Neverwhere #1 Review

Vertigo

Writer: Mike Carey
Art/Cover: Glenn Fabry
Letters: Todd Klein
Colors: Tanya & Richard Horie
Consultant & Based on a novel by: Neil Gaiman

Review by Larry Stanley

Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere has finally arrived. After the classic novel and British TV series, we are going to be treated to a wonderful helping from best-selling author and writer of Sandman brings to Comics in a nine-part series. Riding under the Vertigo banner, this adaptation has Mike Carey and the always-great artwork of Glenn Fabry with Neil Gaiman overseeing the entire project as consultant.
Dealing with an alternate world of magic, danger and weird characters existing far below modern London where people have fallen through the cracks in our own world, and live their lives in sometimes desperation and sometimes in fear.

Richard Mayhew becomes involved in this world and it denizens when he stops to help a battered and bloody young woman, costing him his girlfriend, job, home and everything else he or we might value in our own mundane world.

The girl, Door, is from a London that Richard never suspected or even could have imagined and she needs his help as much as he will come to need hers.
 

 

While I am not usually a great collector of Gaiman work, I do have a few things. A Sandman book, a couple of novels. But out of all this in my collection and the numerous other works I have seen by him, my favorite by far has always been Neverwhere.

There was something about the characters and the situations that I found wonderfully fun to read. When I finally got my hands on the novel, I could not put it down. I wanted to KNOW what was going to happen.

Our hero, such as he is is Richard Mayhew a somewhat henpecked boyfriend who does not seem at first to be all that bright. He tries to not take very many chances, and just goes through his life on a day-to-day basis. In fact, very much like the rest of us. 

About the only thing really heroic about him at the start of this adventure is that he is truly one of the ‘Decent People’, the ones who see someone in need and are willing to finally take a chance helping him or her.

And it is this act that brings his life to a changing point; Door needs his help and reaches out to him bringing him into contact with the other characters in our story; Mr. Vandemar and Mr. Croup, two killers who like to eat parts of their victims and are hunting Door. The Marquis De Carabas, who has offered Door his help in exchange for a secret treasure hidden by her father and many others, some good and some even worse then bad.

Neverwhere is going to be an amazing story, filled with adventure, scares and action. But at its heart it is still an old-fashioned story one man finding himself and discovering what it is to be a hero.

I can’t wait to read the whole story.