Following His Dream

Neil Gaiman talks about his past,

present, and future as a storyteller.

One of the most creative writers in comics today, Neil Gaiman came to
popular attention when he created the Sandman for DC Comics almost three years
ago. Today he continues to write _Sandman_, as well as _Miracleman_ for
Eclipse. DC is currently publishing _Books of Magic_, a four-issue limited
series written by Neil and illustrated by a different artist each issue. An
established writer outside the comic book genre, Neil has written several books
-- most recently _Good Omens_ with Terry Pratchett. Neil was interviewed on
March 11 by Alex Amado.

Alex: Let's start at the beginning. Well, not the very beginning, but close
enough. I understand that you used to be a journalist, but you gave up all that
glamour and prestige to become a fiction writer. Why was that?

Neil: Well, I was a rotten journalist. Just terrible. But I was a pretty good
interviewer. I liked doing interviews, and I liked doing long magazine pieces.
But I wound up drifting over into newspaper journalism.

Alex: So you were a freelancer?

Neil: Yes, I was a freelancer working for most of the big London newspapers,
and I was terrible. I was really appalling. And I used to get really upset
when people would rewrite my stuff... I remember I once did an interview with
two English comediennes, two lady comedians -- actually one of them was
American -- Rudy Wax and Dawn French. I thought they were really great and
we really got on. I typed up the interview, and when I saw it in print, the
headline was "Will Two Man-Eating Feminists Make Mincemeat of Our Reporter?"
I said "What *is* this?" Then about two or three weeks later I got a phone
call from the newspaper, called _Today_, and they said "Well, you are our
fantasy and science fiction correspondent, and we want you to do a piece on
Dungeons and Dragons." I said "Fair enough." They said, "Well, great. Now
what we want is an article showing how it drives people mad and makes them
use black magic and commit suicide." There was a vaguely incredulous pause
on my side and I said "Well, no!" They said, "Why not?" I said, "Well, because
I'm not working for you anymore," and I put down the phone. That was really
how I quit journalism.

Alex: That's very dramatic.

Neil: It actually wasn't too dramatic. It was just that I wasn't very
good at it. I actually have more respect, strangely enough, for American
journalism, than I do for English journalism. American journalism tends
to be more balanced, possibly because they know that if they go too far
overboard, somebody is going to be suing them for millions of dollars.
Whereas English journalism seems to be designed to send other people's
children home in tears. I don't like it, so I stopped. I had been
writing a little fiction along the way -- I think I'd published three
books by the time I'd quit journalism completely. And even then, over
the last three or four years, I've done occasional articles for a London
magazine called _Time Out_, which is the London equivalent of _LA
Weekly_ or the _Village Voice_. Every now and then they come to me with
a journalistic offer that I can't refuse. One assignment I took was to
stay out on the streets of London, in darkest Soho for 24 hours. That
was fun, and I just got to wander around, and it all got very strange. I
was hunting, looking down all these alleyways for someone to mug me just
because it was so boring.

Alex: You have to keep the excitement level up.

Neil: It actually turned out to be an article about boredom, but it was fun.

Alex: You said that you had three books published before you quit journalism?

Neil: Yeah, ghastly beyond belief.

Alex: Does that mean that you're not going to tell me what they were?

Neil: No, no! That was the title: _Ghastly Beyond Belief_! However, you're
right, the second book I won't confess what it was. I no longer admit to
having written it. But the first book was called _Ghastly Beyond Belief_, and
it was basically a collection of quotes from the worst and most wonderful
and bizarre science fiction books, television shows, and movies. I did it in
conjunction with movie critic and author Kim Neuman. This is back in about
'83, '84 when we were both in our very early 20s and completely unknown. And
Kim is now very well known as a novelist and critic, and people keep coming
to us and asking us if they can republish _Ghastly Beyond Belief_, just on
the basis of our names. We keep saying "no" because we'd have to do so much
to it to get it publishable now. Neither of us has the time. And there was
also, of course, the _Hitchhiker_ book, _Don't Panic_, which was finally
written in '85, '86, and published in '87.

