Blankets: A treaty of the devil?

Last December, Time Magazine declared Blankets, an autobiography of 570 pages, to be the best comic of 2003. The stunning story of young love is well worth the four years of hard labour author Craig Thompson put in it.

Craig Thompson is born on 21st of September 1975 in Trevorse City, a little town in Michigan. When he is three years old, he and his strictly religious family move to a small village in Wisconsin. The only book that is considered worth reading in the Thompson family, is the bible. During his childhood Craig Thompson reads in the bible for one hour every day. Blankets deals with this period in his life, where Christianity is considered to be the only truth. Besides studying the bible, young Craig also likes to draw. After high school he considers drawing Christian cartoons. By this time, however, he is re-introduced to comics. 'It was a revelation to me that you could make a living doing comics. I loved the idea of being able to produce a piece of work all by myself. It seemed like a very accessible medium. It was something you could do without a college degree.'Thompson goes to art school, but quits after the first semester. 'I could only afford one semester, because I had to pay everything out of my own pocket. After one semester I was in debt for over $ 8,000. And I was going like “Oh, I can’t keep doing this.” In addition to that, I didn’t feel I was learning anything. I was spending all this time working in the woodshop, working table saws, or making toothpick sculptures, or color wheels. Cartoons and comics were really looked down upon, so it just didn’t feel like it was a very nurturing environment for that sort of thing. I realized that it was better to work crappy jobs, which is what I did and during my free time work I focused on my art. Still, I regret I not having a university education. It would probably have been useful for peripheral things, such as learning another language. That still is a goal of mine.’

Adulthood
After his disappointing experiences in art school, Thompson works in a bagel shop and as a telemarketer. He finally lands a job as a graphic designer at a local newspaper and after that at an advertisement agency. For a brief moment he works as an animator. He moves to Portland to work at Dark Horse Comics as a graphic designer. Then he shows his work to Brett Warnock at Top Shelf Comics. Warnock looks at his sketches and self-published autobiographical comics and is captivated by a little turtle character named Chunky Rice. Warnock thinks the autobiographical comics are too personal and asks Thompson to make a story about Chunky Rice instead. ‘Goodbye Chunky Rice was going to be a mini-comic. Partly because of the encouragement of Top Shelf it expanded into a larger book. Knowing that I had a publisher, suddenly the story kept growing and growing. Before I knew it was 120 pages long and it was a small book.’ Thompson creates Chunky Rice in his spare time, while working at Dark Horse in the daytime. He completes the story in one and half years. Goodbye Chunky Rice tells the tale of little turtle Chunky Rice, who goes on a journey and leaves his girlfriend behind. It is a subtle tale of desire and being left behind. The book gets rave reviews. Although Blankets is a very different story, there are similarities between the two stories. ‘Visually they are quite different. Chunky Rice is cute animals and slick broad brush lines, whereas Blankets is human beings and naturalistic, a mundane Mid-West US setting and more loose expressive brush lines. But thematically both are meditations on change and leaving friends and longing and separation. And both have the love of nature in common. Like the ocean in Chunky Rice and the snow in Blankets. And they are both love stories. The main characters are both like fragile teenagers: they share the same world. Both of them are somewhat intimidated and oblivious to the more adult world. On the whole, I want each book of mine to have its own separate character. To have its own different texture and flavor. I like to compare them to Beck albums. Each Beck album is very different from the one before, at least in sound. I know I will be revisiting the same themes, probably for good, but I hope there will always be enough variety for the reader.’

Blankets
After drawing the cute Chunky Rice character for one and half years, Thompson wants to try something different. He starts to think about doing an autobiographical story about his childhood. ‘Initially, I was really reluctant. Autobiography in comics at the time seemed somewhat overdone.’ While working on Chunky Rice Thompson discovers the work of French comic artists from L’Association and the legendary Comix 2000 anthology. ‘The first time I discovered the works of Lewis Trondheim and Edmond Baudoin they were a big influence. I can barely read French, so it was more on a graphical level and the length of the comics were a revelation to me. I have grown up with the American standard comics format: a whole story told in 24 pages. But I decided to make a book where nothing really happens.’ Thompson starts to work on Blankets. He only has the title to start with: Blankets. A gift from Thompson’s first girlfriend, Raina. ‘It was one of the first elements. I still have that blanket: it is all worn now. It is a real physical object.’ The title has a lot of references in the book: the blanket Thompson had to share with his little brother, the blanket he receives from Raina and a symbolic blanket. ‘There is this symbolic security blanket. The same security people cling to in relationships, romance, family, art and religion.’

Simplicity
Thompson thinks the book will be around 250 pages long. But after a year of writing and sketching the page count is over 600. ‘The pages I drew were just in pencil and they were pretty rough thumbnail versions. They were detailed thumbnails, but they were still these casual thumbnails and I would draw ten of them a day.’ This sketch version contains parts of his life, that would not end up in the final version. ‘My sister I did have a roll in the first draft, but I edited her out. I also edited out the fact that halfway through my senior year of high school my parents took us out of high school they put us on this Christian do-it-yourself curriculum at the house. Obviously, on itself, that is a pretty fascinating story. But in the book as a whole it just complicated things. I tried to simplify the storyas much as possible. I editied out more of the breakdowns, more of the melodrama, because I was striving for certain simplicity to tell the main theme of the book: acceptance. Acceptance of self and of others.

