Habibi

In drawings of a sculptural beauty that resembles woodcuts, this mammoth comic offers a visual meld of the East and West, the ancient and the contemporary, that entertains and engages.  It is sure to provoke many rereadings and many conversations: the essence of an important book. –S. Squier

A wonderful, heavy book.  It really shows what a graphic novel can become in the hands of a master. A story about two orphans in a fictional Arabian country, it is part an indictment on the spoils of modern industrial civilization mixed with the Tales of the Arabian Nights, and part a travel tale of lust dissolving into spiritual and universal love, a compendium of tales of jinns, biblical stories, Arab, and Christian stories. –G. Masuchika

Habibi is a work of such singular vision and scope that it warrants a nomination. The technical accomplishment of the art, layout and design of the book is extraordinary. At over 600 pages Habibiis a mammoth, ambitious story in both narrative and form. We have already spent time considering Thompson’s work in all its beauty and flaws and another nomination is necessary to further discuss it. –J. Secreto

This book is filled with beautiful surfaces:  rich pattern work, palpable textures (of sand or wood or cloth or flesh), two-dimensional caricatures of striking-body types -- and stories, too -- tales that have beautiful surfaces of longing, injustice, perseverance and hope.  Thompson explores the intoxicating properties of encountering culture through 2-dimensional scrims and veils. 
–H. Pisciotta