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‘The blend of pictures and words is part of the point’
Chat history with cartoonist Craig Thompson
Created on 2008-01-28 20:44:13 by: Emy Koopman 9.70/81
Craig Thompson: 18:57:42
Checking in...
Craig Thompson: 18:58:06
for interview with Emy
Craig Thompson: 19:00:51
I'm ready for questions...
Emy: 19:01:52
Our readers may know you from the graphic novels Goodbye Chunky Rice (1999), Carnet de Voyage (2004) and the award-winning Blankets (2003). When you make these kind of comics, what is your work-process like? Do you begin with a storyline or do you start out with certain images or memories that you try to develop?
Craig Thompson: 19:02:13
Usually the images come first. Feelings, scenes, moods... I jot down individual scenes on note cards and then start organizing those cards in some sort of narrative order, not necessarily linear. Then I piece that arrangement into an outline, and from there, I begin ‘writing’ in comicbook form - drawing/writing simultaneously - in a loose thumbnail style.
Craig Thompson: 19:04:05
Have you seen my blog [http://blog.dootdootgarden.com]? You can find some examples of my ‘thumbnails’ there - the preliminary rough for the book [Thompson's upcoming graphic novel Habibi].
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Emy: 19:05:06
Yes, I have seen your blog. It seems a long way from sketches to the final page. I wonder how you can draw and write simultaneously... do you not put in the words later?
Craig Thompson: 19:07:03
There is certainly a long time between the sketches and the final version. I spent one year thumbnailing Blankets and it took over two years to complete the final pages. Writing and drawing simultaneously, well, in fact, the words are the first thing I draw on the page, and I make the rest of the illustration fit around the word balloons. AND I spend a lot of time editing/rearranging that rough thumbnail form of the book before starting on the final pages. So writing and narrative seem to preceed execution of images.
Emy: 19:08:57
Would you say then that words are essential to your work?
Craig Thompson: 19:10:28
I enjoy the ‘international’ quality of wordless comics, but I also feel like they neglect half of the power/vocabulary of the medium. The blend of pictures AND words is part of the point.
Craig Thompson: 19:13:39
I have an easier time communicating with images - I'm less clumsy with the vocabulary - and yet images on their own (at least in the manner I draw) bore me. They're simply illustrations. It's the panels in sequence, the composition of the page, the integrated words that make things move. ‘Word balloons’ are a visually awkward element, but I ‘believe’ in them, that they allow the drawings to speak.
Emy: 19:18:09
Yet you are also great at conveying emotions and
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atmospheres by only using images (that sort of ‘filmic’ style that Chris Ware - best-known for the graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth (2000) - so often uses). For example, painting over the tree in Raina's room in Blankets until there's just a blank page left (p. 540-543). But images often leave less to the imagination of the reader; is that one reason why you find that words ‘make things move’?
Craig Thompson: 19:21:03
The words and pictures together are just more engaging to me. Some say reading comics employs both the left and right side of the brain. And Chris Ware's work especially is so much about musicality and rhythm - you have more instrumentation and variation with words and pictures together.
Emy: 19:21:47
Speaking of music, you once said that you try to create your comics as music in images; could you elaborate on that?
Craig Thompson: 19:27:34
I envy the immediate emotional impact of music, and it's something I strive for in my comics. I suppose FILM is also very emotionally arresting, but part of that is because it employs music - and film doesn't have the intimacy of music or comics - mediums often best savored on one's own. Musicality in the comics medium... it does feel like the cartoonist is controlling the visual rhythm in the manner they break down a page: the number and size of the panels, the constant tinkering with the ‘flow’ of one image to the other, then sometimes saving an entire page for a single image - a crescendo, a cymbal crash.
Emy: 19:29:02
Is that also why you started to work with the indie rock band Menomena?
