crimeculture
Nightmare Alley: Spain Hernandez’s graphic adaptation of the William Lindsay Gresham novel
Arthur M. Fried, Plymouth State University
Nightmare Alley tells the story of Stanton Carlisle, an emotionally disturbed young man who starts out as a carnival magician before learning a fortune-telling act from an older carny woman who takes him as a lover because her husband has become an alcoholic. Stan soon leaves the carnival, becomes a success on stage, decides he can make even more money as a swindler, and ultimately falls even more quickly than he has risen. By the end of the story he has fallen so far that he has become a carnival geek, which is about as far as it is possible to fall in his world, or anyone else’s.
William Lindsay Gresham published Nightmare Alley as a hardcover novel in 1946; in 1947 it became a motion picture starring Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell and Helen Walker. Gresham’s novel was reprinted in the Library of America volume, Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s, along with works by James M. Cain, Horace McCoy and Cornell Woolrich. It is likely to remain in print for a long time to come. For some reason the film, generally reckoned as one of the best film noirs of the forties, has never been released on video, although bootlegs are available.
Spain Hernandez’s graphic adaptation of Nightmare Alley is at least as successful as its predecessor versions. The artwork is black and white; sometimes cartoony, sometimes realistic. Close-up character studies alternate with splash pages and occasional landscape shots so well done that they resemble woodcuts. Hernandez’s story-line follows Gresham’s novel closely; I don’t recall any major scenes or sequences being left out. He does not stint on quoting Gresham’s dialogue; his word balloons are as packed as any I have ever seen. The story of Stan Carlyle’s rise and fall is as compelling in graphic novel form as it was in earlier versions.
Nightmare Alley is an important work of American crime fiction; it is perhaps unique in that memorable versions of the story are now available in three different media.
Copyright © 2005 by Arthur M. Fried
WIlliam Lindsey Gresham, Nightmare Alley, adapted by Spain Fernandez (Fantagraphic Books, 2003, 129 pages, ISBN 1-56097-511-3), available for $14.95 from Amazon
ARTHUR M. FRIED is a professor of English and department chair at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, where he teaches courses in film and popular fiction. He has a doctorate in English from the University of Michigan, and has a specialist knowledge of graphic novels and comic books – an expertise founded on over fifty years of reading them.