Alex: I had heard that there was a book which you had "disowned", and I looked,
but I couldn't find it anywhere.

Neil: Good. There's only one book I've ever written which was written solely
for the money... and it wasn't even very much money, but when you're very
young and very hungry, and somebody's just offered you the opportunity to
write a book, you take it. I don't even have a copy of it myself anymore.

Alex: That says it all.

Neil: It was just a very hasty thing... it was written in about three weeks,
and it is the biography of a pop group, and that's all I'll say.

Alex: On to your comics writing: your stories seem to have a lot to do with
mythology. They also seem to be well-researched in that respect. Is that just
out of personal interest?

Neil: Yes, it's personal interest, approaching a personal obsession. I
love mythology. Mythology excites me no end. One of the things that I
wanted to do when I started _Sandman_ was to do a comic that was
self-consciously mythological. It's been really fun because you can play
with all the mythologies that have gone by, and with the mythologies
that are springing up in the 20th century. So, on the one hand, you have
serial killers, who've been assimilated into 20th century mythology, and
on the other hand I can do _Midsummer Night's Dream_, or look at what
cats dream about. I love mythology. Every now and then I think there's a
level on which "Season of Mists" probably tends to hit more on theology
than mythology, but that's just the way that it works.

Alex: Yes, you can see that throughout. Are you familiar with Eddie Campbell's
work?

Neil: Oh, extremely. I wrote the introduction to _Deadface_.

Alex: Do you have any interest in doing something like _Deadface_? A lot of it
is just a comic book retelling of the actual myth of Bacchus...

Neil: I love what Eddie's done. I think that there are definitely levels on
which I feel like myself and Eddie are tuned into the same radio station,
which is a sort of crackly thing on which people chant occasionally and then
get drunk. We definitely have similar interests. There's a level on which I've
sort of held off on doing anything with the whole Bacchus/Dionysian mysteries,
which I'd love to get into in _Sandman_.

Alex: But you won't be doing that?

Neil: No, because I wouldn't want to step on Eddie's territory. But I don't
think I ever have an urge to go in and retell a story. That's very rarely how
I approach things. What I like doing is taking stories which people are sort
of familiar with and messing them around. I like using bits of mythology as
a springboard... for instance, one of the things which I tried doing in
"Season of Mists", which I was convinced wouldn't work, (and I'm still not
sure it has), was the idea of having all these different representatives from
all these different mythologies wandering around. Instead of saying that any
of these are exclusively true, it's saying that they're all true. You can have
the Norse gods on the same stage with the fairies and the Japanese deities,
and even DC's own little Order and Chaos.

Alex: It paints an interesting picture. It sort of pushes the limits of
theological conception.

Neil: Yes. I kept expecting people's -- and even my -- suspension of disbelief
to collapse in on itself, but for some reason it hasn't. It worked far better
than I had imagined.

Alex: That may have something to do with the medium. With comics, you have a
more receptive audience than you would if you were writing prose.

Neil: Well, I don't think there are that many differences between comics and
prose readers. Generally speaking you can get away with anything in prose
that you can get away with in comics, but you have to use different techniques
to get those effects, and pull those things off. One fascinating thing about
writing _Good Omens_ and the few short stories that I've done since then is
that I saw just how different the two forms of writing really are. It takes
a different set of tools to get comics to work than it takes to get prose to
work.

Alex: Do you prefer one over the other? Comics or prose?

Neil: I like telling stories. That's what I like doing.

Alex: Just stories, whatever the medium?

Neil: Well, I've always found comics more exciting. But that's because it's a
more collaborative medium. If I write a short story or a book, I couldn't
pick it up for pleasure. I couldn't look at it and say, "This is really good."
Rather, I would think, "Oh, God... that sentence!" Whereas I can pick up an
issue of _Sandman_ and think that it's really good, because it's not what I
wrote. What I wrote was a script, a blueprint. What I'm looking at is something
that i didn't create. You had to have Todd Klein lettering and Kelly Jones
drawing it, or Danny Vozzo coloring it, or Dave McKean drawing it... and you
end up with something that you, as a creator, can really enjoy. I like that.
One of the special things about comics is that I can get a kick out of them,
too.

