In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels. I’m running the transcript here in nine parts. Craig’s web site is here. He is published by Top Shelf.

In Part Seven, we’d just discussed the possibility of comparisons between Thompson’s book and the work of fellow Top Shelf artist Jeffrey Brown.

M: Now I gotta go back to talking about [Thompson’s brother] Phil briefly. Now, this is kind of a weird question, and I really debated whether I wanted to ask it or not. But I think it’s important that I can ask. You can just say, I don’t wanna talk about it or whatever.

Um, you touched on Eric Gill earlier; you mentioned the mix of devout religiousness and you said, I think, ‘he was a sick little perv’ or words to that effect. I would probably say, ‘perhaps he was more interested in fetish sexuality,’ as a way of getting around you know, putting a value judgment on the behavior or the desire.

CT: Are we talking about Eric Gill?

M: Yes. Okay. But I’m leading up. I’m pussyfooting around.

CT: I would definitely place him in the pervert realm, though. Because, see he, I believe, yeah, he had sex with his own children.

M: That’s pretty perverted.

And here’s the question that I’m kind of avoiding asking. You depict you and your brother urinating on each other in bed. You sleep together throughout your childhood. It’s depicted without any sexual overtones. But, you do put him in Batman Underoos, which has that Batman symbol, which looks like the labrys symbol that we talked about earlier!

CT: Oh, wow! Another subconscious thing!

M: And, you know, fetish sexuality in adults, is something which in my experience of friends that are interested in it, a lot of times is associated with having experienced abuse as kids. And watersports is, um, you know, a well-recognized subset of fetish sexuality.

CT: Yeah.

M: Can you talk about this in general terms? I’m not wanting to invade your privacy exactly, but…

CT: No, No no no!

But I’m totally milking that for the full humor angle.

M: Oh yeah, I don’t thin-

CT: I mean, I really don’t – I don’t get watersports. I mean whatever floats someone’s boat. But, uh, um, and like you said, there is probably that very obvious connection with those sort of childhood experiences.

M: Sure.

CT: But it truly doesn’t have any appeal to me. But poop and pee are very funny.

M: Certainly, can’t go wrong with poop and pee. And add a monkey in there and you’re, you’re good.

CT: [laughs] I wish I could elaborate more.

M: Yeah, I couldn’t figure out how to fully frame the question, really. Essentially, there’s this subtext where you’re showing this forbidden activity that can have sexual overtones; you don’t show it in a way the does have sexual overtones; and that would be the end of it except for the Batman symbol. That was the thing really made me kinda start scratching my head, and think ‘boy is there something else going on here’?

CT: A lot of people have found it very specifically controversial to them. They’ll be like, “This’ll be the scene. This’ll be your Judy Blume scene, this’ll be what gets people outraged.”

M: [laughs] I hope not!

I don’t know, God. Well, with any luck you’ll get banned and get some press, but I don’t know.

CT: They’ll be burning it along with Last Temptation of Christ.

M: [chuckling] yeah. Yeah, well. You know, if you had Jesus come out of the wall and have sex with the both of ya, then maybe, you know. Next time, you won’t make that mistake again.

Um, well thank you for bearing with me on asking that question. It’s definitely – it’s like, the pieces are there. But it just seemed like it was something that sort of happened organically without – I don’t know.

CT: Yeah, I wish there was more, but…

M: Uh… Let’s see. Um, oh yeah! To what extent, moving away from asking about the reactions of people in and out of your life to the material, to what extent were you aware of shaping the story? I mean, did you, like, write fifteen drafts of it and uh, get the screenwriter’s manual to have you know, first, second, third acts? I mean, how much effort went into the shaping of the story itself?

CT: I spent a year. Just writing. It was a lot. Especially compared to the Chunky Rice, which was a sort of stream of consciousness. But I spent a year doing real detailed thumbnail forms and then went through at least two specific edits, and even after a year of fiddling with it, the ending still wasn’t quite right, but I just started drawing final pages. And once I got back to the ending after two years of drawing, suddenly the ending was finally ready, presented itself. But I mean I’m doing this all part time too, I mean, I had to pay the bills, I had to work.

M: Yeah. Now, um, in terms of like script and thumbnailing, your process is to thumbnail and take notes or to thumbnail with a typewritten script, or script and then thumbnail, or what do you do?

CT: I did really detailed thumbnails of the whole book. Which, you know, some cartoonists were, “Just publish these! These are completely…” they were almost finished, and they were legible. I did ’em that way so I could show ’em around and get some feedback from people. I definitely won’t do ’em that detailed next time.

But uh, my process was pretty much – like in the morning I would do an even quicker thumbnail, which was totally illegible if I were to look at it like two hours later, even to myself, but if I really quickly took those really illegible thumbnails and transformed then into more detailed forms then I knew what was going on.

M: Uh huh, uh huh.

CT: But I would have a jot, like just a blob, a scribble, and somehow I would know what the character was saying, what was happening. For a couple hours, and then it would fade.

M: And so…

CT: So there were two versions of the thumbnails, but one only existed, literally, for hours.

M: Right, right.

CT: The other one had to sit around for a year.

M: And you, then, don’t have an independent, just-prose script that you’re using for reference. That’s embedded in to what, I guess, the second draft of the thumbnails probably?

CT: It all comes together at once.

M: Right.

CT: Not separated.

M: Let’s see – we talked about that, yes, okay – Um, in Blankets, how much penciling do you do? Because you’re relying so heavily on the brush; I was just curious about how penciled the pages are.

CT: Uh, actually, fairly penciled. I would pencil two pages in the morning before lunchtime; and then ink ’em in the afternoon.

M: And do you work with a blue pencil or just a regular lead, or…

CT: Yeah. Just a regular pencil. Actually, I don’t use barely any white out or anything – but uh, but I also make a mess of my pages with the lead underneath. I’ll just make a mess of panels and then go back and erase it.

M: Right. I think that’s something that we have the luxury of doing now because of digital repro, I mean, it’s something that you couldn’t do fifteen years ago.

Um, how many pages a day were you trying to do when you were working on it?

CT: Two.

M: So it’s pretty much two years of solid work then.

CT: Yeah.

M: Wow.

CT: And there’d be like three months on end where I couldn’t touch the book; where I had so many freelance-work illustration projects just to pay the bills.

M: Sure. As far as I can see, with just one like brief exception, you – it’s completely hand lettered, is that correct?

CT: Yeah, that’s the one thing I hadn’t done with a brush. I did that with a Micron pen.

M: And do you use Speedballs at all [brass-nibbed dip-ink pens, an illustration standby]?

CT: Nope.

M: So you just – what brushes do you use?

CT: The number two or number three. You know one of the kind of uh Winsor Newton sable-synthetic blend, the four or five dollar brushes.

M: Sure, sure. Are you picky about the hairs? I mean, can you use a camel brush?

CT: Well I kinda trash my brushes, and then they start to work better, you know?

M: Oh, interesting, because you get the edging on the line probably.

And here’s the other thing – you know, brush is – it’s like the hardest of the ink mediums to master. Um, what led you to it?

CT: Um, right from the beginning, when I was getting interested in comics, this would have been like in community college – which I only attended for a year – but a friend had me do a strip for the newspaper, and so, “Okay, I gotta figure out how people do comics,” and I got all the cheeseball books out of the library, and I initially was ruling my panels and using like an Eames lettering guide to do the lettering. And a lot of those things I abandoned quite quickly. I’m like, “Ohh, I can’t”.

You know I tried the lettering with what, a Speedball 2 and it’s just like, I can’t letter with this – hate using rulers and stuff to get all these straight lines. But uh, from the beginning I was like –

You have to use a brush, I’m supposed to! Say, a Number Two Winsor Newton sure is an [inaudible] brush!

I never graduated to that fine of a sable but uh – but so I started with a brush, and that helps, because I had several years under my belt before I even started on Chunky Rice, of working with a brush. And by the time I had finished Chunky Rice, the slick line that I was employing in that book got boring. Because I had enough control of the brush where you know it could be as slick as I wanted it to be and that’s why I broke loose with Blankets and started heading down the expressionistic angle.

M: Yeah, there’s a – the breadth of expressive brushwork in the book is fab. And at the end there’s a couple of scenes where you go from this really heavy brushed thing to this really light linework that the contrast to show the emotional state of the character – it’s a shot of you in fact I think lying in your bedroom or something – yeah that’s it – oh, you’re sitting in your bed, sitting up – is just very effective. It transforms from I think a dream sequence – you know where I’m talking about?

