Blankets and Dropsie Avenue

Contradictory to previous readings of Herge or Peanuts strips, graphic novels like "Blankets" hit a tender and painful nerve in my childhood. The pieces of youth that are no longer full of wonder and imagination but rather full of fear, uncertainty and turmoil that comes with growing up are all in the pages. The story itself contained a lot of feelings and thoughts that I also had when I was growing up and even though a few topics were very smarting for me (the mentions of child abuse and homophobia), reading Thompson's experiences were almost a balm to some of my own personal memories in the sense that it gave me relief to know I wasn't alone in some of my experiences. It's also almost too painful to try and discuss how much this book has affected me on a personal level, so I need to digest my feelings and instead move on to the graphic novel itself.

Not only do I love the line quality and use of like and dark within the book pages, but I also loved the way panels were structured and sometimes abstracted themselves by flowing organically. Words weren't bound by sections or placement, but rather jumbled or used fonts to differentiate ways of speaking or context of situations. It felt like the whole book was structured like a very beautiful release of emotions, frustrations, and explorations of the mind. There is so much energy and sentiment in each page, whether its a torrent of angry and despairing ink that seemed to rip through the drawings or carefully illustrated scenes that are gentle and almost reverent. 

The best way I can describe the overwhelming immersion of reading this book is the simple escapism of exiting my current existence in the real world and entering a film or a novel, and then coming back the real world and realizing that I had traveled somewhere entirely different without moving an inch for two hours but feeling almost breathless from traveling in my own head. To be able to feel an author's emotions so clearly and so explosively out of a book almost encourages me to attempt something similar, in the sense of gaining a cathartic release.

Dropsie Avenue is a very different flavor of a reflection on history, as well as a much large scope of time that is incredibly illustrated throughout the novel. I really love the humor and contradictory nature of all the characters that pass through the story, especially when it came to discussing immigration of one ethnic group "ruining the neighborhood" only to flourish from the new groups and then have the new tenant complain about immigrants and having the same situation prior continue from there. The cyclical nature of storytelling is both intriguing, but also a little tedious on top of having to take in a lot of new information at different time periods, but I enjoyed it as an exploration of history and the growth of culture in the melting pot of America nonetheless.