Sunday, 19 April 2009
Sonia is unhappy with aspects of graphic novel Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere
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I think Neverwhere in novel form may have been my first introduction to Neil Gaiman, and it's a story I have a lot of fondness for. Having been presented in a couple of different forms already (tv and the novel) it seemed like a pretty good candidate to be adapted into a graphic novel. The story is fairly linear, and a lot of the joy is in the world Gaiman builds. I'd have thought you couldn't really go wrong with a graphic novel version, which just goes to show how naive I was. There's always something that can be fucked up if the team are dedicated enough. 
Doing the words is Mike Carey, who's got plenty of experience with Gaiman derivatives, having written a couple of Sandman spinoffs and the series Lucifer. He knows and respects Gaiman's work, and his introduction makes it very clear that the changes he has made here aren't about stamping his own mark on the story, but are made in the interests of making it work in a different medium. And I think his writing is good. The plot is compressed a bit, and the narration is first person (from Richard's POV) but these are good changes. The only real annoyance I have is with the fact that so many words are emphasised. It's the manual version of abuse of the strong tag, and though it's possible to tune it out to some extent it does become noticeable again. But that's a small gripe and the writing is not where my issue lies.
It's Glenn Fabry’s art I have serious problems with. Technically, it's excellent. The floating market is particularly beautiful and he really pays attention to detail. Fabry mixes up his angles, uses colour nicely and no doubt employs lots of subtle techniques I don't even notice in order to make the art match the words. I have serious issues, however with the portrayal of some of the characters. Door and the Marquis de Carabas in particular are appalling, and I don't say that because I’m being pedantic about canon.
I'll start with the Marquis first. In the tv series, he's played by Paterson Joseph, who is a black man. In the book, he's a black man. In the comic... he's surprising. And not because he's white. Scroll down and see.
Then answer me one question. What. The. Fuck?
Eyes and a mouth in a block of black ink. We find out from his profile views that he does have a nose, but you wouldn’t know from the front - there's no shading, not contours to his face... nothing. This was published in 2005, by the way. Hunter, the other canonically black important character, is shown as a black woman in the human sense rather than the wall of ink sense, which makes the Marquis’s portrayal all the more bizarre. He's not supposed to be a demon or a monster or anything, and no one in the text even mentions that he seems to have no face (they also don't mention that Anaesthesia, another human character, is blue for no good reason). But someone made a character design decision that the Marquis should look like that.
And apparently no one involved in the production objected strongly enough that, er, it might look a tiny bit racist. Give them their due, though, they were also busy not objecting that it might have a hint of misogyny.
Door is supposed to be a vulnerable 16ish girl, huddled in clothes too big for her. I’ll admit there’s a hint of buyer beware here, as I could have seen from the cover how she’s been re-interpreted, but I somehow missed that in glee at the book's very existence. It was only when I came to read it that I realised she was wearing very little, and that that very little frequently moved aside to allow the reader to see as much of her flesh as Fabry can expose. Her breasts never actually fall out of that corset but it’s a close-run thing, and when the time comes for her to fall spectacularly we get a charming angle of her legs up on the air and wide open, with a very small amount of fabric stopping the comic from being porn. And this is a fish-in-a-barrel point, but seriously, those breasts are a bit on the odd side.
I know comics have a venerable history of this sort of shit, but this is where my other point comes in. Neil Gaiman’s name attached to this implies that he condones it. As a reader I don’t care about contractual obligations or legal tussles over rights or any other behind the scenes stuff that I haven’t heard about. If your good name means anything, you should care where you put it.
Gaiman is one of the writers I trust(ed) not to be linked with this stuff. He’s pretty famous for positive portrayals of women, queer people and people of colour - critics and fans fall over themselves to celebrate him for it. And within his own work he's pretty consistent. I haven't read everything he's ever written, but I've read quite a lot of his stuff and I've never had these type of concerns before, even when I haven't liked a piece of his work. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that an adaptation of his work that bears his name should carry the same values as other versions of the story, especially when his is the biggest name on the cover. And I'm no marketing expert, but surely if you're using Gaiman's name and selling a version of his work to his fans you'd want to keep with their expectations?
