HIGHLIGHTS FROM NEXTPLANETOVER -99Originally published at Nextplanetover.
James: Can you give us any hints about what's coming up from you? Neil Gaiman: Well, I'm currently writing a very odd novel which sort of goes into Sandman territory, called American Gods. And there's a children's book with Dave McKean called The Wolves in the Walls and a children's novel called Coraline, which is extremely disturbing. Ian: I know you're looking at possibly directing and are working on your new novel and promoting The Dream Hunters, but will we see any comics work from you any time soon? I heard that you were looking at possibly writing a few issues of Promethea for ABC, which would be cool. NG: I won't be doing anything on Promethea, but I will be doing a Tom Strong story or two. Peter Parker: I was wondering if you had any plans to work on some more Hellblazer stuff. NG: No Hellblazer plans, I'm afraid, although DC is going to be reprinting Hellblazer #27's "Hold Me" in a book that is probably going to be called Midnight Days. It should be out in December. SpaceCake: I was curious about what you read these days, if anything, in the comic-book industry. Anything you'd recommend to people who follow your work? NG: I like lots of stuff. I love the new Alan Moore stuff, Eddie Campbell's Bacchus, Astro City, Bone, Penny Century, The Invisibles, et cetera. Had a great time at the Small Press Expo recently and discovered piles of great comics and new creators I'd been missing. Currently my favorite comic is Clan Apis by Jay Hosler. Bird: Is it true that sushi is one of your favorite foods? Any chance we might see Neverwhere brought to the big screen? Possible animation? NG: Yes, I really like good sushi. It may be dead, raw fish, but it makes me happy. Neverwhere is with Dimension Films/Jim Henson Films, and a director should be announced in the next week or so. Unless he isn't. Live-action, not animated, though. 4Skin: How did you and Yoshitaka [Amano] come together on [Sandman: The Dream Hunters]? NG: Jenny Lee at Vertigo is a fan of Mr. Amano's, and she persuaded him to do the Sandman 10th anniversary poster. I loved it when it came in and realized a) that I'd never written a Sandman story set in classical Japan and I'd read a whole bunch of Japanese myths and history for it. And I've always been fascinated by fox spirits.... So when Karen Berger asked me to write a 10th anniversary story, I agreed on condition that Amano-san be the artist. He agreed but said he didn't want it to be a comic but an illustrated book. I didn't mind doing it in that format...and started to write. Morph: What happened to the Sandman movie? I read some sort of script online, and it was good, I liked it, but I never heard any more about it. Any info you could give me? NG: I don't really know what's happening with the Sandman movie. The last rumor I heard was that they were getting a new writer and going back to the first Avary version of the Elliot/Rossio script.... I don't have any control over it, so I try not to get involved. Gelfilled: If the Sandman movie was to happen (in its proper form), who would you like to see direct it, and who would handle the visual/makeup effects? NG: To be honest, I think the best thing about the Sandman movie's not being made is that everyone can put their own perfect Sandman movie together in their head. Mine would be about 30 hours long and would have segments directed by everyone from Greenaway to Gilliam to Schwenkmeyer. Kotter: As someone who primarily writes comics, how does it feel to look at the final pages after a collaborator renders your vision? Are you ever shocked by how different a comic looks from the version you created in your head? You've worked with some brilliant artists, so I'd imagine that often you're pretty pleased. I've seen some drawings that you've done. Do you have any desire to do an all-Neil Gaiman comic -- written by, illustrated by, everything? NG: I don't ever remember being shocked, but then it's very, very rare that I wrote anything without knowing who would be drawing it (the last time was probably Sandman #1). I have no illusions about my abilities as an artist, although I did enjoy doing the 24-Hour Comic -- which, come to think of it, I did write, draw, and even letter. MasonLang: 1) The new Counting Crows album has the same exact cover as The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish. Dave [McKean] was obviously involved in this happening at some point, but what do you think about that album sharing its cover with your book? 2) Do you speak Japanese? 3) Do you think The Matrix is intentional plagiarism of The Invisibles, Volume 1? NG: I'm not entirely sure what I think about the Counting Crows thing. It was rather a fait accompli when I heard about it from Dave -- and obviously, it's Dave's painting. It isn't actually the Goldfish cover, by the way; each element is different. But when put together it's exactly the same. I just hope that people aren't going to accuse us of having ripped off the Counting Crows cover for our book. (Stranger things have happened.) 2) Nope, no Japanese. Or almost none -- little bits have rubbed off recently. 