Character design for a long-gestating story called Vampironaut.

Here are videos of talks John Jennings and I have given about our latest published work, Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation. (Available now from Abrams ComicArts, wherever fine books are sold, support your indie booksellers and local comic shops!)

First up, here we are on January 18, in discussion with the inestimable author and scholar Jonathan W. Gray at the Schomburg Center’s 8th Annual Black Comic Book Festival:

Next, see us talk race and time travel with the inimitable writer, critic, and DJ Hannibal Tabu on February 22 at Black Comix Day 2020 in this video by the fine folks of Hall H Show!

And, last but not least, enjoy our March 5 chat with the incomparable Nalo Hopkinson at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, home to Octavia E. Butler’s personal papers!

It’ll be a while before we emerge from our COVID caves, so those recordings of our in-person tag team shenanigans will have to hold you, J2D2-heads. Until then, stay inside, and take care of yourselves and each other as best you can.

To quote an Earthseed verse from Parable of the Sower: “Kindness eases Change.”

I’ve been working on writing the script for the graphic novel adaptation of Parable of the Sower. I’m about halfway through.*

(*Or rather I was when I originally wrote this post. I’ve just now come back to it today, at the point where I’m working on the script for the sequel, Parable of the Talents, and there’s an Advance Readers Copy out there with rough art and a for-placement-only narration font.)**

[**And actually, by the time I got around to finishing and publishing this blog post that has sat in my drafts folder since October of 2019, I’ve now turned 40 years old and am 2/3 of the way through the script for Parable of the Talents. But the stuff below still applies.]***

{***And then, a month later, I wrote the last couple paragraphs of this. Lost track of what I’m talking about yet?}

Anyways, I don’t think I’ve really, fully admitted this to anyone, including myself, but: I’m not doing awesome.

I mean, I think the script is going fine, [well the book is released in two weeks {has been out for three weeks} so I hope so] no worries there Octavia fans. I’m definitely doing the thing I did on early drafts of Kindred, where I contort myself to avoid cutting things out and suddenly I’m halfway through my page count and a third of the way through the novel. That’s some unhappy math, when I know it’s time to start murdering darlings. (Which also takes on a very literal meaning in Butler’s Parables.) [And even more so in Talents.]

But, listen, if you haven’t read the book or its sequel? Know that the prescience of its on-the-ground, slow-motion American apocalypse is chilling. In a conversation between the main character, Lauren Olamina, and her best friend, Joanne Garfield, Joanne asserts, “You can’t read the future. No one can.”

“You can,” Lauren replies, “if you want to. It’s scary, but once you get past the fear, it’s easy.”

Like a lot of things in these books, that’s a true statement. There’s a lot of truth in this novel, published in 1993, set 30 years in the future. The economic and environmental catastrophes of climate change raging unchecked. The death of the middle class and the thriving of stark income inequality. Civil society privatized and sold off; vulture capitalist corporation salivation over the fire sale of human rights and natural resources; presidential administrations offering some potpourri of avarice and the kind of Christianity that really means white supremacy. How could Octavia E. Butler have known?

Because Octavia E. Butler was paying attention. To Amercian politics, to global warming, to the basics of human history, to where things were headed.

And, on a personal level, I’m trying to do that too. Look at the direction where things are headed.

So, this book {and its sequel} is {are} depressing because it is {they are} built on hard truths. Plus I got depression.

This will always be funny to me forever.

   I’m not much on talking about myself, as you might have noticed from how much I update this blog (which I think at this point, isn’t “blog” just Internet speak for “old person text wall” anyway?)

[And, hell, it took me like four months and a middle-age milestone just to finish this solid wall of words, so, really, who knows what this blog is for.]

{And now it’s a month after I wrote that!}

At any rate, I’ve yet to schedule my TED Talk about how my depression taught me to live the journey of my tomorrow’s yesterday’s truth, or whatever. It’s a thing I have. I get sad. I wake up wearing the metaphorical “I’M THE GUY WHO SUCKS” t-shirt. I take meds for it, which helps all right, but not always. Sometimes I get mad at my kids for their fake mixed martial arts fights in the living room.  Or I get mad when one sibling tells the other they hate the other and I’m like, in my head, “You assholes you love each other and I love you both!” And then, right after a stressor like that, my body just kind of calls it a day. Boom: I’m tired, exhausted. And I hate myself. And I assume everyone else does too. You don’t do you? Do you? Oh, you didn’t before, but now that I’m asking you incessantly, kinda?*

(*But do you?)