As far as I can see his name is on this either because
a) He liked it and didn’t see a problem with it
b) He had no choice due to contractual obligations
c) He didn’t read it
d) He did secretly object but decided to take the money
None of those look good to me. B is maybe the most excusable, but if it’s true then he should have had a care earlier in the game about what his name was attached to. And maybe mentioned somewhere that he didn’t personally approve the adaptation. All I can find on his blog is praise for it, and (this is subjective but) I don't get the impression he's being sarcastic or reluctant.
I was never enamoured with Alan Moore’s insistence that his name be removed from film adaptations of his work, but I’ll admire his stance before Gaiman’s. Moore cares about his name, and what it’s used to sell, while it seems that Gaiman maybe doesn’t care as much as I’d hoped. I’ll remember that next time I want to assume that because he’s linked with a work, the work can be trusted.
More than most SF/fantasy writers Gaiman's name is something of a brand (I think I've pinched a train of thought from Dan's article here). If someone compares a story or a writer to Gaiman it's a shorthand for certain elements and attitudes, not just a comparison of writing style. And it's quite an insular brand at that - mostly based online, and massively dominated by information from his blog. He's even commented himself on the distorting effect his web presence has compared to other authors. The fact that he and his fans make up the vast majority of this presence (day to day, I don't see many negative words about him. Even actively searching for negative criticism while writing this article didn't turn up much to work with) serves to present a fairly uniform view of what Gaiman's work is and what he has to say.
But while Brand Gaiman may bring him pretty big commercial advantages, as a consumer I feel more entitled to make assumptions about what that brand is - the good and the bad. If I buy a jar of Ainsley Harriot's carbonara sauce I don't expect him to have made it personally, but I can infer his approval from his choice to put his name on it, whether he was involved or not. If it tastes overwhelmingly of garlic and pepper I'll know next time that he either doesn't care what he puts his name to or that his tastes are very different to my own, and I'll apply those assumptions to the whole range of sauces. If Gaiman wants to use his name in this way then the same applies. I'll know in future that his name isn't the mark of quality I believed it to be.
You can't credibly set yourself up as someone who writes about minorities and women in a positive manner but set those attitudes aside when it's convenient - you actually have to believe them all the time. If you think it's okay to reinterpret 'black' as 'non-human' or 'woman' as 'body' then maybe you shouldn't be accepting thanks or awards from people who thought you were on their side. I'm not going to be avoiding all Gaiman's work in the future - I enjoy his writing too much for that - but maybe I need to rethink his ranking in my mental list of awesome people. Gaiman the writer might produce material I like, but Gaiman as endorser means considerably less.
(As a postscript, while writing this article I got my first Blue Screen of Death for years. I think the geeks may be on to me)

Doing the words is Mike Carey, who's got plenty of experience with Gaiman derivatives, having written a couple of Sandman spinoffs and the series Lucifer. He knows and respects Gaiman's work, and his introduction makes it very clear that the changes he has made here aren't about stamping his own mark on the story, but are made in the interests of making it work in a different medium. And I think his writing is good. The plot is compressed a bit, and the narration is first person (from Richard's POV) but these are good changes. The only real annoyance I have is with the fact that so many words are emphasised. It's the manual version of abuse of the strong tag, and though it's possible to tune it out to some extent it does become noticeable again. But that's a small gripe and the writing is not where my issue lies.
It's Glenn Fabry’s art I have serious problems with. Technically, it's excellent. The floating market is particularly beautiful and he really pays attention to detail. Fabry mixes up his angles, uses colour nicely and no doubt employs lots of subtle techniques I don't even notice in order to make the art match the words. I have serious issues, however with the portrayal of some of the characters. Door and the Marquis de Carabas in particular are appalling, and I don't say that because I’m being pedantic about canon.
I'll start with the Marquis first. In the tv series, he's played by Paterson Joseph, who is a black man. In the book, he's a black man. In the comic... he's surprising. And not because he's white. Scroll down and see.
Then answer me one question. What. The. Fuck?