CT: Yeah.

M: It’s really nice.

Alright, so the book’s title is Blankets. The obvious blanket is the blanket you were given by the character of Raina. And then there’s also the blankets that you and your brother share, in bed, and then there’s the blanket of the snow that lies over everything, during Christmas break. Are there other blankets that I’m missing, or is that it?

CT: Well, there’s other metaphorical blankets – since I was initially, you know, thinking of Blankets as things that we cling to for security or comfort, right away I was meditating on those themes.

You know, romantic relationships, family, religion – et cetera. Whatever it might be that’s our security blanket.

M: Fair enough. Oh, let’s see – looks like we did all the good stuff here – we talked about Raina, talked about Craig.

I think that’s about it for now. Do you have any questions for me at this point?

CT: I was just curious what your educational background was.

M: I have a degree in art history, um, I have been an avid comics reader since around 1982 or ’83; I was exposed to comics a little bit when I was a kid growing up, but not a lot. Um, my parents would bring ’em home, but if they’d look at ’em, like a Conan book, they might take it away, you know. [chuckles]

Which is a really different – and I think a worthwhile way – of looking at literature…

CT: You do a good job.

M: Well, thank you.

In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels. I’m running the transcript here in nine parts. Craig’s web site is here. He is published by Top Shelf.

In Part Six, Craig had just said he didn’t feel he had the right to initiate contact with the real-life girl the character of Raina was based on, because he’d cut off contact with her.

M: Did you actually burn all that stuff? I mean, both times in the book?

CT: Yeah.

M: Crazy man! Don’t do it again!

CT: Oh, I wouldn’t!

M: Well, good!

CT: That’s the last time I did it in my life, the last time I broke up with someone, to destroy all evidence.

M: Well, you have a responsibility to, to, people in your audience now, too, not to do that. That would be the other thing I would remind you about. Um, now, it’s possible, that that same idea, that you have a responsibility to people in your audience – which you are free to accept or reject as an artist – would argue that you have a responsibility to share the work with her.

Is that something you’ve thought about?

CT: Um, I guess I’ve been operating on the assumption from the beginning that I don’t have the right – as a person that cuts off contact. But maybe I’m wrong. I could be entirely wrong.

M: Well, you also told me that you intended the book as being about establishing and keeping connections.

CT: [pause] uhhh…

M: You can think about this, I’m – it’s just my perspective.

CT: There is another element, that the most immediate emotional inspiration for the book was a different girl. So Raina in that sense represented two different girls. She was on the surface this two-week high-school relationship and at that point in my life she was a long-distance friend that I was longing for. So I’m bundling all of that emotional energy as fuel.

M: And what was the outcome of your um… interesting courtship?

CT: We ended up together.

M: Well, there ya go. So let that be a lesson to all you young cartoonists out there: draw a five-hundred page book…

CT: …and that’s the way to get the girl.

M: And get the girl.

CT: [chuckles]

M: Well, it was apparent to me as I was reading it that Raina, um, was more idealized than the other characters in the book. I mean it just – as someone who has also drawn cartoons, although not as extensively as you, she looked to me like you worked your butt off to get the character design exactly the way you wanted it. You have drawn that woman’s face hundreds more times than appears in the book. That’s what I think. And I’m asking you if that’s true.

CT: Uh, it’s true because the girl that I ended up with was the main model. But not in the earlier parts of the book. So there’s probably a point where – and in there is a point where I went back and fixed some of the drawings, but you know, she became my model for the character, my actual physical model.

M: Ssssstealthy! That’s interesting! So, then, were you doing life drawings from your current partner?

CT: [emphatically] Yes.

M: And, a lot of life drawings from your current partner.

CT: Yes. I mean, they are not all reference, but uh, definitely a lot of them were naturalistic poses, where the figure consumes a large portion of the page. Those were drawings where she sat for me.

M: Right. Now, there’s also the difference in the way in which the Craig character and the other character’s faces are drawn; they are generally more cartoony; and her face – I mean, it’s all lines on paper – but it’s relatively more naturalistic.

CT: Yeah.

M: But at the same time it’s a very kind of idealized representation. Um, and there’s like this – Um, the intensity of the emotion that went into the drawing is what I got out of it. That’s what – maybe I was projecting, but that’s what I felt when I was looking at ’em.

CT: Yeah, okay, that idealization was my method of getting the reader to experience, you know, to look at her the way I did.

M: Right.

CT: You know sometimes a friend will have a crush on a girl or something and point her out, and it’ “Oh, you know, okay, yeah, she’s cute enough” but it just won’t connect with you?

M: Right.

CT: So that was the advantage of having drawings versus photos, I can show what I felt with my eyes, even if wasn’t particularly…

M: Right.

CT: But another connection between those two girls, um, would be – my present girlfriend, and Raina of high-school, was when I met my present girlfriend for the first time, uh, there was a connection. Like I connected the two girls right away, and this would have been like ten – seven, eight years ago. And that night I drew a comic about Raina, the night I met my present girlfriend.

M: Oh, that’s really interesting. Has that ever been published?

CT: No, but I think that I’ll publish it like in about three or four years. I’m gonna put out a collection of a lot of odds and ends that nobody else – that no-one’s seen. You mentioned that SPX anthology piece, and I’ll collect that one.

M: Yeah, like that Expo – I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to track it down because those things go out of print so fast.

Um, oh, that’s all, that’s really fascinating. So in a way, because you feel it was associated with your current girlfriend that the necessary act of inclusion, of sharing the artistic production – that’s been discharged.

CT: Well, you know…

M: Or maybe you don’t feel there’s a debt there.

CT: To be frank I would like to be back in contact with the original Raina. Obviously not in a romantic sense but just to to – re-experience that friendship and everything. To get back in touch, in some sense I think it’s creepy enough that I made this book without her permission.

M: Well, speaking of stuff like that, about the same week that I got a copy of Blankets, uh, I think it was – I can’t remember who the publisher is, but I was sent a copy of Unlikely, have you seen that?

CT: Yeah, I love that book.

M: Um, how do you – there’s gonna be – there have to be – comparisons, because it’s young men recalling their first love. Um, how do you feel about that comparison?

CT: Uhm, I’m flattered, I love Unlikely. You know, I hadn’t thought of it myself; but I guess where it leads – we’re distributed by the same publisher, we sit behind the same table at shows, Jeffrey Brown and I. But we are – I remember reading his – and since I have this sort of self-deprecating quality about myself. I remember reading his thing and thinking, “I wonder if Blankets should have been more like Unlikely.”

M: [laughs]

CT: …which seemed less fulsome – less idealized and ornametal.

M: I understand. It’s also more formal with those single page stories that he adapts for the methodology. I dunno. The other aspect of Unlikely that’s I think different from Blankets is that there’s a strong sense of the reflective mind of you as an artist in Blankets. It’s present in Unlikely but it’s in the drawings rather than in the narrative.

CT: Very understated.

M: Yeah, exactly.

[Ed. – The appearance concerned Clumsy, a prior book by Brown. The link to the audio of the show on the TAL site is to a single RealAudio format file. Brown’s segment begins around 46 minutes in to the show.]

CT: Yeah, I did, and it almost brought me to tears.

M: Well, I thought it was interesting. I thought that the questions he was being asked were – they were legitimate, sensitive questions.

But, uh, yeah, I thought it was fascinating. There’s a definite relationship. You guys will probably start a genre now, you know? Marvel will open an arm, sort of you know, the ‘lost loves’ – No, I’m kidding.

CT: Except for the fact that Jeffrey Brown’s next book is a superhero book. For real.

M: Really?

CT: Yeah.

M: Is it still for um the same publisher?

CT: Yeah.

In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels. I’m running the transcript here in nine parts. Craig’s web site is here. He is published by Top Shelf.

In Part Five, we’d begun discussing autobio comics as a genre and how Blankets related to that field.

M: Autobio’s ideology in alternative comics is a lot of times it’s – it’s you know, sort of this transparency, you know, you try to be as honest as possible in depicting your own life or whatever, sometimes to the detriment of the literary structure that’s being presented. But it’s still a literary structure, you know. I mean, Adrian [Tomine] made the decision to draw the comic about this stuff, right? He has shaped the material.