Alex: Back to _Sandman_ ... What was it that inspired the Shakespeare and
Sandman connection?

Neil: Okay, well... I wanted to do the "meeting in a pub every hundred
years" story. Incidentally, that was the oldest idea for a story I think
I ever had. I got the idea for that story when I was about 17. Two
people meet every hundred years, one of them is immortal and the other
is not dying. But I wanted to wait on it, until I thought that I could
do it justice. Then I thought, well, okay, it goes into _Sandman_. The
story got written. So, the story was written in 1989, so it occured in
'89s through the ages. And when I got to 1589, I knew I couldn't do the
Elizabethan period without Shakespeare and without Marlowe. Then I did a
bit of research and realized that Shakespeare and Marlowe were pretty
much the same age, they were both about 26. Marlowe was the most
respected playwright and poet in the land, and Shakespeare was a
little-know actor who'd just written _Henry VI Part I_, which is
supposed to be on of the worst plays ever written in the English
language. I had this lovely vision of them; the wannabe next to the one
who was. So I got them both on stage, and I was very surprised when the
Sandman immediately wandered over to Will and said, "Listen, we've got
to make a deal..." Which is what happened. Which just left me for the
next two or three months wondering what the deal was, and trying to
figure it out. Then I basically had _A Midsummer Night's Dream_.

Alex: So, you basically just wrote yourself into this corner, and had to work
your way out?

Neil: Yeah, that's what I mostly do. And, by definition, there's going to be
one more Shakespeare story.

Alex: Have you decided which it's going to be?

Neil: It will be _The Tempest_... although, you probably won't see much
of the play in that one because that will actually be about the action
of writing. That will occur round about _Sandman_ 39 or 40. That will
be the last of the Shakespeare stories, because it's a three part deal.
But, no, I didn't know ahead of time. I didn't know when I sat down to
write _Sandman_ 13. The flip side of it is also that I told Charles Vess
that I'd love to do something with him, at San Diego a couple of years
back. So, he called up and said "I'm ready, I want to do a _Sandman_" So
Karen rang me up and said "Have you got a _Sandman_ for Charles Vess,"
and I said "Boy, have I ever!"

Alex: So how was it that you decided to take up _Sandman_ in the first place?

Neil: Well, while I was working on _Black Orchid_, DC got cold feet. We were
almost finished with _Black Orchid_, or were like halfway through it, and
somebody at DC suddenly woke up and I got a phone call from Karen Berger,
saying that they thought they were in trouble. She said, "Look, it's this comic
about a character nobody's ever heard of, by two guys that nobody's ever heard
of, and it's a female character at that, and female characters don't sell.
We've got a bit of a problem." So I asked what she was actually saying. She
said, "Well, one of the things we're going to do is we're going to give Dave
this Batman project. We'll put _Black Orchid_ on hold, give Dave this Batman
project, and we'd like you to write a monthly comic book. So that way, at
least when _Black Orchid_ comes out, Dave will be "That Batman Artist", you'll
have a monthly book to your credit, and maybe we'll sell half a dozen copies."
So I said, "I think you're wrong, but fair enough. Do you have any titles you'd
like me to do?" She said "What would you like to do?" So, I tossed various
characters at her and was told no on all of them. Afterwards she said, "Well,
what about that thing you were telling me about at the last UK convention,
about _Sandman_?" Now, the thing about _Black Orchid_ was that it was very,
very realistic. It was sort of film noir; all the dialogue was realistic, and
the artwork was very realistic. And I think both Dave and I were chafing under
that a little. When Karen asked what I wanted to do next, I had suggested a
Sandman graphic novel, featuring the old Simon and Kirby 1970s incarnation
because there were a few things that I thought were really interesting. I liked
the idea of a character who lived in dreams, who had no objective existence.
So later, she said, "Well what about that _Sandman_ idea?" I said, Okay. She
said, "Great, but make it a new one. You know, forget the old one, just do
a new one."