And, at those moments, I know I could be doing a better job of managing. But I have this aversion to going to therapy–talking about my feelings is best done at several layers remove, through fictional characters, and joking self-deprecation, don’t you know. Yet, adapting Parable of the Sower, [and Parable of the Talents], watching this dystopian hellscape America lining up with the political realities of 21st century America, tossing all that in the depression stew… you spill it on the… t-shirt… and… metaphor… uh… it sucks?

Not that any of this white boy neurochemical angst compares to the constant grind of having your kids torn from you and put in cages, or having the cops called because you were… standing somewhere with dark skin, I guess? Shit don’t compare, and that’s hardly new. And I suppose that’s the hard pill to swallow of the Parables, really: The future is easy to predict, because look at how we always treat each other.*

(*I mean, the above paragraph was typed out almost a year ago and it remains evergreen, sad to say.)**

[**Ditto a year-and-a-half later.]***

***{Cosign a couple months after that.}

But, at the same time, look how far humans have come. We started at the bottom, now we here. Where once the Trade Federation of Phantom Menace were racist stereotypes, now Asian-American women are well represented in 1/3 of 21st century Star Wars movies.** There are Indigenous and Muslim people in the U.S. Congress.** No one in the continental U.S. is being burned at the stake for witch trials. **

[**So, clearly, all of this was written in 2020. Witches being burned at the stake happens in Talents, brought on by supporters of the presidential candidate promising to “make America great again,” but so far the same hasn’t happened here. So maybe some of Octavia’s predictions were off. Except Talents also includes family separation and concentration camps, so maybe not.] 

At any rate, I fully realize how illogical it is for me, this cis hetero white male, happily married and blessed with a couple amazing kids, getting to succeed at his dream job of making comics, to be depressed. But I can’t help it. I so often feel so sad. For the world, and who we let run it. For the people we love, and how that love gets twisted into stupid hate for other people so quickly and easily. And, really, just for no good reason other than that’s the direction the brain steers me. 

The Parables are a rough reaping to sow. They are an unblinking, stone faced, what-the-fuck-you-gonna-do reminder that victory in the long-term struggle means unavoidable short-term losses. That maybe, at the top of the insurmountable, just over the event horizon, there might be a bit of something worth a damn. If only you keep climbing even after you backslide. If only you fight to break free even after the singularity claims all the gravity for itself. 

At the end of the day, I have to find some comfort in the fact that Octavia Butler didn’t have the answers, and she was MacArthur certified Genius. So maybe it’s okay that I don’t have the answers either.

Beyond the answer to the question, “What’s the best webcomic ever?”

I cannot communicate to you how surprised I am about this. Not because of my low self esteem, which I’m working on, okay? But just because of the hugely amazingly unspeakably awesome murderer’s row (pun! I guess!) we were up against. 

And since, unfortunately, neither John nor I could be at the awards ceremony, I’d like to resurrect this zombified blog to pretend like I was there, and actually had an acceptance speech prepared.

So..

I… Thank you! This is such a surprise! <pulls out five foot long scroll of names>

Thank you first and foremost and always to Octavia E. Butler and the Butler Estate, who have given us the enormous privilege and honor of adapting Octavia’s work, for new readers and new readings. Thank you to John Jennings for always being my partner in comics madness. Thank you to Sheila Keenan for making it all happen! Thank you to Charlie Kochman, Maya Bradford, Melissa Esner, Pamela Notarantonio, and everyone at Abrams ComicArts! 

And, above all, thank you to my wife, kids, and mom for supporting me in all the things, and for not mentioning that I looked like the walking/lettering dead during that last week of production on this, until well after the fact. And for putting up with me trading sleep and sanity for hitting deadlines. 

Okay, they’re trying to play me off, but no! NO! THIS IS MY MOMENT! Thanks to my dad for buying me way more comics than was healthy when I was a kid! Thanks to all our color flatters! Thanks to the creative writing professor who recommended I read Kindred a couple decades back! I DON’T CARE THAT THE BAND IS PLAYING! I CAN TALK LOUDER THAN YOUR PIPE ORGAN AND THEREMIN! AND BY THE WAY, WHAT A WEIRD CHOICE OF BAND BRAM STOKER AWARDS!

