5.3 It’s on The Illabus: A Discussion with Jean-Christophe Cloutier and John Jennings (SW)

John Jennings—Hugo Award winner, New York Times bestselling author, curator, scholar, and Artist—is keenly aware that in adapting novels for the graphic format, his decisions turn what has only been imagined into facts drawn on the page. In this conversation with critic, translator, and teacher of a creative course on the art of making comics, Jean-Christophe Cloutier, Jennings explores how he makes those decisions that range from the design of endpapers to selecting a character’s skin tone with the ultimate aim of championing Black culture and Black comics. Given that Jennings has just entered the Marvel Universe with the debut of Silver Surfer: Ghost Light, the timing is right to reflect on the pressures and pleasures of adapting beloved stories for a contemporary audience. Jennings is both teacher and student of comics’ powerful lessons, and lucky for listeners, his course comes with an illustrated syllabus, aka illabus. In the podcast’s first ever episode about graphic novels, Jennings and Cloutier talk comic book history, the power of collaboration, and the importance of long showers.

Mentioned in this Episode:

By John Jennings:

Black Kirby: In Search of the MotherBoxx Connection, John Jennings and Stacey Robinson (2015)

The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art, Edited by Frances Gateward and John Jennings (2016)

Kindred, Octavia Butler, Adapted byDamian Duffy and John Jennings (2018)

Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler, Adapted byDamian Duffy and John Jennings (2021)

After the Rain, Nnedi Okorafor, Adapted by John Jennings and David Brame (2021)

Box of Bones: Book One, Ayize Jama Everett and John Jennings (2021)

Silver Surfer: Ghost Light, John Jennings and Valentine De Landro (2023)

Also mentioned:

Megascope, Curated by John Jennings

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud (1993)

Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art, Roger Sabin (1996)

Outside the Box: Interviews with Contemporary Cartoonists, Hillary L. Chute (2014)

Maus, Art Spiegelman (1980-1991; complete version 1996)

Unveiling Visions: The Alchemy of the Black Imagination, The Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture (2015-2016)

Barry Lyndon, Dir. Stanley Kubrick (1975)

The Silver Surfer: And Who Shall Mourn for Him? Stan Lee, Howard Purcell, et al. (1969)

Kitty Pryde and Wolverine, Chris Claremont and Al Milgrom (1984-1985)

The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay (2011)

“Red Dirt Witch,” in How Long ‘til Black Future Month? N.K. Jemisen (2018)

To learn more about the comic artists Jennings discusses, including Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Winsor McCay, Frank Miller, and Charles Schulz, see Jeremy Dauber’s American Comics: A History (2021) and Thierry Smolderen’s The Origins of Comics (2014).

Listen and Read:

Audio: It’s on the Illabus

Transcript: 5.3 It’s on the Illabus

10.2 Beautiful Sentences Matter. Billy-Ray Belcourt and Matt Hooley (SW) – Novel Dialogue

Can a novel with a singular voice also be a chorus? Can it reject the conventions of the novel and still be a novel? Poet, essayist, and novelist Billy-Ray Belcourt tells critic Matt Hooley how his desire to write a novel that “would sound like something else,” led him to produce A Minor Chorus, his experimental debut novel. Together they consider how Billy-Ray’s vulnerable, first-person narrator makes room for other voices, or more precisely, how it becomes “a voice that could focalize the desires of a community.” Billy-Ray discusses how his influences— queer theory, indigenous novelists, and contemporary autofiction—harmonize in his search for a new form. While author and critic trace the circuits of grief and melancholy that run from Roland Barthes to Billy-Ray, their conversation is joyful, reminding listeners that romance and intimacy sustain us and that beautiful sentences matter. His answer to this season’s signature question attests to the way that even the classroom can be refashioned, like the novel, into a chorus. Mentioned in this episode By Billy-Ray Belcourt: A Minor Chorus A History of My Brief Body This Wound is a World Also mentioned: The Summer Day “Arundhati Roy Sees Delhi as a Novel” Rachel Cusk, The Shakespeare and Company Interview “The State of the Political Novel: An Interview with Édouard Louis” “100 Things About Writing a Novel” Mourning Diary Ann Cvetkovich Joshua Whitehead Mourning and Melancholia Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

1. 10.2 Beautiful Sentences Matter. Billy-Ray Belcourt and Matt Hooley (SW) 43:57
2. 10.1 "Extreme Circumstances, Extreme Reactions:” Aaron Gwyn and Sean McCann (JP) 46:37
3. We Better Laugh About It: A Discussion with Álvaro Enrigue and Maia Gil’Adí 47:03
4. 9.5 Who Owns These Tools? Vauhini Vara and Aarthi Vadde (SW) 48:58
5. 9.4 “That In Between Time,” Fernanda Trías and Heather Cleary (MAT) 52:05