Photos: Craig Thompson's Epic New Graphic Novel 'Habibi'

Thompson, whose acclaimed debut, Blankets, chronicled his harsh upbringing in a fundamentalist Christian home, says the events of 9/11 were the earliest inspiration for Habibi, as he set out to learn more about Islam and its artistic traditions. “I didn’t have any preconceived bad ideas about Islam, but until I started looking into it, I just didn’t know about all the connections and similarities of the ‘Abrahamic sandwich’ of Judaism, Christianity and Islam,” he says.