I didn’t make it out to Craig Thompson’s reading at Seattle Public Library last night—truth be told, I didn’t even remember the reading was last night until a young, very-in-love couple walked by the Occupy Seattle protests with an autographed copy of Thompson’s new book, Habibi. I cursed pretty loudly when I remembered that I missed out on the reading: I really wanted to go, because Habibi is the best comic book of 2011.
Habibi‘s scope is tremendous—it’s part riff on One Thousand and One Nights, part comparative religion study, part love story, with bits and pieces of other fictions and facts thrown in. It feels intimate, like a diary. This is a comic book you can’t breeze through in a couple of hours; it’s a novel whose story is as dense as Thompson’s beautiful, highly detailed artwork. Look (click to enlarge) at this two-page spread:
It’s gorgeous, it’s got that special energy that only hand-made artifacts have, and you can even tell that Thompson considered how the book would look when opened—the symmetry of the two-page spread shows remarkable forethought for a book that took the better part of a decade to complete. Habibi doesn’t shy away from topics of spirituality and sexuality, but it’s not a religious book or wank material. Like most masterpieces, it’s also a statement on the medium it’s using to communicate the story to us: Thompson takes language back to its roots, when it began as a series of rough pictograms, and explodes into new territory, at times pulling his protagonists apart into words and putting them back together again. You’ve never read anything quite like it. You have to read this book.
If it makes you feel better, he didn’t read any of it. He showed slides describing his writing process and the evolution of pages from sketches to finished works.
Well, crumbs. Now I regret not taking a closer look when I saw it in passing at a big indie bookstore in Spokane this past weekend. That would have been the perfect place to nab it.
Can’t wait to read it on my Nook!
Actually, Chester Brown’s “Paying For It” is an outstanding adult comic strip memoir for 2011. Check it out.
Any good local bookstore to pick up a copy?
I’m bugging my library to buy it. they generally have a really great collection of graphic novels.
Paul, how does it compare to Blankets? I know some people really loved that book, and while I’ll admit the art was gorgeous, I found the story grating and indulgent.
I swallowed Habibi in one, very long, sitting. An absolute masterpiece. Both in terms of craftsmanship and storytelling, Habibi is brilliant. It demands comparison with the finest manuscripts in the Western and Islamic traditions, and deserves a place with them in history.
Bought the book, met him… Craig’s genuinely a really nice guy, and the book is truly a piece of art.