Author of
Night Comes Walking (Abrams, 2025)
My Super Hero Is Black (Simon and Schuster, 2023)
Box of Bones: Book One (Rosarium, 2021)
Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation (Abrams, 2020)
Black Comix Returns (Magnetic Press, 2020)
Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation (Abrams, 2017)
Blue Hand Mojo: Hard Times Road (Rosarium, 2017)
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.
John Jennings
Books by John Jennings
Night Comes Walking (Abrams, 2025)
The year is 1952. After two seemingly impossible murders at accommodations listed in The Negro Motorists’ Green Book, its publisher, Victor Hugo Green, calls in the legendary anthropologist and hoodoo expert Zora Neale Hurston to track down the killer.
Co-created with Nalo Hopkison and Steve Bissette
My Super Hero Is Black (Simon and Schuster, 2023)
#1 New York Times bestselling author John Jennings and acclaimed producer Angélique Roché illuminate some of the most important Black creators and characters through Marvel Comics history.
From the introduction of Black Panther in the 1960s and publisher Stan Lee’s early efforts at addressing systemic racism, to the groundbreaking work of creators like Billy Graham, Christopher Priest, Reggie Hudlin, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, My Super Hero Is Black offers a rich examination, celebration, and historical overview of Marvel’s Black characters and creators. It also includes accounts from prominent Black creators and luminaries about their personal relationships with Marvel super heroes.
Presented by John Jennings—the notable comics scholar, illustrator, editor, writer, teacher, publisher, and #1 New York Times bestselling author—and Angélique Roché—the acclaimed content creator, producer, and the popular host of Marvel Entertainment’s Marvel’s Voices podcast—this milestone work is destined to become a classic and will speak to generations of comics fans and storytellers.
Box of Bones: Book One (Rosarium, 2021)
When Black graduate student Lyndsey begins her dissertation work on a mysterious box that pops up during the most violent and troubled time in Africana history, she has no idea that her research will lead her on a phantasmagorical journey from West Philadelphia riots to Haitian slave uprisings. Wherever Lyndsey finds someone who has seen the Box, chaos ensues. Soon, even her own sanity falls into question. In the end, Lyndsey will have to decide if she really wants to see what's inside the Box of Bones.
Described as "Tales from the Crypt Meets Black History," Box of Bones is a supernatural nightmare tour through some of the most violent and horrific episodes in the African Diaspora. Ayize Jama-Everett and John Jennings have assembled a talented group of artists for this ten-issue project, including cover artist, Stacey Robinson (I Am Alfonso Jones), David Brame (MediSIN), Avy Jetter (APB: Artists against Police Brutality), and Tim Fielder (Matty's Rocket).
Parable of the Sower (Abrams, 2020)
2021 Hugo Award Winner for Best Graphic Story or Comic
The follow-up to #1 New York Times Bestseller Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, comes Octavia E. Butler’s groundbreaking dystopian novel.
In this graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, the award-winning team behind Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, the author portrays a searing vision of America’s future. In the year 2024, the country is marred by unattended environmental and economic crises that lead to social chaos. Lauren Olamina, a preacher’s daughter living in Los Angeles, is protected from danger by the walls of her gated community. However, in a night of fire and death, what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: a startling vision of human destiny . . . and the birth of a new faith.
Black Comix Returns (Magnetic Press, 2020)
In 2010, Professor John Jennings and Dr. Damian Duffy compiled and published a 176-page collection of art and essays celebrating the vibrant African American independent comics community. Black Comix featured over 50 contributors, including Dawud Anyabwile, Eric Battle, Kenji Marshall, Afua Richardson, Larry Stroman, Rob Stull, Lance Tooks, and many, many more. It met high praise throughout the industry and quickly sold through its respectable print run despite interest and demand―used copies now fetch $60-150 on Amazon and eBay.
Flash-forward eight years: the comic industry has changed a lot since then, and the amount of African American talent continues to grow and amaze. While huge strides in diversity have been made, John and Damian felt the time was right for another spotlight on the topic. Rather than simply reprinting the first edition, considering the number of fresh new voices and changes in the industry, a whole new volume felt necessary. This massive volume will be a brand-new milestone spotlight on the amazing diversity in comics today.
Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation (Abrams, 2017)
#1 New York Times Bestseller
Winner of the 2018 Eisner Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium
Octavia E. Butler’s bestselling literary science-fiction masterpiece, Kindred, now in graphic novel format.
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.
Butler’s most celebrated, critically acclaimed work tells the story of Dana, a young black woman who is suddenly and inexplicably transported from her home in 1970s California to the pre–Civil War South. As she time-travels between worlds, one in which she is a free woman and one where she is part of her own complicated familial history on a southern plantation, she becomes frighteningly entangled in the lives of Rufus, a conflicted white slaveholder and one of Dana’s own ancestors, and the many people who are enslaved by him.
Held up as an essential work in feminist, science-fiction, and fantasy genres, as well as a cornerstone of the Afrofuturism movement, the intersectionality of race, history, and the treatment of women addressed in the book still remain critical topics in contemporary dialogue, both in the classroom and in the public sphere.
Frightening, compelling, and richly imagined, Kindred offers an unflinching look at our complicated social history, transformed by the graphic novel format into a visually stunning work for a new generation of readers.
Blue Hand Mojo: Hard Times Road (Rosarium, 2017)
1931. Bronzeville. Chicago. The mage, Frank "Half Dead" Johnson, is a marked man. Literally. A drunken decision fueled by tragedy has left him with half a soul, sorcerous powers, and two centuries to work off his debt to Scratch (aka The Devil) himself. This graphic novel chronicles three adventures with this tragic conjure man. Watch as "Half Dead" attempts to save his own soul, pay his debt, and help as many people as he can along the way. It's a hard-hitting Hoodoo Noir highball with just a splash of Southern Gothic. Smack-dab in the dark heart of the Windy City.
Hold on tight! It's going to be a bumpy ride down Hard Times Road.