Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery": The Authorized Graphic Adaptation - Miles Hyman

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Author/Illustrator: Miles Hyman

Original Author: Shirley Jackson
Genre: Graphic Novel
Rating: 1 star.

In a Nutshell: Recommended ONLY if you wish to see great sketches. Reading the original short story is a must before you attempt this.

If you have not read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, stop reading this review and go to it pronto! It is one heck of a horror short. Horror not with paranormal or scary elements but in a shocking ‘leaves-you-speechless’ kind of way.

My daughter read the story and loved it. While looking up resources online, she happened to discover this book and got me to read it with her. That’s the only reason why I attempted this graphic novel. Having read it confirms my initial suspicion - this is NOT a story to be read in the graphic format.

The visual artist – Miles Hyman – is author Shirley Jackson’s grandson. This book was published to coincide with Jackson’s centennial. The sentiment is great, the result isn’t.

What you should know about this book:
☠ You need to know the original story to better appreciate the content.

☠ The artwork dominates the text. There is hardly any content. The two of us completed this 160-page book within about 10 minutes (excluding the time for the preface.)

☠ While the art is mostly brilliant in its quality, I didn’t understand the need for frontal nudity to be included in a few of the panels. It seems to have become a trend to include at least one page of nudity in serious graphic novels. When it is not relevant to the story, what’s the need for it? Does a story have a greater impact only when skin is revealed? (Needless to say, this was even more irritating to me as I was reading it with my child, who was equally horrified to see the unexpected. It caught us both unawares.)

☠ The famous ending scene isn’t as gruesome as I had expected it to be. But that also reduces the shock factor. As such, this graphic version doesn’t have the same impact as the story.


Usually graphic novel versions of classics help bring newer readers to the original, but in this case, the adaptation does a huge disservice by stressing so much on the art that the gravitas of the original story gets diluted.

A strong NO from me except for the illustrations. Please read the original 1948 story instead.

1 star, all for the artwork. (In contrast, Jackson’s story was a 5 star experience for me.)

Luckily, this title is available online on the Internet Archive and I borrowed it from the below link:

https://archive.org/details/shirleyjacksonst0000hyma/mode/

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