Habibi Review

So for the extra reading, I decided to go and read Habibi by Craig Thompson. After reading Blankets, I was hooked by his story and his drawing style and I got really curious after the book was introduced in the class because I didn’t get a chance to read the whole book. So after some time, I finally able to read this graphic novel and I can say that Craig Thompson really did not disappoints me. Habibi is really a gorgeous book, talking about the relationship between Dodolah and Zam in a harsh fictional Islamic fairy tale landscape.

As any of his work, I always find his artwork to be very interesting. The clarity of the movement of the character is really strong that you can clearly see the action and the story right away. What really mesmerized me is background layout. I know, the first time I read Blanket I fell in love with his style and with his later book, Habibi, he really took it to another level. The detail of the Arabic art that was used all over this book is really beautifully done. The fine detail of each line really depicts the Arabic art perfectly. I can’t really imagine how long will it take him to draw one page of the title because as you can see, here in this image, you can see how much fine lines and details that he has to draw to achieve such perfection.

Not only his pattern art that stood out. His ability to mix the Arabic art to enhance the emotion of the story is really interesting. It is shown in this image below how we can see the Arabic words transform into an image of trees. The way he use the ink to blend those 2 elements is what really intrigues me.it must have taken him a long time to study the art of Arabic art and alphabet to be able to incorporate perfectly into his graphic novels.

Another thing that I really like about this graphic novel is the story itself. I really like how he really studied the teaching of Islam to make this graphic novel even more believable, just like how he incorporated the teaching of Christianity in his graphic novels, Blanket. Here you can see how Craig, incorporated the Qur’an and another Arabic alphabet teaching into his story with his explanation of Dodolah emotion and thoughts through the teaching of Qur’an. He also used the Arabic alphabet in the section, where Dodolah first learned Arabic and how she taught it to Zam. It is really interesting as I read because, not only I get entertained by the stories, I also get to learned the history of Islam, Qur’an and Arabic letters. As I was raised in the Christian family, learning other religion for the sake of knowing it is really an interesting journey. I guess, it is the same with Craig, as we can see in the book how He also not only mention Qur'an verse, but he also took some of it from the bible as Both Qur'an and Bible are telling about the same stories with some difference. so for me who are more accustomed to the bible teaching, it is really interesting to find out how similar it is the Qur'an to the Bible

Overall I really like this book. For me, this is his greatest work yet. We can see how his art has become more matured and more sophisticated compared to his previous book, Blanket. It is still a beautiful graphic novel but the art in Habibi really exceed the one in blankets in my opinion. Overall, I really like this book and I can’t wait for his next breakthrough.