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Craig Thompson: 19:33:00
Doing the album cover art for Menomena was at first about doing a favor for friends. They're three of my closest buddies. It wasn't like I was seeking out an opportunity to collaborate with musicians. But then when I went on a little European tour with them - playing Amsterdam, and four other cities, drawing big doodles on stage while they played - it was about getting out of the loneliness and isolation of my studio. Making comics is a very quiet and slow and studious and lonely occupation. It's novel to get out of the house and ‘perform’ - to draw in the presence of others, quickly, and in the moment. I suppose I am looking for ways to shake up the public perception of comics and cartoonists.
Emy: 19:35:04
What do you think is the ‘public perception’ of comics and cartoonists and why does that image need shaking up?
Craig Thompson: 19:38:34
I suppose I'm talking about the inherent ‘nerdiness’ of it all. And that's already shifting. With the newfound trendiness of the ‘graphic novel’ in the States, the public is beginning to associate cartoonists with real novelists rather than Dungeons & Dragons. Maybe that's all different in Europe - the medium seems more widely respected over there - but over here, it's been about superheroes and adolescent power fantasies for far too long.
Emy: 19:40:35
The superhero genre is not quite your thing, but in interviews you also express a certain skepticism about the current tendency to call comics ‘graphic novels’ and classify them under ‘literature’. Can you explain why you object to Blankets being called ‘literature’?
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Craig Thompson: 19:40:56
Actually, I don't mind at all... It sounds a bit pretentious, but as long as it's other people labeling it that way, and not me. That's like call oneself ‘an artist’ - an arTEEST - sounds lame when you label it yourself. But other people are free to label it as literature OR art - I'm rather flattered.
Emy: 19:42:13
What do you consider to be ‘literature’ then?
Craig Thompson: 19:46:58
Literature is art in written form. But ‘art’ is difficult to label. It's something instinctual. Something that transcends the material qualities of its medium. I often talk about the real life blanket that inspired my book. Raina made it for me. And the physical object outlived our very short relationship. But now it's tattered/threadbare/falling apart - it, too, will be gone someday like everything in the material world. But thus far, it's had a magic: to transport emotions, even love. The hope, especially in art, is that that energy will continue on... Art makes manifest/makes physical certain spiritual feelings - hopefully transports those feelings to outlive the physical object.
Emy: 19:48:46
Which writers/novelists do you like? You've mentioned Proust and Nabokov in earlier interviews.
Craig Thompson: 19:51:18
Those two were big inspirations while working on Blankets. Recently, working on Habibi, it's been Arundhati Roy (God of Small Things) and Salman Rushdie (Midnight's Children). I've been drawing lots of inspiration from poets; Rumi, of course, and Kahil Gibran - I think of Kahil Gibran as a cartoonist - weaving words and pictures together in such beautiful form.
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Sketch for Craig Thompson's forthcoming graphic novel Habibi. From Thompson's blog <http://blog.dootdootgarden.com/>
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Emy: 19:52:59
So do you search for certain books that correspond with the topic you're interested in for your work or does it work the other way around and do you read things that inspire you to start working on a certain topic?
Craig Thompson: 19:54:02
The former. My project comes first, and somehow it draws fuel of similar themes to me.
Emy: 19:54:46
Do you plan on reading the Quran?
Craig Thompson: 19:56:15
Yes. I have been reading the Quran. I rather like it; it has a more poetic, sophisticated arrangement than the Bible. But I don't know how one comprehends it without the extensive footnotes, and prior Biblical knowledge. (And I'm only reading the watered-down English translation)
Emy: 19:58:38
I agree, both on the poetic arrangement and the prior knowledge. I do wonder, isn't there a paradox in making a comic about a religion that uses calligraphy as a means of not having to draw pictures?
Craig Thompson: 20:00:38
Yes, and I weave that paradox into the book... but I don't want to spoil the surprise... (is that answer enough?) I've heard Arabic calligraphy described as ‘text as music’, by the way, connecting into comics. The word becomes the image.