Uh – to what extent did you like, consciously shape and re-form your autobio? How great a degree of difference is there between the character of Craig in Blankets and the artist that invented that character?

CT: Uhhhm. That’s another good question. And important to add to it – the character of Craig in the book is Craig in 1994, versus Craig ten years later.

M: Sure.

CT: They’re definitely different characters.

I mean, I have to simplify something. Both in my character and also my life. I took out – I edited so much out. That year of my life – my senior year of high school was actually much more dramatic. Uh, my parents pulled me out of school midway through my senior year to be home-schooled, which was a horrific, horribly disturbing experience for me. [laughs]

M: [chuckles]

CT: And I actually started going crazy during that part of my life and started to hallucinate and uh – I’d see angels and demons constantly. So, I was kind of at the brink of a bad religious experience, and my body started to break down, and I had to go to the hospital for all this stuff, and I was, I was just going crazy. And I cut that all out.

It’s interesting stuff, it probably woulda made a good story. But also, I think it woulda isolated the readers a bit, in that I wanted to touch more on the simple universal experience. And I didn’t wanna tell a story about going crazy. I wanted to tell a simple story about – I mean…

In that year of my life the one comfort was that relationship I shared with Raina, even though it was only two weeks.

M: [stammering a bit] That’s wild. That’s fascinating to me that you had a um like you had an emotional and physical illness that happened right then. That’s – that’s fascinating. Uhm, that’s –

[Ed. – In the conversation I referred to Northwest Cost Native American shamans because I studied that aspect of turn-of-the-century and earlier Native American culture in college, and consequently I’ve read more about it in that context than any other; however, the ‘shamanic illness’ is common to cultures all around the world, and to an extent, mainstream American and European cultures make room for shamanic practices only with in the context of either the performing or visual arts; I was quite literally taken aback to hear Craig describe it, clearly without knowing the context that I had for it.]

CT: [laughs]

M: And you’re right, I bet it would probably make a very interesting story at some point, when you’re ready to do that. In the book, though, you do show demons and angels a coupla times. Uh, are those true visual depictions of what it was that you were seeing?

CT: No, no, no, those are their own thing. Sort of a visual candy, in some sense, I mean, they are ornamentation in some sense. Or or or I’m hesitant to – Yeah, the demons and stuff I saw were similar I guess, in some ways that’s how I depict them, but they were just pure – um – they were pure black. Sometimes the closest uh pop culture correlation I can think of is to the Twilight Zone movie with that guy on the wing of an airplane?

M: Sure! With William Shatner!

CT: Yeah! And actually I haven’t seen it in a long time, so maybe it doesn’t hold up, but I’m thinking of that character that was on the wing, like “Oh! That’s similar to the images I was seeing!”

And of angels, they didn’t look much different. They kinda had the same form.

M: Huh. Interesting.

Uh, you know, Roberta (Gregory) actually has a self-published book called Winging It which is about demons and angels coming to Earth; it’s kind of interesting. Anyway. And she started doing it like in the seventies [possibly inaccurate]. It’s, uh, self-published, and so it doesn’t really have distribution – but if you’re ever up here and you meet her, ask her about it!

CT: Okay. Yeah, I’d like to!

M: Let’s see, now, coming back to autobio stuff. You said you kind of fought against using autobio – that’s because you didn’t care for the form generically. Not because you were trying to keep the private material out of the story, is that correct?

CT: Yeah. And I’ve been influenced and inspired by a lot of you know, the autobio cartoonists, you know, the whole gang of Brown and Seth and Julie Doucet and all those were great inspirations, but you know I didn’t feel like any there needed to be necessarily new autobio comics in the form.

Cause they were really exciting at the time, and then I don’t wanna just continue navel gazing, you know. But I was definitely reluctant. I had a lot of awkwardness to it, and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna come off as egocentric, and I’m gonna insult my family, and other people who I’ve been around in my life, you know…’ I wasn’t worried about how I would come off, um, how I depict myself but just everybody that surrounded me, and how to do that gracefully.

M: Right. That’s sort of the classic writer’s problem, isn’t it? Um, um, well, I guess, actually, that’d be a good transition to the obvious couple of next questions: what’d your parents think of the book?

CT: They were incredibly upset at first. I had to share a six-hour car drive with them from Minneapolis to Milwaukee and they just tore into me. And, uh, some of the first issues they brought up were um that they thought that they were depicted like monsters. And they wondered what right I had to take our private life and make it public – but then beyond that, and on a much larger level, “Spiritually awful” they called it, um. They said that it “bore witness for the devil.”

M: [snorts, laughs] Oh Gawd.

CT: …And that it was a testament to the devil. And so this was a pretty intense car-ride. But it wasn’t entirely traumatic, because it was uh therapeutic to finally get this stuff out on the table and talk about all these issues.

M: Uh… yeah!

CT: And a couple weeks later my parents called, and they sort of apologized, not officially, but they said, “Oh, we realize we were being really defensive, and that we don’t have to defend God.” And then they wont on to say that they talked with, you know, friends and stuff. And the friends hadn’t interpreted the book as – as making them out to be monsters. To begin with, they were relieved at that, they started to accept the fact that I’m allowed to tell my own story. That, they still have big issues with the Christian elements, but that’s not gonna change. And I don’t expect that to change for them.

M: Uh huh, Wow, that’s interesting that you mention those two specific things – “Bearing witness for the devil,” that sounds to me like that was a direct quote –

CT: Yes.

M: Uh, and that they felt they were depicted as monsters. I definitely recall thinking about the way that you depicted your father and I thought, wow, he looks kinda like the Incredible Hulk; you know, I mean, you drew him with a large head and a tiny face.

[Ed. – Interestingly, I’ve seen others also note that the characterization of Raina’s dad is similar in appearance to the Gasoline Alley character Walt Wallet. I neglected to ask if this was deliberate, however.]

CT: [laughs]

M: You know? And then the ‘bearing witness for the devil’ thing; well, as I was reading it, in my mind, I kept thinking, boy, this is gonna be a really interesting reading experience for someone who’s – a Christian person, because – you – you fall from grace, man! I mean, that’s what happens! And you fall from grace by projecting grace into your life or by accepting the world, you know?

Even though it’s beautiful. And that, that may be thing that makes it disturbing, do you know what I’m saying?

CT: Uh-huh.

M: But, anyway.

Now, the other person – well, the other people that I wanted to check up on – I’ll actually ask about Phil first – uh, what’s your brother think of the book?

CT: He loves it.

M: Even with the – you guys peeing on each other in bed?

CT: Oh yeah, no – my brother’s totally cool.

Uh, and uh, I actually have a sister too.

M: But she’s not in the book.

CT: Yeah, that’s another element that I edited out, like how I was saying I edited out the home schooling and the sort of the mental and emotional breakdown. I took out my sister too because she didn’t figure – so this was a sort of a narrative uh – indulgence, you know, like okay, my sister doesn’t need to be here for the story so I’m going to take her out.

M: Sure, it’s like in The Osbournes.

Both: [laughter]

CT: But my brother loved it! And my sister did too! And the scenes that they were most connected with were uh, punishment scenes. The cubbyhole scene and the sitting on the edge of the bed while parents yelled at me for drawing a naked lady. That was really amazing to find out that both my siblings had experienced the exact same thing of having to be locked in the bedroom and get the lecture. And it was always about really silly things, like I remember, ‘yeah I said shut up at school’ or something, you know.

I found out from both of them naughty things they had done as children that I had never known about and that they had been severely punished for.

It was really funny for all of us at this point.

M: Now, here’s the – well, let’s see. I can ask the – the Raina stuff first and then I’m gonna come back to Phil.

Um, are you still in touch with Raina?

CT: No.

M: Not at all?

CT: Not at all. As it happened in the book, I cut off contact and so I’d say the ball is out of my court now, I don’t even have the right to renew contact with her.

In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels. I’m running the transcript here in nine parts. Craig’s web site is here. He is published by Top Shelf.

In Part Four, the tape cut off just as we began to discuss the influence of turn-of the–century Austrian painter Gustav Klimt on Blankets. That, in turn, led to a discussion of Thompson’s interest in other artists from the fine-art world.

M: …and this time I’m going to leave it where I can look directly at the spindles.

