I've started reading Damian Duffy and John Jennings' graphic novel adaptation of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and it's terrific. I'm not sure if readers unfamiliar with the novel will get everything - they've put a lot of Butler's detailed world-making into the imagery, along with the way the narrative works. But look at the way they start! The looping things are the laser wire surrounding the fortified suburb where the protagonist Lauren Olamina grows up; Butler writes that this wire is nearly invisible and birds sometimes die trying to fly through it. But it's Duffy and Jennings who bring back the white bird carcass a few pages later, as Lauren describes her disaffection with the Christianity of her father; her favorite book of the Bible, she tells us, is the Book of Job! (And another 16 pages later, as we learn how the community learns to protect itself with guns and uses BB guns against pests who eat their tree crops, we see the black bird shot.) Best of all, an adaption of the sequel, Parable of the Talents, is in the works!
(NY: Abrams Comics, 2020), 2-3, 13
