So I think that’s why my brother and I were obsessed with comics that was like our edgiest form of entertainment.

But comic books were below the radar because they were children’s entertainment, you know? They didn’t even consider them. Only Christian music was allowed, no secular music. All the movies they’d watch first, and the television shows-it was very strict. MJ: Were the arts frowned upon by your parents?ĬT: I think that’s one of the reasons I imprinted myself on the medium: They did censor all the media in the house. So, we didn’t have access to the arts in the house in any form other than the Sunday funnies. I grew up in a very working-class family and also a very fundamentalist Christian family. We lived a 10-minute drive outside of town, in the country, on a highway.ĬT: Yeah. My dad was a plumber, and my mom was on and off again, either a stay-at-home mom or working with the disabled as a visiting-nurse assistant. MJ: Did your parents work in the factory?ĬT: They didn’t, actually. The elementary school and the high school are on pretty much the same block, and pretty much your entire life is there. There’s a cheese factory there, and that’s sort of the center. What’s it like there?Ĭraig Thompson: The town, when I was growing up, was population 1,200. Mother Jones: I grew up in Madison, but never got as far north as Marathon. “So I think those two modes met somewhere in the middle: a social-political fairy tale. “I wanted to do a book that was bigger than myself, either something sort of fantastical and epic like Lord of the Rings or something with political relevance, like Joe Sacco‘s documentary work, “ says Thompson, who is now 36 and living in Portland, Oregon. The author weaves the adventures of his slave-child protagonists with tales from the Bible and the Koran, numerology, and themes of imperial debauchery and environmental degradation. Maus creator Art Speigelman sent him a laudatory letter, and Time dubbed Blankets the year’s best graphic novel, while Paste magazine would later name it the decade’s best.Īt a staggering 672 pages, Habibi, Thompson’s new book out this week, is a richly rendered love story set in a fictional Middle-East that’s simultaneously modern and medieval.

He followed up with the mini-comics Bible Doodles and Doot Doot Garden, but it was Thompson’s 2003 release of Blankets, an autobiographical coming-of-age saga that earned him a shower of awards and cemented his place in the comic pantheon-even as it led to a family rift. His 1999 debut, Good-bye, Chunky Rice won a Harvey award and was nominated for an Ignatz-named for the beloved Krazy Kat character. But comics flew under their radar, so that’s where Thompson, then a socially awkward nerdling, ended up gravitating. Craig Thompson grew up in rural Wisconsin, where his access to media was strictly controlled by his fundamentalist Christian parents.

Blankets craig thomson