THE READING RHEUM: SNOW, GLASS, APPLES (2019)

I was about to write up SNOW, GLASS, APPLES, a collaboration between writer Neil Gaiman and artist Colleen Doran, as a major mythcomic. But then I learned that Gaiman first wrote "Snow" as a 1994 short prose story. That means it's not a work original to the comics medium. I made an exception for the Thomas-Smith "Song of Red Sonja" because the adapters took a prose story by Robert E Howard and not only tweaked the original narrative, they incorporated the tale into a more extensive narrative as well.

But though I've not read the original Gaiman prose story, I see no indications that SNOW is anything but a straight adaptation. So it can't be a mythcomic, though it's now going to be the first time I've labeled a review as "high-mythicity fiction" without its also being a "prose fiction review."

SNOW is a reversal of current culture's popular understanding of a famous folktale, starting from the proposition that the Queen with the magic mirror was entirely virtuous and the snow-white heroine is actually a monster. For that reason, I'm not going to do the usual plot breakdown, but instead, I'll focus upon the three symbols of Gaiman's title.

SNOW-- There is no character named Snow White in Gaiman, and all of the other characters are similarly nameless, to emphasize being totally defined by their roles in the story. In the original folktale, the whiteness of Snow White's skin seems to connote fundamental innocence, while the redness of her lips is there mostly as contrast. But in Gaiman the Snow White analogue, whom I will call The Princess, has snow-white skin because she's undead, and her red lips connote her dependence on drinking blood.

GLASS-- In the original story, the magic mirror of the nameless evil queen is an "all-seeing-eye" through which she ascertains herself to be the fairest in the land. Glass is thus the medium through which an older female seeks to remain her position as the Foremost Beauty, and through which she seeks to eliminate all rivals. There's no Oedipal struggle between a younger and older female in the best known versions of the folktale. But Gaiman includes one, in which the undead Princess not only causes the death of her mortal father, but also co-opts the Prince whom the Virtuous Queen prizes, causing the Prince to betray the Queen. Whereas the magic mirror of the folktale causes that queen to obsess about her supremacy, the mirrors commanded by the Queen give her only minimal aid, and cannot prevent her doom by her nemesis. Indeed, the Princess proves that even in death she has a superior command of the Power of Glass, since it's through her transparent coffin that she beguiles the liberating influence of the Prince.

APPLES-- In the folktale, the apple is not a fruit that fosters life, but an agent of death, possibly with some distant inspiration from the fatal fruit from the Garden of Eden. But in the early sections of the story, the Queen offers a dried apple to the Princess before the Queen knows what she is, and the Princess' choice of another red substance establishes her monstrosity. Later, The Queen does deceive the Princess into taking the fatal bite, but because the monster is undead, her immortal beauty allows her to survive. The Queen then meets a fate usually doled out to a certain barnyard animal when served up on a platter-- though in Gaiman's description, the whole "roast beast" is stuffed with dried apples, not just one in the mouth.

Colleen Doran has a follow-up text piece in which she discusses her influences and the intensive work behind the adaptation. As far as I can tell, SNOW seems to be her magnum opus. I don't envy her trying to top it.