By Chris Ryall
February 24, 2003
BLANKETS For the Memories
Getting older sucks. Since it happens day by day, it doesn't always dawn on you that every day you wake up is one more day further away from your adolescence. One more day further away from the innocence and wonder that hit you as you treaded that line between childhood and young-adulthood. No, instead of thinking about this, you just go on with your life and add life experience after life experience, all the while not even realizing that you're slowly building up walls around your youth. When did you forget the feeling of that first love felt like? Can you even remember that wonderful, terrible lump in your stomach when you tried to decide if you should call that special someone or not? It fades. Bad or good, these memories fade.
However, there are reminders of those first crushing emotions -- maybe it's a particularly poignant song or movie; or maybe it's Craig Thompson's BLANKETS.
Craig Thompson, for those who don't know his work, is a cartoonist who produced one of the finest, most touching graphic novels in recent years: GOODBYE, CHUNKY RICE, published by Top Shelf Productions. RICE was the story of a small turtle, Chunky Rice, leaving his home and his mouse friend, Dandel. Which may not sound so deep by that description, but the book's exploration of friendship and how decisions in the past can affect one's present, gave the book resonance rarely equalled in its genre. And in the four years since its initial publication, people have wondered how Craig would follow up that stunning work. This July, he'll deliver the answer to that.
Top Shelf was kind enough to drop a preview copy of Craig's new book on my doorstep, and when I say drop, I mean, it could've broken your foot if it landed on it. See, his new book, BLANKETS, comes in at 577 pages, longer than most novels. With one major difference that I can see--most novels don't grab you from page one and keep you up until 2 AM, finishing the book and even finding the occasional tear in your eye. Sometimes, it takes the blending of words and images, especially the singular vision of a writer/artist, to fully express feelings and make them so palpable, so familiar.
 |
BLANKETS is a much more personal, or at least, more autobiographical, story than CHUNKY RICE. It's basically the story of Craig's life, up until he left home and the small town he grew up in, at the age of twenty. Which means we get to the issue of first love and the awakening of romantic feelings.
The book details Craig's younger years, too, the years when he shared a bed with his younger brother Phil. Now, I grew up sharing a ROOM with my older brother, and a pretty small room at that, but my home life wasn't anything like Craig's. Raised by strict, sheltering Christian parents, his homelife seemed, well, pretty miserable. Sexual abuse is alluded to (not from his parents), and just a general malaise at both school and home, coupled with strict Christian teachers, helped make Craig an introverted kid. A kid whose only outlet from the harsh realities of his life was putting pencil to paper and drawing. I read -- Craig drew.
Craig's formative years were filled with people who quoted the Bible to suit their needs--he seems to have grown up with huge feelings of guilt, for thinking lustful thoughts, for wasting his time drawing, for just about everything. So it had to be a huge welcome for him to spend weeks at summer camp. And what happens at summer camp, even the church camp Craig went to? The opposite (or same) sex. In Craig's case, Raina.
Raina is everyone's first love. She's the one person who understands what you're going through. She's the person who observes the world in ways you never thought of, who starts to open your eyes to a larger world. She's your refuge.
She's Craig's refuge, anyway, and after spending some time at camp with her, they keep in touch. Which is portrayed in such a way as to make you flash back to that first person you had a crush on. Of course they never lived in the area--you always wrote letters ("the days before e-mail" weren't all that long ago) and traded thoughts. Remember when you'd get a letter in the mail and you'd stare at it for an hour, not even opening it, just relishing the idea of it? No? You will--BLANKETS will take you back to those days, when every minor move carried with it the weight of the world.
The book intersperses looks back at Craig's childhood with his teenage years and infatuation with Raina, the first girl to really help him come out of his shell. And what emerges from these dual glimpses into his life is pretty heartbreaking at times. Religion was a huge part of Craig's life, both in his studies and in the guilt that was pounded into him by his parents. When you have the wisdom and distance of years to look back, you can see how wrong-minded some parents can be, using guilt as a hammer to suppress the normal feelings of every adolescent. But at the time, it just shows up as a crushing weight that affects Craig's relationships with girls and even with himself. Craig, a skinny kid who was picked on at school (not a new story but a familiar one for just about everyone at one point or another), withdraws from others until, at a summer church camp, he meets other disaffected kids, and among them, Raina.
 |
It's here that the book really takes off--the religious bits obviously had a huge effect on Craig's development, but as someone who was raised in a pretty non-denominational house, the relationship bits are much easier to relate to. Craig's art style is simple in its delivery, and pretty whimsical in places (notably the bits where he shows his younger self only being truly alive while drawing or imagining in his own head), but it's deceptive, too. Much like Alex Robinson (the writer/artist of the excellent BOX OFFICE POISION, another 600-page Top Shelf graphic novel), his art style conveys a lot with a little. The art is more expressive than detailed and yet you never fail to see the emotion he's trying to convey. Try as they may, this is something a writer and separate artist are never quite able to pull off as effectively. Craig lived this stuff, and he knows exactly what he wants to get across. The book makes the point that his younger brother Phil has the real artistic ability, but luckily Craig's style is perfect for this book and none too slouch-y itself.
