Chivalry

Chivalry is a story about the quiet magic of everyday life. Mrs. Whitaker, a proper elderly widow who spends her days at the charity shop and her evenings with the telly, buys a cheap second-hand chalice — and discovers she’s just acquired the Holy Grail. Enter Sir Galahad, perfect and courteous, who has been searching for the Grail for centuries and will trade any relic in Christendom for it. What follows is a gentle, witty comedy of manners about kindness, longing, and knowing what a thing is worth, rendered in full-blown Arthurian splendor by Colleen Doran. Perfect for fans of Good Omens, A Room with a View, and the gentle Arthurian whimsy of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Paint and Gold

Adapted from Neil Gaiman’s 1992 short story (from the collection Smoke and Mirrors), Chivalry is Doran’s love letter to manuscript illumination. To capture the story’s medieval-meets-suburban mood, she studied illuminated manuscripts and painted the entire book in watercolor and ink, with real 18-karat gold leaf on the Grail itself. The result is one of the most physically beautiful graphic novels of the 2020s — published by Dark Horse Comics in 2022 with lettering by Doran and Todd Klein.

More Hardware for the Trophy Shelf

Chivalry swept the major awards, winning the 2023 Eisner Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium and the 2023 Locus Award for Best Illustrated and Art Book — a rare double that The Beat covered at length. The Locus Awards, chosen by the readers of the pioneering SF magazine, singled out Doran’s work as the best illustrated book of the year.

For anyone who loved Snow, Glass, Apples or Troll Bridge, Chivalry is the crown jewel of Doran’s Gaiman adaptations — a book you could frame. Gaiman’s take on the story remains available at neilgaiman.com, and Doran sells signed copies at colleendoran.com.