3) I tend to think of The Invisibles as being much more fundamentally original a work than The Matrix -- and The Matrix seemed to be borrowing from a great many places. (Incidentally, I saw an interview with Laurence Fishburne where he said that his Morpheus character was explicitly named after the Sandman -- and that the Wachowski Brothers had him read a pile of Sandman collections to get the feel of the character.) Ian: I'm surprised by the fact that you are doing Tom Strong. Any ideas when that's coming out? It's nice to see you step into comics again. I heard you were interested in directing a film version of Death. While it would be great, I was wondering why you were interested in doing this when you have showed a great interest in seeing Sandman not go to the big screen. Or did that mostly stem out of a complete destruction of The Sandman? NG: When Alan rings and says, "Now, about the Tom Strong story, I'll need it in a month or so," it'll be time for me to write it. The big difference between Death: The High Cost of Living and The Sandman is that one is a small story that's more or less movie-shaped, and the other is an enormous thing that includes many, many stories and kinds of stories and isn't movie-shaped at all (and the horrible things that they've done trying to make it movie-shaped only confirm this suspicion). I'm happy for someone to make a brilliant Sandman movie. I'd just rather not be involved. Possibly if someone other than Jon Peters were the producer, I might feel safer about it. But it would be a big, expensive movie, and they have their own dynamics. Hellboy: If/when the legal rights to Miracleman are straightened out, do you plan to pick up where you left off? In other words, should we keep holding our collective breath for the rest of the Silver Age, or have you washed your hands of the whole sordid business forever? NG: I would love to finish the story I started. Miracleman #25 was finished, what, six years ago now? Drawn. Lettered. It's really fun. It mostly takes place in the Himalayas. Unruhe: Princess Mononoke was a beautiful piece of work, Mr. Gaiman. I had the pleasure of meeting you at the San Diego Comic-Con this year, and you mentioned something to me along the lines of a Good Omens movie out next year with your support. Is this true? NG: There should be Good Omens news pretty soon. The rights were bought by the Samuelsons (Wilde, Carrington, Tom & Viv), and they've spent much of the last couple of years setting up the director, who is the perfect director. He's flying out for a meeting with the probable studio this week...I hope that it ends up with a big announcement. Who knows. Sean Rogers: Seeing Chester Brown's illustrations in Gods & Tulips made me realize just how much I miss the collaborations in your comics between yourself and your artists, some of which have often pleasantly surprised me (as with Marc Hempel), others of which I knew would be stunning if only you and the artist could find some opportunity to work together (as with Eddie Campbell). When and if you return to creating comics (and please do -- your short stories are truly incredibly written; I expect great things from American Gods, and I am anxious for the inevitable Hollywood project, but comics are where your talents are most needed and, indeed, where they have been most perfected), with which creators are you looking forward to working? NG: Currently I'm having a wonderful time seeing the art for the long-lost Green Lantern / Superman story I wrote 11 years ago chugging out of the fax machine -- pages by Mike Allred and Eric Shanower -- and I'm looking forward to the Matt Wagner pages and the Eddie Campbell pages and so on. It reminds me of why I loved doing comics. It's the pleasure I can take in something I've written, which I'm never going to be able to find in prose. On the other hand, I feel like I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing in prose, and am starting to do a few interesting things in the new book. When I do come back and do more comics, I suspect there will be a whole new roster of names and faces to work with. So far I've been amazingly lucky in the people I've been able to collaborate with. J-Manuel: I've been a big fan since the Sandman days and just loved both Neverwhere (the novel) and Signal to Noise. But the book that won the most smiles in my home has got to be The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish. Both the story and the artwork were magnificent. Are there any future plans to do another storybook such as that one? NG: Yes, there's another storybook due out next year. (It needs Dave McKean to find the month in which to paint it.) It's called The Wolves in the Walls, and it's the story of a little girl who is convinced that there are wolves living in the walls of her house. And there are. Morph: Do you have anything else (Sandman-related) planned? NG: No current plans for anything else Sandman-related on an immediate basis, although the possibility of a Delirium miniseries with Jill Thompson shouldn't be ruled out. (Having said that, I had no plans to write The Dream Hunters before I saw Mr. Amano's art for the 10th anniversary poster. So you never know.) EHFECKED: 1) In A Season of Mists you have Death telling Dream that sending Nada to hell was "a really sh*tty thing to do." Well, if Death felt that way, why didn't she stop him from doing it at the time (as the dead are kind of her responsibility), or at the very least bring the issue up earlier, rather then waiting 10,000 years.... 2) Speaking of Nada, don't you think she let Dream off a little easily? She spends all that time in hell and all she does is slap him? If it had been me (or anyone I know, thinking about it), you would have had to use a crowbar to separate my teeth from his face. :) 3) How do you feel about the new Dream being used in other comics? (Personally, I loved Dream's appearance in JLA. Grant Morrison really seemed to get the voice right.) 