Eyes and a mouth in a block of black ink. We find out from his profile views that he does have a nose, but you wouldn’t know from the front - there's no shading, not contours to his face... nothing. This was published in 2005, by the way. Hunter, the other canonically black important character, is shown as a black woman in the human sense rather than the wall of ink sense, which makes the Marquis’s portrayal all the more bizarre. He's not supposed to be a demon or a monster or anything, and no one in the text even mentions that he seems to have no face (they also don't mention that Anaesthesia, another human character, is blue for no good reason). But someone made a character design decision that the Marquis should look like that.
And apparently no one involved in the production objected strongly enough that, er, it might look a tiny bit racist. Give them their due, though, they were also busy not objecting that it might have a hint of misogyny.

I know comics have a venerable history of this sort of shit, but this is where my other point comes in. Neil Gaiman’s name attached to this implies that he condones it. As a reader I don’t care about contractual obligations or legal tussles over rights or any other behind the scenes stuff that I haven’t heard about. If your good name means anything, you should care where you put it.
Gaiman is one of the writers I trust(ed) not to be linked with this stuff. He’s pretty famous for positive portrayals of women, queer people and people of colour - critics and fans fall over themselves to celebrate him for it. And within his own work he's pretty consistent. I haven't read everything he's ever written, but I've read quite a lot of his stuff and I've never had these type of concerns before, even when I haven't liked a piece of his work. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that an adaptation of his work that bears his name should carry the same values as other versions of the story, especially when his is the biggest name on the cover. And I'm no marketing expert, but surely if you're using Gaiman's name and selling a version of his work to his fans you'd want to keep with their expectations?
As far as I can see his name is on this either because
a) He liked it and didn’t see a problem with it
b) He had no choice due to contractual obligations
c) He didn’t read it
d) He did secretly object but decided to take the money
None of those look good to me. B is maybe the most excusable, but if it’s true then he should have had a care earlier in the game about what his name was attached to. And maybe mentioned somewhere that he didn’t personally approve the adaptation. All I can find on his blog is praise for it, and (this is subjective but) I don't get the impression he's being sarcastic or reluctant.
I was never enamoured with Alan Moore’s insistence that his name be removed from film adaptations of his work, but I’ll admire his stance before Gaiman’s. Moore cares about his name, and what it’s used to sell, while it seems that Gaiman maybe doesn’t care as much as I’d hoped. I’ll remember that next time I want to assume that because he’s linked with a work, the work can be trusted.
More than most SF/fantasy writers Gaiman's name is something of a brand (I think I've pinched a train of thought from Dan's article here). If someone compares a story or a writer to Gaiman it's a shorthand for certain elements and attitudes, not just a comparison of writing style. And it's quite an insular brand at that - mostly based online, and massively dominated by information from his blog. He's even commented himself on the distorting effect his web presence has compared to other authors. The fact that he and his fans make up the vast majority of this presence (day to day, I don't see many negative words about him. Even actively searching for negative criticism while writing this article didn't turn up much to work with) serves to present a fairly uniform view of what Gaiman's work is and what he has to say.
But while Brand Gaiman may bring him pretty big commercial advantages, as a consumer I feel more entitled to make assumptions about what that brand is - the good and the bad. If I buy a jar of Ainsley Harriot's carbonara sauce I don't expect him to have made it personally, but I can infer his approval from his choice to put his name on it, whether he was involved or not. If it tastes overwhelmingly of garlic and pepper I'll know next time that he either doesn't care what he puts his name to or that his tastes are very different to my own, and I'll apply those assumptions to the whole range of sauces. If Gaiman wants to use his name in this way then the same applies. I'll know in future that his name isn't the mark of quality I believed it to be.
You can't credibly set yourself up as someone who writes about minorities and women in a positive manner but set those attitudes aside when it's convenient - you actually have to believe them all the time. If you think it's okay to reinterpret 'black' as 'non-human' or 'woman' as 'body' then maybe you shouldn't be accepting thanks or awards from people who thought you were on their side. I'm not going to be avoiding all Gaiman's work in the future - I enjoy his writing too much for that - but maybe I need to rethink his ranking in my mental list of awesome people. Gaiman the writer might produce material I like, but Gaiman as endorser means considerably less.
