Big Jim and the White Boy: An American Classic Reimagined

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been called "the best book we've had" (by Ernest Hemingway) and also been widely banned because of its copious use of the N-word. Here, this American classic is recast in a way where Jim becomes the central figure and Huck is more of a sidekick instead of vice versa. A big impetus for the switch is to bring dignity and humanity to a figure who is not given proper treatment in the original novel, but it is also made to explain some weirdness to the narrative, namely revealing why an escaped enslaved person would travel south instead of north to safety. Also, this book explains why Jim is so attached to Huck in the first place.

One major addition to this story is the revelation that Jim's family, who are referred to in the original but never named, have been illegally sold down the river by Huck's reprobate father Joe. So, Jim embarks on his odyssey to be reunited with them. Along the way, he is hunted, becomes a sort of racist bogeyman, assists with the Underground Railroad, joins the Union army, and has all sorts of adventures. He meets many people, telling all of them his story, and he becomes an almost mythic figure, an adventurer and beacon for freedom. 

What makes this narrative work is the fact that it is told across three different timelines. Some of the book focuses on the adventures from the book set in the 1850s, other portions show Jim and Huck as old men in the 1930s, telling tales of their adventures to Jim's grandchildren. The third storyline is set in 2022 and follows Jim's great-great-great-great-granddaughter Almena who is a history professor researching his life. The various viewpoints make for a rich, complex narrative, and the result is a grand epic. I cannot say enough good things about this book.

Big Jim and the White Boy was a collaboration between writer David F. Walker and artist Marcus Kwame Anderson, who previously produced the Eisner Award-winning graphic novel The Black Panther Party. Walker is a prolific author and is best known in comics for his work on the series Bitter Root, runs on Marvel Comics series such as Luke Cage and Power Man & Iron Fist, and the DC Comics series Naomi. He also wrote another nonfiction graphic biography of Frederick Douglass. Anderson also worked on his creator owned series Snow Daze. Walker and Anderson speak about their work on this book in this interview.

All of the reviews I have read about this book have been glowing. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called it "a vital reconsideration of an American classic." Mike Rhode wrote that Walker and Anderson achieved what they "set out to do, providing readers with a work that strips away the minstrel mask that Twain placed on Jim and reveals reality." Carla Riemer declared that "this well-researched, well-written book belongs in all library collections."

Big Jim and the White Boy: An American Classic Reimagined was published by Ten Speed Graphic, and they offer a preview and more information about it here. There is also this 11-page preview available from Publishers Weekly.

Godzilla's Monsterpiece Theatre

If I were writing an elevator pitch for this book, it'd be "American literature + kaiju +Universal monsters." It 's sort of like a US version of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, only more fun and slightly less horrific. The central conceit is that Godzilla attacked West Egg, and Jay Gatsby amasses all his resources to both repel the beast and impress his lost love Daisy Buchanan. 

The drama!

His G-Force pulls out all the stops to defeat the massive beast and going to the ends of the Earth to bring the fight. Along the way, a number of other prominent literary figures, including Sherlock Holmes, Captain Nemo, Dracula, and Frankenstein's monster join in the fray, some as friends others as foes. The result is some inspired madness. 

What I love about this book is that it portrays so much action and also sets up excellent cliffhangers. Certainly there are a good number of clever scenes and funny moments, but thrilling action is what drives the narrative. Most impressively it does so while also honoring the literary histories of the characters involved, so that the whole enterprise comes off organically. That is no mean trick to pull off, especially toward the end when a myriad number of characters have to be coordinated in an epic final battle royale. This book is a page-turner and the worst thing I can say about it is that it ends too abruptly for my liking. But they say to always leave the audience wanting more, yes?

Godzilla's Monsterpiece Theatre was the product of Tom Scioli. He is a prolific comics creator who has made his own series such as  Gødland and American Barbarian as well as work-for-hire ones, including Fantastic Four: Grand Design. He has also drawn a number of licensed properties, including Transformers Vs. G.I. Joe and delved into nonfiction with graphic biographies of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. He speaks about his work on Monsterpiece Theatre in this interview.

