Ginseng Roots (2019 Uncivilized Comics) comic books
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Issue #1
Published Jul 2019 by Uncivilized Comics.$12.00
Story, Art and Cover by Craig Thompson. From ages 10 to 20, Craig Thompson (the author of Blankets) and his little brother Phil, toiled in Wisconsin farms. Weeding and harvesting ginseng-a medicinal herb that fetched huge profits in China-funded Craig's youthful obsession with comic books. Now, for the first time in his career, Thompson is working in serial form, in a bimonthly comic book series. Part memoir, part travelogue, part essay, all comic book, Ginseng Roots explores class divide, agriculture, holistic healing, the 300 year long trade relationship between China and North America, childhood labor, and the bond between two brothers. 6 inch x 9 inch, 32 pages, full color. Cover price $5.00.
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Issue #3
Published Jan 2020 by Uncivilized Comics.$5.00
$5.00
Story, Art and Cover by Craig Thompson. Ginseng Roots unearths the earliest recorded knowledge of ginseng and its healing properties. From the mythic figure that first discovered it: Shennong, the god of farming and medicine, through tales of ginseng hunters in the mountains of ancient China, to the first ever International Wisconsin Ginseng Festival in the author's hometown. A red thread of history and time binds the ginseng buyers from Asia with rural growers in America. 6 inch x 9 inch, 32 pages, full color. Cover price $5.00.
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Issue #6
Published Sep 2020 by Uncivilized Comics.$7.00
Story, Art and Cover by Craig Thompson. The stratification, planting, and growth cycles of the ginseng seed parallel the seasons of childhood. Ginseng berries are gathered in the last week of summer, just before school resumes and brings with it the awkward transitions of adolescence, sexuality, and friendship… or a parental decision to homeschool. Before planting, ginseng seeds are doused in bleach and fungicide-a purifying ritual of sorts-like baptism-which Craig and his siblings undergo to be cleansed of sin. 6 inch by 9 inch, 32 pages, full color. Cover price $6.00.
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Issue #7
Published Nov 2020 by Uncivilized Comics.$8.49
Story by Craig Thompson. The seventh issue of Craig Thompson's Ginseng Roots follows the story of a family of Hmong immigrants that may have been the first to farm ginseng in America. The Hmong story is traced from CIA's Secret War in Laos, through the ethnic cleansing campaign in their homeland, to America's reluctant acceptance of Hmong as refugees. As they struggled with assimilation and discrimination in rural America, Hmong immigrants became the primary labor force in Wisconsin's ginseng gardens. Also, the long-awaited harvest of the roots! 6 inch by 9 inch, 32 pages, full color. Cover price $6.00.
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Issue #9
Published Nov 2021 by Uncivilized Comics.$12.00
Story by Craig Thompson. Phil joins Craig during a book tour in South Korea, through Seoul and Bucheon, then extending to a research journey in rural Geumsan, the epicenter of Korean ginseng cultivation. Geumsan is the sister city to Marathon, the brothers' tiny American town, but with a deep thousand-year history of art, mythology, and cuisine surrounding the medicinal root. While there, the brothers sort out how Craig's paralyzing writer's block and Phil's marital strain are tangled up in their working-class childhood. 32 pages, PC/B&W. Cover price $6.00.
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Issue #12
Published Sep 2023 by Uncivilized Comics.$9.00
$9.00
Story by Craig Thompson. Four years in the making, the exact duration required to bring the prized crop to harvest, Ginseng Roots reaches its finale. Craig drives across the country for his parents' 50th wedding anniversary and wrestles with the ghosts of his childhood. His mother dreams of the Christian Rapture, his father sleeps in a barn with Mexican migrants, Phil imbibes ginseng moonshine, and farmers leave the ginseng industry to grow marijuana instead. This double-length issue sprawls across rural Wisconsin, reflecting on aging parents, changing America, and where to find a sense of belonging. 64 pages, CP/B&W Cover price $9.00.
