Snow, Glass, Apples
Neil Gaiman and Colleen Doran's Eisner, Bram Stoker, and Ringo Award-winning dark fantasy retelling of Snow White — the 'evil' queen's chilling story of a monstrous stepdaughter and a happily ever after that was never supposed to be.
📖 Dark Horse Comics • Started 2019
Snow, Glass, Apples turns the fairy tale you know inside out. In this gorgeously unsettling retelling of Snow White from Neil Gaiman and Colleen Doran, the princess is not an innocent — she is a vampire, an ageless, beautiful horror who has fed on the kingdom for generations. And the “evil queen” who tries to stop her is the only one who sees the truth. Gaiman’s story, first published in 1994 and widely considered one of his finest short works, becomes something darker and stranger in Doran’s hands: every page is a jewel-toned painting of Gothic beauty and creeping dread, its twisted romance of apples, hearts, and immortality earning comparisons to Angela Carter and the brothers Grimm at their most unflinching. Perfect for fans of The Sandman, Rapunzel’s Revenge, and the A Court of Thorns school of dark fairy-tale revision.
A Sweep of the Awards
Published by Dark Horse Comics in 2019, Snow, Glass, Apples was immediately recognized as a masterpiece of comic art. It won the 2020 Eisner Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium — the comics industry’s highest honor — along with the 2019 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel and the 2020 Ringo Award for Best Graphic Novel. Doran also earned an Eisner nomination for Best Penciller/Inker and a Reuben Award nomination from the National Cartoonists Society. (Gaiman’s source story itself was shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award, and the team’s follow-ups would keep the trophy shelf growing.)
Two Masters, One Vision
Gaiman wrote the story for his 1994 collection Smoke and Mirrors, inspired by a panel from an ancient Snow White retelling in which the evil queen cuts out the princess’s heart. Doran’s adaptation — with its luminous paints, intricate patterning, and a heart-wrenching finale that reworks the fairy-tale’s ending into something both tragic and inevitable — became the first in her celebrated Dark Horse run of Gaiman adaptations, which continued with Chivalry and Troll Bridge.
Follow both creators on their own ground: Gaiman at neilgaiman.com and Doran at colleendoran.com, where her webstore sells signed editions of this modern classic.
