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

Posted byhajo43545Posted inJean-Christophe Cloutier, John JenningsTags:, ,

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

We Better Laugh About It: A Discussion with Álvaro Enrigue and Maia Gil’Adí – Novel Dialogue

Álvaro Enrigue and critic Maia Gil’Adí begin their conversation considering translation as a living process, one that is internal to the novel form. Álvaro, author of the trippy You Dreamed of Empires (Riverhead, 2024), explains how the opening letter to his translator Natasha mirrors the letter to his editor, Teresa, in Spanish, and how both letters become part of the fiction. Fitting for a novel that crosses Nahua and Mayan, Moctezuma and Cortés, Mexican history and the glam rock band T. Rex. The English translation—which Álvaro calls the book of Natasha—is longer, filled with changes and additions and revisions, and so translation becomes “another life for the book.” From the living book to its contents, Maia asks how You Dreamed of Empires blends the gorgeous and the grotesque, slapstick humor and extreme violence, historical detail and mischievous metafictional departures. Álvaro links his work to Season 9’s theme of TECH by pointing out the novel’s longstanding use as a tool to laugh about the powerful, to tell them that what they’re saying is not true, and to articulate politics through contradiction and humor. After discussing the encounter of Moctezuma and Cortés (or really, of their translators, including a very magical bite of cactus) as the moment that changes everything in history, Álvaro makes a surprising historical swerve in his answer to this season’s signature question. Mentions:Álvaro Enrigue, Sudden Death, You Dreamed of Empires, Now I SurrenderNahuaNatasha WimmerTeresa Ariño, AnagramaSergio Pitol, Enrique Vila-Matas, Javier Marías, Roberto BolañoMiguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote; Laurence Sterne; Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s TravelsOctavio Paz saying New Spain was a kingdom in One Earth, Four or Five Worlds: Reflections on Contemporary History, translated by Helen R. Lane.Edward SaidLèse-majestéT. Rex, “Monolith”Gonzalo GuerreroThe Colegio de Santa Cruz de TlatelolcoJosé Emilio PachecoMichel FoucaultMichelangeloSaint Paul, Epistle to the RomansNoam ChomskyTlaxcalas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
  1. We Better Laugh About It: A Discussion with Álvaro Enrigue and Maia Gil’Adí
  2. 9.5 Who Owns These Tools? Vauhini Vara and Aarthi Vadde (SW)
  3. 9.4 “That In Between Time,” Fernanda Trías and Heather Cleary (MAT)
  4. 9.3 Planetary Boundaries are Non-Negotiable: Kim Stanley Robinson and Elizabeth Carolyn Miller (JP)
  5. 9.2 Monstrous Dreaming: Lauren Beukes and Andrew Pepper
Listen to more episodes