Off Panel: A Comics Interview Podcast · SKTCHD

Comic Roots with Craig Thompson

April 21, 2025·1 hr 13 min·5 clips

Maurice Sendak resented Where the Wild Things Are defining his 45-year career after its success.

Craig Thompson is in motion. Recorded on Tuesday, April 15th, the conversation opens with David Harper catching him between interviews and tour prep for Ginseng Roots. The schedule has the full comics circuit feel. Thompson lays out a two-month U.S. run that starts around the book's late-April release and wraps at Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina. Bookstores, shops, and conventions all have their place, which gives Harper a clean path into where this book sits in Thompson's career. The surprise is how practical the hook is. Thompson says that, at ten years old, he worked forty-hour summer weeks in ginseng gardens in rural Wisconsin. His hometown makes the subject feel less random. He says the tiny town was the biggest producer of American ginseng in the world, which helps explain why the material stuck with him. Memoir ends up taking charge, even if he did not rush toward it. Thompson says he had to return to the form because it gave readers an emotional way into the story. Blankets is never far away. The timing landed near that book's twentieth anniversary, while Thompson was also going back to his hometown and to parts of his past he had left alone. The family story also refuses to behave. He expected his brother to guide Ginseng Roots, because that relationship mattered so much in Blankets. Instead, his sister moved closer to the center. That catches him off guard partly because she is absent from Blankets, so the new book feels like a correction as much as a continuation. Harper stays with the craft problem. He brings up the notes in the back of Ginseng Roots and the interviews behind it, then treats memoir as a rough exercise in choosing what survives. Thompson agrees. Memoir and journalism both come down to editing, cutting, and living with the fact that every removal changes the truth a little.

As heard by us

A process-heavy comics interview about Ginseng Roots, memoir structure, and the editorial choices behind turning memory into page form.

Craig Thompson's Off Panel conversation stays close to the work: Ginseng Roots, the tour prep around it, the memoir shape, and the editorial calls that make the page hold together.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

For a candid, process-heavy conversation about comics memoir, touring, and what gets cut.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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