(As a postscript, while writing this article I got my first Blue Screen of Death for years. I think the geeks may be on to me)
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And then there's this thing. I've always felt that Neverwhere was a story that's never quite found its ideal medium, and I was always under the impression that it really needed to be a comic book to fulfil its full potential. It's such a shame they've bungled it.
Allow me to oblige:
"He's been writing the same fucking book over and over again for the past ten years at least, he really can't do endings properly, and for fuck's sake his books have discussion questions in the back".
Gaiman's always been a bit hit-and-miss race-wise. In American Gods, while it was nice that "Shadow" was mixed race it annoyed the hell out of me that Kali got lumped in with all the other "abandoned" gods. I mean, I know there aren't that many Hindus in America but there are presumably more Hindus than *Vikings*.
I should clarify that I was searching for criticism in relation to this graphic novel, which is why I didn't spread my net that wide. But Dan, I like that quote very much, in a painful way (though personally I've liked some of Gaiman's endings). And excellent point about Kali.
1. Do you appreciate being steered towards certain interpretations?
2. Do you think Harry Potter would benefit from similar treatment, or is it preferable to be directed from authorial interviews?
'Coraline' on the other hand delighted.
Also, the fact that she's one of a very short list of Hindu deities that people who haven't studied the religion are likely to be able to name must count for something.
Haha - I have to admit, I was so massively peeved by the questions for discussion in the latest editions of Gaiman's books that it really soured me on him, which is entirely unfair becuase I'm sure no moderately sensible human would *not* if they could possibly avoid it have patronising questions for discussion at the back of their books.
The problem is, when I've tried to get over my Gaiman-Aversion, I've failed miserably. I remember quite liking Sandman, because it was impossible not to at the time of reading, and I still feel broadly positive about it today. I loved Stardust, novel, comic, and the movie was quite charming. And I was hugely into Neverwhere as a teenager.
Semi-recently I picked up Anasi Boys and I just couldn't finish it - and I couldn't work out whether I couldn't finish it because it wasn't very good or because my Gaiman Aversion is too pronounced.
I've heard nothing but positive things about Coraline, however, I should really investigate. Also it has the advantage of brevity so if I hate it, at least I won't resent the time I've spent on it.
The things people who haven't studied it don't know about the hindu religion could no doubt fill several libraries, and I count myself under those who know next to nothing about the religion (I even never saw the Indiana Jones movies, but I know the thugees and Kali feature in it - such is the permeation of popculture into every day life, alas), but if asked, the hindu gods that would spring to mind would be Shiva and Ganesh, not Kali. Kali summons up a vague picture of a savagelooking woman with a skull necklace (have no idea if this is correct. Will check out the wiki-link you provided later) and a vague recollection of reading some Victorian story where thugees were mentioned (Sherlock Holmes?)
I suppose which Hindu gods spring to mind to non-Hindus depends on your background, contact with actual Hindus, the breadth and depth of your religious studies classes in school, and so on. But this is all slightly at a tangent to Dan's point; while the general cultural pervasiveness of Kali might be up for debate, that still doesn't mean her worship has been completely discarded, but that's kind of what the banishment of her to the Island of Misfit Gods implies.
Kali appears in Hindu mythology (certainly in the Mahabharata) as the wrathful aspect of a number of goddesses, and I think Durga is an aspect of hers. Durga is certainly very popular amongst Bengali Hindus, and I know there's a few of them in the US (though I don't know exact numbers), so I suspect she's got a good strong lead on Thor!
Wait ... wtf ... are you saying Will Fog is not a reliable source of data on other world religions? Dude!
Except they weren't.
Cursory googling of the subject reveals that the "Thugee" were actually probably perfectly secular bands of robbers and murderers, whose number included Hindus, Sihks and Muslims. They were no more a sect of Kali worshippers than the Mafia are a "sect of Christians". Some Thugee were Hindus, some Mafiosi are Catholic.
In fact, it's pretty much this sort of cultural misconception that worried me about Kali's inclusion in the book in the first place. By including Kali alongside Odin, Gaiman basically lumps Hinduism with "weird, old religions that do human sacrifice" and that's a real problem.