Alright. Right, so you were in Paris, and you were looking at Rodin stuff, and you weren’t responding to it positively, but then as you grew into more maturity as an artist, it changed your experience looking at art back to where looking at art became a more religious experience again.

CT: Yes. So do I have to define this further?

M: No, I think that’s clear enough. Were you aware of this interregnum in Christian history that you know is called the Iconoclastic Controversy? Is that something that something that you came to the project with, already in your mind?

CT: No.

M: So, that’s also a new thing that I was noting that sorta has parallels?

CT: Yeah.

M: Okay, the gist of it is basically what you outline in the book, that to create a representation of God’s work is sacreligious.

CT: Okay, yeah, well, yeah, I did know about that. I did know about the contrast between the more medieval art and the Renaissance, and the you know – yeah – the depictions being sort of idolatrous.

M: Right, exactly.

Which I thought was interesting.

CT: [hushed] Yah.

M: Um, how much of that specific episode is storycraft, that you invented in order to illustrate your perceptions as an artist of what was going on, and how much of it is just straightforward narrative and recollection?

CT: Well, the painting of Jesus hanging by Kurt Cobain is authentic. And it was the same painting of Jesus – the generic kitsch image, that you know, mass produced – that was hanging in my parents’ room. So that’s authentic. The – Jesus turning around and smiling was more like a way to represent emotionally what was going on, a metaphor.

M: Sure. And I guess the other question I have about that specific little element is did she really have Kurt hangin’ next to Jesus like that?

CT: Yeah.

M: [laughs] that’s awesome, that’s awesome. ‘Cause I remember just kinda looking at it and kinda chuckling, thinking it was like cartoonist’s wit, you know?

Is that someone you were specifically looking to in your doing this stuff?

CT: No, not at all, and I keep getting that comparison. And I have no problem with it, I find it flattering. But it’s funny, because I wasn’t looking at his work whatsoever.

M: It’s interesting – your ears are the same.

CT: Yeah?

M: Yeah, they are almost identical. It’s really interesting.

Oh, here’s the comics question, I already asked that. Okay, so what – looking away from comics, uh, were there any authors like prose novel-writers that influenced you in the development of Blankets?

CT: Uh, I don’t know if it’s uh visible but the three that I was most inspired by while working on Blankets were uh Proust, – I read the entire Remembrance of Things Past while working on the book –

M:[excited] Oh yeah!

CT: And Nabokov, I was really obsessed with Nabokov, and Henry Miller. Kind of – at least the latter two are kind of a sexist bunch which is kind of funny. I mean, I remember after I was just obsessed with those three writers, for like a couple years there and then after I got out of that phase, like “Man, I gotta start reading female authors and stuff.”

Uh, but uh, those were my favorite authors at the time.

M: Wow, that’s really interesting.

I mean, he’s sort of, not exactly Russian, not exactly American –

CT: Naw, I think of him as American.

M: Yeah.

CT: Um, no. Were you thinking of Dostoyevsky or someone?

M: Um, I don’t know.

I mean like the Nabokov and – the – somehow or other they relate to that tradition in my mind, and I’m more of an art historian and an art critic than I am a literary critic so, my background…

CT: I read uh like three biographies on Eric Gill at the time, he’s uh, an engraver?

M: Yeah, he’s the guy that made the typefaces.

CT: Yeah, that’s what he’s most well known for, is Gill typefaces. Yeah. Uh…

But he was also just a twisted little character. He had this awkward, uh, contrast of being a really devout religious man and also being a real perv. But I find his work really beautiful, a lot of his art – he would do both biblical themed engravings and woodblock prints and and also erotic prints.

M: Mm-hm, mm-hm.

CT: And I like the juxtaposition.

M: That’s interesting. I am gonna ask some questions that have to do with stuff like that a little bit later, I think. But uh, I’m glad to hear it’s something you’ve thought about. I was kinda “should I talk…I dunno.”

[Ed. – I was completely unable to back this up. I suspected the citation was in Groth’s somewhat controversial ‘Death of Criticism‘ bit in #254, but I couldn’t find it there. As I recall, the remarks essentially criticized some autobio or contemporary realist comics as lacking production discipline and ambition, the one negative trait reinforcing the other. I suppose it could even have been another writer. I’m sure it was in an ish of the CJ, though.]

CT: No, I didn’t – I…

M: It wasn’t directed at you – it was just the adoption of autobio as sort of like this characteristic form for people of uh – for people that are like younger than the Hernandezes, a lot of times, you know.

I thought that Blankets was just about the opposite; it was about being connected to everything. Is that something that you had consciously set out to explore?

CT: Well, the autobio part was definitely really reluctant. And like it wasn’t something that I thought – like – volunteered to some extent to do? I mean, obviously, I chose it, but I was like, not really keen on autobio comics, in some way I was doing one. But yeah, uh, part of my attitude towards a lot of alternative comics in general is that they have too much of a misanthropic quality. And uh, even though I have incredible respect for the cartoonists themselves, I felt a lot of their work wasn’t life-embracing.

So, there was a certain conscious response to that. Like, ‘Oh, stop making comics about, you know, how the fact that you make comics isolates you from everyone else.’

M: That’s right.

CT: There have been times when I – I really like Adrian Tomine‘s work, so I don’t want this to come off as insulting – but I remember reading a specific issue of Optic Nerve where I’m like, ‘Adrian, you need to stop making comics for a while and just like patch up a few things in your life and then come back.’ [laughs]

‘Cause I really felt like, you know, this is really bad for him.

M: Well, and this leads into the next part of that question…

In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels. I’m running the transcript here in nine parts. Craig’s web site is here. He is published by Top Shelf.

In Part Three, Craig had just identified some period songs that were appropriate as a soundtrack for Blankets.

M: Okay, let’s see. Okay, so… Back once again to the visual theme. Oh yeah, yeah. Actually, it sort of like comes outta the Christian stuff that we were just going over.

What’s the status of your beliefs today?

CT: Um, I believe in God, but ah – you know, as undefined as that could be. And uh, I feel very moralistic but I don’t have any pinned down sort of dogma, or anything. And moralistic in the sense of how we should treat each other in the world, not judgmental and you know, you know. And it’s most typical for people I know who are actually, uh, religious or fundamentalist or uh self-proclaimed, separate, moralistic people, are actually not, it’s the other way around.

So, I care about how we treat people and how we treat the environment, you know, sort of a hippy-dippy version of [Mike chuckles]… the world.

[Ed. – From context, Craig actually means he feels he lives a moral life – he meant the word ‘moralistic’ in a positive way, although it’s more commonly employed as a pejorative term.]

M: The corollary to this is that, uh, as people who are drawn to I guess spirituality move through periods in their lives it’s not uncommon for people to move away from organized religion and then back into it. Could you imagine returning to it at a later stage in your life?

CT: No, I can’t imagine that. Uh, my parents would love it! And I can think of maybe a few other people in my life… And in fact I get letters from fans sometimes, that that’s their prayer for me, is that I’ll be led back to the faith.

M: Oh, that’s really interesting, so the book is reaching people still within that mainstream Christianity stuff?

CT: Yep.

M: That’s really interesting.

Is it something that is – are you aware of people using it in like in youth group and stuff? [laughs]

CT: Um… No I don’t think I have heard of that yet.

M: That would be a pretty brave thing to do, I would think, but uh…

CT: I’m thinking to about why people that leave Christianity are often led back, and a lot of times those are people who more specifically rebel. Maybe they go and indulge in a few things that they’ve been restricted from before. And then they sort of return, the prodigal son sort of repentance. And you know, I don’t think I feel like I share that experience. Like, I feel like most of my, uh, living outside of Christianity has just been as conscientious as uh – sort of – moralistic, you know? I haven’t lived this totally selfish lifestyle. You know, I live with my girlfriend, but I haven’t ever thought of that as, like, scandalous.

So I guess what I’m saying is that I feel as spiritual as ever, except more undefined, so I don’t think I’m going to return to Christianity because I just feel like I’ve kept growing in the same direction.

M: Mm-hm. That’s interesting. That’s – uh – yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah, I uh, I just notice in looking at people around me and through my life that – as people get – as people become fully adults, and have kids and stuff, that uh, sometimes the stuff that didn’t make sense to us as teenagers begins to make sense to us as adults. So, that was sort of the genesis of that question.

A first for me in my comics interviewing career.