Alex: No pressure...

Neil: Yeah, so I sat around for a few days just thinking. Trying to put
together a character who could exist in the DC universe, which is what
they wanted, and who would also satisfy me. The kind of character I'd
like to read about. Who could exist in a book that wouldn't be a
"monster of the month" book. It wouldn't be a superhero book. It
wouldn't be predictable. It would just go off wherever it wanted to go
off, so I could write whatever sort of stories I wanted to write. So I
figured I should just reduce it to the basics, and what I got when I
reduced it to basics was Dream.

Alex: It all seems to have worked out very well. One of my favorite touches
was the way you worked all those old Simon & Kirby issues into the plot, so
that the Sandman who came before wasn't entirely extraneous.

Neil: I like doing things like that. I tend to be inclusive rather than
exclusive. I like including it all. It seems to be a very unfashionable
way to think, way to act, way to carry on. I don't know why. That's the
nice thing about _Sandman_. It allows me to be inclusive and I can take
it anywhere I want it to go. I've just finished writing "Season of
Mists", and I'm gearing up for four or five historical stories. I'm
currently writing the one set in the French Revolution, with Lady
Johanna Constantine on the run with a severed head through the French
revolution. After that I'm going to be doing a couple of Roman stories
with Bryan Talbot. And after that, perhaps an Arabian Knight (sic)
story. It's fun because I can go anywhere. I'm not terribly frustrated.
There is a Batman project which I was contracted to do years ago, and I
will be doing it with Simon Bisley. I've been offered other Batman
projects since, but I've turned them down chiefly because I don't really
have very much to say about Batman. I mean he's a guy who dresses up in
a bat suit and hits people.

Alex: It's been done to death.

Neil: So, I'm doing this one book which will be a pretty big hardcover thing
with Simon Bisley, in which Batman goes to the circus. And that will probably
be it for me and superheroes. Basically, I think that over the last 3 or 4
years most of the teenage and preteenage fanboy desire to take these characters
and mold them in my image has been satisfied.

Alex: So, on to _Miracleman_: the last several issue have been encapsulated
stories, which seem to be building up to something, but I can't tell quite
what. Do you have a long-term plot in mind for that series?

Neil: Yes. There is a long-term plot. What we're basically doing in "The
Golden Age" is examining Utopia. We are looking at a Utopia and seeing what
it's like for the people who live in it. After "The Golden Age" comes "The
Silver Age", which occurs about 20 years down the line. That shows the initial
results of the world it's created, and it's sort of one big story. After that
will come "The Dark Age", which is about 300 years down the line. It's sort
of the end result of the Miracleman world.

Alex: How did you end up with _Miracleman_?

Neil: Well, in 1986 I had just finished writing _Violent Cases_, and I'd
shown it to Alan [Moore], and this was way before _Black Orchid_ and
_Sandman_. Alan rang me up and said, "Listen, Neil, I'm going to quit
_Miracleman_ with the end of book three, which will be in about 6 or 7
months I expect. How would you like to take over when I'm finished?" So
I said, "Gosh, I'd be honored." That was how it began. As you know, it
turned out to be a little more than six months, more like three years.
It was a good year between issues 15 & 16. That was basically how it
happened. What was interesting there was that although I'd plotted out
the whole thing back in 1986, when I came to write the stories in the
Golden Age, in each case I'd moved on a long way. So I had to go back to
the story in each case and find out what made it interesting for me now.
So, for example, the Warhol issue; I had the idea back in 1986, when
Alan first suggested it, of having the sort of Hades beneath the pyramid
where they were bringing people back. At first I thought it would be
lovely to do a reworking of the legend of Persephone in the underworld
with Gargunza coming back every six months, with them forever bringing
him back, trying to get a Gargunza they could use. When it came time to
write the story, I'd lived with that story for three years, and it no
longer held much interest for me, however, at the time I was briefly
obsessed by Andy Warhol. So, the story wound up being about Warhol,
about these two men, about their relationship. But the core of the idea
was still there. It was just how I told it that changed radically, if I
had written it in 1986, I would have just told the story and then had
the shock ending with them doing it every six months. Not that I'm not
saying that what I did was better, I'm just saying that it is the result
of having lived with the story for three years. After a while the story
stopped being interesting, once the initial bug of creation was gone.
For each of the stories I had to go back and find out what made the
story interesting for me today, which I've done with greater and lesser
degrees of success. One that I'm really fond of is the next one to come
out which is called "Winter's Tale". It's a children's story, or at
least, a large part of the actual story is a children's story. It's a
children's book with prose and illustrations which tells what happens
when Winter goes across the galaxy. One of the nice things about
_Miracleman_ is that I can go off on tangents that I probably wouldn't
allow myself to do in _Sandman_. In _Sandman_, if there's a choice
between telling a story two way -- one of which might work very well or
might be a total fiasco, and another way of telling it which probably
will work -- I will go for the one which probably will work. In
_Miracleman_ I am far more tempted to go for the way that might be a
complete mistake, might be a major fiasco, might make me the laughing
stock of the comics industry. I'm more tempted to go for the stranger,
more out-on-a-limb way, to see if it's going to work or not.

