Craig Thompson and Process on Instagram

Earlier today, via facebook, Craig Thompson announced a new instagram, where he's posting pictures of his process for his upcoming all ages outer space adventure, Space Dumplins. I can't post the pictures here, but using that particular popular smartphone application to document a workspace as well as and alongside documentation of his process is clever; it's a good reminder that comics, any art, really, is created by people in places at a certain point in time and that to argue otherwise is contradicted by the evidence at hand. 

2o11 in a Shortbox: The Best of the Year

Yeah, it's been a while. 2o11 passed. DC rebooted. Everything went crazy. I really still need to get this out there, so: These are my picks for the best comics I read last year.

To qualify, a work must be comics and must have become publicly available in its entirety, in English, and for the first time, either in print or on the web, between 1/1/11 and 12/31/11. The selections are presented by category, but not in any ascending or descending order.

BEST GRAPHIC NOVELS (over 100 pages)

"Scenes From an Impending Marriage" from drawn & quarterly (@DandQ)
written and drawn by Adrian Tomine
Imagine the bride and groom standing up straight and looking prim and proper. Ready to take the next big step in their lives. Except they probably don't feel ready at all. They probably feel exhausted and stupid and hungry. A comic originally made as a gift for the guests at his own wedding, one of Adrian Tomine's most personal auto-biographical comics, edited and expanded as "Scenes from an Impending Marriage" is funny, human and was the first comic to put me on the verge of tears with laughter last year.

"Habibi" from Pantheon Books (@PantheonBooks)
written and drawn by Craig Thompson
Was there any question when Craig Thompson releases a new graphic novel that it ends up on all the best of the year lists? Not in my mind. Thompson has Will Eisner's versatility in character design, Harvey Pekar's observational acumen, Jack Kirby's ability to enliven a line on the page, and an emotional intensity that I can find no analog for in my memory. "Habibi" is the story of two orphans surviving together and apart in a Middle Eastern country never named in a century never named. It is haunting, beautiful, and an education in itself.


BEST GRAPHIC NOVELLA (under 100 pages)

"Batman: NOEL" from DC Comics (@DCComics)
written and drawn by Lee Bermejo (@ljbermejo)
This book may not be the best Batman graphic novel I've ever read but it holds a spot somewhere in the top 10. Retelling Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" with the DC Universe characters sounds absolutely fucking crazy but by making the role of Scrooge ambiguous (is it The Joker, is it Batman?) Bermejo created a unique work of playful originality and breathtaking visuals.


BEST MINI-SERIES

"The Intrepids" #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 from Image Comics (@imagecomics)
written by Kurtis J. Wiebe (@kurtisjwiebe); drawn by Scott Kowalchuck (@scottkowalchuk)
If Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had made the 1960s "X-Men" today it might have looked something like this: Smart, fun, action-packed, well-told. The characters are written on a tightrope balanced between unbelievability as teenagers and unbelievability as super-secret-agents, but you know what? I believed them somehow. Issue after issue, these kids react genuinely to their uncanny situations and convinced me of their wants and their worries again. Sometimes even in a somewhat moving way. That coupled with the 60s retro-future design work, the comics-pop colors, and the simple 'yellowed paper' flashbacks make this the best mini I read in 2o11. Or could it be because the book is just so much fun? Possibly, but then... that's the artistry of it.


BEST INDIVIDUAL COMIC-BOOKS (either from an ongoing or limited series)

"The Lil Depressed Boy" #1 from Image Comics
written by S. Steven Struble (@struble); drawn by Sina Grace (@SinaGrace)
I saw this slice-of-life book on the shelf and was immediately very, very impressed. Few comics succeed in being so entertaining with so little sensationalism. And the design of the main character (a simple puppet-like figure conceived for the original LDB webcomic) makes all the difference.