CT: [laughs]

M: In Blankets, you refer, very obliquely, to the basis of the prohibition of the depiction of the human form which is practiced to a greater or a lesser degree under Islam, and which was enforced for a period of time in the early church. In Christian history, that period of time and its’ events is referred to as the Iconoclastic Controversy.

Is the use of the labrys a deliberate reference to the historical use of the image?

CT: Could you repeat that?

M: Yeah, sure. Is the use of the labrys – that’s the circular form with the notches at the top and bottom –

CT: Oh, okay.

M: Is it a deliberate reference to the historical use of that form?

CT: No, entirely subconscious. I don’t even know what that is.

M: Wow, that’s awesome.

CT: [laughs]

M: That’s awesome!

CT: So I’m tappin’ somethin’, but I don’t know what it is!

M: That’s completely awesome!

That battleaxe is actually a labrys. And it’s an abstract representation of the inner lips of the vulva.

CT: Woah!

M: And it goes back to like, I believe, pre-classic Greek civilization, like Minoan civilization. It’s really old. I mean it’s really old. And the way that you use it in the book – is – I mean – it’s – that’s completely what it is, man!

It also looks somewhat like the symbol of the wig-shape used in Hedwig and the Angry Inch to signify Hedwig’s transformation into, well, Hedwig, which I also find interesting, and see parallels to Thompson’s work in as well.]

CT: Yeah, that image, that symbol emerged without any of my choosing.

M: That’s completely wild.

CT: Yeah.

M: Wow, man, that’s cool! [laughs]

Well, then, tell me about how that symbol emerged?

CT: It ended up, kinda, you know, on one of the panels, and maybe – nothing specific. I saw it after two or three panels, and like, ‘Ah! I’ve been drawing that like more than a couple times.’ And it became conscious, and sort of kept it and it sort of became part of the ornamentation of a lot of scenes.

And I guess it had a personal meaning to me. But you know only because I accidentally repeated it at first.

M: …And it’s something that emerged on the page for you. I mean, you depict yourself as a mooning youngster – uh, checkin’ out the ladies, toward the end of the book with – you know – you use the visual symbology. It where it almost becomes – Well, it’s explicitly developed before that section of the book actually, but this one drawing here of you at work at a bagel shop.

CT: Yeah.

M: And you know, it’s just obvious that it’s you having the crush on the person that you’re serving, you know? And there – here it is at a party and I mean just throughout. Uh, and it just emerged in the development of the panels as you were working through the book? It’s not something that you have a sort of like a synaesthetic, you know, thing that floats in front of your eyes or anything?

CT: Yeah, no I don’t literally see those. I – You know, the ornamentation in the book became a visual embodiment of how I felt about Raina, and then later, in that scene that you’re talking about, I intended to be a bit self-deprecating, to say that like I was, you know… well, self-deprecating in a sense of like, that, well, I was so casual about that feeling, to some degree. Obviously it’s not full-blown ornamentation, you’ll just see a little paisley or something pooping up here or there. But just like random strangers walking by. A similar experience, on a smaller level. I thought that was hilarious in a self-deprecating way, or sort of an unidealistic way.

M: Mm-hm. I understand.

[Ed. – Close but no cigar, it’s The Three Ages of Woman.]

CT: It’s The Stages of Women or something.

M: Yeah, I forget the title of it.

But, uh, so is – was Klimt‘s use of pattern and decoration, was that something that was a direct inspiration to your decision to use it?

CT: No, no. I – as I was working on the book, I was drawn to his work in looking at it. But I think only after the fact, I think until around that point – I think it was that scene where I was thinking of what was in her room – and I thought of that image and I had to run and track it down. And then once I started looking at it – even before I started looking at the book, it was before I’d went and seen the art on the page.

And I’d always heard Klimt criticized for being an ornamental painter, essentially.

But looking at the paintings was a huge part of the deal. I don’t buy the criticism.

M: Yeah, and no, really, it’s kind of a transient criticism.

CT: It’s sort of a pretentious art-school criticism – ‘ah, he’s not real art,’ you know, ‘he was an ornamentalist.’

M: Well, it’s a little bit more – I think historically complex than that but uh the –

CT: In that there was stuff going on, you know, politically, that he wasn’t addressing…

M: Yeah, exactly.

Dang!]

In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels. I’m running the transcript here in nine parts. Craig’s web site is here. He is published by Top Shelf.

In Part Two, I’d just spoken with Craig about Blankets’ resemblance to another huge book – The Bible. We joked about a special edition release of Blankets on onion skin with gilt edges, and I continued the thought in a more serious direction.

M: Yeah, I uh actually grew up in a religious family too, and so it was interesting to read about your sort of embrace – I mean, I rejected it but I mean I thought about it a lot before I did that. And uh, one of the sort of side-effects of being in a religious family was that some of my earliest exposure to comics was through comics that were specifically associated with the church. I was wondering if you had exposure to materials like that too.

CT: Oh yeah, definitely. Those uh, was it Al Hartley? The guy who drew the Christian Archie Comics? And all the Jack Chick comics…

M: So you saw the Jack Chick stuff through church?

CT: Well, no, through the Christian bookstores. Not the small pamphlet-style ones but the bigger ones.

M: Boy, I don’t think I’ve ever seen those. Are they collections of the pamphlets?

CT: No, they’re entirely different; they’re more like highly rendered, superhero style stuff.

M: Highly-rend – that sounds fascinating.

CT: And that Mexican artist did all the artwork.

M: Right.

CT: The Jack Chick artwork.

M: I actually knew a guy named, uh, Crevo, who was like this punk-rock artist that got born-again around he was like 19, and then ended up doing Chick comics. He was just – crazy stuff. He had this like total nervous obsessive line quality – it was just perfect for Chick’s stuff. It was weird to realize that this was being drawn by this guy I had, you know, done cough syrup with. It was very strange.

Oh, I wanted to specifically ask about these two Christian graphic artists that I remember seeing when I was a kid. In the “Today’s English” version of the Bible, you know the sort of plain English version?

CT: Uh-huh.

M: Good News, I think it was published as? Do you remember those drawings that are all throughout it?

CT: No I didn’t. I have the version of ‘Good News’ that came out in the seventies, and it had all those great images of people in their bell-bottoms.

M: Oh yeah, I remember that one; and they’re like sort of more commercial-arty lookin’?

CT: Yeah. That’s very seventies.

M: The artist I was thinking of, her name’s Annie Vallotton and she’s anonymous in that version of the book, but the drawings are beautiful and very evocative, and there’s sort of a line quality in them that made me think of your work, so I thought maybe you’d seen them.

And then the other one, I’m not quite sure if I have the right source on this, but there was an artist that did this sort of ambitious thing where it’s basically the Bible in like Prince Valiant-style detailed drawings.

CT: [emphatically] Yeaah! Those were awesome!

M: Yeah. I remember those things really impressing me. I figured out the source, I think: it’s The Picture Bible by Iva Hoth and Andre Le Blanc. Le Blanc is the artist.

CT: And they released them in that sort of dime-store…

M: Yeah! Like almost digest-sized. They are collected and you can get it and stuff. But I can remember those things kind of like really kind of like having an impact on me as a kid.

You mentioned Al Hartley. Do you remember The Cross and the Switchblade comic book?

CT: That sounds strangely familiar but no.

M: Yeah, I think that was a Charlton one, which I think the Christian Archie ones were, but I could be wrong about that. Anyway.

[Ed. – The book, as it happens, is an adaptation of a seventies flick starring Pat Boone and Erik Estrada – “Ponch” from ChiPS – and is by… Al Hartley! It wasn’t Charlton, and neither were the Christian Archie books. It was Spire.]

CT: In another interview, it came up that part of the lure of comics, you know, the one medium that I grew up with that wasn’t censored by my parents. It was sort of the one medium I had control over. Like all the music and television and movies was really highly monitored. But this slipped under the radar. They were kind of this sort of, uh, creative awakening.

M: Let me fast forward to the questions that I had about that, if I can find them. I did this whole elaborate outline here, tried to group everything together. Well, I can just ask it verbally, I guess. Um, so so – you just told me that it was something that wasn’t censored by your parents. In the scenes that you show of you and your brother as little kids sleeping in the same bed, you’re wearing Spider-Man Underoos – or I’m sorry, the character of Craig in Blankets is wearing Spider-Man Underoos and his brother is wearing Batman Underoos.

So, did you guys read a lot of like standard-issue Marvel and DC when you were kids?

