By Ariel Baska — Kindred, the novel, was written as a slave narrative from a modern perspective. Well, modern for the time, which was around the American Bicentennial in 1976. Octavia Estelle Butler set out to demonstrate how the story of America’s history has two sides, just as much as the newly minted commemorative Bicentennial quarters. Through some brand of mystical teleportation, Dana, a jaded writer in 1970s Los Angeles is transported to the 1800s, where this magical tether connects her to Rufus, the son of a Southern plantation owner. 

While there, she is forced to face hard truths about the reality of slavery, and learns quickly that to experience is not the same as to read. She is a modern woman, with her own way of relating to her Black identity. She feels comfortable in her interracial marriage. She has her own pre-conceptions regarding slavery and blackness and history and family and what it is to submit to another’s will. Her travel back in time is both a fast-paced adventure, and an unraveling of the fictions we tell ourselves.

The graphic novel adaptation, while certainly abbreviated, loses none of the power of Butler’s original work. The key to this power lies in the imagery. As it opens with the tale of Dana’s life in L.A., round faces and familiar forms of clearly sketched out lines abound. Once Dana is drawn into the past, and wrapped up in the life of young Rufus, the danger is palpable on the page. Raw and hard-edged, like a wood carving, artist John Jennings cuts to the heart of the story in his quick, striking lines, from the very first encounter with Rufus and his father’s gun. Damian Duffy’s text succinctly captures the beauty of Butler’s language, taking her most iconic phrases and leaving them to stand their ground in modern text type amid the starkly contrasting colors of Dana’s teal blouse and the red and black world that surrounds her. 

The book does significantly condense the story, a story that already felt urgent and compelling, but I barely noticed the abridgement in the final analysis because, again, I was engrossed in every aspect of the storytelling. John Jennings famously drew out the initial line drawings using a Sharpie in the back of a car, and something about this quick-draw style suits the raw material, and allows the reader to access the traumatic pain of history, etched out in lines like lashes. 

The spare color palette of this work makes our heroine shine all the brighter in her bright, beautiful teal. Likewise, the blue that connects the eyes of Rufus and Dana’s husband, Kevin, is as clear in the art as it was in the original narration of the book. And this is visual magic. These colors are imbued with a transformative power because they feel so out of place in the world of the 19th century slave plantation. 

Octavia Butler described Kindred as “a grim fantasy” - where she could (and did) explore the ideas of kinship and historical memory with stunning complexity and insight. The graphic novel may omit some of the finer details of her original vision, but it captures both sides of the American coin in such perfect visual contrast, that you physically feel Dana’s whiplash between time periods as you turn the page. 

This work won an Eisner in 2018, for Best Adaptation from Another Medium, and for good reason. But why am I reviewing it now? 

I wanted to revisit it in the context of the other two Octavia Butler adaptations, the Parable of the Sower, and the Parable of the Talents, also adapted by Duffy and Jennings. Sower was published in 2020, Talents is due out soon, in 2021. 

This pair of collaborators work well in concert and clearly share a passion for Octavia Butler’s ideas. I can not emphasize enough how important this work is as an essential critique of American history. This narrative was entrusted to the right hands. This adaptation of an iconic work is itself iconic. Like Butler, the authors put their faith in the reader’s abilities to make connections, and in doing so, transform the reader’s concept of history and memory. The monstrous, the magical, and the ancestral merge in this work in every conceivable way.

This is the first of three pieces about Octavia E. Butler graphic novel adaptations. Up next will be Parable of the Sower, also by Damian Duffy and John Jennings.

Octavia E. Butlers Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation

Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation
Story By: Octavia E. Butler
Adapted By: Damian Duffy
Illustrated By: John Jennings
Designer: Pamela Notarantonio
Editor: Sheila Keenan
Publisher: Abrams ComicArts
Price: $18.99
More than 35 years after its release, 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.
Buy It Digitally: Kindred on comiXology

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Ariel Baska pretends to know many things. And yeah, she has a pop culture podcast, Ride the Omnibus. Which may or may not be exactly as pretentious as you think.