It's the equivalent of having Yaweh sitting around at the Council of the Old Gods saying "How come nobody drinks the blood of Christian babies any more? Oy!"
Willy Fogg was fantastic. I can now hear the chorus of the theme tune in my head :-)
(Oh, and I may be the one person who didn't like Coraline. Anansi Boys, though, I enjoyed.)
Unfortunately, it's one of Gaiman's trademark throwaway lines that sound meaningful but don't stack up to anything in the actual text. American Gods is curiously quiet on the question of Christianity. Apparently Americans went from worshiping Odin and Isis to worshiping TV and Shopping without passing through anything in the middle.
I think it follows that Kali's inclusion in American Gods isn't automatically a suggestion that she doesn't have worshippers, unless she actually says so. It's been too long since I read it to remember exactly if she does say.
(I am still agreeing that her inclusion and portrayal could be problematic, and also adding my name to the list of people who don't know enough about Hinduism to add anything to the debate. I'm just questioning the choice of 'obsolete'.)
True, but I think her inclusion amongst the old, forgotten gods which America no longer needs or has any use for strongly implies that she and the pantheon of which she is part falls under "cool myths" not "proper religions". The line about Jesus is just so much self-justification - nowhere else does Gaiman dare mention Christianity (not least because it would undermine the entire point of the book).
Sorry to keep going on about this, I just really, really didn't like American Gods.
Yeah, that's fair.
Interestingly, he was linked with a Dreamworks adaptation of the Ramayana. According to his blog it fell through after Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron didn't do very well, but his drafts had already strayed far enough from the original that they would probably need a different name. Which seems to back up your point pretty well.
(Slightly tangentially, he does engage with Christianity elsewhere - the horsemen of Good Omens were largely Gaiman's writing. They also get the 'cool myth' treatment)
From the artwork displayed here, I agree with you. I'm particularly irritated by what they've done to poor Door. There's nothing less other-worldly seeming than clothes that look like they came from Camden Market :)
Then again, there's always sort of a point to it in Sandman, for example. Death looks absolutely normal and down to earth, but that's sort of the point - she's far and away the most grounded of the Endless. Delirium dresses in the cheap colourful stuff you find in the bargain bins at the stalls but she's meant to have a bit of a lost vagrant look about her - she dresses more like a normal person who's fooled themselves into thinking they are one of the Endless than an actual ur-deity from before the dawn of time, which is completely appropriate (especially when you consider her history). Dream's costumes vary from the fantastic to the mundane gothy, but he's constantly flirting with being more human so that's OK.
The Neverwhere art, on the other hand, just seems slapped together. Aside from the blackface (what the hell?) they look like people play-acting as Neverwhere characters rather than actual residents of an otherworldly London-within-London, if you see what I mean.
(Gene Wolfe fact of the day: Wolfe designed the characters in The Book of the New Sun specifically so that they'd be reasonably easy to cosplay, because he was fed up of nobody dressing as his characters for costume contests at conventions.)
True. On the other hand, as you said, it usually seems more 'natural', whereas in the comic it occasionally bordered into a cliche of the 'Gaiman' look.
Maybe I just need to get in touch with my inner thirteen year old...
As far as I can see his name is on this either because
a) He liked it and didn’t see a problem with it
b) He had no choice due to contractual obligations
c) He didn’t read it
d) He did secretly object but decided to take the money
There is, I think, a fourth option that's at least theoretically possible. This is that Gaiman's attitude to adaptations of this kind is similar to the attitude of many playwrights (and many more directors) to productions of their plays, namely, "My works ends when I finish putting the words on the paper; what the director, actors, set designer, &c. do with my work after that is something I may like or dislike but is basically none of my business."
Is that an acceptable attitude to an adaptation like this? I'm not sure. With a play, the members of the audience know pretty well exactly what the playwright is responsible for and what he or she takes the credit and / or blame for: which character says which words in what order, and possibly to some extent how they say them and what they do with their bodies (by way of stage directions). We know that we can't assume Tom Stoppard's approval of any other aspects of a production even if it's billed as 'Tom Stoppard's Jumpers. With a comics adaptation of a novel there's no such established convention, so, as you say Sonia, the billing 'Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere can quite naturally be understood to mean 'a version of Neverwhere endorsed by Neil Gaiman. Moreover, it isn’t a direct analogy because in the case of an adaptation to another medium much of the original is actually changed, whereas from play-script to stage the words remain the same although they are added to in production.
