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109 of 112 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The graphic novel at its finest, April 14, 2004
This review is from: Blankets (Paperback)
When you first come into physical contact with this book, taking this brick-sized 600 page monster into your hands and cracking open the covers - the heft alone should tell you that this is no ordinary graphic-novel/comic-book. A few pages into this book and you'll immediately be hooked. Your fingers will flip through page after page and before you know it you'll already have consumed several hundred pages of what will surely go down as a monument to the medium of the graphic novel the way Art Spiegelman's, 'Maus,' did in the 80's and Neil Gaiman's, 'Sandman' series offered throughout the 90's. 'Blankets,' at its core is a simple, timeless story (coming of age, first-love, alienation, anxiety, pursuit of spiritual identity, teen-angst) told thousands of times over the millenia (books, poems, songs, movies, television) but perfectly captured, perhaps for the first time, in comic-strip form. This book is exquisitely plotted, paced, written and drawn and by the end of it all one can't help but be left dazed at the sheer artistic excellence demonstrated by Thompson, from start to finish, through thousands of panels. Visually, the black and white artwork is a stunner but perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of all is Thompson's gift for prose with not a wasted word to be found in his minimalistic narrative that still manages to be filled with layer after layer of subtext. This truly is a title not to be missed by anyone with an appreciation for the written word, not to mention the graphical novel format. The stylish cover design and paper quality also lends itself very well as a gift-giving item.
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67 of 72 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
the graphic novel that's not afraid to be a novel, July 27, 2003
This review is from: Blankets (Paperback)
Much has been made in recent years of how the graphic novel-and as a result, the comic book-has matured and come into its own. This is indeed, true, as subject matter and approach in the comics industry has become much more fluid. Yet, most stories were still serialized before they were printed in book form, and the ones that struck out on their own and did it in one-go (including some by my own company, Oni Press), were significant, but not yet reaching the full breadth that the word "novel" implied. Enter Craig Thompson. Nearly five years ago, he released his first major work, GOODBYE CHUNKY RICE. It was an excellent piece of sequential fiction, but much like, say, the first album by Nirvana or Andi Watson's SKELETON KEY (or even THE COMPLETE GEISHA) or Todd Haynes' POISON, it was only a glimmer of what was to come. Since that time, Thompson has locked himself away and honed his first masterpiece-an ambitious narrative clocking in at nearly 600 pages. Sure, you can write it off as a coming of age story (a coming of age story in an art form that still is coming up with its standards for most literary genres, and thus still coming of age itself), but that would be to say THE BELL JAR is merely the story of a depressed poet or GOODFELLAS about a guy who gets an interesting job. BLANKETS is the story of an artist in a state of becoming, a boy walking down a road where people in the houses on either side are attempting to get him to stop and play in their yard. It's the tale of said boy figuring out how to stick to the middle, and stay true to himself. Semi-autobiographical, BLANKETS outstrips the standard coming-of-age novel by giving it a perspective that only the comic book would allow him. Not even in movies could the story of an artist have that artist's vision so expertly rendered (think of how, in CRUMB, Zwigoff had to look over Crumb's shoulder to see what the illustrator saw). While the narrative thread of BLANKETS is straightforward, Thompson uses his pen to bend the world he portrays. Thus, you can step into an abstract world in the short span of a panel, see it as Thompson sees it himself. And there you get what makes the difference. The story of a boy discovering who he will be is also a book where an artist discovers a new form of expression. And there we are, back to the beginning. This is a comic book that understands what a novel is, and a novel that has figured out how to be a comic book. There is going to be a lot of hype about this one, and the sorts of people who read and talk about "comix," needing the crooked letter to make them feel cooler, will likely come down on BLANKETS for not being cool enough, but ignore all that and trust yourself and trust the book. It's emotional and expressive and engrossing, and possibly the best thing you'll read this year-in any medium.
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24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
When Church Camp Spells Relief, You Know You're in Trouble, October 26, 2006
This review is from: Blankets (Paperback)
Craig Thompson's Blankets is a big, hefty, slab of a graphic novel -- the kind of book that requires you to develop strategies for holding it up when you're reading in bed or draping yourself over the edge of the couch. I found that the book was easiest to read in bed with my knees in the air. That way, its massiveness could be propped up on my knees and the pages fairly easily turned.
Blankets is an elegantly inked autobiographical coming of age story about a boy, Craig, who is dealing with mid-west mullet-sporting hicks, extremely overzealous Christians for parents, an only minimally explained instance of childhood molestation (by an apparent stranger with bad skin), much more direct and violent abuse from the before-mentioned extremely overzealous Christian father, and relief from all of this only in the form of church camp. When church camp spells your relief from it all, you know you're in trouble.
The character Craig's childhood is rendered sweetly charming by the author Craig's portrayal of two brothers sleeping in the same bed together in a poorly insulated attic room and managing to weather the turmoil of the childhood they didn't choose for themselves or each other. They draw, but most of all, they summon creativity: that force kids can bring to life in even the worst of situations.
At church camp one year, much later in his adolescence, Craig meets Raina, the alluringly drawn bad-for-a-Christian girl who Craig falls for and then the book falls for -- about half of the text, right up until a very-nearly tacked on section at the end, is spent describing Craig's slow-boil relationship with Raina. By focusing on a two-week visit to Raina's house in Michigan (Craig lives on a farm in Wisconsin), the book manages to describe and show two teenagers all crazily obsessed with each other, their families, and the bible. This mixture of obsessions keeps Craig and Raina drawn to each other and kept distant because of a complex array of barricades.
[Spoiler Warning!] When the two-week visit to Raina's house is over (look to this section of the book for some fairly scintillating teen-age heterosexual action), the book accelerates toward its closure. Craig and Raina fall apart -- but it's not that tragic; I mean really, who can sustain a long-distance relationship while in high school? Craig moves out of his parents' house at age 20, and in a revelation the entire perspective of the novel tells you is coming but is hard to imagine the particulars of, Craig falls away from the force that has captivated him his entire life: organized Christianity. In the final pages, too, we see Craig and his younger brother reconciling a bit, as the years of deprivation (emotional, mainly, but also environmental and cultural) had kept them from loving each other in the ways close brothers seem to ought to.
The book ends with Craig treading softly through the rural landscape; we know him, in those final pages, to be living in a city far from it all -- far enough to gain the needed author's perspective on the hazards of small town life and provincial thinking this book explores in such detail.
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