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.