Craig Thompson's Islamophobia-phobia

With Habibi, Craig Thompson delivers another of the phone-book-sized narratives for which heâ??s justly celebrated. Stretching nearly 100 pages longer than his landmark previous book, 2003â??s Blankets, the story takes Thompson away from autobiography and into a terrain of his own imagining, a hybrid of Middle Eastern fairy tales and industrial modernity. This world is inhabited by the escaped child slaves Dodola and Zam, who meet many obstacles in their attempts to forge new lives for themselves, but their journey is only part of Habibiâ??s sprawling canvas. Using a structure derived from Islamic magic squares, 3 x 3 grids that Thompson likens to â??mystical sudoku,â? the book expands along horizontal and vertical axes, incorporating close reading of Koranic and Biblical passages and an exploration of Arabic calligraphy. Itâ??s a heady mix, dazzlingly ambitious and largely successful, and it again establishes Thompson as one of the most important comics artists working today.