Letter

While working on Blankets Thompson is looking for a certain narrative style to tell his story. He writes the book as a personal letter to the reader. ‘It has been my aim to have my books have a sort of an emotional quality, more like a song than a more plot driven narrative. The same with Chunky Rice. I am thinking more about the rhythm and stuff in a different way. So it is more of an emotional experience. I definitely broke away from computers. I think in part because I worked on computers for so long. It is definitely my philosophy in comics to avoid computers as much as possible. Obviously, I scan the original art in the end. But otherwise I like everything to be really hands on: ink on paper. I was doing two pages a day, when I was working on the book. I pencilled them in the morning and then after lunch I would ink two of them. This may sound as a very fast working process. But, on the other hand, there would be three months at a stretch where I wouldn’t be able to touch the book because I was buried in freelance projects.’ At this time, Thompson has a variety of magazines he works for as a freelancer: Nickelodeon Magazine and National Geographic Kids Magazine, Owl Magazine. He also draws comics and illustrations for the three largest comics publishers: Dark Horse, DC and Marvel. ‘I did get a $500 advance from Top Shelf, but that didn’t last mevery long! I was working the whole time to pay the bills.’
The writing of Blankets is Thompson’s cry for help. He has little contact with his parents and they do not communicate; there is a lack of understanding. Blankets is Thompson’s last attempt to make his parents understand why he abandoned his Christian faith. The book is like a therapy session to close off his childhood. It is also a tribute to Raina, his highschool sweetheart with whom Thompson has lost all contact. Raina is also based on his current girlfriend, who literally acted as a model for 'Raina' in the book. ‘The romantic part was written with this girl I left behind in Milwaukee in mind. So on the surface it has this high school relationship, but emotionally it was motivated by my longing for this girl I left behind when I moved from Milwaukee to Portland. And we eventually ended up together. That turned out good.’

Response
When Thompson’s parents read the book, they were afraid he wasted their good reputation. 'At first they were very upset by it. Some of their concerns were how they were presented and my decision in the first place to make our private lives public. My father said: “Why have you done this? There are all kinds of things that happen to me or that I feel, that I never even tell your mother.” And I was like: “Oh why don’t you Dad? Why don’t you communicate those things?” Then he said: “Those things are between me and the Lord!” Obviously they were upset about the breaking free or abandoning Christianity. Over time, however, they have become much more acceptant of other elements in the book. Now they understand why I had to tell the story. Plus they have talked to a lot of people. Now they understand better why it is important to me, why it is a form of therapy. On the whole they are still upset, and they will probably continue to be upset about the Christian thing. That is the most heartbreaking element to them. They even called Blankets a Treaty of the devil.’
Fortunately, Thompson's brother's and sister's reactions to the book are more positive. They all share the same Christian upbringing. Thompson’s sister still lives in the same town as her parents and still is a Christian, though not a fudamentalist one. His brother Phil also still calls himself a Christian, but a very liberal one at that. Phil now is a graphic designer and healso draws comics. ‘Both of my siblings liked Blankets a lot. But there were things they hadforgotten. Or moments they remembered the story differently, which were fascinating. Like: “Oh yeah I remember, but it happened like this!” It is so funny how memories are such subjective things.’

Habibi
For the moment Thompson will not make another autobiography. ‘After finishing Blankets I was pretty convinced it would be the only one I'd do. But it might be an interesting theme to revisit. Who knows? Maybe ten years from now. My next project is definitely not autobio - it is sort of fantastical even.’ Thompson’s is currently working on this book. It is titled Habibi and is scheduled for Summer 2005. It will most likely become a voluminous book. If the story exceeds 300 pages, Thompson considers to split the story into three volumes.
‘I still have an active interest in the bible. But I am not a Christian, I am not religious. My new book draws a lot on Islamic art and culture. I am studying the interplay between the Koran and the Bible, which is really fascinating. So now I am just branching out these stories. I really enjoy the gnostic texts and the scrolls that never made it into the canon of the bible. I am very interested by the Koran now and how the two interact: the similarities and the differences. Habibi will be sort of an Arabian folktale - but of my own making. The story is about a water crisis in an imaginary sort of Ottoman Empire. The main characters are child slaves. One is a prostitute and the other a eunuch and they fall in love. I am now looking for comics or stories that have the same sort of setting. I made an outline of it and I am about 60 pages into thumbnailing it: the first draft. I have been taking a break the last couple of months, because I have to prepare for my trip to Europe. I am going to be in Europe for 3 ½ months. I will also be in Morocco for three weeks for research; I am going to be drawing a lot. I hope to be drawing like the actual pages by fall-time or so. In some ways it is going to be the same like Blankets, because it will have humans and my looser brush lines. But the environment is such an important factor in the story. The characters are going to be smaller on the page; they will be enveloped by their environment. I feel like Blankets is more close with all of these cosy camera angles, but with the new book I am going to tale more distance and show a lot more of the landscape.’

Europe
This Summer, Top Shelf will publish Carnet de voyage,which will show Thompson’s impressions on his journey to Europe and Morocco. ‘It is really exciting. I don’t know what else to say than that I am excited about it. Ultimately I have this fantasy of being able to live in Europe for some time during my life and learn another language. It sits in with this idea if I can establish an audience in the European market.... This would open up possibilities of moving here at some point. I know a lot of Americans who want to get away from our country right now with Bush being in power. But this might be a wrong time to leave, too. Because if we stay, we might have a small chance of changing things.’

Blankets has had rave reviews, but Thompson is the first one to put this kind of attention into perspective. ‘It feels pretty much the same as when I was this sort of obscure, suffering, poor cartoonist. It feels very similar. Now I can enjoy all the attention. But I know it is temporary. OK, great, everyone seems to like me this month. In a year that will change. I hope I will build up a steady audience. That people will be there for me like a committed audience. The current attention is very fickle.’

Stefan de Groot

pubblished in ZozoLala 135

ZozoLala Roots