I mentioned Craig Thompson’s massive autobiographical graphic novel Blankets in my MoCCA recap the other day. The book isn’t even officially out yet and it’s already the subject of much speculation and controversy. Part of this is due to the rapturous reception Thompson’s debut book, Goodbye, Chunky Rice, received. Some people felt it didn’t deserve the ecstatic praise people were heaping on it, so it was the victim of a backlash (one that, even if you agree with its contention that the book wasn’t a masterpiece, was just as excessive as its adherents were saying the praise they were reacting against was). (Whoa, how’s that for syntax?) Another part of the trepidation is due to a general antipathy to teen-angst autobio, which many feel is just as unnecessarily dominant in the alternative-comics sphere as superheroes are in the mainstream comics world. I myself still haven’t read the book, but I admit that certain previews and a few flip-throughs leave me wary.
Not The Missus, however. After seeing it on the kitchen table, she opened to a random spot in the book and was immediately enthralled. She read the whole thing yesterday, before I’d even gotten a chance to read it myself. She happens to relate to its source material quite a bit, having grown up, as Thompson did, in a devoutly evangelical Christian household, and because she had a long-distance letter-writing romance just like Thompson’s (with me, actually). But clearly the book pulled her right in and compelled her to plow through all 600-odd pages, which believe me is a rare thing for a comic to achieve with my wife. This might well be the breakthrough book some people are predicting it’ll be.