4) And on a related issue, do you know why they keep calling the new Dream Daniel? I thought you made it quite plain in The Wake that the new Dream was not to be called Daniel. 5) What the hell is "the other side of the sky" that the Endless and even Satan himself keep mentioning? I know it's the mystery that endures, not the explanation, but please tell me the answer to this one! NG: 1) She didn't say anything because he wouldn't have listened if she had. (And this is not a family who spend much time offering advice on each other's affairs.) When she did speak about it, it was because she was directly asked; he wanted her to agree with him that Desire was out of order. And she didn't. I don't think Death pretends to be sweetness and light: Look at her monologue in "Facade." She knows exactly what she is. 2) Did Nada let him off easily? Yes, obviously. But I think that Nada was very ready to move on. (And with the exception of the whip to the face in The Kindly Ones, I think that's the only blow he receives in the whole story.) 3) Overall I'm not really comfortable with Dream turning up in other comics. (I thought Grant did a good job in JLA, and it seemed a fair exchange for them letting me use the JLA back in Sandman #5.) 4) I think they call him Daniel because it's an easy shorthand for "the new white-colored Dream that isn't actually the Morpheus character we knew and loved." (I think you're crediting the shadowy forces at DC with a Machiavellian brilliance they've certainly never displayed in my presence.) 5) Good question -- I never told that story, did I? Thanks for reminding me. I'm glad you didn't think the ending of Stardust was a Happily Ever After. Neither did I, but you'd be surprised at the number of people who did. Randi: What do you think is the difference between storytelling and lying? Is it the motivation of the storyteller or the cleverness by which the story is told, or the purpose of the story, or what? And are there any sources that you can recommend looking for if you want to find where the inspiration for The Dream Hunters came from? NG: Obviously writers are liars. But stories are true, and more than true. (Oddly enough, I just read an academic paper on Sandman #19: Midsummer Night's Dream that went into that at length.) No, there aren't really any sources for The Dream Hunters -- lots of books on Heian-period Japan, and memories of books with titles like Japanese Fairy Tales that I read as a boy, filled with fox girls. Ian: What kind of stuff are you into -- what music and books (including comics) do you currently enjoy? And how involved will you be with the Neverwhere film? NG: I am currently listening to the Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs over and over. I hope I'll be involved in the Neverwhere movie, but at the end of the day, it's up to the director and the producers how much involvement I have. I hope it'll have a slightly larger budget than the BBC series did (I don't think you could cater a Hollywood movie with the BBC budget). SuperPulse: I realize that this is kind of a "huh?" question, but what is your favorite movie? NG: My favorite movie? That I've seen recently, probably Love Is the Devil; of all time, All That Jazz. Goatman: Were you influenced by the work of Joseph Campbell? I've always loved mythology, but I only recently discovered his work, and I can't help thinking of Sandman when I read it. Also, did you ever get any pressure from religious groups about the use of angels and demons along with the other "mythological" characters? NG: I've enjoyed Campbell, yes. I like Frazer (The Golden Bough) better, though -- perhaps because I don't like other people drawing patterns for me. I prefer to figure them out myself, even if I get them wrong. And apart from the Sandman boycott by the American Family Association and Concerned Mothers of America, I don't recall any other groups getting upset. Kyle: My question relates to your work on the English adaptation of Miyazaki's Mononoke Hime, released here as Princess Mononoke. I noticed two inaccuracies in the translation that did change the meaning of certain aspects of the plot. First, Kaya is said to be Ashitaka's little sister. She isn't. She's his fiancée. Second, at the end of the film, San tells Ashitaka that she loves him. Yet the English version diminishes this to her caring for him greatly. The fact that Ashitaka and San love each other is important to the resolution of the film. What was the reason these changes were made? NG: 1) Yeah, that one puzzles me, too. In my script she was his fiancée, which makes it more moving when she gives him the dagger (which she gives away), and the "brother" thing is a term of respect. I've no idea who decided to do all that brother/sister stuff. Wasn't me. (I asked Jack Fletcher and Steve Alpert if they'd written it, and they hadn't. I assume it's "someone at Miramax" dialogue. "Someone at Miramax" dialogue crops up from time to time all the way through the movie, but that's the only place I remember getting irritated by it. (Well, that and the decision to use the terms rifle and riflemen all the way through. The guns aren't rifles.) 