CT: Not a lot, no. Probably at that time, we were buying, we were picking up the Star Comics line. Do you remember those?

M: I don’t.

CT: They were like a Marvel, uh, full-merchandising line of kids comics. And we were picking those up at the corner drugstore in the small town. And it would have been like, you know, Muppet Babies. . .

M: Muppet Babies, oh yeah, okay.

CT: It woulda been like Saturday morning cartoons adapted for uh, [for cheesy?] comic book format. Amazingly enough though, that had great artists like Marie Severin doing all the Henson-based properties.

M: Is that sort of the route that Henson as a visual inspiration came to you though, then?

CT: No no no, it’s definitely the real-life Muppets.

M: Right. Heh, the real-life Muppets.

CT: I pursued the puppetry career for a while there too. Yeah, well, puppetry. That’s better than animation.

M: That’s interesting. I didn’t know about that. Do you know my friend, or, the music of my friend Jason Webley from up here, by any chance?

CT: No.

M: Nope? Well, never mind then. ‘Cause he is very strongly influenced by puppetry as well. But anyway.

CT: Music influenced by puppetry?

M: Yeah, he uses – uh – He’s this real kinda interesting character. Who uh, eh, I shouldn’t go into great detail in describing it because of the time and stuff, but his music’s great. He does these elaborate sort of performance art things and puppetry can be a part of what he’s doing, sometimes, especially at the more elaborate shows that he’ll do up here usually in Spring and Fall.

So, generally speaking, to what extent did you encounter visual materials in a religious context that moved you toward pursuing what you’re doing now?

CT: Outside of a religious context?

M: No, no, within a religious context.

CT: Uh. I don’t think there was anything specifically within the Christian world that was inspiring to me.

M: That’s interesting.

CT: I mean I was a hardcore Christian, I was definitely a firm believer. And I was really into, uh, Christian Rock for a while.

M: Stryper, brother! [laughs]

CT: Like Christian speed metal, Christian punk rock. [laughs]

M: There’s great Celtic Christian punk band from Chicago – I can’t remember their name – something “Boots.” Oh well. Still listen to any of that?

[Ed. – I was grasping for the name of Ballydowse, who apparently lack a website at the moment.]

CT: Noooo.

M: Noooo.

CT: Uh, I’m sure that there’s probably a couple bands there that, uh, you know that are still aesthetically appealing – actually, I am working on a Blankets – I’m not actually doing any work, but um, a friend of mine here in town is working on a Blankets soundtrack.

M: I was gonna ask that question – lemme see if I can find that actually. But so you’re not doing it. Is it gonna be released? Do they have a deal and stuff?

CT: Yeah, it should be out by next summer, and the musician is John Askew – you might know FILMGuerrero records? That’s his label out here and he has a band, Tracker.

So basically, it’s another Tracker album, but it’s all done as the soundtrack to Blankets. And I’m gonna you know embellish the CD and stuff with some illustrations and comics similar to what Seth did with that Wee Man album?

It should be really exciting, with some like orchestration coming into it.

[Ed. – I couldn’t find a reference for the record Craig mentions, so it’s possible I have the name wrong.]

M: Oh, that’s interesting.

CT: With some like French horns and cellos, trumpet, piano…

M: Oh, that’s really interesting.

CT: So I’m excited about that, and at this point still, there’s no lyrics, instrumental.

M: So are you thinking about literally like a soundtrack, like for a film?

CT: No, I don’t think any of us are thinking of it literally – it’s an interpretation or drawing inspiration from the book.

M: I understand.

CT: We’ll record an album and I guess I’ll draw inspiration from the album to create a package for it. But John grew up in the Christian rock movement – he was in Christian rock bands and stuff. So that’s another fun connection.

M: Well, that probably makes it really emotionally satisfying for him to work on in relation to the piece then.

CT: Yeah.

M: Now, here’s the questions that I had about the soundtrack, it was a completely different tack.

Uh, Posters for bands from the Pacific Northwest cover the walls of Raina’s room. Again, I mean I’m sure that they’re from different places as well, but it’s obviously really important. Let’s say you’ve been asked to make a compilation album to serve as a soundtrack for Blankets. So, as a compilation, you’re working from existing material. What 16 songs would you select? And I know you’re not gonna be able to answer that right off the top of your head. But you know, name two or three and I’ll try and follow up with you and get the other sixteen in writing at some point.

CT: Okay. Well, when I met Raina, I was getting out of my punk rock stage a bit and mellowing out, you know, the grunge era? So I remember her introducing me to The Cure, with Just Like Heaven. And I was a really big Dinosaur Jr. fan at the time, and on the Fossils album they had also covered Just Like Heaven. So both those versions of the song would have to be core to the soundtrack, Dinosaur Jr. and the Cure’s version.

Um, and we were really into…

I remember what I was into better than what she was into, but she was really into uh PJ Harvey; I listened to Fugazi, Jawbreaker, um, we both loved Nirvana – who didn’t at that point?

Um, a little bit of Pavement in there. And uh, I remember really liking Little Earthquakes, Tori Amos album, too. That would be the album that would clash with all the punk stuff. Um. Those are just a few off the top of my head.

M: What one additional song would be the hidden track?

CT: Hidden track. Um… I think – I have this feeling it would be an Arcwelder song. Did you know Arcwelder?

M: I don’t think so.

CT: They were a Minneapolis band, I don’t know how much they spread beyond there. But, or maybe a Secret Stars song. God, trying to remember the names of these songs… Um, Not Moving. There’s a good kind grungy nineties sorta feel to it. Not Moving, by Arcwelder.

M: If the opportunity arose, would you be interested in actually developing such a project?

CT: Uh, sure, for the fun of it, yeah.

In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels. I’m running the transcript here in nine parts. Craig’s web site is here. He is published by Top Shelf.

In Part One, I’d just observed that Craig had traced a series of interests in a variety of media that form a downward-sloping financial trend: film to animation to comics. He’s responding to that observation, below.

CT: I guess that comes from having come from a working-class background too. I know there’s something very working-class about comics, and uh…

M: That’s an interesting perspective. Elaborate on that idea for me a little bit.

CT: Well, uh, I don’t know if I’m entirely right about that… I kinda think of film sometimes or the idea of breaking into film is sort of like the suburban white kid’s NBA. Like uh, it’s a sort of elusive, alluring world that these kids who actually come from a privileged background dream of attaining. And fortunately, I’m glad I haven’t concentrated my energies towards that. And very soon, I knew I wanted to have, like, full control over what I was creating, and once I realized that I could do that in comics, that it was in some ways more simple, acceptable form at least for a creator, I actually started to really fall in love with the form itself, and respect it more than those other films, uh, other forms.

Uh, I like how black ink looks on white paper, I like the uh, the object, or “the fetish quality”, whatever Dan Clowes calls it. And just that you can hold it in your hands, take it at your own pace, and it’s just you know, a very intimate medium, the conversation going on between the creator and the reader.

M: That’s interesting. In my conversations the theme of ‘sole control’ definitely comes up with creators. That seems to be a real specific issue.

CT: Yeah, I hope that isn’t because cartoonists are power-hungry! [laughs] Rather than it’s because we want to see a vision though!

M: Yeah. I shouldn’t be telling you what my opinions are – but I’m going to anyway!

And that’s not always the case, I don’t think; but I think that’s a real important part of the temperament of people that are drawn to working in the medium. And then later, they complain about it, because they’ve spent twenty years without developing, you know, the kind of social networks you get from working, even in an office, sometimes.

CT: Yeah. No, I wouldn’t – I mean, personally that seems to make sense, but that doesn’t fit for me personally, because I do crave that sort of interaction, and that’s such a hard thing with being an isolated cartoonist. But I don’t know…

Did you see, uh, Lost in La Mancha?

M: No I haven’t yet. I’d love to see it though.

CT: That’s a perfect example of, you know, [laughs] witnessing Terry Gilliam in that film, there is a part of you that just wishes that he was a cartoonist – a full-time cartoonist just sitting in his own studio and realizing his own visions instead of dragging everyone else into it…

M: Sorta the ‘note to self: do not make a film’ kind of movie?

CT: Yeah.

M: Yeah.

And now I’m almost at the end of my standard six. I’ve been more chatty than I should be.

CT: Oh, okay.

M: Um, what do you listen to while you are working on comics?

