Thursday, July 7, 2011

Comic Review: Blankets

Blankets by Craig Thompson

Thompson's homepage is here.

Blankets is a critically acclaimed comic. In 2005, Time selected it as one of the 100 best English language graphic novels ever written.

Blankets is certainly worth reading for fans of comics that aren't of the superhero variety and would be excellent for people who have never read a comic before too.

The art in Blankets is appropriate for the story it tells. It's occasionally very beautiful. At other times it's very simple. It uses a beautiful blue, white and black color palette that suits the tone of the story very well.

The story is a brutally honest confession and, while some parts are sweet and funny, others are awkward, terrifying and very sad. It's a wild emotional ride.

The story tries to tie together the author's experiences with his first girlfriend, his realization that he wants to be an artist and his growth from the received faith of his youth to a more personally negotiated adult faith. Sadly, these different threads never came together for me and, at the end of the story, I felt like none of the stories had any sort of resolution and all of them had got less time and development than they deserved.

Blankets is a fantastic example of the power and scope that comics can have even though it fails to deliver on it's promise as fully as it should have.

I highly recommend Blankets. Angela also reviewed Blankets. Go take a look at what she thought.


--Abe

No comments:

Post a Comment