Image: 20th Century Fox

As certain as the sun rises and sets, every year we get a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror special—but the 2017 edition is recruiting legendary writer Neil Gaiman. Not to pen a story, but to star in an homage to his dark fantasy novel Coraline.




Gaiman revealed the news on Twitter today, ahead of the 28th annual Treehouse of Horrors premiere in a few weeks. After asking fans to guess which character he’d be voicing—the answer: beloved Simpsons family cat Snowball II—Gaiman posted the first image from the short, which sees Lisa crawling through the mysterious passageway that, in the novel and the 2009 stop-motion adaptation, leads to the creepy world of the button-eyed Other Mother and Other Father.


It’s not the first time Gaiman has appeared on the show—that honor belongs to the season 23 episode “The Book Job,” where he played himself—but it’s going to take some getting used to, hearing his voice emanating from Snowball the cat.

The Simpsons’ “Treehouse of Horror XXVIII” airs on October 22.

[Nerdist]