John Jennings (2)Besprekingen

It's mostly Hoopla's fault but this was so hard to read! The Hoopla ebook is super low-quality images, combine with the font and it was a big old headache

Time travel done well. A 1970s California bride, Dana, is called back in time -- time after time -- to save the life of the son of a Maryland antebellum, slave-holding plantation owner. Dana is the Black half of interracial newlyweds, and each time she is called into the past, she stays longer, confronts the way she is adapting to life under the lash and the hard choices she has to make to survive and to protect those she loves.

Alfonso and his girlfriend Danetta are out shopping for a suit to wear when his father is released from prison. An off-duty police officer working store security shoots and kills Alfonso after mistaking the hanger in his hand for a gun. As a spirit, Alfonso meets others who were cut down by police brutality and witnesses the impact and global activism that result after his death. I found the narrative disjointed and the illustrations chaotic but in the end this is a story for our time.½

Kindred is a novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler that incorporates time travel and is modeled on slave narratives. It is a harrowing and enduring work of art that remains a highly important book in the American canon of literature. This Locus/Bram Stoker award winning adaptation in graphic novel form is highly stylized but remains to true to Butler's narrative masterpiece. I found John Jenning's renderings to be tense but often a bit confusing which is appropriate for a tale of disorienting time travel.

The graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s bestselling literary science-fiction masterpiece Kindred is a #1 New York Times bestseller and the winner of the 2018 Eisner Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium.

Kindred continues to draw in new readers with its deep exploration of the violence and loss of humanity caused by slavery in the United States, and its complex and lasting impact on the present day. Adapted by celebrated academics and comics artists Damian Duffy and John Jennings, this graphic novel powerfully renders Butler’s mysterious and moving story, which spans racial and gender divides in the antebellum South through the 20th century.

Butler’s most celebrated, critically acclaimed work tells the story of Dana, a young black woman who is suddenly and inexplicably transported from her home in 1970s California to the pre–Civil War South. As she time-travels between worlds, one in which she is a free woman and one where she is part of her own complicated familial history on a Southern plantation, she becomes frighteningly entangled in the lives of Rufus, a conflicted white slaveholder and one of Dana’s own ancestors, and the many people who are enslaved by him.

Held up as an essential work in feminist, science-fiction, and fantasy genres, as well as a cornerstone of the Afrofuturism movement, the intersectionality of race, history, and the treatment of women addressed in the book still remain critical topics in contemporary dialogue, both in the classroom and in the public sphere.

Frightening, compelling, and richly imagined, Kindred offers an unflinching look at our complicated social history, transformed by the graphic novel format into a visually stunning work for a new generation of readers.

-Amazon description

Wow, what a great story! It’s like a tale of Nigerian spiritualism from Chinua Achebe run through a filter of Clive Barker with a dash of Evil Dead thrown in. I can’t say too much without spoilers, but this was such a creepy and engrossing read for me. It’s rife with imagination and moments of straight up horror.

I loved the emphasis on Nigerian spirits and folklore. I also appreciated its attempt to explore Chioma’s double consciousness through a lens of magical identity. And the art is so cool in a fantastical sort of way. It does inventive and amazing work with the pages and panels like I’ve never seen before in a comic, every border bleeding into another and overlaid with smaller images to reflect the conflict and Chioma’s emotional state. It’s hard to explain, you just need to see it for yourself!

My only complaint is that the ending left me without a clear understanding of what all had taken place. That and the copy on netgalley is pretty fuzzy and hard to read at times. I truly wish I had a physical full-color copy of this beauty.

Intriguing, mystical

Nnedi Okorafor's amazing storytelling are translated into visuals in a spectacular way! Very good story and wonderful artwork work well together!

I loved the original Parable, so when I learned of a graphic novel edition AND it fit the Read Harder category "a book from the Ignyte awards shortlist/longlist/winner list," I pounced. Interestingly, despite having been quite impressed by the original, I clearly forgot many of the details, so this version served as a bit of a refresher in graphic color, no-punches-pulled. It remains a stunningly prescient and devastatingly, violently bleak peek into a future not at all difficult to imagine. I wouldn't recommend this as merely a standalone, but rather as an enhancement to Butler's original work.

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review. Content warning for racist and sexist violence, including depictions of rape and murder.)

-- 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 --

UC Berkeley student Lindsay Ford is researching the appearance of "spectral creatures" at key moments in Black American (North and South) history. Her interest in these spirits was ignited by a story her grandfather told her years ago. As teenagers, Jim and his friend Gauge were brutally attacked - beaten nearly unconscious and, in Gauge's case, raped - by a gang of racist white classmates. Gauge turns to her mother's "New Orleans voodoo" - in the form of a box of bones to which the practitioner must sacrifice her soul - to unleash her revenge.

