Has anyone else seen the post in Neil's journal about the comic adaptation of Coraline he's currently working on with P. Craig Russell? (There's a preview on Russell's website.) As much as I liked some of his other work (I think that Ramadan is perhaps the most visually beautiful of the Sandman short stories), I don't think he suits Coraline at all. Dave McKean's sparse, dark drawings are a much better fit for the story, as far as I'm concerned, and the previews don't change my mind.

What do you think? Does the look of the preview pages work for you?

(I also don't quite see the point in Neil adapting his own stories into comic form. What I find interesting about adaptations is to see someone else's interpretation of a work, and that element of translation is diminished if he writes his own adaptations. Neither Murder Mysteries nor Creatures of the Night added anything much to the original story, feeling like nicely illustrated versions at best.)

Huh. I much preferred the graphic novel of Murder Mysteries. No idea why, I just did.

I love Russell's art and would gladly purchase a book of his illustrations of the spleens of famous dead people, so I may be biased, but this looks like an interesting adaptation.

Coraline as a dark and gothic tale, surreal and unreal, is one way to go, but I had the audio book long before the book itself and always saw it as a very matter-of-fact, if someone Lewis Carrollesque child's adventure, which seems to be what the graphic novel's going for.

And the behaviour of the cat in the graphic novel, even what little we've seen, looks a ton more like an actual cat's than in the kid's book. When I saw the thing that McKean had created I was honestly disappointed. Snarky black cats don't need to be made any cooler than they actually are.

I think McKean has form with snarky black cats - he did the illustrations for Varjak Paw.

ooh i love p craig russel...
*wanders off to re read coraline, secretly thinking he'd have preferred brian talbot*