 Tre interviste... e commenti
The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN) COMICS AS AN INVESTMENT? OH, PISH-POSH, SAYS NEIL GAIMAN Neil Gaiman is certainly outspoken. Gaiman, on a variety of topics: -- The state of comic books today: "Unfortunately, desperately trying to sell comics as an investment item
to gullible children has harmed -- On comic book creators he admires: "Alan Moore can do it. I think Dave Sim is a remarkable writer and artist. I think Kurt Busiek - I love what he's doing with Astro City. I still like Jeff Smith, what he's doing on Bone is so marvelous. Alan and Eddie Campbell are possibly my two favorite writers in comics. "Mike Mignola is wonderful, and he's such a fine artist. I love Frank
Miller . . . but I'm glad he -- On possible movies of the characters he's created, including Dream and Death. Does he have any role in a possible Sandman movie? "Absolutely none. Oh God, I hope not. The last script I saw was possibly the worst thing I've ever read. The Sandman was kept prisoner under New York City by giant electromagnets. And he must fight his brother The Corinthian. It was the biggest load of illiterate posh I've ever read." -- On a movie featuring Death, in Gaiman's world a cute, New Age woman with a Goth look and a surprisingly sunny disposition, given the nature of her job: "The trouble is that Warner Bros. (DC Comics's parent company) regards Death as a Sandman spinoff, and they just sort of put it off into limbo until they had their Sandman made." ( Lucy Anne's n.b.: As of the summer, this may have changed) -- On the pervasive influence of Death, surely one of the most original comics characters in recent years and soon to become her own action figure: "What is really getting strange now, is that you'll now get Death clones who've never read the comics. They just like the look." -- On his winning a World Fantasy award for an issue of Sandman, and the organization's immediate rewriting of the rules to prevent another such win by a comic book: "I just thought, 'You're being silly. What are you afraid of, that comics are going to come in and win all your awards?' " Subject: Gaiman article -= Cleveland Plain Dealer April 3, 1999 The Plain Dealer MULTIMEDIA AUTHOR STILL A COMIC-BOOK WRITER,
PROUD OF IT A journalist interviewing Neil Gaiman about his most recent novel,"Stardust," said something Gaiman has heard often enough to make him angry. "He said, 'So you left comics to pursue more serious work.' I told him he had it all wrong, that my comics were my serious work,' Gaiman said. Gaiman did the same thing at a book author's dinner in Cleveland recently when the woman introducing him paused before the words"comic-book author," looked over at him and said"the writer of, what do we call them, graphic novels?" Gaiman said loud and proud, "They are comic books. I write comic books." Reading or writing comics is nothing to be ashamed of, particularly not those written by Gaiman. "I told the journalist that the whole Sandman series ran 75 monthly issues, 2,000 pages," Gaiman said over lunch recently in Cleveland. "It was a huge work of metafiction, one giant story with a beginning, middle and an end. It's a story so complex that when people tell me they want to read more about Sandman, I tell them to read it again. There are subtle things in there they will see the second or third reading. 'Stardust' is a fairy tale for adults, simple in comparison.' At lunch, Gaiman took a call on his cell phone. "That was it," he said. "That was confirmation of the movie deal with Miramax for 'Neverwhere.' It's a go. I will have the movie treatment to them by the end of April, a script by the end of the year.' He said he was also in serious discussion with Imagine Television, the creators of "Felicity" and "Sports Night," for a television series. "I can't even say what it is about, top secret," hesaid. "It would be a fantasy series, historical fantasy. That's it." Movies, television series, books. We've lost him, he belongs to the masses. Will he ever write comics again? "Yes," he said. "But it would have to be something I really want to do, and on my terms." Lost control Gaiman said he would have a hard time writing stories for characters that are owned by someone else. He said he is not at all unhappy with the work he did for DC and others, but when it came time for a Sandman movie proposal, he was on the outside looking in. Actually, he was on the outside pounding on the door and screaming. The rights to a movie on the character were sold to Warner Bros., which turned the project over to Jon Peters. "The second, revised script I saw had Sandman as the God of Good Dreams trapped under Manhattan by his evil brother, the Corinthian, the God of Bad Dreams," he said, shaking his head. "It was everything that Sandman was not. In the end there is a big battle and good triumphs over evil with the help of a good woman. It was just so awful." He said he hopes such a movie is never made. Gaiman's Sandman was the God of Dreams who lived on an ethereal, cosmic scale. Never in 75 issues did Sandman resort to fighting. He controlled dreams and influenced living creatures through their dreams and nightmares. He was never ordinary. "With 'Stardust,' if there is ever a movie it will be the way I want it to be, because I own the characters,' he said. "No one can take them and do anything they want with them. Are there untold Sandman stories in my head I would love to create? Yes, there are. But I would rather create comics that are new, that are mine." Gaiman said he still reads comics, but does not enjoy very many. His favorites are Alan Moore's "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," "Penny Century" by Jaime Hernandez, Kurt Busiek's "Astro City," Frank Miller's "300," Eddie Campbell's "Bacchus" and some others. What does he think of most of the mainstream comics today? "They are made by too many people futilely flogging the grease spot on the sidewalk where the horse used to be," he said. Subject: Gaiman article - Cleveland Plain Dealer April 28, 1999 The Plain Dealer April 28, 1999 LETTING GOOD FANTASIES ROLL; AUTHOR NEIL GAIMAN'S FAR-OUT IDEAS PRODUCE