Whether it’s an acceptable attitude or not, is it actually Gaiman’s attitude? I think it’s possible. I remember reading an online interview with him - I can’t remember where I found it, I’m afraid - in which he criticized an amateur stage adaptation of Violent Cases for being too faithful to the structure of the original and thus unintentionally relocating the emotional core of the story. He expressed the view that an adaptor should be willing to change fairly basic things in order to make sure the story works in its new medium. I think all this was in answer to the interviewer asking him whether he objected to changes that had been made in another adaptation - it may even have been the TV version of Neverwhere. So perhaps he does say, in effect, “I may not like it, but it isn’t my place to object”.
Then again, perhaps not. After all, it’s one thing to say, “I don’t like this stage adaptation, but I’m not a playwright”; but he can’t very well say, “I don’t like this comics adaptation, but I’m not a comics writer”... because he is. Of course we don’t know for sure whether de Carabas’ odd blackness and Door’s dress-sense is down to Carey or Fabry or both, but even if it was entirely the artist’s decision we know that Gaiman, even though not a comics artist, was prepared to write fairly specific visual descriptions of characters when he wrote comics (see the sample script of Calliope in the Dream Country paperback, for example), so it would be unconvincing for him to say, “I’m not qualified to judge whether this is an appropriate bit of adaptation”.
I fear it may just be one of your four original, unattractive options. Gaiman has become a bit of a franchise, and he does seem to be letting that happen without keeping a very careful eye on it. I went to a book-signing he did in Oxford a few years ago and I didn’t get the sense that he was a reluctant cult celebrity. But there we are. He’s done good work, and maybe one day he’ll do good work again.
Sorry this is so tangential to the discussion; but I just found it so funny how weirdly distorted perceptions can be across cultures based simply on the physical representation of a god. Reminds me of that joke - the Sunday School one. Boy does terribly in school, is shifted around everywhere, nothing works. They send him to a Catholic School, he becomes very studious and aces his exams. His mom asks him what changed - did religion inspire him? Were the nuns very good teachers? How did they get him to get so serious about studies? Boy replies: When I saw the man they nailed to the cross, I KNEW they meant business!
:D
@Arthur re:Character redesigns... Richard Mayhew looks pretty much identical to his tv version, though, so I don't think the rights are wholly to blame here. Agreed on the copyright though, and he's listed as the holder inside the novel version on Amazon.
Wow, how odd. I can see the appeal in keeping the character designs consistent with the TV show, and I can see why you might want to redesign the characters for the adaptation to distinguish it from the show, but redesigning almost all the characters but keeping one design consistent strikes me as a bit of a strange decision. It seems to directly invite people to compare the comic characters to the TV characters, which is a risky thing to propose when you've done what these guys have done to Door.
But I think your point stands, because compared to Door and de Carabas he's changed much less.
As for the absence of Jesus, keep in mind the part where they talk about the difference between a "real" god like Thor and a marketing idol like Paul Bunyan. Most of us would agree that in America, Jesus is basically a corporate mascot that happens to be public domain. That would explain why He has no presence here.
They would, but then again, they sell depictions of him at Wal-Mart. Jesus is too immergent (opposite of emergent) to be one of the "actual" gods like Odin or Anansi. People don't just believe in him; they believe in him after they're told to go to church for most of their childhoods and large sections of the government tell people that Jesus = America Fuck Yeah.
>And don't immigrant groups routinely speak the language of the country in which they live rather than the one in which their parents live?
Which strengthens my point about America overwriting your heritage. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, I'm saying that's what happens, and AG is a book about just that phenomenon.
They're all abandoned gods. None of them are as important to us as our cars or our Internet access or our televisions. That's just life.
I think the point Sister Magpie was making is that it's not a phenomenon exclusive to the US.
America doesn't replace your old customs with some sort of deity. It just replaces them. Figuratively, America has always been the place where tradition goes to die. AG simply makes this fact less figurative.