The Suffering, The Wretched, The Nobody, The Burden, The Night Doctor, and The Dark: Ford travels first to New Orleans, then to Philadelphia, and finally to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in search of proof that the box of bones exists. Or, perhaps, in search of the box itself?

I previously reviewed the inaugural issue of BOX OF BONES through Netgalley. The first issue introduces us to Lindsay Ford, by way of her oral examinations in front of the UC Berkeley faculty. I thought it a promising premise, and one that's certainly expanded upon here. My review from five (!) years ago still holds.

"While I do enjoy a good rape revenge story - because, let's be honest, the world of fiction is pretty much the only time abusive men are held accountable for their actions - rape is also overused as a plot device. Gauge's violation takes place off-screen, but it still comes like a punch to the gut, especially since it looks for a hot second like she might escape. Revenge comes quickly and is satisfying as heck. So I guess my feelings are mixed on this one.

"Otherwise the story is engaging enough; a solid start to what looks like a promising series. Overall I enjoyed the artwork; though the monster has an over-the-top, gonzo feel to it, I quickly found myself digging the style."½

CW: Shooting of black teenager

Seemed to me more a badly illustrated abridgement than a graphic novel.

Thank you to Octavia E. Butler (author), Damian Duffy (illustrator), ABRAMS, AbramsComicsArt, and NetGalley for allowing me the extreme pleasure of access to an advanced reader copy of “Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation: A Graphic Novel Adaptation” for an honest review.

This graphic novel adaptation of Parable of the Sower was quite a surprise when I opened it. I've never recieved an ARC that was in such a rough draft format as this one arrived, so I'm going to do my best to cover this as openly and honestly as I can (while adding some notes of supposition given that there are five months to publication and it will be shored up by then, likely).

I deeply love that Lauren's narrative of this story remains her journal entries and that the journal entries are on every page, and every piece of narration is backgrounded my the image of it being written on lined paper (though I'm deeply questioning the few sheets that were three-hole punched?), as it kept you in the frame of mine it was written down and being told in that writing no matter what you saw in the comic boxes and dialogue bubbles format.

The art on the front cover, which stormed into my heart and demanded I request this adaption, is the only piece of art in the whole graphic novel that is complete. Everything between that gorgeous front cover and the end is serious of very rough sketches, all of which are in black and white. Several faces all still bear the lines of their symmetry, and most things don't have much background. This made it very hard to distinguish characters from each other and if I hadn't read Parable of the Sower in print two weeks earlier, I don't think I would have been able to even guess who they were.

I was very moved by getting to see the big groups together. It's easy to blend the idea of that many into a lump in your head, but seeing just how many people the group collected, and how many were settling at the end brought that even more home to me than reading the novel did.

Star rating for current art, but very likely to become a 4/5 once completed. No complaints aside from not knowing how to judge the art scale yet.

Thank you to John Jennings, Damian Duffy, Diamond Book Distributors, and Netgalley for this advanced reader copy of “Black Comix Returns” for an honest review.

From the stunning cover alone, I knew I wanted to be on the inside of this book, both receiving a review copy and devouring the content that would be taking up all the space inside of it — and I was not let down in the slightest.

While I had expected more in-depth, longer content, per author or artist, I quickly figured out this was more of a sample book. The artwork ranged from the questionable to the, all but literal, heart stompingly gorgeous. I will be tracking down several of these author/artist to be able to read their works that went with the art I fell in love with.

Colorful African magical story.

Parable of the Sower: Graphic Novel
by Octavia E. Butler,
adaptation by Damian Duffy and John Jennings

This is a tricky one to review. On the one hand, there is the stellar story behind this adaption. Butler was a master of the field, weaving powerful prose with profound ideas to create something transcendent, at times.
The Parable of the Sower novel is deep, and compelling, and important.

It is a story of humanity in danger, of faith and creed and hope. It is about race and love and humanity. It is a story worth reading, for anyone.

The idea of a graphic novel adaptation is a good one. I like graphic novels. It can be tricky, though, to adapt books to visual form (just like to movies) because you can't do everything. You have to balance the words and the pictures, so some words get left out. Obviously, it can work, as the comics creators behind this one created a wonderful award-winning adaptation of Kindred.

