From KCRW, Santa Monica and KCRW.com, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the treatment, which you can also hear at KCRW.com.

In the course of the last decade decade in three books, starting with

Goodbye Chunky Rice in 1999, leading to Blankets in 2003 and his most recent Habibi last year,

my guest, the writer, artist Craig Thompson, is taking basically a graphic novel approach to

books that are about emotional relationships that go into something much bigger and much more epic.

Craig, first of all, thanks so much for being here.

Thank you, Elvis. It's an honor.

Oh, no, completely. I'm the one who's honored to have you here because before we get into Habibi, what I want to talk to you about is there's this a passage in blankets, which Craig, as he's called in the book, says at one point to his girlfriend,

Raina, he says, well, you talk about having power as a kid because I associate childhood with

fear and powerlessness, and that one passage of dialogue could apply to almost all of your books.

Well, yeah, I mean, for me, that's the universal child experience as being powerless, being scared.

I think the revelation for me in high school of learning to connect with another was learning

I wasn't completely alone in the world.

That was a bit of a revelation in adolescence.

So I guess it was connected to sexuality, too.

It's realizing that that sort of loneliness and isolation I felt as a child was fairly universal,

and you can bond with someone else over that vulnerability.

I think of comics to me as being a kind of sacred text and connect to the Old Testament

in so many ways.

So many major comic stories from the strips to superhero stuff comes from the Old Testament,

comes from that sort of sense of justice and Old Testament feelings of fear.

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