Renée Nault’s graphic novel adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a separate reading of the book, not a picture companion to the television series. It keeps selected scenes, renders them in watercolour and ink, and uses colour to separate the world before Gilead from Gilead itself. Nan A. Talese published it in March 2019, and Penguin Random House tied it to the premiere of Hulu’s third season in June 2019 in a June 5, 2019 article. The season is now history, but the book it reinterprets is not.
Edition details
- Title: The Handmaid’s Tale (Graphic Novel)
- Creators: Margaret Atwood (original novel) and Renée Nault (adaptation and illustration)
- Publisher and date: Nan A. Talese, March 26, 2019, per the Penguin Random House listing
- Format: 240-page hardcover
- ISBN: 9780385539241
- US list price: $27 as shown on the publisher’s page at the time it was reviewed. Retail prices change, so check the current price with a bookseller before buying.
Atwood wrote the story; Nault is the artist and adapter. Credit her for the pictures, the page layouts and the choice of which scenes to keep.
Why it reads differently from the novel
Choosing what to leave out
A novel can spend pages on a single thought. A graphic novel has to decide which scenes carry the book’s argument. Nault has said the choices were difficult. In a 2019 interview with The Harvard Crimson, she said: “It was hard to make choices because there was so much in the book that I had to leave out of the graphic novel just because of space.” Her stated aim was to keep the novel’s central themes rather than translate every page, so readers who know the book will notice what is missing and what has been pushed forward.
Showing what a narrator says and what the reader sees
Nault’s account of the medium explains why the form suits Atwood’s narrator. Her words were: “One interesting thing about graphic novels is they can easily shift between the literal and the abstract.” In practice, the form can show inner monologue while depicting external events, and it can set what a narrator claims against what the image shows. The reader is left to notice the gap, which a voice-over in a novel or a film cannot do as easily.
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Colour as a map of Gilead
Nault works traditionally, with watercolour and ink, and she describes colour as a structural tool. In her March 2019 interview with COMICON, she said June’s flashbacks use a warm and varied palette. Gilead is drawn with a narrow group of symbolic colours, which she tied to the regime’s rigid social roles. Her summary: “The past is more ‘normal’, the present day of Gilead has been stripped down to a few symbolic colours, corresponding to rigidly enforced roles.”
Costume follows the same logic. Nault treats colour and clothing as part of the world’s construction rather than decoration, so a reader who learns to read the palette can also read the social position of a figure from across a page.
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Atwood’s role in the process
Nault has said that Atwood and the editors reviewed the script, and that Atwood approved major elements, including character and costume designs and the direction of the epilogue. That is Nault’s account of the process. It does not make Atwood a co-illustrator, and the published credits do not suggest she drew the pages.
Graphic novel and television series compared
The two versions answer different questions. The table below sets out what the sources support. Nault’s interviews describe her method rather than mapping individual pages to episodes, so a scene-by-scene comparison is not something the published material establishes.
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| Aspect | Graphic novel | Hulu series |
|---|---|---|
| Medium | Watercolour and ink panels; the reader sets the pace | Filmed performance in serial television |
| Scope | Condensed; Nault says material was cut for space | Multi-season run; Hulu’s press page describes Season 6 as the final season |
| Visual language | Warm, varied palette for flashbacks; restricted symbolic colours for Gilead | Not compared in Nault’s interviews |
| Relationship to the other | Nault completed her graphic novel work before watching the show | Television adaptation of the novel; not a source for the graphic novel |
| Where to find it | 240-page hardcover, ISBN 9780385539241 | Hulu, subject to current availability |
Reading the two together
- Read the novel first if you want the full argument. The graphic novel removes material, and the novel’s narration carries reasoning that the pictures can only suggest.
- Use the graphic novel to slow down. Panel layouts and colour changes make it easier to notice how a scene is staged, which is harder to do in a fast-moving episode.
- Treat overlaps as thematic. Where the show and the book share a theme, the graphic novel can show how one artist chose to express it, without implying that a particular episode matches a particular page.
What has changed since 2019
The third season premiered in 2019, which is why the publisher’s June 2019 article linked the two. Hulu’s current press page describes Season 6 as the final season, so the television series is complete at the level of its main run. Check Hulu directly for current streaming availability, since licensing and regional access can change. The graphic novel’s authorship, edition details and 2019 publication date are stable; its price and stock are not.
If you are approaching this for the first time, the graphic novel is a fair entry point. It is a short, self-contained reading of a novel that has been adapted in several forms, and it gives you a clear view of one artist’s decisions about what to keep.
Quick Recap
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