All of the reviews I have read of this book have been glowing. Frank Plowright wrote, "A gleeful absurdity prevails throughout yet the strength is evident via a story that would work if given an entirely straight treatment." Kara Dennison called it "a great deal of fun." Zack Quaintance wrote that it "is, simply put, one of the best comics of the year."

Godzilla's Monsterpiece Theatre was published by IDW, and there is more information about it here.

Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation

I have never read the novel Kindred, so I cannot really compare this version to the original, but I can say that after reading this adaptation I really want to check it out. The story focuses on Dana, a black woman from 1976 who is suddenly, mysteriously thrown into the past where she rescues a little red-headed, white boy named Rufus from drowning.

It turn out Rufus is actually one of her ancestors, the son of a slave-owner and a future slave-owner himself, and somehow her fate is tied to his. Stuck in the early 1800s in rural Maryland, Dana finds that she has to make a lot of compromises in order to survive in a place where slavery is not only legal but the guiding force of society. Dana ends up returning to the present, but she bounces back and forth in time a few times over the course of the story, finding that months spent in the past only add up to hours or days in the present. Each time brings different revelations, emotions, violence, and consequences.

What makes this book especially powerful for me is how it engages with the conflicting views of the past and present. Having to make do in the past, Dana learns the absolute horrors and terrors of slavery. She sees firsthand how ugly and dehumanizing it was, and she also sees just how strong and stoic many of her forebears had to be in order to survive. Her modern sensibilities are profoundly affected by her sojourns into the past. This book is a harrowing and traumatizing one, and not one I will soon forget. I think that the illustrations and pacing make for compelling reading, and they also capture the horrible aspects of slavery and racism in visceral ways. It was riveting and also repulsive, a work that is challenging in the best sense of the word.

This book is based on an original text by Octavia Butler, a Hugo and Nebula Award winning writer who was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. This adaptation won the 2018 Eisner Comics Award for Best Adaptation From Another Medium, and it was created by writer Damian Duffy and artist John Jennings. These frequent collaborators also have adapted another Butler novel Parable of the Sower into graphic novel form. Both creators weigh in on their work on the Kindred adaptation in this interview.

All the reviews I have read of this book have been positive. Shawn Taylor gushed, "Not only is this one of the very best adaptations of an existing work, ever, but one of the best graphic novels in twenty years." John Denardo opined "Duffy's adaptation perfectly captures the horrific situations forced on the lives of black people in the pre-Civil War South and conveys the emotional impact of Butler's work." Publishers Weekly wrote, "It’s an effective recap, clearly produced with great love and respect, but the book remains the gold standard."

Kindred was published by Abrams ComicArts, and they offer more info about it here. It's also currently available on Comixology Unlimited, which is where I read it.

Slaughterhouse-Five: A Graphic Novel Adaptation

I should preface this review by stating that Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite authors ever. I have read every one of his novels, checked out many of his nonfiction essays, and laughed at his cameo in Back to School countless times. One of the high points of my college career was getting to hear him speak my freshman year. So, to say that I have high expectations for this book is a bit of an understatement. Beyond my own background, some of the weight of my expectations also lay in this book partly being adapted by writer Ryan North, a brilliant comics creator/humorist responsible for some of my favorite works, namely Dinosaur Comics, Jughead, and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. 

For those who have not read the original novel, Slaughterhouse-Five is about a man named Billy Pilgrim who becomes "unstuck in time."  Throughout the novel he bounces back and forth across his own timeline, witnessing his death, marriage, experiences in World War II, abduction by aliens who placed him in an interstellar zoo, and meetings with literary hero Kilgore Trout, among other things. As a result, he takes a unique view of humanity, forming opinions about the capriciousness of war and societal values.