"Invincible Iron Man" #500.1 from Marvel Comics (@Marvel)
written by Matt Fraction (@mattfraction); drawn by Salvador Larroca
Man, if you have a character who is famous for, among other things, being an alcoholic and you are offered the chance to give him a side-story moment that only needs to sell in comic shops and not on newsstands... I should hope you would do an entire issue of your main character in a Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. And I would pray you were as talented as Mr. Fraction. Every third page seems to add another layer of meaning to Tony Stark's sad life-long battle against the "Demon in the Bottle," indeed to his entire story.

"Daredevil" #1 & #4-5 from Marvel Comics
written by Mark Waid (@MarkWaid); drawn by Paolo Rivera (@PaoloMRivera) & Marcos Martin
Really, really impressive superhero comics. Playing off of Bendis' (@BRIANMBENDIS) work from years ago (outing Matt Murdock as the vigilante superhero Daredevil in the tabloid press thereby making it publicly questioned but not publicly provable), but taking it one step further into reality: if everyone knows you may or may not be a superhero vigilante you wouldn't be able to step foot in a court room. What's an enterprising genius-attorney-secret/public superhero to do? Become a consulting law firm, an organization that teaches the common man in need of legal advice how to represent themselves. Genius. And somehow touching.

"Catwoman" #1 from DC Comics
written by Judd Winick; drawn by Guillem March
Yes, this book is drawn to 'gratuitously large proportions'. It is a superheroine/supervillainess comic with a lot of T&A but it's also a book with a lot of brains and a lot of heart. The dialogue breathes and rushes and pauses again between breaths. Kinda like that feeling of running down a hill into open land faster than your legs can safely carry you but you just barely avoid tumbling at the bottom and you push right on...
Did I mention this book is fun?

"Supergirl" #1 from DC Comics
written by Michael Green and Mike Johnson; drawn by Mahmud Asrar (@MahmudAsrar)
If "Catwoman" is the hooker with the heart of gold, "Supergirl" is the feisty little five-year-old who will bite you if you piss her off. Choosing to put this newest version of Kara-El into a more delicate situation (Kara wakes up from suspended animation on Earth with no memory of the destruction of Krypton) we see and 'hear' her freaking out on multiple levels at once. The portrayal of a teenager thrown into a situation she doesn't understand is more than competent and Asrar's art is a joy to read.

"Batman" #3-4 from DC Comics
written by Scott Snyder (@Ssnyder1835); drawn by Greg Capullo (@GregCapullo)
Scott Snyder has suddenly risen to the comic-book writing A-list last year and a large part of the reason is his head-turning writing with the Batman character, first on "Detective Comics" and then in this run of "Batman".

"Animal Man" #1-2 from DC Comics
written by Jeff Lemire (@JeffLemire); drawn by Travel Foreman
Completely re-imagining a superhero character is so old hat in a world post "Squadron Supreme" in the 70s/"Watchmen" in the 80s/"Planetary"in the 00s that nowadays it almost seems more impressive to simply take the elements already present and do it better than it's been done in a long, long time. Lemire's "Animal Man" is family-centered, high-concept, body-horror superhero comics that works, and it deserves accolades for that alone.

"the Amazing Spider-Man" #673 from Marvel Comics
written by Dan Slott (@DanSlott); drawn by Stefano Caselli
I almost declared the entire "Spider-Island" quasi-crossover-event the best story-arc of the year because it's very good, possibly among the best Spider-Man stories in a decade. But I was rather taken out of it by how silly it was at times. Too silly. In this epilogue issue Dan Slott's humor feels right however, like a great release after a terrifying ordeal.

"Sweet Tooth" #24 from Vertigo (@vertigo_comics)
written and drawn by Jeff Lemire (@JeffLemire)
Man, this book is just so damn beautiful. Death has never looked so good. Go read it.

"Diablo" #1 from DC Comics
written by Aaron Williams; drawn by Joseph Lacroix
Never-before-seen: A video game adaptation comic-book of real substance. A father-and-son story set against a fantasy back-drop.

"Northlanders" #36 from Vertigo
written by Brian Wood (@brianwood); drawn by Becky Cloonan (@beckycloonan)
"The Girl in the Ice" Part 2 is harrowing. Wrongly accused Jon must serve his community, even if what his community clamors for is a scapegoat. The clearest example I've read in the "Northlanders" series that the reality of life in the northlands at the turn of the last millenium was cold indeed.

