Troll Bridge
A New York Times bestselling coming-of-age dark fantasy — Jack grows up, and grows away, while a troll beneath a bridge patiently waits for him. Neil Gaiman's story, Colleen Doran's art.
📖 Dark Horse Comics • Started 2016
Troll Bridge is the rare fantasy that makes you ache. As a boy, Jack stands at the edge of a dark bridge and senses something beneath it. When the moment comes to cross, he freezes, turns, and runs — and the troll he never saw waits, patient and hungry. Over the years Jack grows up, falls in love, loses his way, and crosses a hundred bridges, but he never goes back to that first one. This is the story of a fear you never face becoming the shape of your whole life — told with devastating tenderness by Colleen Doran from Neil Gaiman’s short story, itself one of Gaiman’s most autobiographical works. Perfect for fans of The Graveyard Book, Bridge to Terabithia, and Coraline’s bittersweet edges.
A Portrait of a Lifetime
Doran’s adaptation — the first of her celebrated Dark Horse run of Gaiman books — lets its art do the aging. Jack is drawn as a boy, a young man, a husband, and finally an old man, and Doran’s evolving watercolor style tracks the quiet erosion of his life across the decades. The 2016 hardcover from Dark Horse Comics, with lettering by Todd Klein, became a New York Times bestseller and was hailed by School Library Journal ahead of its release. NerdSpan called it “a haunting coming-of-age tale” that earns its place beside the great works of children’s fantasy.
The End of the Road
Gaiman and Doran both describe Troll Bridge as a story about the price of running away — and its ending, in which Jack finally returns to face the thing under the bridge, ranks among the most quietly devastating finales in modern comics. It’s the perfect entry point to Doran’s Gaiman library, which continues with Snow, Glass, Apples and Chivalry.
Order it from your favorite bookshop or Amazon, and follow both creators — Gaiman at neilgaiman.com and Doran at colleendoran.com.