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE CONGRATULATING US ON SOCIAL MEDIA! THANK YOU TO THE–whoa, they have an actual Frankenstein’s Monster bouncer! Shouldn’t that be at the Mary Shelley Awards?

ACK!!!

Well, not the entire New York Times, which still features some fine reporting, and certainly not even the entire Book Review, which just published a wonderful, precise review by N.K. Jemisin.

But I guess John Jennings and I did break the graphic novel bestseller lists part of the NYT.  It seems that, in becoming number 1 on the January 29, 2017 New York Times hardcover graphic novel list, Kindred: A graphic novel adaptation also became the LAST book to do so. Starting the next week the NYT Book Review did away with the Hardcover and Soft Cover Graphic Books lists, as well as the Manga bestsellers list.

This is too bad for several reasons, mostly that other deserving authors will be denied the cultural and industry-wide recognition of such an achievement. I mean, it’s my understanding that people in the Abrams ComicArts offices were as ecstatic as John and I were when we heard the news. A few days later I received this in the mail from Editorial Director Charles Kochman and the fine folks at our publisher:

Listen, if I had a nickel for every time someone sent me champagne for having a graphic novel on the New York Times bestseller list, I’d have five damn cents. And, while I understand this seems like a small, silly thing, a selfish celebration of free booze, that’s not really my point. Culturally, symbolically, this kind of recognition has important meaning. Whenever I open that champagne I’m going to have to pour some out for Octavia Butler, because that’s a toast to her legacy. To a mainstream cultural recognition of her work and importance.

The designation of a New York Times bestseller carries with it a certain level of cultural capital, not just in terms of sales (because how much a place on the list impacts sales for books is debatable), and not because of some desperate need for attention for graphic novels (which is one of the few categories in publishing showing major growth). But, as a marker of respect, and as a way of presenting a diversity of readers an entry point into the comics art medium, the designation carries with it a very particular cultural cachet. I mean, I’ve added it to my bio, and I wish there was more of a chance for deserving graphic novelists reaching wide audiences to be able to put that line on their resume as well.

And thus, I must again apologize for my unwitting role in, along with my brother John Jennings, toppling the eight year rule of the graphic books and manga lists in the New York Times Book Review. 

Please forgive us.

I know, I know, you’re trying to tell me that it’s a coincidence, that our adaptation of Kindred had nothing to do with the elimination of “lists for mass market paperbacks, middle-grade e-books, [and] teen e-books,” mentioned in Publishers Weekly. Perhaps you’ll attempt to make me aware of the complicated, often antagonistic history of the New York Times lists and comics that Heidi MacDonald sums up over at The Beat. Maybe you’ll come at it like comics industry vet Jennifer de Guzman, and try to understand why the Editor of the New York Times Book Review insists on calling the March trilogy a children’s book–a designation whose sharp contrast with bookstore, library, publisher, and reviewer categorizations seems to carry with it an oddly dismissive tone.

But no matter what kind of knowledge, facts, or context you attempt to throw at me, it’s a new sad day in American media politics, I’ve decided everything is always all about me, and like two or three of my friends on Facebook are saying the same thing, so:

Yes, we broke The New York Times with Kindred: A graphic novel adaptation.

We were the too-heavy Jenga piece that brought it all falling down.

We clearly overwhelmed the system with our children’s book adaptation of Octavia Butler’s novel on the racialized and sexualized violence endemic of America’s politics, past and present. 

Our bad.

Me, I’ve been travelling to the awesome Black Comic Book Festival and Black Comix Art Fest, and then recovering from that travel while my children did me like Hop on Pop for daring to be away from the house for like 6 days.

And along the way there, Kindred hit number one on the New York Times hardcover graphic best-sellers list. And we’ve gotten some wonderful, thoughtful reviews and press. And it’s gratifying and humbling and to tell you the truth, I’m not quite sure how to act. I think I may still be in shock. 

But John and I are also busy putting together the February Kickstarter for Black Comix Returns, the sequel to our 2010 art book Black Comix: African American independent comics art & culture, coming out from the Magnetic Collection at Lion Forge Comics.

