This is a graphic novel adaptation of the notorious 1930s cult novel of the same name by William Lindsay Gresham, illustrated by legendary underground cartoonist Spain Rodriguez. The story is a study of the lowest depths of showbiz and its sleazy inhabitants and environs, the dark, shadowy world of a second rate carnival filled with cheap hustlers, scheming grifters, and Machiavellian femmes fatales.

Gresham was born in Baltimore in 1909, but grew up in New York. Nightmare Alley was highly influenced by the freaks and sideshows he routinely observed at Coney Island as a child. The dark side of carnival life is the world of Nightmare Alley, deeply rooted in early film noir and the hard-boiled books of Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain. Rodriguez's illustrations complement Gresham's dark, brooding, cynical and complex world perfectly—the rich imagery of Gresham's prose is perfectly realized by Rodriguez's brush. The book depicts the rise of Stan Carlisle from a carnival mentalist to a successful "spiritualist," preying on the rich and gullible matrons of society, to his eventual fall and total disintegration.