"Criminal: Last of the Innocent" #1 from Icon
written by Ed Brubaker (@brubaker); drawn by Sean Phillips (@seanpphillips)
Although the following issues of this mini bored me slightly, this first issue rocked my socks off with its terrifying vision of modern American marriage combined with the loss of innocence we all must experience dramatized by the dirty scratchy art of the present day 80s and the smooth cartoony art of the main character's flashbacks/dreams of the 60s.

"Atomika" #12 from Mercury Comics
written by Andrew Dabb; drawn by Sal Abbinanti (@SalAbbinanti)
Atomika, the god of... something that by this point is a little unclear finally overcomes his treacherous father figure Aronhir in the last issue of this monumental series started in 2oo5. The final denouement was not the quite what I wanted as I felt a lot more emotional effect from the previous issue way back in 2oo9. But the epilogue-type stuff in here about humanity continuing on got me quite choked up. I hope this gets released in a single package one day- it'll read well and it might just get some major recognition.

"Spontaneous" #1 from Oni Press (@OniPress)
written by Joe Harris (@joeharris); drawn by Brett Weldele (@BrettWeldele)
Before the DC re-boot, this team had concocted the best first issue of the year. Quick, without feeling rushed, fun without feeling pointless, scary without being over-the-top, this unique story is told with Weldele's great watercolor style accenting a dark tale of obsession. But the real draw is Harris' dialogue for his female lead. Smooth and quirky, I fell in love at the first scene.

"ZEGAS" #1 from Copra Press
written and drawn by Michel Fiffe (@MichelFiffe)
Strikingly beautiful artwork, the kind that immediately grab your eyeballs and won't let go, is sadly rare in this world of comics. The balance required to make something VISUALLY beautiful while telling a story in tiny pictures WELL is incredibly difficult. Somehow Michel Fiffe can do this.

"A Skeleton Story..." #4 from GG Studios (@GGSTUDIO)
written and drawn by Alessandro Rak; translated by Adam McGovern (@AdamMcGovern)
This simple tale of crime-noir in the afterlife is so beautifully drawn that it might have won a spot by that alone, but the character designs, storytelling, and good old fashioned Disney-ish heart of this comic won me over pretty bigtime.


BEST SHORTS (under 22 pages)

"BOOM" on CartoonMovement.com
written by David Axe (@daxe); drawn by Ryan Alexander-Tanner (@ohyesverynice)
When I stumbled across this short but powerful webcomic, it felt like a little revelation. The current horror of IEDs and their ability to destroy more than mere lives on the battlefield. [I reviewed it here.]

"Bahrain: Lines in ink, Lines in the sand" on CartoonMovement.com
written and drawn by Josh Neufeld (@JoshNeufeld)
Truth about political difference demonstrated by two political cartoonists' work from the point-of-view of one American comicsmith. Powerful stuff.

"What Every Woman Should Know" on CartoonMovement.com
written and drawn by Susie Cagle
An intense presentation of the realities of abortion clinics in California in illustrations and sequential art. Regardless of where you may fall on the subject, things are not as they seem. Read it, educate yourself.

"State of Palestine" on CartoonMovement.com
written and drawn by Sarah Glidden (@sarahglidden)
It's only four pages and it tells the story of a clever political artist. Go read it.

The whole website is wonderful. Journalistic comics on the web, for free, easily shared. CartoonMovement.com deserves a medal. Four comics made my list.

“A Brief History of the Art Form Known as ‘Hortisculpture’” from "Optic Nerve" #12
written and drawn by Adrian Tomine
Choosing to give up on your dreams for your family and your own well-being is one of the hardest things an adult has to do. Sad, true, ridiculous, petty, human. All of these describe the main character of this sad, heart-warming, smart short tale.

"The White Room" from "Strange Adventures" #1
written by Talia Hershewe; drawn by Juan Bobillo
Beautiful and terrifying; short but haunting. This is excellent sci-fi psychological stuff. Go track it down and keep your eye out for those two names. I know I have.

