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Award winning graphic novelist talks The Goblin Throne, “a beautiful and eerie tale”
The Goblin Throne from award-winning creator Mel Gillman offers a dark and Sapphic fairy tale pitting a young woman force into a strange world in a struggle with a powerful Goblin Queen.
The 100-page, full color, 6″ x 9″ hardcover graphic novel, intended for YA audiences and older, is Gillman’s newest effort following work including the webcomic and graphic novel As the Crow Flies, which won the Stonewall Honor Book by the American Library Association, and the lesbian western graphic novel Stage Dreams.
Gillman’s portfolio also includes several Steven Universe comics published by Boom! Studios.
The Goblin Throne is promised by publisher Iron Circus as “a beautiful, eerie tale that recounts the story of a woman who makes — and then breaks — a pact with the Goblin Queen. Little does she know, though: all deer roads lead to the Goblin Kingdom…”
According to the official synopsis: “When a young woman cornered and out of options makes a pact with the Goblin Queen for peace and safety, she initially thinks herself prepared to pay any price. But when confronted with the true cost of her contract, she breaks her word and flees to start a new life far from the strange old creature.”
Unfortunately, wherever one goes, The Goblin Queen can follow, and eventually the young woman’s son is snared in a trap that will mean terrifying consequences.
Wicked Horror‘s Sidney Williams spoke with Gillman about the new graphic novel and approach to storytelling in the medium.
WH: The Goblin Throne is a rich and layered story with several plot twists. What went into the outlining process to plan a large and yet complete tale?
MG: I knew the general shape of the story right from the beginning – where I wanted things to land, and what I wanted to try to make the reader feel along the way. I tackled each of the three parts individually, though – writing and drawing one new chapter each year, with long breaks in between. With long-form storytelling (and especially in graphic novels, which can take foreeeeever to draw), it sometimes is a good idea to deliberately leave space for your future self – who’s bound to be a slightly different sort of person than you are today – to still have a hand in the writing of a story. 2026-Mel is older and wiser than 2024-Mel in a lot of ways, and has a few more tricks up their sleeve when it comes to storytelling. I’m glad they’re the Mel that’s scripting Part III — not just illustrating an older script. I like thinking of years-long graphic novels as collaborative projects shared between your past, present, and future selves.
WH: The notion of a protagonist traveling into a mystical world to fulfill a parent’s broken promise feels very right for a fairy tale-type story yet it also seems fresh. What inspired that aspect of the story?
MG: For The Goblin Throne, it all started with that classic “promise your firstborn to the fey in exchange for something” trade, which is familiar territory for a lot of fables. I knew I had something cooking when I got thinking about making that trade less about adoption or a changeling story, and more about a marriage pact! The Goblin Queen’s character grew naturally out of that idea – that deep, desperate, old-age loneliness for a wife and a family, and convincing yourself you’re ready to be someone’s beloved doting spouse, despite all evidence to the contrary.
WH: You have done a western as well with Stage Dreams? What appeals to you about tackling mythic forms in new ways?
MG: I’m a lover of a lot of classic old forms of storytelling, and capital-g Genre Fiction! Stage Dreams as a lesbian western was a lot of fun to work on, because it let me combine queer and trans historical research with a silly action-adventure storyline. In a world where a lot of records about our queer ancestors have been lost (or deliberately destroyed), historical fiction is a way you can rebuild a story, by stitching together all those little scraps of documentation you can still dig up, and spinning them into a complete narrative.
WH: Iron Circus Publisher C. Spike Trotman has said: “There are far too few Sapphic fairy tales out there.” What themes did you set out to explore in this story?
MG: The Goblin Throne is a lesbian horror-romance told in the style of an old fairy tale. Like all old fables, there’s a few layers of allegory baked into its structure! Below the surface, the book touches on how romantic relationships can be shaped by unspoken guilt and shame; and how tempting it can be to try to use a new romantic relationship as a tool to absolve yourself of old remorse, even when that’s probably not gonna work out great for you!
WH: The artistic style seems great for this world in particular. What inspirations shaped your ideas for visuals and styles.
MG: I always work in colored pencil, so I can’t necessarily claim I chose that medium on purpose just for this book! But colored pencil does have a lot of strengths when it comes to a story like this. It’s a highly textured medium, with a natural, soft, organic grittiness to it. It also can have a surprising amount of depth, from the layering process. For a story that’s meant to harken back to old, dark fables, hand-drawn traditional media art feels like the right fit!
WH: There’s an interesting and judicious use of bold colors. Do you plan for color as punctuation as a story like this develops.
MG: Yes, absolutely! I always choose a limited color palette for each comic I make. For The Goblin Throne, I started with a core palette of walnut brown, gray and white, which stayed consistent on every page. And then from there, I added an additional yellow and a darker warm tone, which varied from chapter to chapter depending on the narrative tone I was going for. Part One had a bold scarlet, since I knew there’d be a lot of blood in the finale and I wanted to make sure it popped. Part Two replaced all the red with pink, since that part of the story would be a lot more romantic and sensuous. And Part Three swapped the pink for an orange, which comes across more dangerous and nasty. In any case – color is always a major player in the story for me!
WH: You hold an MFA in comics from the Center for Cartoon Studies. There are not just tons of programs in comics in higher education. What was involved in your course of study?
MG: I learned a lot from the Comics MFA program at CCS. I came to that school as a relatively fresh cartoonist – I’d only figured out how much I loved comics about two years earlier. Getting to take a bunch of classes taught by professional cartoonists, and be part of a cohort of students who are all making wildly different comics themselves, was exactly what I needed as a baby graphic novelist. CCS is also a school that has a strong self-publishing culture, which ended up being really useful for me – it felt really empowering to hear “you can do this all on your own, you can draw any sort of comic you want, and you don’t necessarily need a publisher first.”
WH: Have we seen the last of the goblin world or is it a land you’d revisit?
MG: I don’t have any plans to tell additional stories set in this specific world, for now! But a lot of my work lives in that pastoral, romantic fairy-tale land in general – this probably isn’t my last comic in that sort of vein.