CT: I’d have to confess that I’m on a big NPR kick lately. It depends – there was times in [working on] Blankets that I was listening to lots of music, but then I don’t know. In the last year, I’ve been really NPR oriented.

I pencil in the morning, and then have lunch, and then by the time I’m inking it’s time to kick it around – Fresh Air time – [laughs]

M: Right.

Did you hear the one – oh geez, it was the Fox News talk show host guy – [pause, can’t dredge up the name] ah, forget it.

CT: Oh yeah, yeah I did hear that, it was hilarious. I can’t think of his name.

M: I can’t think of his name either right now. The Mumble Factor. O’Reilly Factor, that’s the guy.

CT: I’m sure my parents love the guy. Or they would love him.

M: They would love him.

CT: They like Rush Limbaugh.

M: Alright. So now I’m gonna move on and ask some – I guess they’re forward business rather than literary-type questions.

Have you started any new projects since completing Blankets?

CT: Yeah, I’m in that crazy, brainstorming-slash-sketching-doodling-researching part of the next book. And I probably’ve got about ninety percent of it outlined, actually. Although I’m far from actually writing it out. Should I try to describe it?

M: Sure, absolutely!

CT: It’s sort of an environmental allegory. It takes place in a pseudo-Middle East. And it’s an allegory in the sense that it takes some of the stuff going on in that climate, in that region, and simplifies them; makes them sort of fairy tale-ish. I focus a lot on the water crisis there and it’s sort of this New Ottoman Empire.

My main characters are child slaves – one’s a prostitute and one’s a eunuch and there’s a romance that develops between them. And that’s about as much as I can describe right now.

M: Hm. Interesting.

Have you seen Megan Kelso‘s thing that she’s working on lately?

CT: Artichoke Tales, yeah.

M: Yeah. Is it sort of a similar flavor?

CT: I love Artichoke Tales, but I don’t know what comics I’ve seen thus far that has the flavor of what at least I am envisioning in the next book.

M: Sure.

CT: I kind of get into a state in the beginning stages where I’m like, ‘Ohhh, I wanna consume’, you know, other comics and other books and stuff that have a similar flavor, and I haven’t necessarily found what that is yet.

M: Well, uh, maybe Tintin, you know.

CT: Princess Mononoke, maybe to some degree?

M: Huh, that’s interesting; sure, I follow that. All righty.

And um, when do you expect to see publication with this?

CT: If all goes well, Summer, 2005.

M: And are you gonna do it like Blankets, have it all come out at once like that or are you gonna serialize it?

CT: I’m leaning towards all at once again.

If it starts growing, like to incredible lengths, I might break down into a trilogy.

M: This is from a man that just published a five-hundred page comic book. Go ahead and define ‘incredible lengths.’

CT: If it’s climbing over five, six hundred pages, then I’ll break it down into smaller volumes.

M: Okay.

CT: But I’m envisioning it more as like a three-hundred page book and not as a big, six hundred page one.

M: Do you have any plans to do a book tour in support of Blankets?

CT: I did through most of the summer, um, all over the place. New York – all the comics circuit, New York, San Diego, San Francisco, Chicago, I went to Minneapolis. And I’ve done a bunch of things near Portland. I’ll probably make it up to Seattle too. And I’ll be doing some more things, yeah, next year.

Actually, ideally, I’ll be in Europe in the beginning of the year –

M: Oh, for Angoulême?

CT: I don’t know if I’ll be there early enough for Angoulême but I’ll be there for, um, a show in Milan in March and hopefully a show in Barcelona in May. And then I’ll head back to our nation, to our lovely nation, to for sure, San Diego, where I’ll be a guest. And then MegaCon or WonderCon or one of those southern shows.

M: Are there any translation deals in the works for Blankets?

CT: Yeah, that’s why I want to be in Europe. Uh, Spanish and French editions come out in March of next year.

M: Fantastic, that’s great news. Uh, you should learn to read French, because you’re going to have some interesting critical work that’s generated by it, I bet.

Um, are you selling original art from Blankets?

CT: [emphatically] No!

M: [even more emphatically] NO! What are you doing with the original art?

CT: Right now I’m just holding on to it. I’m not like in a crazy rush to sell it. I have it all contained like nice and tidily.

M: How – well, we’ll get into the technical stuff in a bit, actually… Like, looking at the size of the work, I was just thinking, ‘where in the world did he even keep the originals, man?’ But anyway.

So nooooo selling the original art from Blankets.

CT: Not yet.

M: Legions of fans will be disappointed.

Blankets contains a great deal of reflection on your adolescent Christianity. The book itself is published in a ‘brick’ format that is not unlike some editions of the Bible. Is this intentional? Did you plan for this as you embarked on the project?

CT: No, I’m afraid not. I thought the book would be about 250 pages. And the same thing happened with [Goodbye] Chunky Rice where it basically doubled by the time it was finished.

It was someone else who first remarked when it returned from the printer, “It’s as big as the Bible!”

M: Well, how do you feel about that? Does it make you uncomfortable to have that immediate external reference drawn to the book?

CT: [chuckling] No, it’s awesome, I think it’s great. What a great, uh, gimmick.

M: “What a great gimmick.” Are you gonna publish an onion-leaf edition with, uh, gilt?

CT: Yeah! I would love to do that!

M: That would be pretty cool.

CT: With the little, uh, whatever you call those, with the marker, uh, bookmark.

M: Yeah, absolutely. You could have a concordance and a vocabulary and stuff.

In very early November 2003, I interviewed 28-year-old Portland cartoonist and illustrator Craig Thompson for my column in the Seattle alternative publication Tablet, Ink and Pixels . Thompson won a Harvey Award for his debut, the fanciful, yet melancholy Goodbye, Chunky Rice, and two years later, in the summer of 2003, followed up with his remarkable 600-page graphic novel, Blankets.

Craig’s web site is rather terse. Both the books are published by Top Shelf, and the artist has worked outside of indie comics for some time as well (as you’ll read in the interview).

I generally run the transcripts of interviews and conversations I have with comics creators here, and this is no exception. This conversation lasted about an hour and a half, and the transcript totals around 15,000 words; I’ve divided it into nine parts, which will run daily. Editorially, I’m formatting these for posting by attempting to include links as appropriate. In some cases, I followed up on remarks made in the conversation and have provided summaries of that research as editorial asides.

I have not materially edited Craig’s words, but in some cases I have edited my remarks for clarity and length.

M: Say a couple of words for posterity for me, Craig.

CT: Testing testing 123.

M: [laughs] there we go.

CT: I realized the last interview I participated in, I must’ve been mumbling, because the interpretation of a lot of the things I said came out really bizarre.

M: Well, I will try to be aware of that, and if I hear you’re mumbling, I’ll say, I’ll ask you to speak up.

CT: [ Exclaiming ] Stop mumbling!

M: And if you want, by the way I’ll try to … I’ll try to be like really transparent with this stuff. What I do with these interviews is they’ll be turned into the basis of a brief feature for Tablet here, which is a biweekly alternative newspaper. The feature itself is an 800 word column so it’ll be quite a brief piece. I usually include a capsule review of the most recent work by the person I’m interviewing, and then I publish transcripts of the interview, lightly edited like, for grammar and stuff on my blog.

Because of this transparency principle, if you would like a recording of the interview, or the transcripts, just let me know. I’ll be happy to give it to you.

CT: Okay.

M: So as I said, I do this column for Tablet . It’s called Ink and Pixels although, so far, it’s just been Ink. And what I’m trying to do with it, is provide coverage of independent comics, specifically that have to do with the Northwest. Although given Jeff Mason’s operation and his use of East Coast people, I try to include them as well. It seems to be working okay.

I’m very excited to talk to you because I thought Blankets was brilliant.

CT: That’s what I’m excited to see, the twenty years from now compilation.

M: Well, you know, I just recently interviewed Roberta Gregory, and she’s been cartooning for nearly thirty years now, so…

So, who is your favorite visual artist, not just comics, but in the whole world, visual artist?

CT: That’s going to take a moment. Okay, boy, I’m a bad list maker…

M: You don’t have to have performance anxiety, you can just name a bunch of them…

CT: Right off hand the first person that comes to mind is actually a cartoonist, Baudoin, Edmond Baudoin, the French cartoonist.

M: And what works has he done?

