Visualizing the Gothic in Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book and its illustrated adaptations

Abstract

This article argues that Neil Gaiman's appropriation of the Gothic topos in The Graveyard Book (2008) deliberately unsettles its genre. No stranger to the interaction of word and image on the page, Gaiman's fascination with the visual can be seen on the first page of his novel, a page that communicates in word and image. Interestingly, P. Craig Russell's graphic novel version (2014) develops the hybridity of Gaiman's source text in more depth. Not only are these volumes a further testament to the visual potential of Gaiman's Graveyard Book; they also visually mirror Gaiman's approach to the Gothic: it unsettles and transforms the once-frightening world of ghosts and goblins into a world in which the child-protagonist and reader would feel at home.