Alex: Aside from _Sandman_ and _Miracleman_, what are we going to see coming
up in the future?

Neil: One of the most exciting things is that this summer Tundra is finally
publishing _Violent Cases_ in America. Not only is it in America finally, but
it's going to be in the form that it should have been seen all along. That is
to say, reproduced from Dave's original full-color artwork.

Alex: So it was in color?

Neil: Yes. It was in sort of monochromatic colors: blues, browns, and grays.

Alex: The Titan version was in black and white.

Neil: That's because at the time, nobody had the budget. Tundra can afford to
do it in color.

Alex: Yes, Tundra seems to be an up and coming company. They have a lot of
good people working for them.

Neil: Yes, they're terrific. I'm pleased that they've got _Violent Cases_.
Over the last three or four years, pretty much every comic company in America
worth anything has said that they'd like to do the American edition, including
Epic, DC, Eclipse, and others. But I'm really pleased it's Tundra. So that'll
be out in June. I'm relieved, because the question I'm most often asked, even
more than "When will we see Death again?" and "Who is the missing member of the
Endless?" is "How do I get a copy of _Violent Cases_?" So finally people can
find out. The answer is that you go down to your local comic store and you buy
it.

Alex: We've had copies on occasion, but it's very difficult to get them.

Neil: Well, it's never really been properly distributed in the U.S. Copies
have occasionally trickled in, but it's a book that tends to be more rumored
than seen.

Alex: It is a fantastic story. The main character, as an adult, looks very
much like you. I take it that was intentional?

Neil: That was intentional, but it was more intentional from Dave's
point of view than from mine. I'd just written it with a narrator. Dave
said, "You're going to be the model for the narrator." So, yes, it's
true. I admit everything. What else are we going to see...? Well, in
England, we did a series in a magazine called _The Face_, which was
called "Signal to Noise", which was the story of a dying film director
making his last movie in his head. That will be coming out from Gollancz
in the UK, and well, somebody, I imagine, in the U.S.... that's in about
a year's time. That's me and Dave McKean in full color. You've already
got _Good Omens_ in hardback out there... _Good Omens_ the movie should
be coming out sometime.

Alex: Yeah, I understand that you just got back from Los Angeles. Did all go
well with the film treatment?

Neil: Yes, we have an approved treatment! We have a very, very long and very,
very detailed approved treatment. So, it's now just a matter of writing a
script, then getting a director, then sitting back and watching as they make
a mockery of our book. The executive producers are Scott Levinson and Mart
Rosenfeld who were the executive producers of _Home Alone_.

Alex: You said you thought it had a pretty good chance of actually being
produced.

Neil: I believe the statistics say that, on average, one in ten movies
that are optioned actually get made. What both Mark and Scott (who are
the producers) and Sovereign Pictures (who are going to be making it)
are saying is that it is going to be made. None of them are interested
in buying movies just to sit on, they want to get them produced. I'd say
it's got a fifty-fifty chance of making it.