2) Well, the translation that Ghibli gave me had her say, "I like you," not "I love you." I queried it and was told that was definitely what Miyazaki wanted: like, not love. So I wrote the "I really care for you, but..." line to try to shade between them. Ian: If you're worried about doing work at DC/Vertigo because of not owning the rights to what you create...why don't you try doing something at WildStorm, Homage, or something? I mean, Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, and the Cliffhanger guys own their own characters, and it's still DC anyway. But somehow DC treats WildStorm special, so as to allow creator-owned books. NG: I don't believe that Alan does own the ABC characters; I was under the impression, from him, that it's fundamentally work for hire. The issue is not whether I could work for DC or Vertigo and own the work. I could (I owned Stardust, which DC/Vertigo published). It's the complete lack of ownership of any of the Sandman-related characters, and the lack of control of what happens to them in other media. I wish someone who had a copy of it would post the William Farmer Sandman movie script online for people to read. You can read a summary of it at aint-it-cool-news.com -- search for Sandman and Farmer, I suppose -- which is how I learned what happened in the second half of the script, as I'd stopped reading, feeling sick, around page 30. It may give you an idea of why I wasn't too keen on doing more things that those responsible -- not DC -- would be able to control. zenmaster 2000: I am trying to convince my mother that comics aren't kiddie stuff anymore. I made her read Veils, and she loved it, but when I gave her the 24-Hours story and the last story to Preludes and Nocturnes, she said that these were not "mommy-approved." What stories of yours (or anyone else's) do you recommend to a stressed 57-year-old lady who has a sense a humor and talks a lot? NG: I don't know what comics to recommend to a stressed 57-year-old mother, I'm afraid. What kind of books and movies does she like? You could try her with Dream Country or Fables and Reflections -- or with Dream Hunters, which isn't quite a comic. RedJack: When and why was Sandman boycotted by Concerned Mothers of America and the American Family Association? I can't imagine why they would want to do this. Sandman was one of the least offensive comics I've read. NG: I was never sure why they boycotted us. The letter didn't make a lot of sense (it was printed in the letter column -- I think it was early in Brief Lives). We had to renounce our position on violence and homosexuality, I think...something like that. David Woxberg: I read something about a Marx statue in your study...so perhaps Sandman is partly about socialism? Or am I completely wrong here? NG: Yes, there is indeed a Marx statue in my study, but I'm afraid it's Groucho, not Karl. To be honest, if I could have summed up what Sandman was about in a short and easy moral, I wouldn't have taken seven years and 2,000 pages to tell the story I told. Keyring: Mr. Gaiman, there seems to be a very fatalistic attitude circulating around the comics industry of late. Online publications as well as The Comics Journal mention at least once a month how low readership is and that the whole thing is going to hell in a handbasket. I have also noticed that this fortune-telling is never accompanied by any sort of solution. As a reader, it is disheartening to think that the people who make the medium have resigned to being swept along until the industry dies without trying to change or stop its demise. Can you offer any solutions for people working in the industry as well as readers? What can we do to save the medium that we love? The medium is drowning in its own blood. Or so we are being told. NG: Um, good question, James. My own theory, when I was writing comics, was that if you wrote good stories that people wanted to read, people would read them. In 1995-'96 I watched all these other titles going into free fall, and Sandman climbed the sales charts, just because we didn't lose any readers. When I predicted the current crash (see Gods & Tulips, in which the 1993 speech about what was going to happen is reprinted), my suggestion for avoiding it was for retailers to push the stuff they want to read and like reading and to avoid pushing comics as collectibles or investment items. Comics will survive as long as we sell people stories they want to read. Randi: When you were doing the signing tour for Neverwhere, you'd mentioned that your next book was going to be about, amongst other things, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (a collection of his works has been mentioned in some of the book reviews in the last few weeks -- I'm cheating by looking at one of them for the spelling of his name). Whatever happened to that project? And why did you start on American Gods instead? NG: Hi, Randi. That was Time in the Smoke, a book I trust I'll write sooner or later. I suppose I felt that I'd written Neverwhere, a novel set under London, and then Avon published Stardust, a fantasy novel set in England in the 1850s, and if the next one of my books was a London-based historical fantasy, I'd be pigeonholed (as far as the Barnes & Nobles and Borders of this world were concerned) as a writer of historical fantasy set in England. But I also really wanted to write something that was here and now and much nastier and more disturbing than Time in the Smoke is going to be. Which is why I'm writing American Gods right now. Mono-Sabio: I was wondering why you wrote The Dream Hunters for DC Comics. NG: I wrote The Dream Hunters for a number of reasons, but mostly as a thank you for