As you can see from the excerpt above, which opens the book, this adaptation takes advantage of its medium in ways that enrich this reading experience. The tweaks firmly entrench the book in its own historical context as well as the medium of comics, and they are done in very smart ways. This book uses some of the unique features of comics to recast and retell portions of the novel to convey its spirit without being a strictly literal adaptation. For instance, using panels to play with time and imagination:

Or changing into a newspaper comics format to give short bursts of back story:

As you can see, it is almost as if this story was originally conceived to work as a graphic novel. Like its source material, this book is full of pathos, laughs, and dark observations about humanity. It's a witty, fantastically moving, and trenchant book. This adaptation is one of the best I've seen, in any medium, as much a classic as its source material. Perhaps this is faint praise, because most graphic novel adaptations do not take advantage of the affordances the medium allows. I wish I was not so surprised that reading an adaptation of a novel that hinges on continual shifts in time and space in a medium (comics) that constantly manipulates time and space is an excellent experience as this one. I feel that many creators, certainly not most literary adapters, do not take as much advantage as the medium as these ones do.

That the creators of this book have many years of comics experience under their belts should come as no surprise. North has won multiple Eisner and Harvey Awards for his work on Adventure Time comics, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, and Jughead. Artist Albert Monteys was art director of the Spanish satirical magazine El Jueves from 2006-2011 and also created the Eisner Award nominated science fiction series Universe! Both creators speak about their work on this adaptation in this interview, and Monteys shares his take in this interview.

All of the reviews I have read about this book have been raves. In a starred review from Library Journal Tom Batten praised it as "the best, and most effective, graphic novel adaptation of a literary novel in recent memory." In another starred review, Publishers Weekly called it "a rare graphic adaptation that enriches a literary classic." David Weber called it "a perfect graphic novel adaptation" as well as "an absolute joy to read."

Slaughterhouse-Five was published by Archaia, and they offer more info about it here.

Credo: The Rose Wilder Lane Story

Peter Bagge is one of my all-time favorite comics makers. A multiple award winner with decades of credits, he created the seminal alternative comics series Neat Stuff and Hate and served as editor of the holdover underground comics anthology Weirdo. He has also created a number of graphic novels, including Fire!!, Woman Rebel, Apocalypse Nerd, Other Lives, and Reset. More recently, he has been a contributor to publications like Reason magazine (see his collections Founding Fathers Funnies and Everybody is Stupid Except for Me) and Vice Magazine (the Musical Urban Legends column).

Like Fire!! and Woman Rebel, Credo is a biography of a woman associated with a libertarian point of view. Rose Wilder Lane was the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, of Little House on the Prairie fame, and a respected author in her own right. In fact, this book suggests that she had at least a small hand in her mother's literary success, at least as an editor and polisher, and perhaps even more so as the author of several books (the exact nature of her role is suggested but unclear in this book). She was also a very vocal woman, partly fired up by her bipolar mental state, who associated with a good number of the political and literary figures of the day, including Ayn Rand.

Like the other books in this series, Bagge portrays various highlights from her life, and it is clear for the substantive footnotes that follow the main text that he has done extensive research into his subject. He also inserts his own political leanings as well as a good dose of humor. I did not know much about Rose Wilder Lane before I read this book, and I felt that it was an effective and informative introduction to her life and works.  He speaks about his work on this book in this interview with Etelka Lehoczky.

The reviews I have read about this book have tended to be positive. Publishers Weekly called it a "loopy, frantic, and personality-packed tribute." Ryan C. pondered if Bagge is "creatively stalled out" and wrote, "my hope is that he’ll give the biography format a rest for awhile and tell us where he’s coming from and why rather than using historical figures as mouthpieces and/or human shields for his worldview." Rob Clough praised the book for intermingling comedy and historical research.

Credo was published by Drawn & Quarterly, and they offer a preview and much more info here. There is also a sizable preview available from Reason.

On a final note, I was glad to serve on a couple of panels with Bagge at the Denver Pop Culture Con this year, where he signed my copy of this book. He's an informed and funny speaker and a good guy, too!

Little Women

Good things sometimes come on small packages, and I am not making a joke about this book's title. It is a relatively slim volume, but it brought me great joy. It is not a strict adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic book Little Women, as I had expected, but half comic strips that show the highlights in a humorous light, half biography of her dad Bronson Alcott, AKA "the worst father in history." As you might can tell from the cover, this book takes a few liberties in heightening characters' responses to the plot. It also offers a smart meta-commentary on the book. It is funny and clever, and I feel that those who have read the original would really enjoy it. Heck, I've never read the original, and I enjoyed it immensely.