All of which is to say, I don’t know what to say, and I don’t have time to say it, so let me just say Thank You to everyone who’s checked out the book.

And with that I’ll copy and paste it on over to the fine folks at Abrams ComicArts, who have collected all the recent press on Kindred. 

 

Kindred was featured on Vice’s blog The Creators Project in a roundup of graphic novels – read the full story here. 

 “This adaptation of the classic science fiction/neo-slave narrative novel by Octavia E. Butler is required reading.”

 

It was also featured for a SECOND time on B&N’s Sci-Fi and Fantasy blog – read about it here. 

 “…there’s never been a better time for this graphic adaption to share her message with a wider audience.”

 

Online literary quarterly Cleaver Magazine has a great feature on the book on their site. Read it here. 

“Nearly four decades after its original printing, Kindred remains a valuable story and teaching tool. From its pages, we are reminded of the destructive consequences of prejudice.”

 

The authors had a great launch weekend with the Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem this past Friday (picture from their panel below) along with fellow ACA author Kyle Baker, as well as in San Francisco at BCAF (Black Comic Arts Festival) where they did a series of panels and signings for the book’s west coast launch. 

 

The graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred that I wrote/lettered and John Jennings drew will be released by Abrams ComicArts on January 10, 2017 (available for pre-order now). In recognition of that momentous occasion, I’m writing 31 blog posts about the path from novel to graphic novel. This is 31 Days Of Kindred. 

* * *

Day  31

“So Be It! See To It!”

* * *

The Huntington Library houses Octavia Butler’s papers. Among them is a working draft of Kindred, the first page of which is online. 

It’s interesting in its differences. Butler’s original title for Kindred was “To Keep thee in All Thy Ways,” a darkly ironic twist on Psalms 91:11, since in this context “Keep” implicates keeping people as slaves, and keeping a slave owner alive. The story started with the protagonist getting off the bus after failing college tests. The protagonist has kids (who are at their grandma’s house), and walks into the past with nary a dizzy or nauseous feeling.

“Working draft of Octavia E. Butler’s novel Kindred (formerly titled To Keep thee in All Thy Ways) with handwritten notes by Butler, ca. 1977. Octavia E. Butler papers. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.”

Things are always changing. Nothing is certain. Or, to put it in the words of another Butler protagonist, “God is change.” As John often likes to put it, capitalism hides process. Which is a shame, because there’s something inspiring about seeing that even geniuses like Butler have to put in work. 

If this blog has offered anything, I hope it has offered a glimpse of the process of adapting the graphic novel–the thought and work and collaboration that went into making it. The book is released tomorrow, and I understand it’s already started shipping out to people that pre-ordered it on Amazon. Currently Amazon lists Kindred: A graphic novel adaptation as a best seller in the “Graphic Novel Adaptations” category, so thank you to everyone who’s ordered the book, either through book sellers or your local comic shop. 

I hope people like it, and I hope–if this is your first encounter with the work of Octavia E. Butler–that you seek out her many novels and short stories. You will not be disappointed. 

But, on a slightly more selfish note, I hope you like it so I can keep doing this work. I mean, I’ll do the work no matter what–I have my own writing and art and other collaborations, of course–but it’s so exciting to be able to have this kind of impact.

If you’re in either New York or San Francisco this coming weekend, come out to the Black Comic Book Festival in NYC and the Black Comix Art Festival in San Francisco to see me and John (and a jaw-dropping number of big time comics creators) and get yourself an autographed copy.

And, while this may be the last of 31 Days of Kindred, this is far from the end of anything. More blogging, and new projects are waiting just round the corner. 

In February, for example, join me and John and the Magnetic Collection at Lion Forge Comics for Kickstarter of Black Comix Returns proportions. Because this is the just the start. The start of me being a big time successful writer cartoonist person. That’s me. Professional comics creator. I will help bring attention to other artists who need help whenever I can. I will be an activist for social justice, through my art and my actions. And millions of people will read my graphic novels. So be it! See to it!

Sorry. Once you’ve started adapting Butler, it gets difficult to stop.

“Handwritten notes on inside cover of one of Octavia E. Butler’s commonplace books, 1988. Octavia E. Butler papers. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.”

Talk more soon, Internets.

Bye.

Oh, fine, one more Star Wars GIF. 

via GIPHY