"The Clock" from "Crack Comics" #63 (The Next Issue Project)
written and drawn by Paul Maybury (@pmaybury)
The pure Dick Tracy-high-impact-four-color-fun of this short piece is not to be reckoned with. The note the main character delivers to the bad guys on page one tells us what's going to happen, but it only makes the ride all the more fast and fun.

"I'll Never Let You Go" from "Amazing Spider-Man Spider-Man: Infested"
written by Dan Slott; drawn by Giuseppe Camuncoli
A more human presentation of the relationship between Peter Parker and his Aunt May has rarely been seen. In flashback and in the present we see their love grow: the short opens on the day May and Ben become his legal gaurdians and he yells "You-- you're not my mother!" but the adult Peter in the present says to Mary Jane (for the first time I can remember) "She's my mom, MJ."

"this one is not a dream" from "Dream Logic" #4
written and illustrated by David Mack (@davidmackkabuki)
A comic by David Mack about the death of his father. Abstract, yet human, unique in style. Heartbreaking.

Lil Depressed Boy: "My Life is Starting Over Again"
written by S. Steven Struble (@struble); drawn by Sina Grace (@SinaGrace)
Essentially the last entry in the old-style of the webcomic version of LDB tells a story about making your home, your fun, making your life-- wherever you can.

"Finder: Third World" Chapter 1 from Dark Horse Presents v2 #1
written and drawn by Carla Speed McNeil
My first introduction to "Finder" and the work of Ms. McNeil. Sharply realized characters in strange situations, all well-drawn. Even context-less (for me) I could tell there's cool stuff going on here.


BEST STRIPS (1 page)

"November in the North of England" in "Thought Bubble 2011" published in the US by Image Comics
written by Andy Diggle (@andydiggle); drawn by D'Israeli
Time travel. Crime. Morbid. Funny. All in a page.

untitled published in the US in "Jason Conquers America" from Fantagraphics
written and drawn by Jason
This little piece was finally released in the US last year in a slim one-shot collection of stuff Jason made that was never released in the US before: Man visits lover's grave. Man is shocked to find his lover's skeleton is having a picnic with -gasp- another skeleton! Shocking? Scandalous! Hilarious!

"on the way back DOWN"
written and drawn by G.M.B. Chomichuk
Take a second to look at this one-pager and tell me it's not gorgeous.

"I Can"
written and drawn by Jess Fink (@JessFink)
Inspiring, no?

"A Softer World" #727
written by Joey Comeau (@joeycomeau) and photographed by Emily Horne (@birdlord)
Yeah... I think.

"A Softer World" #724
written by Joey Comeau and photographed by Emily Horne
Oh yeah! Equally exciting and disturbing.

"A Softer World" #701
written by Joey Comeau and photographed by Emily Horne
I like it because I can't help but agree.

"A Softer World" #666
written by Joey Comeau and photographed by Emily Horne
All of us who've loved and lost can relate to this one.

"A Softer World" #661
written by Joey Comeau and photographed by Emily Horne
This one is among the few times "Softer World" leans more on the visuals than the writing. Both parts are awesome though.

"A Softer World" #628
written by Joey Comeau and photographed by Emily Horne
Funny because it's probably true of most of us if we're really honest with ourselves.

xkcd: "Sharing"
written and drawn by Randall Munroe (@xkcd)
Among the best things I read on the web last year. This simple, six-panel webstrip says everything about freedom, piracy, and 'sharing' by referencing the current terror over digital comics piracy (any kind of digital piracy really), against a well-regarded work of sequential art: the famous children's book Shel Silverstein's "The Giving Tree".

xkcd: "Depth Perception"
written and drawn by Randall Munroe
Just... wow.

xkcd: "Lanes"
written and drawn by Randall Munroe
As I have a few people who've survived cancer in my life, this was a bit chilling but very much eye-opening.

