Love, Islam and Terror in the Desert

Craig Thompson’s “Habibi” was one of two major graphic novel releases this fall inspired by the West’s recent, disastrous interactions with the Islamic world. The other was “Holy Terror” by Frank Miller, a thinly veiled Batman story that pitted the caped crusader against al Qaeda.

Both projects are intensely personal efforts that took years for the creators to knock into shape, and there the similarities very much depart. Mr. Miller hates and fears Islamoterrorism, and he roots that terrorism in the black heart of Muhammad. Mr. Thompson is much more concerned with the Western reaction to terrorism. In an interview, he told the A.V. Club arts review that the novel is “post-9/11 in a sense, because I was responding to this huge surge of Islamophobia in the United States.”