Ginseng Roots. By Craig Thompson. 448 pp. New York: Pantheon. 2025. $35.
It seems like only a blink of an eye for some comics fans since Blankets first made it upon the scene. The 600-page coming-of-age graphic novel was published in 2003. At the time, it led the way during a great wave of interest in a new generation of indie comics, or “alternative comics,” alternatives to mainstream superhero fare and a wholly new voice to the old underground comics guard dating back to the 1960s. By 2003, a ten-some-year wave of interest had reached its crescendo with Craig Thompson‘s monumental book. Were all new graphic novels to be this big? Well, some would be but only a few. Thompson’s book was different is so many ways, from its virtuoso drawing to its uncanny and disarmingly earnest honesty. What would Craig Thompson do for an encore? Plenty, including Habibi and Space Dumplins. Fast forward to now, Thompson has come full circle with another look at his childhood, this time with the focus out on the ginseng farms.
Working in the fields and loyal to the family.
We learn a lot about life as the years roll along and, a good bit of those life lessons are learned early on. It’s only years later, in retrospect, that some of this wisdom has time to blossom. Craig Thompson seems to have taken everything he’s learned in childhood, and in a long career in cartooning, and put it into this latest monumental work. Going back to the 1980s, in order to make ends meet, Craig and his brother Phil, along with his mom, all made extra cash for the family by tending the burgeoning ginseng farms of their hometown, Marathon, Wisconsin, which became the capital of the American ginseng market. Starting from around age 10 to age 20, Craig dutifully went out to pick the crop. Thompson takes the little ginseng herb and masterfully dissects the hell out of it, giving the reader a long and detailed history and analysis and, in the bargain, turning the plant into a mighty metaphor for hard work and a way of life.
Working on your own comics and loyal to your own dreams.
So, what is ginseng, in the big, and little scheme of things? Some people might ask, what is ginseng, in the first place? It is a slow-growing perennial plant, with various health benefits, often distilled into tea, best known to originate in East Asia but, as this book makes clear, also has its counterpart in the United States. In regards to Thompson’s story, and his family and the community, ginseng proved to be a vital source for making a living. It became the town’s life blood and it didn’t matter one way or another if any of the town folk actually used ginseng themselves.
Lessons from the past.
The most important thing I can say about Thompson’s book is that it is a phenomenal work of testimony and storytelling. It brings to mind my recent conversation with Paul Karasik, in terms of creating any graphic narrative. At the end of the day, whether it is a prose novel or a graphic novel, it is essentially still a novel. That means it shares a lot of the methodology and framework. It takes time to build it up. It takes time to refine it. I recall, many years back, chatting with Brett Warnock, the co-publisher of Top Shelf Productions, which first published Blankets. When I asked Brett if he’d ever come across a cartoonist like Craig Thompson, someone who produced such a massive output of pages of work. Brett shook his head and said, “Never. Craig is one of a kind.” So, that’s what is going on with this book. It’s one of those head-spinning massive works that is so indicative of what Thompson is capable of doing. The sheer scale of it is what is most striking.
Herb, Music, Medicine and Comics!
Any writer begins with a small book that may become a much bigger book. As a cartoonist, the sensibility is to go towards the concise. I see that in Thompson’s book with it reaching for the big picture and making his points. But a different sort of mindset takes over if you have a much bigger canvas to play with. With a big book, a cartoonist, just like any other writer, has room to expand and to go back to finer points. So, in this case, a reader will know everything they ever wanted to know about ginseng and then work their way into deeper issues of family, work, and ethics. Beginning with ginseng, this book is, in the very best sense, a book about everything. For instance, how did the United States treat Chinese workers after they arrived during the American gold rush? It triggered America’s first anti-immigration legislation. Well, that’s a whole topic in itself. Fast forward to more recent times and it’s American farmers dependent upon Chinese investors. Nothing wrong with that if you’re a fair-minded sort.
Ginseng puts Marathon, Wisconsin on the map!
So, a huge graphic narrative is its own animal gathering together concise points, taking a deep breath, and then exhaling much more expansive content. With Blankets, Thompson set the tone for what is possible with long-form American contemporary graphic novels and, from time to time, other cartoonists rise to the challenge. I suppose you can say that massive graphic works have been around for a good long time within mainstream superhero comics. Fans of the genre are more than happy to pore over huge volumes and beg for more. It’s a whole other thing to will into existence a quirky autobiographical graphic memoir with a ginseng theme.