 |
After the meeting with Raina, who, of course, doesn't live in the same town, the two keep in touch and eventually Craig talks his parents into spending two weeks at her house. Her house is very different from Craig's -- her parents are heading for divorce, and her step-brother and sister are both retarded. And the two weeks go exactly like any long-distance relationship you might have had as a kid. The other person is the most important thing in your life...and yet, you're not quite sure why. Even then, the romantic in me hopes for a happy ending as I read this, knowing full well that, in order to grow, it needs to not end happy. It can't possibly end happy. Kevin Arnold doesn't marry Winnie Cooper, and most people don't end up with their first infatuation (and thank God, right?). Many of the panels of this book are spare in dialogue, and yet these are all the thoughts going through my head while I'm reading. Which only speaks to the caliber of the storytelling.
 |
(Not to mention a moment, on page 489, that had me tear up. Now, I've been reading comics for a long time, and they don't make me cry. They just don't -- it's a book. And this one did. Man, between JERSEY GIRL a week or so ago and now this, I'm really pushing the "sensitive-guy" thing to its outermost limits, huh?
It's fortunate that there's people like Craig, people who have kept these childhood feelings alive in their head and in their heart and are able to express them on paper. I imagine this book was as much a labor of pain as it was love for Craig, as he had to dredge up memories both good and bad. Luckily for us, we can sit back and just take it all in, and then get lost in our own heads, remembering just how similar our own struggling paths to adult were. BLANKETS is a wonderfully expressive and touching look back at the years when every feeling we had was at its most raw, most affecting and most formative. And through this book, it lets you recall memories you've maybe long since suppressed, memories of times that made you who you are today, and that's never a bad thing.
BLANKETS ($29.95, 592 pages, ISBN # 1-891830-43-0) will be available from Top Shelf Productions in July 2003 and will be solicited in the May 2003 issue of PREVIEWS from Diamond Comics Distributors.
What's With All This Comics Stuff?
I'm sure a lot of you have been asking that pretty often lately; not just about the site, but in general. Seems like everything you hear lately is all about comics: "GHOST WORLD and ROAD TO PERDITION were based on comics;" "Nic Cage sold his entire collection for over $1M;" "Nic Cage is going to play Superman/Ghost Rider/Hellblazer/Ultimo in a movie;" "IRON MAN is in development;" "ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY has started a new comic book section;" everywhere you like, people are talking comics.
Now, I understand that the majority of the world hasn't read and absorbed these things since birth (what's wrong with you people?!?). In fact, rumor has it that some unenlightened few out there consider comic books to be for...children...
Well, say whatever you want about us (and if you read the e-mails I get, you'd know that most of you decided not to even wait for that permission), but we can be sensitive to your needs here. You go and see a movie like DAREDEVIL and are looking for a good place to read more about what this character is all about?
We're about to give you that.
Starting this Wednesday, and every subsequent Wednesday after, we'll have COMICS 101 in session. Our news guy/proofreader (and good bud) Scott Tipton is coming out from behind his news desk to bring you this comics primer, geared toward the un-comics-savvy out there. Up first will be a look at just who DAREDEVIL is in the comics. He'll go over some FAQs and offer some reading recommendations on the character. And that's just the start--he'll also cover books that appeal to women, to children and the few of you out there who love funny animal characters. He'll explain the differences between Marvel and DC and whose characters belong to whom and why you'll never see a big-screen fight between Spider-Man and Batman. And when other movies like X2, HULK, LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN and whatever comic property ends up with Nic Cage attached hit the theaters, he'll be all over those, too.
And, unlike the guy on the stool at the coffee house who gets offended when you shout out "Play 'Freebird!'" Scott will also take requests. So if there's anything you want to know about comics, just drop me or Scott a line and we'll get you up to speed. Maybe not Flash-like speed but...well, all in good time, my students.
/chris
Comic of the Week: H.E.R.O. by Will Pfeiffer and Kano, published by DC Comics
CD of the Week: NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS, Nocturama
Book of the Week: A POET IN EXILE by Ray Manzarek (I know, I know, only a week after I talked trash about it
PS2 Game of the Week: Tiger Woods Golf 2003
Reason We Deserve Another Great Flood of the Week: I'M A CELEBRITY, GET ME OUT OF HERE
E-MAIL THE AUTHOR |
ARCHIVES
