"Blankets"

by Craig Thompson

"Blankets" is an auto-biographical graphic novel about the life of a fundamental christian as he grows up and battles the conflicting emotions between following the faith and following his dreams. After reading the novel I found it to be an extremely rich and thoughtful account of the authors life. He tells the story of his life from an artistic angle that is easily digested and engaging. A testament to this degree of approachability would be my girlfriend's interest in the novel (a comic novice) , saying that "I never knew that comics were so deep". I feel that this novel is an example of how interesting someone's personal story can be after some self reflection and analysis. The author shows me that a character that is based off of real experience is often much more fleshed out and relatable than a character that you were to just make up. I feel that this is a huge part of art and in my own work I think of every character as being a piece of me, I don't believe there is a way to disconnect yourself from your artwork and if there is than that's a sad way to do art in my honest opinion. I have always felt when the debate over representation in media comes up that the author of any work cannot create things they do not have experience with. I would say that without extensive research and real life experience that it would be very hard for me to write a compelling story about the life of a Korean child seeing that I have never experienced that directly. I feel like this is where alot of stereotypical and archetypical characters come from. Asking for a compelling story about the plights of a black man from Atlanta from a white man from Boston doesn't seem like it would work out well to me just based of the fact that the man from Boston has never experienced the life of the black man from Atlanta. My conclusion from "Blankets" is just to stick to what you know and not in a negative way, but in a way where you celebrate your own experience instead of suppressing it for storylines and characters that marketing people think will resonant with the audience. This novel is straight up fantastic, a must read for anyone interested in story telling.