During a two week stay, I conducted graphic novel workshops to three entirely different groups, each with their own inspiring dynamics. The first were deaf children (ages 5 – 20) at The Holy Land Institute for the Deaf in Salt, Jordan. These kids were a bit baffled by the concept of comics (perhaps even drawing) on the first day of classes, but by the third day, they were churning out comics with wild abandon. The institute is a boarding school, and the theme of missing one’s family was a common one in many of their stories, but the concurrent theme was that of gratitude towards finding an extended family they could actually communicate with.

Through comics, these kids proved quite eloquent with word balloons, sound effects and visual music. My favorite exercise was a pairing up of students – boy/girl, young/old – in which one student signed a story and the other translated it into comics form on a board in front of the class.

The second batch of workshops was with inner city youth – teens and university students – at the Princess Basma Youth Resource Center Computer Clubhouse.  They channeled passions for music, graffiti, writing, architecture, and even computers into comics pages, collaborating on an anthology conceived and drawn in only three days — a pretty impressive display of constructive teamwork.  If only I’d been so focused at that age!  The girls (above left) are refugees from Syria and amazingly prolific cartoonists. They talked of creating a graphic novel to document their experience fleeing their war-torn homeland. The world needs this book to exist!

In the final workshops (below) held at Mlabbas – a hipster t-shirt shop on Rainbow Street in Amman – we gathered professional artists with specific interest in graphic novels.  It was refreshing to be around like-minded, similar-aged peers without a language barrier, and also to witness the outset of a burgeoning comics scene. Every single meal we shared was an AMAZING FEAST! The media paints a bleak outlook for the region, but there is a visceral optimism around the arts and self-expression and the medium of comics.

Finally, despite the banning, we were able to organize a bookstore signing where I met HABIBI fans from Jordan, Palestine, Syria, and Iraq. These two fans (below right) had only recently left their homes in Iraq. Readers found the book’s ban quite arbitrary, and felt it corresponded with a time of public frustration towards increasing government censorship in Jordan. Many Muslim readers thanked me specifically for the reverent depiction of their faith in HABIBI.

It’s been a full year of touring with HABIBI, and this week takes me to what feels like a pinnacle – the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. While there, I’ll be conducting comics workshops with deaf children at the Holy Land Institute in Salt city,  youth at the Princess Basma Youth Resource Center in Amman, and an elite group of Jordanian graphic novelists. This promises to be a life-changing experience; and I’ll be sure to bring home drawings/stories for the blog.

A couple of days after my return, I’ll be at the National Book Festival hosted by the Library of Congress in Washington DC.
My presentation & signing is from noon – 2:30 on Sunday, September 23rd.

Enticing invites keep pouring in from all over the world; but I’m feeling growing pressure and obligation to get home to the drawing board and start producing new comics pages! My plan is to travel nowhere for October – my first month of not flying since this time last year.

Thanks for the reminder, Jordi! The all-ages book is progressing, but still in its secret stages. What I can reveal is that I got last minute tickets to attend San Diego Comic-con this week. At 10:30 am on Friday, July 13th, I’ll be signing at the Top Shelf booth (#1721). That night, I’ll certainly be attending the Eisner Awards. And on Saturday the 14th, from 10am – noon, I’ll be presenting a writers’ workshop on ‘World-Building’ at TR!CKSTER (795 J Street, San Diego, CA). My plan is to hang around TR!CKSTER quite a bit, where they’ll be selling a super-limited-edition HABIBI screenprint – handpulled by Portland printmaking superstar Pete McCracken.

Speaking of Portland superstars, cartoonist buddy & psychedelic visionary Theo Ellsworth (above) is leaving town; so we got together for one last drawing day, and crafted an afternoon jam comic (below). FLOMGART’S DEPARTURE is inspired by Chicago’s Trubble Club sessions. For other surreal, half-baked jams on this blog, revisit those with Aaron Renier, Fabio Moon, and my brother Phil.

Thank you all for your patience while dootdootgarden was down. It was eaten to death by spam like a disease. Now it’s up-n-running on a more reliable server, and with a more professional name – craigthompsonbooks.com. Thank you, too, to those who brought the Twitter impostor to my attention. Finally dealt with that creepy pest. Work on new projects is shifting into a bit of a secretive stage; so in the meantime, here’s some treats from the HABIBI process vaults and my sketchbook.

Above left: a discarded page of HABIBI that was reworked into page 591 of the final book (right). Note that the sidewinding snake looks almost exactly the same, but is redrawn. And the narration becomes less clunky.
Below: an exercise in my sketchbooks is to copy a frame from a favorite film to get a sense of the composition and chiaroscuro balance of light and dark. This one is from Hiroshi Teshigahara’s The Woman in the Dunes.

