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Different Walks of Life
The Hunting of the Snark reimagines Lewis Carroll’s famously surreal 1876 poem as a vibrant graphic novel adventure. What inspired you to adapt this classic work?
I fell in love with the poem after discovering it fairly late in life, in a collection of Lewis Carroll poems. The relationships, the world, and the transformations the characters went through during the hunt resonated deeply with me. As I continued to reread and repeat it, the world started to form in my imagination, and I eventually felt compelled to get it out of my mind and on paper.
How did you approach remaining faithful to Carroll’s language while creating a fresh visual interpretation for modern readers?
It was really important to have a crew drawn from many different walks of life for the adventure. Lewis Carroll did this in the original version with the variety of professions. For modern readers, I thought it was necessary to expand on that with a broader range of ages, genders, and ethnicities across the crew so the book could explore the Snarks we hunt today, and how our backgrounds shape the hunt. Beyond that, it was surprisingly easy to stick with Carroll’s original language; changing the pronouns fit naturally into the verse and—if anything—provided an opportunity to deepen the identity of each character.
The crew is wonderfully eccentric, with occupations that are oddly specific and often hilariously impractical. Which character was the most fun to reinterpret visually?
The visual basis for the “frenemies” relationship between Baker and Broker was really interesting to build and see come to life. The visual contrasts between their styles, attitudes, and values came together in wonderful and surprising ways—for example, both incorporate red, but with very different levels of formality.
What conversations do you hope readers have after reaching the final page?
What do a Snark and a Boojum represent, and what does it mean to catch one (or the other)?
Is this a comedy, tragedy, or something else entirely?
And, of course, which crew member are you most like?
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The story follows the Bellman and his eclectic crew—a group brought together by only a common restlessness—as they embark on their hunt in a strange land, which appears to be just the place to find the elusive Snark. But as they travel deeper into this distorted world, their efforts become increasingly fragmented and they find far more than Snarks awaiting them.
Told through a series of vignettes and side quests, the tale unfolds like a riddle. Just like each character’s ambitions, each Fit is self-contained but laced with visual clues that echo and connect the crew’s experiences across the work.
Each walk of life faces unique trials on their path, and the hunt always yields a discovery—though never the one that was sought.
Richly layered with hints, metaphor, and hidden references, The Hunting of the Snark is both a tribute and a transformation of Lewis Carroll’s chaotically brilliant poem; presenting a surreal and beautiful journey about identity, longing, and the price of obsession while finding purpose amongst the nonsense of life.
The Hunting of the Snark
Macy Grove’s The Hunting of the Snark is a vibrant graphic novel adaptation and fantasy adventure built around Lewis Carroll’s famously strange 1876 poem. Grove preserves Carroll’s rhythmic language while giving the expedition a contemporary visual identity, with illustrations credited to Anonymous, Macy Grove, and Nyx Grove. The story follows the Bellman and a wonderfully mismatched crew as they cross an impossible sea, land in a landscape of chasms and crags, and begin searching for a creature they can barely describe. It’s playful from the start, but the silliness always carries a faint sense of danger.
The cast gives this illustrated fantasy poem much of its personality. The crew includes a Baker who has forgotten her name, a lace-making Beaver, a Butcher who can kill only beavers, a Barrister, a Banker, a Broker, and several other specialists whose talents are either oddly specific or completely useless. Grove updates the hunters into a broader, more varied group while making that choice part of the book’s own mischievous mythology. The character designs help turn Carroll’s list of occupations into an ensemble you can recognize, follow, and care about, especially as the Beaver and Butcher move from mutual fear to genuine friendship.
What makes the book especially enjoyable is the way its surreal comedy and comic book storytelling work together. Carroll’s absurd logic remains intact: the Bellman navigates with a blank map, treats repetition as proof, and instructs the crew to hunt with thimbles, forks, railway shares, smiles, and soap. The art gives those jokes physical shape, but it also deepens the mood when the Jubjub, Bandersnatch, and Boojum enter the story. Scenes that sound ridiculous on the page can suddenly feel lonely, eerie, or threatening when placed against dark valleys, jagged cliffs, and an approaching night.
The final part lands with more emotional force than the book’s comic setup might suggest. The Baker appears to find the Snark, calls out in triumph, and then vanishes when the creature proves to be a Boojum. That ending gives this dark fantasy graphic novel a haunting aftertaste, turning the hunt into a story about ambition, fear, friendship, and the things people chase without fully understanding them. Grove’s adaptation feels lively, affectionate, and visually generous, making it an inviting way to experience Carroll’s poem while also giving longtime readers plenty of new details to notice.
Pages: 99 | ASIN : B0FP54JXFZ
