AltWeeklies Wire » Books » Fiction

Return to 'Neverwhere' -- again

By J. Caleb Mozzocco
Columbus Alive | June 23, 2005
The comic industry’s adoration for British fantasist Neil Gaiman is much like its love of the man who taught him how to write comic books, fellow British fantasist Alan Moore—virtually any and everything connected to Gaiman will one day be adapted into a comic book. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are publishers sitting in a conference room right now scrutinizing stacks of Gaiman’s and Moore’s grocery lists and discussing who the best artist to draw them would be.

This week Vertigo, the DC imprint responsible for publishing Gaiman’s Sandman epic, begins a monthly adaptation of Gaiman’s novel Neverwhere. The novel is a solid work of highly imaginative fiction, creating a fantasy world in and around modern London—in alleys and sewers, on rooftops and the sides of buildings, in closed department stores after dark—that we never seem to notice because we’re too wrapped up in our mundane lives. It’s a neat idea and an entertaining read, but it’s also a genre book—if you roll your eyes at the sight of books with swords, elves or dragons on the cover, it won’t be your cup of tea.

Neverwhere has previously been adapted into an extremely low-budget BBC series (available on DVD, for anyone curious to see how hard it is to make a semi-convincing fantasy show on a shoestring budget), which makes the Vertigo series the second adaptation of a story that still works best in the medium it was intended for—prose.

If you haven’t been to Neverwhere yet, it’s a compelling read; if you have been there once or twice, there’s an inevitable sense of déjà vu. The greatest strength of the adaptation, written by Mike Carey (who writes Lucifer, a spin-off of Sandman), is in seeing how artist Glenn Fabry (best known for is cover paintings on for Preacher) interprets and designs the novel’s characters.
Tags: Alan Moore, neil gaiman, Glen Fabry, Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, Neverwhere, Vertigo

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