"Troll Bridge" is a short graphic novel by Neil Gaiman.
When Jack is seven, he meets a troll under a bridge. The troll tells him that he will eat his life but Jack convinces the troll to let him go by promising to come back when he is older and will make more of a meal. Over the next several decades Jack and the world change beyond recognition. And the troll is still waiting for Jack under the bridge.
This story provides examples of:
- All Trolls Are Different: The troll has a nose keen enough to "smell the dreams you dreamed before you were born". And it eats a person's life and takes their place, leaving them, in exchange, to take the place of the troll.
- Classical Anti-Hero: Jack isn't evil but he's definitely not a nice person and doesn't have any typically heroic traits.
- Deliberately Monochrome: As the story goes on Jack's clothing and the world in general become darker and more washed out. As a child he's dressed in bright colours, and by the end he's in solid black.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The troll eating Jack's life looks a lot like a sexual assault.
- Driven to Suicide: One interpretation of the ending. Jack's wife and child leave him, his life seems empty and the art style becomes bleak and monochrome. He walks to the bridge and asks the troll to take him after spending most of his life running from it. It's not hard to see it as an allegory for depression and suicide.
- First Love: Jack's female high school best friend Louise is his first love. He tries to sacrifice her to the troll to save himself, which makes him realise he doesn't actually love her, or at least not as much as he loves himself.
- Good Adultery, Bad Adultery: Jack regularly cheats on his wife. He doesn't feel especially guilty about it but he's also well aware that he's in the wrong.
- Growing Up Sucks
- Sell-Out: Jack goes from an aspiring punk artist to a corporate talent agent.
- Teens Are Monsters: As a teen, when Jack meets the troll for the second time, he pushes Louise between them and yells "Take her instead!"
- The City vs. the Country: In the background of the story. The idyllic rural areas of Jack's childhood are swallowed up by urban sprawl, mirroring his own personal decline.
- Troll Bridge: The bridge itself is just a disused brick rail bridge like any other in rural Britain. By the end of the story it's accumulated the graffiti and trash common to any normal bridge, and people are walking through and across it with no idea of what it actually is. Because Jack as the troll just sits there invisible and lets them.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: As a child Jack is imaginative, optimistic and cheerful. As an adult he's an unlikeable Jerkass.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: When he first meets the troll, Jack tried to bluff his way past it by using the "big brother" line from the Three Billy Goats Gruff. The troll knows he's lying.
- You Can't Go Home Again: Jack's hometown changes from a sleepy village to a commuter suburb that he doesn't recognise.
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