Adamtine by Hannah Berry is undoubtedly one of the most thrilling Gothic narratives produced within the last ten years. It is hair-raisingly terrifying and a subliminal mix of horror, murder-mystery and gothic realism. Adamtine focuses on four main protagonists and a murder victim, Rodney Moon. No one really knows what happened to Moon and the four protagonists’ tenuous link to his fate will impact their own in far more tremendous ways. Most of the events occur on a train, in the middle of the night, and Berry uses its creepy atmosphere to startling effect. I personally read this when traveling on the train from Manchester to Leicester and I advise anyone who enjoys being profoundly creeped out to schedule in some train time with this graphic novel.
The artwork is incredibly detailed and while not black-and-white, it primarily sticks to muted colours and two-tone scenes. There is no such thing as a jump-scare in comics, but looking at a scene closely can jump-start your heartbeat when you realise that the innocent details, or the vast expanse of the black background, are hiding untold horrors. The narrative is shockingly sparse at times, with most of the ‘narration’ coming from newspaper articles and character’s dialogue, trusting the reader’s intellect to piece it all together and allowing new discoveries with every read.
Hannah Berry is a comic artist, writer, illustrator, podcaster and a wonderful public speaker. Her exploration of the Gothic is captured in interview with Alex Fitch, recorded at ‘Graphic Gothic’, the Seventh International Conference of Graphic Novels and Comics in 2016. You can find a special issue of The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics based on the conference online. Unfortunately, we do not have a copy of this wonderful novel in the David Wilson Library.