"Dream"

written and drawn by Anne Emond (@comeeks)

A really wonderful and unique use of color to represent a feeling in lines. This is exactly the type of tool-building I want to support for the medium, this is the reason I write this list every year. Synesthesia is the key to good art. And here it's amazing.

And that's a good place to end.

_______________________________________________________
And finally, graphic novels I wanted to read (or finish) but didn't:
"Anya's Ghost"
"His Dream of the Skyland"
"Marzi"
"Mangaman"
"Vietnamerica"
"The Homeland Directive"
"RUST"

We all only have so much time in a year. You just got a (literal and figurative) snapshot of how many comics I read with mine.

Strange, last year I couldn't wade through all the graphic novels and barely had enough single issues to choose from, this year the reverse! The industry in America is in flux. Digital seemed to be slowly becoming the standard method of consuming comics, but we now know that it actually only accounted for about 10% of comics sales in North America last year. [ICv2 source.]

~ @JonGorga

P.S.:

"One Soul"
published by Oni Press, written and drawn by Ray Fawkes (@rayfawkes)

Eighteen lives. One Soul.

Fawkes' graphic novel uses the Ditko-style nine-panel grid x2 to create a double spread that give each character their own narrative space that is then repeated as the characters age. It's about life and death.

It doesn't hang together as well as I wanted it to.

It's not the best graphic novel I read last year. But it came close. Blame Craig Thompson for releasing his second major graphic novel in the same year. It's a unique and daring work. You should read it.

Coming Soon, To A Spinner Rack Near You: Craig Thompson

Craig Thompson's Space Dumplins

Process: Craig Thompson

Craig Thompson shares some preliminary sketches for his new all ages project.

Maurice Sendak

There have been a couple of fascinating comics tributes to Maurice Sendak bouncing around the internet today. Over at his blog, and reproduced below, Craig Thompson has a nice little tribute to Maurice Sendak, which I think speaks volumes more than words ever could:

I wish I could say that I had seen Sendak's influence in Thompson's work before now, but thinking about it, its there, clear as day. I would like to know specifically what Sendak told Thompson about his art, and I would have liked to know what Thompson took from Sendak, but, given that the two had a personal relationship, this seems a much more honest kind of tribute, in the voice that comes most naturally to Thompson.

There's also this old Art Spiegelman interview that's been banging about, which I think brings into focus why, exactly, Sendak's work is so important. We, culturally, like to believe that childhood is privileged, protected from the big-bad-wolf of the outside world and, in some ways, it is, but it's also got its own terrors, even for those of us who were lucky enough to grow up in safe and healthy environments. The crux of Sendak's work is to  admit that those big-bads exist, and then to do to celebrate their existence as part of what makes us us, and as what provokes the better angels of our nature.

Basically, Maurice Sendak was more honest about childhood than any other theorist (accidental or not) of the subject ever was; that honesty, that caustic, challenging voice, is going to be sorely missed. 

New Dawns

These early days of the new year find me once again reading as many of the past year's comics as I can in feverish preparation for the decisions (both very easy and very hard) behind my annual Best of the Year post.

A large number of what I'm reading is from DC Comics this year as their New 52 reboot was one of the big news stories of 2o11 and a lot of the titles excited me but I burned myself out on their characters writing a long retrospective of the first 75 years of the publisher's characters that posted as the second month of the relaunch hit comics stores.

So here I am at the start of 2o12 reading the start of DC's new universe/status quo as well as many other comics I've never read or haven't read much of: "Spontaneous" from Oni Press, "T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents" (which may or may not take place in the DCnU), and "Mudman" by Paul Grist.

2o11 was a strange year.

We saw DC claim they were about to become the new hotness then actually become the new hotness.
(Yeah. I just used 'the new hotness' to describe an American comics publisher. I'm a little bit embarrassed too. You can deal with it.)

We saw the return of Craig Thompson to the full-length graphic novel format in "Habibi".

We saw Ultimate Peter Parker die and be replaced as Spider-Man by a new multi-racial character.