Alex: That's good news.

Neil: We think so. Let's see... "Sweeney Todd" is coming out, on which
I'm working with Michael Zulli, and we'll probably do it in _Taboo_ as a
workin-progress and, starting about a year after it first appears in
_Taboo_, bring it out as a comic in its final or finished form. That
will be a sort of meditation on manners and meat and lots of other
things beginning with "M". What else?... That Batman project with Simon
Bisley... a new book with Dave McKean called _Mister Punch_, which we're
both just talking about right now.

Alex: It sounds like you're keeping busy.

Neil: I don't think there's any shortage of work out there. Occasionally I feel
a little like a juggler who's thrown a few too many chainsaws in the air, and
at this point I simply have to keep throwing the chainsaws into the air, and
hoping that none of them lands on me. Yes, I'm busy. Insanely, madly, busy.
In addition to all that, I'm writing a children's book.

Alex: That's fun! Do you have a publisher in mind?

Neil: No, just for fun. It's always nice writing things that don't have homes
to go to. Then I feel like I'm writing it on my own time. If I had a publisher
for it, I'd have a deadline.

Alex: This way there's no pressure.

Neil: Exactly. I'd feel guilty otherwise.

Alex: I understand that you're editing a benefit book that's coming out as
well.

Neil: It's actually already come out, it just sold 100,000 copies, and is
going back to press for another 50,000.

Alex: I don't believe we've seen it out here.

Neil: No... you may get to see some of the 50,000, though. The 100,000 just
disappeared! In fact, it was very American of us; we did a signing for it
on Saturday, and we actually ran out of comics about ten copies from the end.
We ended up signing pieces of paper for people. The book was actually called
_Comic Relief_.

Alex: I like the title very much.

Neil: I thought you'd like the title. _The Utterly Comic Relief_ comic. It's
an English charity event called "Comic Relief" which will occur this year in
about a week's time... actually in four days time, on Friday, March 15th. It
is officially "Red Nose Day," when people put on red noses and do silly things
to make money for charity. And there's an all-night telethon, and various
other things. So, I approached the organizer, who is a guy called Richard
Curtis, who is also the writer of the _Black Adder_ series, and a movie called
_The Tall Guy_. Richard and I got together and we roughed out a plot which
Grant Morrison then took and expanded on, and i then took and broke down into
pages. Then with Peter Hogan (who used to edit _Revolver_), Richard and myself,
we edited the thing, which was a complete and utter nightmare, because there
were at least eighty people involved in a sixty page comic with one story.
You're talking about...

Alex: A logistical nightmare!

Neil: Yes, and we also wanted to get it right, because I always thought that
the idea of those "Heroes for Hunger" and "Heroes for Hope" were really good
ideas, but the final product left a lot to be desired. So we actually tried
to do something that was good. I don't know if we succeeded... it's messy and
it's fun, and it goes all over the place.

Alex: It sounds like fun. I certainly hope we get some of them out here.

Neil: It's got a beautiful Dave McKean and Gary Leach jam cover, and a lovely
John Bolton back cover. And inside is practically everybody. Dave Gibbons does
an amazing job.

Alex: I'd be vastly disappointed if the U.S. never saw any copies of this book.

Neil: I certainly hope that you get some. Unfortunately Titan didn't get many
copies this time 'round. They got a few, but maybe they'll get a real shipment
this time around.

Alex: Who is actually putting this book out?

Neil: It's being published by Fleetway. And Fleetway is donating all the money
they make to charity. The paper was donated, and everybody donated their art.
And with any luck we can raise half-a-million dollars for charity. Two-thirds
of it will go to Africa for famine relief, and the other third will stay in the
UK to help the homeless and the young underprivileged, et cetera.

Alex: Well, it certainly sounds like a worthy cause. By the way, when are you
going to be in the U.S. again?

Neil: I'll be at the San Diego Convention in July.

Alex: Okay, well I'm all out of questions, so I guess I should just say thanks
for your time.

Neil: It's been a pleasure.