We’re all of us different people at different times of our lives - and yet the same person. Like the main character of Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim, who is alternately: a prisoner of war in the closing stages of WW2; a successful optometrist in later life; a self-admitted mental patient in a veteran’s hospital; a philandering husband; a distant father; an exhibit in an alien zoo; a little boy failing to swim.
And like Billy, and all of us, Kurt Vonnegut’s most famous novel is many things too: anti-war; pulp sci-fi; memoir; experimental; literary; a timeless mess; something completely unique.
This review starts out like this: “We’re all of us different people at different times of our lives - and yet the same person.” and will end with “Poo-tee-weet” - and all of my thoughts happened in this way, more or less.
I like more of Kurt Vonnegut’s work than I dislike but I didn’t jibe with his best known book, Slaughterhouse-Five, for whatever reason - I read it so long ago, in the pre-review daze, I’m not 100% sure what my thoughts were. I suspect, if present-brain is like past-brain, it was just too scattershot for my taste, and not all of the various parts were of the same quality.
So it’s odd that I enjoyed Ryan North and Albert Monteys’ comics adaptation of Vonnegut’s story more than the original source material. Which isn’t to say it completely dispels what I believe I didn’t like about the original but I think this version of the story is definitely more accessible and entertaining.
Part of that is North’s adaptation style, where he adopts a similar approach to Wes Anderson’s movies: the cast are efficiently introduced, their characters are neatly set up, and aspects of their being are playfully portrayed. It makes for a lively, fun read.
Which is why Albert Monteys is such a good fit: his art is similarly charming and cartoonish, but with enormous range and skill to suit the differing tones of the story. When Billy watches a movie, it’s presented like a comics breakdown with pencils and notes. There are some stunning splash pages of Dresden pre- and post-bombing. I liked the wacky design of the Tralfamadorians as disembodied hands with giant eyeballs in their palms(!) and the depiction of how they experience time in four dimensions was suitably trippy.
Monteys is arguably the single best reason I can think of for preferring this version of Slaughterhouse-Five over Vonnegut’s original. The art is so visually appealing that it propelled me on more than the narrative itself, which was very uneven.
The story being a mish-mash of essentially consequence-free things of varying interest. For me, the WW2 episodes were the only compelling parts of the book. Billy is basically Vonnegut’s stand-in as the two had very similar lives (although Vonnegut is also other characters in the story, as well as himself - notice a theme emerging?) and so the experiences ring true and are fascinating for being a first-hand account of being a POW.
One of the many things I disliked about that overrated “classic” movie The Great Escape is how pleasant the Nazis behave towards the allied POWs. I always thought it was a consequence of the Hays Code, preventing Hollywood from showing the harsh reality. But, if Billy’s experience is a reflection of Vonnegut’s, then allied POWs really were treated fairly well by the Nazis, which was surprising. (The movie still stinks for lots of other reasons - but this isn’t a review of that!)
The other parts of the book though - Billy’s work as an optometrist, his time in the veteran’s hospital, Kilgore Trout’s hacky sci-fi stories, even his dalliance with the aliens - just aren’t interesting and if it wasn’t for Monteys’ imaginative and vibrant art, those pages would’ve made zero impact on me. I liked the idea of the Tralfamadorians’ perspective on time - that all things are happening at once all the time - which presents a comforting notion that nobody ever dies (so it goes) and that we should enjoy the time we have while we’re experiencing it.
If this book is the end result of Vonnegut wrestling with his experiences in the war and his struggles with mental health in the years after, that would both explain the all-over-the-place style of the storytelling and - believing in the Tralfamadorians’ view on time - be a kinda wonderful way of making peace with it all. Even if, in reality, I don’t think he ever did.
The story doesn’t gel together as strongly as it does in Vonnegut’s better novels (ie. Mother Night) but it’s certainly the better for being adapted into a comic, which is a credit to both Ryan North and Albert Monteys, as well as the medium itself.
If you’re interested in reading Slaughterhouse-Five, this is one of those rare occasions where I’d recommend picking up the comics version rather than the original - it channels the free creativity of the original into an adaptation that is intelligently-presented, accessible and consistently visually beautiful.
Poo-tee-weet.
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