(no subject)

[heidi]

Terrific article on Neil Gaiman and the new Sandman book, Endless Nights.

In other news, I read The Wolves in the Walls to Harrison's class of four year olds today - they loved it, and by the end, they were all saying, in chorus, When the wolves come out of the walls, it's all over!

(yes, both those links take you to the books on amazon, using the FA-associates code. call me a shill - I would've made the post anyway...)

Now, one of the bits in the article says,

Since those last two titles both hit the New York Times bestseller list, I'm surely not the only reader to first fall in love with Gaiman's imagination via the medium of plain prose. Somehow, though, he hasn't quite registered on the public's consciousness as decisively as he ought to. He is, as one journalist put it, the famous author you've never heard of, a baffling fact in the age that made J.K. Rowling its darling.

I am one of those fangirls who came to Gaiman via prose, and I don't think I would've picked up one of the comic books if my husband - then my brand new boyfriend - hadn't pressed a copy of one of the Sandman collections into my hands back in 1995, when he saw the well-read copy of Good Omens on my shelf - and the sidenote is, I'd purchased Good Omens not because of Pratchett's name on the cover, but because I recognized Gaiman as the journalist who'd written the bio of Douglas Adams that I'd read, on assignment from the teacher, in a 1997 philosophy class in high school. SO I think I was vaguely a fan, preprose.

One of the most fascinating things about being at the booksigning on Monday was just how many couples were there - comic book fanboys and the fangirls who love Neil - and I could say all sorts of presumptive things here that rubydebrazier would thwap me for about girls and comic books, but the true fact is, most die hard comic book fans are boys - perhaps because the girls who, like me, read Archie, eventually put them aside for teenybopper magazines with real, cute and unattainable boys like (then) Rob Lowe and Tom Cruise, and (now) Dan Radcliffe and the boys on Everwood.

On Monday night, Aaron and I talked about the idea of a Harry Potter comic book, and the fact that both of us agree that only Neil's most regular illustrator, Dave McKean, would be the one person who isn't currently a fanartist in the fandom who could do Harry's world any sort of justice - and that it's probably only fair that McKean is working on the art side of PoA - anyone know what he's doing, exactly, though? Now that would be a crossover that's Worth It All...

But if there was a comic book version of the Potterverse, it would probably be marketed to ickle kidlings like the Archie and Donald Duck comics and it would be horrible and we'ld all hate it and say how much better work our own fanartist friends do.

And a bunch of us would probably buy it anyway, and hate ourselves for doing so.

Comments

[dinahrae.livejournal.com]

I haven't got my hands on any of Neil Gaiman's comic books yet - I bought Neverwhere two years ago and was immediately hooked. It's eerie, it has a terrific, real feel to it, it has intriguing characters and a truly evil spin. It's still one of the best books I've ever read.

And it makes me scared of certain London tube stations.

But I agree fully on the idea of HP comics. I've pondered what would happen if they made a comic series out of it - it's great material for it. But it would probably so over-cutsied that it would be unwatchable for anyone over 10. I bet they'd use that media form for marketing it off to the kids who are too young to read the books.

[amaterasu.livejournal.com]

That was a good article--I've sent it to my father, who has been patiently weathering my current "I worship Neil as a demi-god!" phase. While I've been aware of the comic book lure for a few years now, I've only now gotten caught up in the frenzy. All the fault of one Mr. Gaiman, who I probably never would have heard of if my HP fandom friends weren't such die-hard fangirls.

Something deep inside me was irked when I discovered that things like BtVS had comic book adaptations. I think an HP adaptation might bug me even more, not just because it would be naff and aimed at the kids, but because I don't have the money left after what I've been spending on the Sandman collection.

[gallowglass.livejournal.com]

There is (or was) a comics series about a boy wizard, Tim Hunter, to whom a certain Mr H. Potter bore a passing but likely coincidental resemblance.

This was The Books of Magic, created by the self-same Neil Gaiman, though written by other people after the initial mini-series. It was (and hopefully will be again) a Vertigo title and thus unsuitable for the kiddies.

The most ironic thing is that the most frequent criticism people ever leveled at BoM was that it was an HP rip-off, when BoM actually came first, beginning publication in 1990.

Yoyo!

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Yes, we got our Books of Magic compilation signed last Monday, too. Gaiman has said that any comparisons are entirely coincidental, and said something along the lines of, if she really was cribbing, she would've at least changed the hair colour.

Re: Yoyo!

[gallowglass.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Fascinating co-incidence though. I keep meaning to get the trade paperback of BoM, I just have the individual issues I collected originally.

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

When I first started dating my husband, he had this strange poster on his wall, of a dark-haired man and a wild-haired woman sprawled on a car hood, before a club called Suffragette City. There was a pumpkin-head, too. The top of the poster said "Brief Lives." And at the bottom of the picture was a little doll with an ankh.

I asked Mr. PH, "What's with the doll?"

"That's Death," he replied. And then handed me _Season of Mists_.

(We still have the poster. It's in the guest room.)

I still haven't read my way through all the Sandman comics yet (and we've been together nearly 10 years now -- we're acquiring them slowly). And I'm still not much of a comics girl -- prose is my thing. But Gaiman's stories are so compelling that it doesn't matter how they're delivered.

=-=-=-=-=

As for Dave McKean -- I was at the World Fantasy Convention last year and he was the Artist Guest of Honor. He did a slide show of many things, including his work on CoS, specifically the nest of spiders in the Forbidden Forest. (Very angular, scary, I only got a glimpse so can't say much more than that.) Dave did also say that his ideas were not used in the final execution, but that he was working on PoA and the new director might be more open to his ideas.

He didn't have any pictures yet, though. :(

=-=-=-=-=

Bonus 80s fangirl moment: Check Neil's bibliography , scroll all the way to the bottom, and revel in his first published book. Hee!

[no-remorse.livejournal.com]

Duran Duran! For some reason that part of Gaiman's bibiliography never fails to amuse me.

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

It's like the disparate sides of my fandom life, crashing together.

There was a girl at WFC who had a copy of the Duran bio for Neil to sign. I wonder what he said. I should have lurked around to listen. ;)

[no-remorse.livejournal.com]

I am wondering too.

He probably wondered where the girl got the book since it looks like it has been out of print for at least fifteen years.

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

I am, of course, now committed to acquiring a copy. Just so I can read Neil Gaiman writing the equivalent of Smash Hits copy. :D

[blonde-dude.livejournal.com]

"But if there was a comic book version of the Potterverse, it would probably be marketed to ickle kidlings like the Archie and Donald Duck comics and it would be horrible and we'ld all hate it and say how much better work our own fanartist friends do.
And a bunch of us would probably buy it anyway, and hate ourselves for doing so."

That would so be me. Shameless fangirlishness. *blush*