Making Graphic Adaptations: From Text to Comics

A panel of graphic novelists discuss the challenges and rewards of taking literary prose and transforming it into comics. This slideshow presentation and discussion features an eclectic group of cartoonists who’ve written and/or illustrated new versions of Little Women, Kindred, A Wrinkle in Time, Slaughterhouse-Five, and more.  This event is part of Will Eisner Week, and Eisner’s many literary adaptations are the inspiration for this panel.  With Bre Indigo, John Jennings, Hope Larson, and Ryan NorthModerated by R. Sikoryak.

Free with registration.

Bre Indigo is an illustrator based in southern California who tells stories of gentle boys, tough girls, and those outside the gender binary. Their projects include Jamie, a LGBTQ coming of age webcomic on the ‘Tapas’ and ‘Webtoon’ apps, and Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy which was Bre’s debut graphic novel. 

John Jennings is a Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside. He is an award-winning, New York Times Best Selling author, illustrator and scholar who studies graphic novels, black speculative fiction and race.  His books include the graphic novel adaptations of Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred and Parable of the Sower (both with Damian Duffy) and Nnedi Okorafor’s After the Rain (with David Brame).

Hope Larson is the New York Times-bestselling and Eisner award-winning author of multiple books for young readers, including All Summer Long, Salt Magic and A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel.

Ryan North is the New York Times-bestselling and Eisner-winning writer whose recent work includes the non-fiction books How To Take Over The World and How To Invent Everything, the semi-fictional graphic novel adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, and the so-far-fictional Unbeatable Squirrel Girl series for Marvel. He lives in Toronto, where he’s twice collaborated with William Shakespeare on choose-your-own-path versions of his plays. 

Sikoryak is a cartoonist and the author of Constitution Illustrated, Masterpiece Comics, Terms and Conditions, and The Unquotable Trump (Drawn & Quarterly). He’s the host of the live comics performance series Carousel.