The second half of the book is a biography of the transcendentalist Bronson Alcott, Louisa May's father. He was an interesting fellow who dragged his family into all sorts of situations based on his beliefs. His specific views about how to live the perfect life led to several attempts at communal living, poverty, and veganism.

I just met this book's illustrator Ryan Dunlavey at the Denver Pop Culture Con in June, and he told me that there will be future entries in this series, only they will be mostly comic strip adaptations without the historical commentary. I am very much looking forward to checking out those volumes.

This book was drawn by Ryan Dunlavey and written by Grady Hendrix. Dunlavey's work typically combined humor with nonfiction and he is known for drawing the series Action Presidents!, Action Philosophers! and The Comic Book History of Comics. Hendrix is an author with an interesting and varied list of credits that touch on popular culture, horror, novels, and cookbooks.

I was not able to locate many reviews of this book, though it currently has a 4.33 (out of 5) star rating on Goodreads.

Little Women was published by Evil Twin Comics, and they offer more info about it here.

To Kill A Mockingbird

It is dissertation defense season, and my plate has been full lately, so I apologize for slacking off here. I have been trying to read this book for weeks now, and I am glad I finally did. To Kill A Mockingbird is one of the most read and also most challenged books in the USA. It is a novel I have read a few times, and there was at least one point in my life when I would have said it was my favorite book ever. I have to admit, there were moments of nostalgia that tweaked me here and there in reading this very faithful and well rendered adaptation. It hews to the original, in its well researched illustrations as well as use of original language from the book (Yes, the n-word is in there, and they provide a justification for its inclusion in the endnotes).

All of this to say that the potential problems people have with the novel also exist for those who would read this graphic novel. The "white savior" narrative is still pervasive, but in this go-through I also noticed how much it highlights feminism and the role of women in this community, something I do not see given as much attention when discussing this book. The family dynamics also touched on my heartstrings, and I admit I did get misty eyed at the last pages of the book. It is very well paced as an adaptation, top notch work all around.

Still, there is a part of me that wonders why this adaptation exists. TKAM is one of the most-read and taught books in the country. There are millions upon millions of copies of it in libraries, classrooms, and in people's hands already. I guess having a graphic version of this book makes it available to some readers who might not want to tackle the novel, but I I have to say that I still found this version to be a time-consuming read. It is text-heavy for a graphic novel, with the text mainly displayed in caption boxes. It is not "easy reading, " which is often the rationale for making a graphic novel version. I get why some of the other adaptations I have recently reviewed exist: The Giver is pitched at YA audiences and graphic novels have proven a popular format for that age group; Anne Frank's Diary carries of the weight of not only being a literary text but also one tasked with preserving people's memories of the Holocaust. I guess it is a good commercial decision to adapt TKAM, as I imagine libraries and schools will snap up this version. But as much as I liked it, I still ended up asking myself if it was necessary. Perhaps as an answer to my question I can say that reading this book has dredged up all kinds of contrary and ambiguous thoughts, which I feel in many ways is the hallmark of a powerful book. In that way, I say this graphic version is successful. 

Harper Lee, of course, wrote the original novel on which this adaptation is based. For it she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize and a Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is remarkable given this was the only novel she published in her lifetime. Fred Fordham adapted the book here, and he has another graphic adaption, of Phillip Pullman's The Adventures of John Blake, to his credit. He has also created an original graphic novel Nightfall, which is currently available in French. He speaks about his work in adapting TKAM in this video.

All of the reviews I have read about this book have been positive. Esther Keller wrote, "The color on the artwork is what struck me most. I expected black and white pencil drawings, which would evoke the Gregory Peck movie. Instead, bright, soft colors are used. It works. It’s beautiful." Publishers Weekly called it a "thoughtfully crafted interpretation" and summed it up, "More loving remake than revelation, Fordham’s adaptation may be scrutinized by Lee’s fans, but does sufficient justice to her portrait of injustice." CJ Lyons declared it "a worthy partner to the original, providing a clarion call for civility, equality, and justice for all."

To Kill A Mockingbird was published by Harper Collins, and they offer more info here.

The publisher provided a review copy.