But judging that success is wholly dependent upon the art, and the art in this eARC is not finished. I assume so, anyway, because these are sketches, The faces aren't drawn at all in some panels, with the guidelines there to show where eyes, mouth etc. go. Some characters are fully drawn in, but many are barely ghosts. There is no coloring at all.

So I can't judge the art. I'm sure it will be fine when it's done, but it's not done, so I can only judge the verbal adaptation: the cuts and changes made to fit a novel to a graphic format.

And that is all pretty smooth. It works to focus on the dialog, mostly. It can be hard in some scenes, without the accompanying art, to know who is talking to whom. The action can be hard to follow as well.

But the characters come through. The narrative beats hit, and the story works, which is to be expected, since this is Octavia Butler's story.

I just wish I could see how it works as a graphic novel.

It seems only the most powerful books are banned. This book is banned for showing police in the wrong light and for being about by POC particularly black issues. In this book Alfonso Jones is shot while shopping for a suit because a security guard with a gun mistakes a hanger for another type of gun. This story looks both at the aftermath of what happens in society after the senseless killing, as well as following Alfonso Jones ‘s ghost as he views the history of other victims of senseless racial violence. This book is hard-hitting and brings forth all the emotions. It is so very real that even though it was written years ago it’s still not only relevant to today but will remain relevant for years to come. This book shouldn’t be banned, it should be studied. It should be used as a reference for what can and does happen in our modern society. It points out atrocities such as a 15-year-old black boy being shot for having a hanger, while a teenage school shooter gets taken alive with an arsenal of weapons. It gets into the thoughts and prayers offered by politicians with little to no action. And it gets into the pain of a community that can be felt by any community when one of their members is senselessly killed. This book should be read and should be in many libraries permanent collection as we hope and work towards a better future where books like this are no longer needed.½

I received this book for free as a part of a test pilot for a Rosarium Mystery Box -- and it ended up being an A+ example of why the concept should work. I absolutely never would have picked this book up for myself. Partly because I am having a bit of a graphic novel dry spell -- where I pick up titles that look interesting but just can't commit to buying any. Also because its mob/PI/conjure-man story isn't a part of my usual genres.

But I really enjoyed this. Partly because it felt so surprising and fun to mash those story elements together. Plus Frank is a man with enough troubles (and demons, including the literal Devil) of his own that he probably should just find a hole somewhere and keep his head down, but instead his is compelled to endanger himself to help the helpless, over and over.

Dark and compelling. With art that is such a good fit for the mood of the story.

Harrowing and multilayered. Now I want to read the original novel even more.

Makes me want to read the original book. The graphics aren’t my favorite (same illustrator as Parable of the Sower).

I was hoping to get the literary copy of this book but I got the graphic novel adaptation and I did not like the art of the adaptation.

There is always a risk with adaptations that they won't do the original justice. This mesmerising graphic adaptation did not disappoint, taking an already powerful story, and adding to it. This is a story of an apocalypse - a very human one - and the images very strongly evoke the drought, fire, and other disasters at a very personal level.

This reads as an encyclopedic, yet passionately opinionated overview of material that is covered with greater depth in "The New Jim Crow" and the masterful documentary "13th" directed by Ava Duvernay ("Selma").

It's eye-opening information about how the industrialized prison program operates and how it has failed. Reagan's War on Drugs and Clinton's criminalization policies are brought into light as crushing missteps in efforts to retain power instead of address the root causes of crime in minority communities.

If you are of the "lock em up and throw away the key" mentality, you should give this book a chance to open another perspective for you.

It's also worth mentioning that the illustrations in this book are stark and powerful. They add a lot to the reading experience, creating something between a graphic novel and an expose highlighted by street art.

I read the book years ago and loved it, which helped me enjoy the graphic novel as I’m not used to reading this format.

This graphic novel takes the reader on a journey with Alfonso Jones--a young black teenager fatally shot by a police officer. Where other books I've read recently tackle the repercussions of police brutality by focusing on the living (All-American Boys, The Hate U Give), Tony Medina constructs a world where we follow Alfonso into the afterlife and see his struggle to reconcile the injustice of his death.

English teachers will love the Hamlet thread that runs through this book. I've placed it on my own list of books I recommend to others seeking to understand racism in America. And I'm not sure if this was a conscious choice by the author and illustrator, but the entire novel is inked only in black and white. I know I'm placing my own interpretation here, but I couldn't shake the thought that the lack of color was intentional. Made me think of what happens to our world when we don't champion the rights of people of color--we lose beauty and dimension in our own humanity. A heartbreaking and necessary read. And don't skip the foreword or the author's note--essential to truly grasp the importance of this novel.