We saw Batman dress up in a new costume for the start of "Justice League" #1 and then promptly get undressed in a semi-sexually explicit scene at the end of "Catwoman" #1.

And that just about all happened in or around September, folks!

DC Comics' share of the monthlies market nearly doubled in September 2o11 then actually grew in October, shocking us all. Unfortunately the high was not to last. November brought them down to a slim, slim margin above Marvel's share and last month's number sees the company returned to where they were before: below Marvel's percentage.

[see article with details by Nicholas Yanes (@NicholasYanes) here]

What will this mean for 2o12? What will this mean for my annual Best of the Year post?

Only time will tell.

~ @JonGorga

HABIBI

On Tuesday, the postman brought me a present. Since I preordered it, I knew it was coming. I hung out at the post office so long waiting for it that I was late for a shift; there was even a brief but excruciating period when I could see the box on the shelf, but, for lack of a slip, could not retrieve it. This was certainly a waste of time, but I've been waiting for Habibi for so long, since I read Blankets five years ago, that I did not really mind. And, because Craig Thompson told Bookslut in 2004 that he was aiming for completion in 2005, I figure I wasn't the only one.

I unboxed it as soon as I got my hands on it; the book itself is a work of delicate beauty, with inlaid gold color and intricate, presumably Islam influenced, designs. Be careful when you grab it: I've been carrying it around, and, apparently, I've been holding it with my thumb on the inlay, which has begun to rub off. The book looks just as nice on the outside as it does on the inside (and the ink on paper won't rub off!); everything we've come to expect from Thompson, the distinctively highly rendered cartoons, the visual puns, the gorgeously complicated splash pages, it's all there. If anything, the time that Thompson spent on Habibi means it looks better and more well thought-out than Blankets. I think part of what made the earlier book a work of sloppy genius is how accidental everything seems; Habibi is striking for the opposite reason, because every line and panel and every space where there is nothing, they all seem intentional.

So let's get one thing out of the way: despite the fact that it is clearly the work of Craig Thompson, Habibi is not Blankets. It doesn't have the same inherent gravity, and the book doesn't keep you as close. Although this fable comes close to the quality of Thompson's autobiographical impulse, it's too intentional, and, anyway, our expectations for it were almost certainly too high. There's no way that Habibi could be all the things I expected it to be, since my expectations were almost certainly unreasonable.

Let us, then, try to move Blankets and my high expectations for its follow-up out of the way, and try to evaluate this new work on its own terms.

Habibi is pretty great. It's flawed, for sure, but the sheer mass of great ideas outweighs the fact that the sprawling fable just feels too big, too spread out, and the strength of the characters is enough to drag you through a good deal of exposition dealing with Islamic theology, mysticism and science: at moments, the book feels like a half effective crash course in Islam. The point of this exposition is unclear to me; Thompson must mean the biblical stories to be allegorical for the events of the story, or maybe the other way around, but allegory and allusion don't work if you have to explain what it means, which is precisely what happens. When the stories do work, or at least when they work better, it's because they are being told in the context of the story itself, because they are stories within the story. The allegorical method might merely be that natural progression of Thompson's tendency towards nonlinear storytelling, his penchant for revealing things at the moment of their highest impact rather than at the moment of their actual happening.

Usually, this works like magic; sometimes, however, Habibi is just too sprawling. Revelations get lost at the moment when they would suddenly make sense, events are frustrating because they are too far separated from the revelations that give them meaning. Like the bits about the magic squares and the Arabic letters, some of which I could probably read a few more times and still not fully understand, the book's sheer size tends to slow its force as a narrative, which is exceedingly frustrating.

You also get the sense that the narrative isn't the point, not quite. There's a lot going on here, beyond the stories of Dodola and Zam, their separations, their reunions, and their love. On that level, the book is very much like Blankets, just significantly more complicated and not pulled together as tightly. On another level, I get the sense that the exposition about Islam is an attempt to soften perceptions about it; I remember reading somewhere a long time ago that this was part of the intention behind the new book, and I wonder about its efficacy, given that Thompson's audience is almost certainly playing the choir to his preacher. Above all that, though, Habibi is a story about stories and, more specifically, it is a story about stories told in both pictures and words: Habibi is, all the way up, a meditation about comics.