Karen Berger, my editor, for all her years of trust and support on Sandman, and for Jenette Kahn, who has done astonishing and sterling work behind the scenes to make the Death movie something good (and something I'd be making) and the Books of Magic movie something that wouldn't suck. I can't really see myself suing DC to try to get control (or ownership) of the Sandman characters. I knew what I was getting into when I signed the original contracts. Goatman: Are there any particular books that you feel everyone should read? NG: Book suggestions? Well, authors I love and would wholeheartedly recommend would include Robert Aickman, Jonathan Carroll, R.A. Lafferty, James Branch Cabell, Hope Mirrlees, Ernest Bramah, Fritz Leiber, Samuel R. Delany, Gene Wolfe, G.K. Chesterton, Kelly Link. What would I want young people to learn from them? The importance of stories, I suppose. And the magic of knowing things. channon: Throughout [Sandman] you make a great many literary allusions and write stories directly about literary/historical/mythical characters. I was wondering if all of that came from the formal education you received as a youth, or if more of it came from your own personal reading. Having been "educated" in a rural Southern American town, it always amazes me that anyone can walk away from an educational facility with as much intellect as you display. NG: Well, most of the cool stuff I know I got from school, but from hanging out in the school libraries and from a lifelong love of reading rather than being formally taught stuff by teachers. Anne: Any more plans to do more tours? NG: The plan is for the next Comic Book Legal Defense Fund [CBLDF] tour to be the last one. It'll probably be New York, Chicago, Portland, and Los Angeles. (If anyone reading is going, "Why isn't he coming anywhere near me?" all I can suggest is that you talk your local retailers into talking to the CBLDF about it.) I've done a few university lectures. I'm the special guest at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in March in Florida, at which I believe a number of Sandman-related and me-related papers are being presented. (I've seen one of the papers so far -- on the "Midsummer Night's Dream" issue of Sandman -- and it was terrific.) heavymurge: 1) Do you write because the stories are in you and you need and love to tell them, or do you make up the stories because of your need and love for writing and being a storyteller? In other words, are the stories born out of a love of storytelling or is the storytelling a way to give them life? 2) While writing or creating a story or character, do you ever doubt or have insecurities about your subject matter? NG: 1) I don't think it's an either/or thing. I think it's a mix of the two. There are stories; I love to tell them. The fun is telling the stories and making them up...but I wouldn't be doing that if I wasn't the kind of person I am. I'd be doing something much more sensible instead. 2) Oh, I have doubts and insecurities about everything, not just the things you listed, when I'm writing. Oddly, I rarely worry about my subject matter, though. I make things up. I like making things up. Why write fiction if you can't have pumpkin-headed janitors in it? I don't write for awards or for acclaim or for posterity or for professors; I write for readers, and I write for me. When awards and so forth come, it's always gratifying, but it's not why one does it. (Well, it's not why I do it, anyway.) And I already have more than my share of awards and recognition (academic and otherwise), so I don't really perceive a problem. Sisterhood of Jhe: How often do you write, and how long does it usually take you to write concepts such as Sandman that deeply move people? Do you usually have a sort of simple human theme before the actual character plot, or do you first come up with the character plot (in other words, did you first say, "A story of condemned, unrequited love" or "Dream travels to hell to retrieve Nada, a love of his past")? NG: I try to write every day, but then, I've usually got more than one thing on the go, and I rarely dry up on everything at once. As for how long does it take, that's kind of a "how long is a piece of string" question, I'm afraid. Sandman took from October 1987 (when I first got the idea for the story and the character) to January 1996 (when I finished "The Tempest") to tell. Mostly what I come up with first is people and places. Plots come after I have the people in long works; people come after I have the plots in short works. Theme is always somewhere in the background, like the music in a movie. Michael: Your graphic-novel work with Dave McKean seems to be very close to postmodern "mainstream" fiction, and most of your novels and short stories are probably pretty close to being straight "genre fantasy." Do you think you're ever going to write a mainstream novel -- or maybe write a weird art-house movie? NG: I may be working on Jonathan Carroll's Land of Laughs as a movie.... giantfan12: Next time you're in L.A., can we have lunch? NG: It's not very likely, as there are too many people I owe lunches to in L.A. Now, if you were somewhere more unlikely, like Anchorage or Pago Pago, where I don't know anyone, it'd be much more likely that I'd accept. Hunter: At what point in writing Sandman did it become clear to you that this would be such a classical tragedy? NG: Oh, from the start. That was never in question.
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