My next event is the Festival of Faith & Writing at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan — April 19th thru 21st. More on that soon.

Continuing on the themes of last week’s post, you’ll find a link to my acceptance essay for the PNBA award which explains the Hokusai
wave graphic. Here’s a shot of the award, and the man who presented it — noteworthy fantasy author & gentleman Terry Brooks.

On a Valentine’s note, OPRAH named BLANKETS one of the greatest love stories of all time. (?!?) (Bless her soul!)
And Aussie buddie Pat Grant released a new book named BLUE that I’m quite fond of.

Also, overlooked in that last post was a recap of London and Angoulême tour. London, as you know, is a charming city full
of deliciously polite folks. As for Angoulême, Drawn & Quarterly and Sarah Glidden do a great job of summarizing the festival.
Here’s myself with two of my favorite French cartoonists – Dupuy & Berberian!

Home safe & sound, and desperate to take a break from travel for a while. My new babies are being neglected!

Next weekend is an easy jaunt to the Cannon Beach Book Company on the Oregon coast to give a talk and accept the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association award. Saturday, February 11th, 2pm — actually held at the library across the street from the store. I chose the location, because CBBC is an impressive book shop that’s a comfort to peruse on a rainy day at the coast, but also because Cannon Beach is a spiritual sanctuary where I’ve been nourished by the ocean in the company of friends, sea lions, probably some sharks, and occasionally sun.  This painting by my dear buddy Dan Attoe perfectly captures the magic of our cozy surf cove.

Here’s another glimpse of that beach from the earliest days of this blog, five years ago. Still a good mantra: “Goonies never say die.”

The adventure continues. Next week, I’ll finally make it to the UK – at least London – for some HABIBI events.
Friday the 20th of January, 6pm at FORBIDDEN PLANET  •   Saturday the 21st, 5pm at GOSH
Monday the 23rd, 7pm at the St. Albans Conference Centre – a COMICA event  •   Tuesday the 24th, 6pm at MEGA CITY COMICS.

Then it’s on to the Festival International de la Bande Dessinee in the cozy and chilly village of Angoulême, France.
(Art Spiegelman is the prez this year.) Casterman will host me for daily signings at their booth Thursday the 26th thru Sunday the 29th.
And I’ll be performing in the intimidating spectacle of the “concert de dessin” every evening along with Bastien Vives,
Alfred Circus, Marion Montagne, Merwan Chabane, Benoit Sokal, Jean-Louis Tripp, and Paco Cerrejón.

An explanation of these images : There’s many overt references to classic paintings planted in HABIBI – here’s one of my favorites,
echoing The Poor Fisherman (1881) by Puvis de Chavannes. The half-swaddled infant in the background reminds me of Viktor Pokov’s
1969 painting July, previously cataloged in my list of rip-offs and inspirations.

Grateful to finally be home to Portland where a dear friend made this gift:

Big thanks to all of you who attended the HABIBI events. And thank you to everyone who’s supporting the book.

My first time to Europe was in 1995 for a two week community college scholarship. Note the effects of sixteen years of aging -
- vital brain matter still sprinkles out of my head.  (Stravinsky Fountain – Pompidou)

Just got home from HABIBI Eurotour yesterday. Thanks to all of you for your patience with the blog neglect. And tremendous thanks to my
EU readers that made it to the events. Frankfurt – Paris – Turin – Lucca – (rental car drive from Pisa to Brussels) – Brussels – Ghent – Leuven – Antwerp – Amsterdam.    Too  many places to sum up, though speaking at il Circolo dei Lettori in Turin was a great honor — a glorious space, joined on stage by Randa Ghazy, the author of DREAMING OF PALESTINE and translator of Italian HABIBI.

Met many amazing folks along the way, including my oft-acknowledged inspiration Edmond Baudoin.
Here we are drawing each others portraits the day before he traveled to Rio de Janeiro for a comics show.

HABIBI travel continues next week, but this time on home turf – the state where I was raised and its neighbor.
Wednesday, November 16th — 2pm at MIAD and 7pm at Boswell Books in Milwaukee, WISCONSIN!
Then on to Chicago, Illinois — Quimby’s on Thursday, November 17th (7pm) — and The Book Cellar on Friday, November 18th (7pm).

PS to Michaela who asked about my “educational background”. I attended UWMC community college part time for a year and a half, and MIAD for a half year. Then dropped out and worked as a bagel maker, telemarketer, laser light show animator, newspaper ad stylist, ad agency graphic designer, grocery packer, house painter, warehouse box-packing grunt, and graphic designer at Dark Horse Comics.