The way Arabic is written is a peculiarly situated way in to this contemplation: as a language that is recognizable yet illegible to most of the intended audience, it is possible for us to look at the calligraphy and both understand that it is words and see that it is also a picture. For someone who reads Arabic, though, the connection is more clear; as an illiterate, I understand that the pictures are words, but someone who reads Arabic understands both the word and the picture together. Thompson then pulls a brilliantly clever trick: in the penultimate chapter, he draws nothing but Arabic letters, English letters and panels-- nine equally shaped rectangles on the page. "Orphan's Prayer" is nothing but exposition, words (which we can understand to be pictures as well as words) strung together to make meaning placed within the traditional context of the comic-- the domain of the word and the picture. For Thompson, the word and the picture are one and the same, born separate, coming together, rent apart, and then coming together again, leaving behind the legacy in the form of an adopted child.

Habibi is, then, perhaps the most subtle in-medium defense of the medium of that I've ever read. It's mere existence is, of course, a testament to how far we've come in the battle to make people take comics seriously, but, even beyond that, Thompson made his book, which he knew people were going to read because it is his first major work since Blankets, which is partially responsible for the vanguard of comics intellectuals we now have fighting the good fight, the biggest weapon we have yet in that fight.

In this regard, Habibi may be proven to be even more important than Blankets, and I will be interested to see how, once the initial critical reaction passes, readers of comics, hopefully a larger group than before, consider them both together.

A Verifiable Classic

The new edition of Blankets, set on top of a copy of Habibi

The first time I read Blankets, I think I was a junior in high school. I know it must have been around then, anyway, because I discussed the book at length with my friend Lauren, and she and I got to know each other when she starred in a movie I made at the end of my sophomore year.

(The movie, if you're curious, was a "stranger comes to town" story, set in a high school. I wonder how it would hold up, if I were to watch it now. Luckily, it's either lost to time or buried under a pile in my closet, so I'll probably never have to find out.)

One day a week, I would walk from my high school, on the outskirts of what passes for a downtown in Chicago's north suburbs, to a tutoring appointment. The end of school and the beginning of the appointment were staggered by a couple of hours; this heartened me, insofar as it meant that I wasn't the only one getting help, but it also allowed me a weekly foray into Highland Park's public library. In a moment at which libraries are increasingly being threatened, I am continually grateful that this particular library continues to hold on, even though I haven't actually spent more than a few consecutive weeks at home in almost three years. Without that library and, in particular, a couple of shelves just the other side of the science fiction section, I'm not sure you would be reading these words right now. Without the Highland Park Public Library, without their ever growing collection of comics, a collection that now takes up several whole bookshelves, I'm not sure I would have discovered that there was more to the medium than four color caped crusaders, nor am I confident I would have eventually discovered Kirby, Moore or Gaiman.

To say that my visits to those shelves are an important part of who I am now is like saying that those tutoring sessions I was killing time before helped me get into college; that is, it would be nothing other than true, although I used to be loathe to admit it.

It was on one of those days that I discovered Blankets. I think it must have been winter. I think I must have slipped the book under my red parka to protect it from snow. I remember sitting in the waiting room at the tutoring center, and opening the book. I remember not getting any work done that night. I remember sitting down on my bed, and reading Craig Thompson's book all the way through.

Let's call that 2006. I've occasionally thought about buying a copy since then, but I never really saw the need: it was always at the library, after all, and I still go home for stretches long enough that my ability to find a copy of the book seemed assured. But with the release of Habibi looming, Top Shelf released an edition of the earlier book that is as beautiful as an object as it is a marvelous piece of comics, an edition that physically matches both the dimensions of the new book and the spirit of the old one, that is to say, Top Shelf released an edition that belongs on my top shelf. So when I ordered my books for the semester, I ordered Blankets too.

