Vintage Gaiman

Although Neil Gaiman is now more prose novelist than comics writer, the latter medium still clamours for more. In the absence of new material, adaptations of his obscure short stories more than do the trick. Taken from Gaiman's award-winning short-story compendium Smoke and Mirrors, "...Miss Finch" is an exquisite slice of his trademark magic realism in which a Gaiman-esque writer and friends (who, a little jarringly, are none other than Jonathan Ross and his wife) attend a macabre circus beneath London's streets. Occasional Sandman artist Michael Zulli again proves why he is so eminently suited to Gaiman's fare, with sumptuous paintings that engagingly depict a world both captivating and forbidding.

Danny Graydon