Stuff That Doesn't Remotely Suck: Blankets

Craig Thompson, an author and cartoonist (he also made the incredible cover art to Menomena's Friend or Foe), is something of a stylistic genius. The premise of his graphic novel Blankets is pretty simple: confused youth finds his way to adulthood through the act of sleeping next to other people. As the protagonist ages this act takes on different meanings and changes his general perspective of the world around him while altering or expanding his internalized sense of self. The story itself is nothing revolutionary, never really moving into a realm that feels unexplored. What takes Blankets beyond being a simple coming of age book though is the way in which Thompson presents the tale he is weaving. Blankets is a text that uses the medium of the graphic novel to it's fullest extent. Thompson does not simply tell a story he makes it into a living thing that crawls off the page through your corneas and embeds itself in the back of your head. He employs a simplistic style of imagery that somehow manages to create a minimalist yet emotionally dense pallet upon which his story is built and told through.