Blankets: Chapters 2-5

While reading Blankets, I have come to appreciate the artwork more and more because of the correlations I find between Craig’s experiences and my life. I feel the simplistic facial features Thompson uses emphasizes McCloud’s position that more basic character drawings allow those viewing the drawings to project themselves onto the drawn characters. Since I find strong personal correlation between Craig’s life and my own in terms of being scolded for creative works, religion, and even Craig’s relationship with Raina, I am already invested in the story itself, but my ability to see myself as Craig due to Thompson’s relatively rudimentary facial drawings has increased my level of investment. Since the novel deals with such common but deeply emotional subjects (divorce, religion and its relation to sex, bullying) and uses simple facial constructions, I can understand why some have read through the entire novel in one sitting. McCloud also states, however, that simple character features cause one to focus more on the words that are being spoken by those characters. For this reason, I find it interesting that many pages of Blankets seem to have little or no dialogue or text at all (pages 256-258 for example).