RIPPLE EFFECT Fantasy writer Neil Gaiman's gaze pierced the lenses of his sunglasses. The Brit-turned-Minnesotan ordered tea in a downtown Cleveland hotel, then said he installed a reverse osmosis filtration system in his kitchen - "Is that sad, or what?" - in pursuit of a decent cup of tea. He is one year shy of 40. You would never suspect that Gaiman lives with one foot in the world of bricks and mortar, and the other in the land of dreams and fairies. For him, the boundary between the two is fragile and ever in flux. "It's 'Through the Looking Glass,' he explained. "Everyone is one cyclone away from Oz. It's just the back of a wardrobe." You may never have heard of Gaiman, but to the legions of young people who continually discover his seminal graphic novel "The Sandman" and the many new readers drawn to his urban fantasy "Neverwhere" and his latest, the fairy tale "Stardust", Gaiman is a very big deal. They turned out in droves to hear him speak at a recent Plain Dealer Book and Author event. Many "nice ladies of a certain age," as he described them, listened to him speak, then bought copies of "Stardust" and joined his autograph line. Their sweater sets contrasted with the Goth-y kids and comics fans. He recently finished a 21-city book tour for "Stardust," during which he averaged 350 people per signing. It seems like a marketing strategy hatched by a public relations department: Author ditches fringe readership for the more lucrative land of mainstream sales, bookstore chains and TV talk shows. Yet he denies that the decision to leave "The Sandman" at the height of its popularity in 1996 andwrite novels was a bid for a wider audience. He simply wanted to learn his craft in other areas. Happy accidents "My life seems to be a series of happy accidents," he said. Gaiman's work comprises "Good Omens" with Terry Pratchett; the children's book"The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish"; several graphic novels, including "Miracleman: The Golden Age"; and two short-story collections. Fantasy is appealing because people are searching for a brief vacation from reality, he said. "You go on a journey, and come back a little bit changed." Fantasy, unlike science fiction, can be "reassurance in a strange and shifting world. The future is no longer what it once was." "Neverwhere," his first solo novel, published last year, creates an alternative London Below of monsters, angels and "the forgotten bits of time," he said. The book is based on his BBC miniseries of the same name. Gaiman set out to write an old-fashioned fairy tale for adults with this year's "Stardust" (Avon, $22), but he wanted to avoid what he regards as the dull, Tolkien-derivative, cliche-ridden fantasy clogging the bookstore shelves. "Stardust" probably could double its sales if a unicorn sat on its cover but, "It's not "Lord of the Rings,' nor does it try to be. It's the ice cream. It's not meant to be good for you," he said. The residents of the pastoral English town of Wall guard the stone barrier that separates their world from the land of Faerie. The gate opens only once every nine years, so that villagers can enjoy a most unusual market fair. Young Tristran Thorn, himself the product of a liaison between a villager and a fairy, crosses over the ancient wall on a quest to procure a fallen star and win the love of a haughty beauty. "It's a novel about good people, and even the bad people are kind and wonderful," Gaiman said. Young people bored with superhero comics continue to discover "The Sandman," which DC publishes in collections. The 10-volume graphic novel combines horror, fantasy and mythology in a story that revolves around Morpheus, or Dream, and eternal beings called the Endless. "Sales have not dropped. If anything, they've gone up," Gaiman said, explaining that young men usually get their girlfriends interested, then the young women take half the "Sandman" collection when they break up, and in turn pass them on to the next guy. "A lot of times it's sexually transmitted,"Gaiman said, sounding like a social scientist. Gaiman juggles a dizzying number of new projects and Hollywood offers to adapt his work. Miramax is interested in a film adaptation of"Stardust," and he's working on another children's book, novel and picture book. His early jobs with newspapers in the United Kingdom taught him to meet deadlines and write anytime, anywhere. "I feel like I'm getting away with something," he said. "I get to happen underneath the cultural radar." One challenge remains: writing a Broadway musical. Coming from Gaiman's imagination, it would probably be something totally unsuitable for the matinee crowd. "It would be set partly in the Grand Guignol," he mused, "and partly in hell." Subject: Re: Gaiman article - Cleveland Plain Dealer April 28, 1999
This is how it happened to me, though I didn't actually steal any of his Sandman collection. Add that to the selection of _nice_ things that are sexually transmitted, along with love, orgasms, and babies. Did it happen like that to anyone else here? Rachel Subject: Re: Gaiman article - Cleveland Plain Dealer April 28, 1999 I have managed to persuade a few of my girlfriends and female buddies (who include all of my ex-girlfriends, BTW) to try the Sandman graphic novels. However, I've never lost any in a break-up (mostly because the ladies who *really* wanted to keep the series went out and bought themselves copies...)(Neil, you can forward that share of your royalties to the charity of your choice.) Captain Average, Subject: Re: Gaiman article - Cleveland Plain Dealer April 28, 1999 >>From: "Rachel Brown"
With me it was a guy I liked but wasn't going out with, and I only stole one... well, not so much stole as we completely lost touch and then I lent it to my best friend who 'lost it'... I dated him a couple of years later though, read the rest of his collection, and then bought a sandman on just about every date. That way when we broke up we both got to keep our stuff. :-) Jen Subject: Re: Gaiman article - Cleveland Plain Dealer April 28, 1999 >Rachel Brown <r.phoenix@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> This is how it happened to me, though I didn't actually steal any of his Nope. It was a guy who introduced me to The Sandman, but it wasn't in that sort of way, and I already read comic books at the time. I am, however, still waiting for the right guy to come along to share The Sandman with. And as overprotective as I am of all my things Gaiman, he won't be running off with them, either. Eden (who once declared that comic books were better than boys, although it was Valentine's Day and she was feeling lonely at the time)
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