CT: Um, some of his best have been uh Piero, which is a big inspiration for Blankets, and uh The Voyage , or Le Voyage. And uh Salades Nicoises , those are the three books that come to mind.

And I like Taro Yashima a lot, the Japanese illustrator that did childrens’ books back in the forties and fifties. And he also did some of the first graphic novels I’ve ever seen, about being thrown in uh Japanese concentration camps during, when, um, Communism.

[Ed. – I was unable to find an example of what Craig mentioned here.]

CT: I love Modigliani paintings a lot. But I like old paintings in general, older paintings.

Jim Henson, big influence.

M: Jim Henson! That’s interesting.

CT: One of my favorite visual artists. Jim Henson.

M: Let’s see now. I’m going to need you to spell the French cartoonist’s name for me I think.

CT: It’s B-A-U-D-O-I-N.

M: B-A-U-B-O-I-N?

CT: B-A-U D as in dog O-I-N.

M: Okay. And has he ever been published in English?

[Ed.- Edmond Beaudoin’s web site may be seen here.]

CT: He hasn’t yet, what a disappointment.

M: What a disappointment. [jokingly] Hear that, Kim?

[Ed. – Kim Thompson, Fantagraphics big cheese #2, is notoriously knowledgeable about European cartoonists.]

CT: I’d be curious to hear what Kim thinks about that, actually.

M: Yeah, well, he – they tried to publish some other European – I actually have asked him about it before, and he gets kinda riled up. [laughs]

CT: Yeah well, he is responsible for translating that David B – Epileptic book, right?

M: Yeah, uh-huh. And he also did…

CT: Trondheim.

M: Yes, exactly.

CT: And I don’t know where that’s at right now, but I imagine Epileptic has been fairly successful.

M: Yeah, ya know, I don’t know. I talked – remember the financial crisis?

CT: Yeah.

M: I talked to Kim during that period of time, during the week when they were, like, freaking out because everyone was coming through for them. First of all, they were rightfully cagey about talking to a journalist about what books they had overprinted. But it was clear that they’d made their business judgments based on their aesthetic desires, rather than what they were projecting.

[ Centrifugal Bumblepuppy was a short-lived anthology edited by the now-famed cartoon journalist Joe Sacco for Fantagraphics.]

CT: Wow.

M: And he really got kinda worked up. [laughs] “Man, we lost all this money on these projects, and I think the American audience just hates French cartoonists.” It was, you know, Fantagraphics grumpiness. It was kind of funny.

CT: I can’t imagine they hate this stuff. I mean I know American cartoonists have been very influenced by the French cartoonists.

M: Well, you know, it could just be that –

CT: Maybe they’re for cartoonists. Maybe they’re cartoonist’s cartoonists.

M: Yah, its hard to say. I mean like the Gaston books, when they translated them, they made Gaston – he speaks this really kind of colloquial French, and so they translated it so that he was like speaking this hillbilly English or something. And they printed it in black and white too, instead of using the nice color seps that come from the publishers in France.

What’s the sexiest comic you’ve ever read?

CT: That would definitely be a Baudoin book. And since I haven’t officially – there’s only maybe two that I’ve gotten through – I don’t really speak or read French, only to a small degree, along with a dictionary –

M: Mm-hm.

CT: That would be Maus.

M: Be generic and say what?

CT: Maus.

M: Maus? Oh yeah.

CT: Um… or Jimmy Corrigan, that’s too easy too.

M: Well those are both comics that um…

CT: Those are big ones, those are big ones.

Pshooo. I guess I’ll stick with those!

M: Okay, fair enough, those are good answers.

CT: Anybody would say those two. But, there’s a reason for that.

M: Well you may be interested to know that I’ve had at least one response that cited an Expo contribution of yours, that I haven’t seen, about child abuse…

CT: Wow.

M: …as the most moving thing that they had ever read. Who said that? Tatiana Gill is the woman that said that to me.

Um, what do you think about webcomics?

CT: Um, I think I’m actually pretty ignorant of them. I think they’re great, in the sense that the people I meet that are doing them are being really productive and and excited and it’s a tight-knit community; but I’m pretty computer illiterate, in a sense. I just don’t like computer screens, and I’m always frustrated with my little iMac, and I’ve got one of those 56k modems. I’m not, you know, tinkering around looking at that stuff very often.

M: Right, right.

CT: But in the, what I gather from being at conventions, you know, there’s a lot of energy going on there, and a tight-knit community and a real diverse bunch of cartoonists coming out of it. So, I’m excited about it in that sense.

M: Yeah, it’s interesting to me – I’m someone that really likes dailies, and it’s just revitalized dailies, because, you know, you can have it in color and you don’t have content restrictions and that’s an interesting kind of a side effect. And there’s a real split, I’ve noticed, between people who are really traditionally oriented, like you, in terms of you know, paper and pen, and not really getting along with the computer and generally younger people – although you’re actually about the age that I’m thinking about. It’s fascinating for me to watch, and that’s why the column says Ink and Pixels, ’cause I really want to pay attention to those guys too. Anyway.

Um, So what are your goals as a comics creator? Why did you pick this instead of painting or film?

CT: [pause] Well, I’ve always been drawn to using drawing as a storytelling medium. Initially that took the form of interest in animation. Or actually, film before animation. Realizing my strengths in drawing, I was drawn to animation. But then, once I researched that and learned a lot about the industry and stuff it lost all its’ allure. There certainly wasn’t any individual vision – I mean there are in some cases but…

M: So there’s kind of a financial trend in that sequence you just traced…

CT: What?

M: There’s kind of a financial trend in that sequence you just traced.

CT: Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.

M: [laughs]

Wormtalk and Slugspeak: Michael Drout is a medievalist and Tolkien scholar at Wheaton. His blog, lately, well, it’s about what you might expect. As someone who has attempted to bring a measure of depth to my own writing about the professor and his current avatars, his material holds my attention.

We attended our second White Elephant gift exchange last night. Tonight as we were eating or out shopping or someplace, Viv asked me where the term and the tradition came from.

I told her that I understood it to refer to a tradition in an Asian country, possibly Thailand, where white elephants are a sacred symbol of the king, and when found, become his property. The elephant. however, may not actually be delivered to the king, but instaed may lodge with whoever is deemed best able to keep it on the kings behalf – but at their expense.

The analogy to what Americans mean by the term is obvious, I think. But when and where did the White Elephant Party begin and when did it become so very widespread here?

I thought I’d invesitgate.

With regard to the Asian roots of the term, my version is certainly popular:

White elephant (1851) supposedly arose from the practice of the King of Siam of presenting one of the sacred albino elephants to a courtier who had fallen from favor; the gift was a great honor, but the cost of proper upkeep of one was ruinous.

– from the Online Etymology Dictionary (Sources), a personal project of one Douglas Harper. It’s a find in and of itself, I’d say.

The online edition of the 1894 Brewer Dictionary of Phrase and Fable has it thusly:

White elephant – King of the White Elephant. The proudest title borne by the kings of Ava and Siam. In Ava the white elephant bears the title of `lord,” and has a minister of high rank to superintend his household.
 –  The land of the White Elephant. Siam.
 –  To have a white elephant to keep. To have an expensive and unprofitable dignity to support, or a pet article to take care of. For example, a person moving is determined to keep a pet carpet, and therefore hires his house to fit his carpet. The King of Siam makes a present of a white elephant to such of his courtiers as he wishes to ruin.

(Siam is an antiquated name for the country we now call Thailand, just in case you never caught The King and I.)

This still leaves the matter of the factual basis of the story wide open, however. What King of Siam in particular? What year did this happen in? Does it still occur?

This unsourced but rather detailed and knowledgeable page discusses the roots of the animal’s importance and role in both Burma and Thailand, even directly addressing interactions between vistors from Britain and the United States in the nineteenth century. Interestingly, it does not discuss the American meaning of the word or cite a specific incident that paralells our usage of the word.

Further research found only anecdotal citations, so I’m concluding that while it’s surely possible that these animals were used in just such a stratagem, it’s unlikely that such an event was ever factually recorded. Furthermore, the term entered English at a time when it was common to denigrate non-European customs as impractical – the phrase ‘sacred cow’ forms a nice bookend with ‘white elephant’ – and the pejorative meaning with which Americans use the term appears to reflect this usage.

I shall examine the evidence for the growth of the White Elephant Party on the morrow, as the Google-hunt is likely to be more arduous.