In 1998, Octavia E. Butler published Parable of the Talents, the dystopian sci-fi sequel to Parable of the Sower. The book, which went on to win the Nebula Award, was set in the far future of… 2024. And now, one year after that in real time, writer Damian Duffy and artist John Jennings have adapted the book into a graphic novel, now in stores from Abrams.
“Butler pretty much nailed it,” Duffy told Comic Book Club over email about Butler’s eerie prescience. “Sure, there are some more explicitly science fictional concepts, like the protagonist’s hyperempathy syndrome (feeling what she sees others feel), the electronic slave collars, and the idea of the U.S. being at war with Canada, but overall… wait what? Pardon? Oh. Oh no.”
To find out more about crafting the novel, the process of adaptation, and whether there are any future plans to continue the series (there are not), read on.
Comic Book Club: When you’re adapting a novel like this for comics, I’m curious to get in the weeds about how the process works. Do you break down by chapter? Page? Where do you start, and where does it end?
Damian Duffy: With Parable of the Talents specifically, I was able to be a little mathematical in my initial breakdowns. We’re given a set amount of pages to work with in our contracts, so I figured out what percentage of the original novel each chapter takes up. Then, I figured out how many pages took up that percentage of the total number of pages we’re allotted for the graphic novel. That let me think more in terms of, “I need to get the characters to this event by page 50” or whatever, which just makes the process more manageable.
I also used this line from an old interview with Alan Moore, where he said he took the famously dictatorial Silver Age Superman editor Mort Weisinger’s rules on word count to figure out there should be a limit of 240 words per page. So I’d divide 240 by the number of panels, take down original prose from the novel, and then edit things down to meet those limits on word count. Having these (admittedly arbitrary) boundaries, and sticking strictly to them, made it easier to find the balance between doing service to Octavia E. Butler’s prose, and making sure John and layout artist David Brame had enough space for the images.
John Jennings: I do my best to create character designs that resonate with the story and color schemes that provide the proper mood. With over 70 characters, Talents was quite a challenge. I was thankful that we had a team to rely on to make sure the visual aspects were up to the caliber of Damian’s amazing script.
You’ve already done this once before with Parable of the Sower… What lessons did you apply, or what did you aim to do differently with Parable of the Talents?
Duffy: I didn’t take much of a break between finishing the script for Sower and starting the script for Talents so, in the fuzzy haze of my memories (I finished the script in 2020), it all feels like a single piece. Definitely, moving from our adaptation of Butler’s Kindred to Parable of the Sower and now Parable of the Talents, I think some of my ideas for page compositions and sound effects became a bit bolder, more experimental. Which, it turns out, meshed well with David Brame’s own tendency towards dynamic panel compositions.
Jennings: I think that having a few more hands on deck was a game changer. Between Damian’s script, his lettering, David Brame’s breakdowns, my inking process, and Alexandria Batchelor’s strong sense of color design and project management, we really had a well-oiled machine working towards our collective goal of getting this book out.
Given the book takes place in the far future of [checks notes] 2024, how much was about preserving Butler’s vision, versus looking at it through a more modern lens?
Duffy: Because these books were written as dire warnings of a dystopian future based on the late twentieth century state of world affairs, it is with great regret I must report, there wasn’t much that needed changing between her imaginings in the 1990s and the realities of the 2020s. I did some minor rewriting of technology–the original novel talks about subscribing to “news discs” and “the Nets.” We portray the news segments more like present day streaming video, and I changed it to a singular “Net.” But, beyond that, Butler pretty much nailed it already. Sure, there are some more explicitly science fictional concepts, like the protagonist’s hyperempathy syndrome (feeling what she sees others feel), the electronic slave collars, and the idea of the U.S. being at war with Canada, but overall… wait what? Pardon? Oh. Oh no.
Jennings: I think that’s what’s so hard about these stories. They are so close to what may happen in our country. I think small things like the water stations in Parable of the Talents, some of the designs afforded via some of the ground transportation, and the digital storytelling technology gave us a little to play with. Overall though, the story is only “a few moments into the future”. So, that’s really unsettling when you ponder that.
You’re playing around with format here, from some denser sections to more sparsely dialogued dramatic scenes and action beats. What’s your approach to pace, both in terms of the writing and art?
Duffy: John and I always try to shape our comics making practice to the specific requirements of the story we’re trying to tell. For these adaptations, a lot of our focus is on using the unique visual, sequential, and synaesthetic affordances of comics as a medium to reproduce the narrative, dramatic experience of the story of Parable of the Talents that Butler constructed through her taut prose. For instance, unlike Sower, Parable of the Talents has multiple narrators, which we represent through comics with each narrator having a unique visual storytelling style. Or–not to give too much away–but there’s a section in the middle of the story where characters are being confined against their will, so I laid out the comics version of that section as reading across the two-page spread, instead of reading page by page. Kind of confining the reader to a different reading path than the one they expect.
Jennings: I think having the limits of the page as guard rails really helps us find how to be experimental within those confines. The great designer Milton Glaser once said that “problems are my friends”. We take that to heart and look at that aspect of comics as a challenge. The question is always: “how can the medium of comics make this story better?”
Butler had planned on doing more Parable books, but never did… Is that something you think you might be interested in tackling? Or are her words, her words?
Duffy: Her stories are hers–the ones she chose to share with the world. And, I think the job of adapting Octavia E. Butler’s work is much different from writing original stories in a world she created, and while, at this point, I think I’m very qualified to do the former job, I don’t think I’m the right person to do the latter.
Although Butler had ideas for more books in the Parable series, the next one, Parable of the Trickster, was going to be set something like 1,000 years in the future, featuring new characters on alien worlds, and that was about as far as she got. And, while Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents provide satisfying reading experiences on their own, they also tell a complete story about the life of Lauren Oya Olamina. It feels like a natural stopping point for the kind of “If this goes on” science fiction story Butler set out to tell.
And, like a lot of creators, we have our own, original projects we’d like to focus on, too.
Jennings: I think that Damian covered this best. I will add that if she felt the work wasn’t ready to be seen then it would be disrespectful for us to try and make something from what she considered substandard. She’s our unspoken collaborator and that means that her wishes need to be adhered to as well.
The Parable of the Talents is in stores now from Abrams ComicArts.
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