I knew that a graphic novel adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five had been released a few years ago, but I’d forgotten about it. My kid gave me this for Father’s Day – they work in a comic shop where Ryan North has done a couple of events and signings, they know I’m a big Vonnegut guy, and they figured this would be right up my alley. They were right.

This is a fantastic adaptation, and it made me hope more of Vonnegut’s work will be adapted this way. It’s probably the perfect medium for Vonnegut, and it’s too bad he’s not still alive to tell us what he thinks. Multiple timelines, bizarre aliens, ideas that don’t translate well to film – all these are par for the course in comics.

Ryan North is an accomplished writer and clearly a devoted Vonnegut guy himself, and the art by Albert Monteys is effective at illustrating the various timelines, the wry and absurd writing and the horror of the Dresden bombing. The story is a much more straightforward read, even if it means that North had to streamline it a little. It’s funny, silly and thought-provoking, just like the original.

When my teen had to read Romeo and Juliet for English class, I put on the Baz Luhrmann film version to make it real, and it was an instant favourite. It led to us discussing the motivations of different characters, the sly, off-colour humour, and the actual structure of Shakespeare’s writing.

In the same vein, this is a great Vonnegut entry point for teenagers. While there are plenty of things that Vonnegut wrote that are objectionable (mainly for the misogyny), he’s still a singular voice in literature. If this gets people reading him more widely, we’re doing ok.

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