And then, with the books I actually have to read for my second-to-last semester in college, it showed up on my doorstep, big and thick and beautiful, all white and black on the inside and highlighted in various dark blues on the outside. Last night, five years after I made this mistake the first time, I opened up Blankets. Two and a half hours later, I was done. Sure, I tried to put it down. Maybe I even succeeded, once or twice, but never more than briefly. By the end, I was committing the cardinal sin of comics reading: I was skimming, just a little bit. Looking at the words rather than the words and the pictures. I had to reread the second half of the last chapter. I did, but rather than really conquering Blankets, it had, for the second time in my life and five years after the first incident, conquered me.

I can't really tell you why I fell so hard for Thompson's book the first time around. There's a distinct possibility that I liked it because everybody else liked it so much; even now, I'm not convinced my critical self is entirely independent. I suspect, however, that I was taken in by the spirit and the romance, by the impressionistic conveyance of a feeling-- love-- that I had been longing for a couple of years already but had eluded me up until that point. I suspect that, when I first read Blankets, I fell a little in love with Raina at just the same moment that Craig did.

Since then, I have more than once fallen in, and then out, of love, and now, rather than see the sort of love I would like to share with someone, I see in Blankets the arc of my own relationships. I see the quilts stuck in the cubby hole (and I know that I am not yet brave enough to dig them all out). I understand that Thompson chooses to reveal memories slowly, in the same way that we only allow ourselves glimpses of pains past, and I understand that, while it is a book about many things, Blankets isn't really a book about anything. It functions in the same way that our own narrative instinct does, it is a story constructed with a beginning, a middle and an end, and with motifs and themes and characters, but without being self-consciously about anything, like, say, the journey of a Jewish kid from the north suburbs of Chicago that begins with a stop at the library between the final bell and ACT tutoring and ends with him sitting at his computer, writing about how he got all the way there. And the story that bookends that story is just as striking at the end as it was at the start.

I think I know, by the way, why that is. Has there ever been as effective an impressionist as Craig Thompson? The simultaneous reality and unreality of the comics medium probably makes stories told in the medium inherently impressionistic, but Thompson really manages to get the senses confused, to tell a story with the feel of fabric in a fully visual medium, relating not the exact actuality of a moment but instead revealing in its complete, if not exactly its persistent, truth.

Habibi comes out in a little under two weeks (although I hold out hope that it will arrive early enough that I can lug it to Brooklyn for the Brooklyn Book Fest); I believe I read, somewhere and several years ago, that Thompson wishes to do for Islam in the new book what he did for Christianity in the old book, that is, humanize it. The fact that I can't find the quote anywhere makes me wonder if I made it up and, to a certain extent, I hope I did. Although, because of its subject matter, some will measure Habibi's success by its characters, I think we can expect carefully honest and earnest constructions; instead, I hope the book is judged by the standards and in the terms that Thompson has already set. I hope it (and, after having just reread the earlier work, I am confident that it will) has the same classic comics appeal of which Blankets is now a verifiable example.

Weekly Process Roundup 6/24/11

The weekly process roundup is a collection of sketches, pencils, inks, thumbnails, everything other than finished product, from The Long and Shortbox of It's favorite artists and illustrators, hitting every Friday.

Sorry for the lack of process roundups, guys: I've been in Greece, and its been hard to keep up while I'm away. Expect more regular updates next week, when I'm back in the States: for now, here's some cool stuff I've missed while being away.

• Jeffrey Brown shares some "stages" from "It's A Cute Cat World!"
• Craig Thompson gives a tantalizing taste of three summer projects! (above)
• Moon shares some colored sketches and some cryptic messages!
• Pasqual Ferry is working on something that looks fun!

Weekly Process Roundup 4/22/11

The weekly process roundup is a collection of sketches, pencils, inks, thumbnails, everything other than finished product, from The Long and Shortbox of It's favorite artists and illustrators, hitting every Friday.

• Pasqual Ferry tries his hand at architecture!
• Sean Phillips sketches a Criminal cover!
• Craig Thompson gets a first look at his new book!
• Moon instagrams a rabbit!