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)