Since ancient times*, humans have ushered in uncountable new years by running out and grabbing some new graphic novels. While opinions vary on whether or not 2016 was as awful as the memes imply, there’s a simple way to guarantee this year starts out properly: grab yourself some new comic books. Fortunately, we have some suggestions for what to […]
Any adaptation of a book can never truly replace the original work, but it’s often revelatory to experience a story in a new medium; it’s like seeing, if only imperfectly, through someone else’s eyes. The rise of comics as a “respectable” medium is a case in point: Margaret Atwood’s 1986 dystopia The Handmaid’s Tale is receiving a […]
The #ownvoices hashtag has been percolating on social media for some time now. It’s generally used to signify a work of fiction by a minority writer, writing a story from within their own community and/or describing their own lived experience. Some will bristle at the implications, decrying that we are all human, and can therefore […]
In Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred, a black woman ends up living in the past—literally. Dana, a writer happily married to a white man in 1976, is repeatedly and inexplicably yanked back to the antebellum South, where every aspect of her life is predetermined by her skin color. Dana is savvy enough to realize this from […]
No genres in fiction are better suited to the style of comic books than science fiction and fantasy. It could even be argued that comics—rich in visuals but free of budgetary constraints—are the best medium to adapt a sprawling genre novel. The 11 comics and graphic novels below prove that when a book-to-comic adaptation works, it creates something […]