Emy: 20:02:28
It must also have been hard wanting to draw while growing up in a strict Christian environment. Did they take the Second
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Commandment [‘Thou shalt not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth (...)’] very seriously where you grew up?
Craig Thompson: 20:04:36
No, they didn't see my drawing as crafting ‘graven images’ or ‘idols’. They saw it as a God-given talent that should be employed to ‘win others to Christ’. So my parents still hope that I start making Christian propaganda cartoons. And they've lectured me, since Blankets came out, that my talent is now being used by the Devil.
Emy: 20:06:05
Is it hard to shake off that Christian upbringing?
Craig Thompson: 20:08:44
Yes, it is. American style Evangelical Christianity is sort of psychological/spiritual child abuse! I was four years old when I first became terrified of an eternity of torture in Hell - already at that age, adults were indoctrinating me with stories of how I'd suffer after death. I can't imagine telling those things to a child. And more recently when I've discussed my beliefs with my parents, they've told me that the human heart and mind are the Devil's tools, so you can't trust them. How can you argue with that? How can you even have a conversation? How can you live life if you can't trust your own mind or heart?
Emy: 20:12:17
Do you still have problems trusting your own moral compass?
Craig Thompson: 20:13:29
Yes, it's something I'm trying to learn each day, how to respect myself / trust my own intuitions.
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Emy: 20:14:36
Back to Habibi; what is it like doing something non-personal after working so long trying to convey your own experiences?
Craig Thompson: 20:16:34
It's more difficult than I expected. I thought fiction would be easier. But at every turn, there are no restrictions on the possibilities. Before, it was simply framing actual events. The scenes were set - I only had to concern myself with how to present them.
Emy: 20:18:06
Yet, wasn't it also very difficult in the autobiographical work to decide whether to go for truthfulness or for a good storyline (like editing out your sister in Blankets)?
Craig Thompson: 20:18:51
Yes, good point. Whatever I'm doing at the moment seems the most challenging! Hahaha. All I'm doing now is drawing a simple fairytale!
Emy: 20:20:31
Can you tell our readers what Habibi is about?
Craig Thompson: 20:22:00
Lately, I feel too superstitious to talk about the book before it's finished. I want all the themes to be surprises! Suffice to say it's an Arabian Nights-style fantasy?
Emy: 20:23:24
Alright... are you also superstitious about predicting when it will be finished?
Craig Thompson: 20:26:05
If I stay on schedule, I'll be finished in two years. So it'll be out in late 2009/early 2010. Sounds like forever. But that's drawing almost
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every single day. Maybe making ‘graphic novels’ this way is insane, and we should go back to short-length comicbooks... no... I believe this story has to be contained in one book, consumed in its entirety, not serialized like some sort of soap opera.
Emy: 20:28:13
Pencilled version of the sketch on page 77. From Thompson's blog <http://blog. dootdootgarden.com/>
Final question then: don't you sometimes feel that the way you draw things shapes your experience and your memory?
Craig Thompson: 20:35:03
Good question... I've worried about that with Blankets, that the book would rearrange my memories, that they'd be watered down. But in fact, the memories seem intact, and the book exists on its own outside them. It has its own life. Its own characters. It exists in some parallel universe. What HAS happened with all my books, including Habibi, is that they offer me a forum for sorting out my most pressing psychological needs. Whilst working on Blankets, I was deeply longing for a past lover - the girl who left me and prompted me to move away from Wisconsin (hence Chunky Rice) - the PROCESS of working on the book reconnected me with her, and we reunited - she became the emotional fuel for that book. Habibi is about themes much more tortured and dark: the darkest struggles of my core, including sexual trauma and self-loathing and plain old American guilt, and I'm figuring out those things for myself while the characters do.
Craig Thompson: 20:38:29
So does that wrap it up? Thank you for good questions.
Emy: 20:40:54
Yes, thank you very much for the interview, it was great talking to you.
Craig Thompson: 20:43:39
Thank you. Goodbye and good night!
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