Neil Gaiman - S/D

Queer friendly as well. His politics have always been pretty good. But yeah in terms of actual writing skills, a lot of great ideas but hardly top tier when it comes pulling them all togther. I thought Sandman was the bollocks when I was a teenager but am scared to read it again.

I'm enjoying it so far, including the art, but it's better when it's a horror book. Anything to do with fairies, roman emperors, greek gods, Charles Vess, etc - forget it. And SO MUCH TEXT, I still want to skip it as much as I did when I was a teenager.

Also any version of the phrase "This is a story about stories" - argh.

I recall my teenaged brain saw all the text as a sign of literary weight - cf Moore's Swamp Thing (which admittedly holds up fairly well).

P. Craig Russell and Scott Hampton are the main two artists on the comic adaptation of American Gods

ah right - as far as I know that adaptation is written by Russell, as with all his adaptations, without collaboration from the writer.

Also any version of the phrase "This is a story about stories" - argh.

lol otm

Moore's purply prose in Swamp Thing doesn't bother me a bit, it's totally in the over-written horror vein of Lovecraft, Dunsany etc.

He's just a much better storyteller than Gaiman (or was), so it mostly doesn't matter, yeah.

Moore's prose style is horrible nowadays.

This is niche but lots of fun: http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Nothing_O%27Clock_(short_story) - it's the first thing by Gaiman i've wholeheartedly enjoyed since I was a teen

Ah, yes, his Who work. i loved The Doctor's Wife, did not like Nightmare in Silver at all

The Doctor's Wife was written four years before Sandman Overture, or I would have mentioned it.

Nightmare In Silver was a total mess, but also was changed significantly from his script, and had major issues in production otherwise too.

http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/neil-gaiman-good-omens-michael-sheen-amazon-1202522663/

Casting pretty dead on, albeit whitedudey

Xpost - The short story is a lot better than either of his episodes.

I couldn't get through the first issue of Sandman Overture. Tedious.

Unfortunately it's the best issue, too

I've just bought the Norse Mythology thing cheap on Amazon, am hoping that's better.

Ah well

most of the JH Williams III comics I've bought were for him rather than the writing, and Sandman Overture was a great setup for him to run wild on.

Oh yeah very beautiful art for sure.

I finished up my re-read of Sandman with Game of You and jesus christ what a shitty mess of a book that is from start to finish, from the ridiculous Delany intro in the TPB to the totally unearned pathos of the closing funeral scene, I wanted to throw it across the room when I was done with it.

literally nothing about the story makes any sense, the setup, the characters, the resolution. All feels made up as it goes along, with plenty of garbage details and crappily conceived gender politics window-dressing thrown in, the art is painful to look at, BLECH

I remember GoY being one of the medium to better arcs, but I haven't read any of the original run for at least a decade.

there's a lesbian character who describes being coerced (although tbf it isn't really clear what happens, her description is deliberately muddled to foreground the character's total ignorance of hetero sex, which is really weird) into sex with a man and then skips a period and thinks she is pregnant so she asks Barbie how can she find out if she is really pregnant/what should she do. She asks Barbie if it hurts to have an abortion and Barbie says "not really". It is one of the most tone-deaf and poorly conceived sequences, it's really flabbergasting. And this is in the middle of a story arc that involves a trans character being told she's not really a woman cuz "the gods don't see it that way", and is subsequently killed (along with a homeless black woman) because Thessaly violates some magical law about the moon. And then Barbie is sad that her trans roommate is dead but apparently bears no ill will to Thessaly even though it is 100% her fault god there are so many fucking plot holes in this thing.

So anyone else watched the Good Omens mini-series on Amazon Video or whatever they call it?

It's... as good and bad as the book. Aziraphale and Crowley are pretty damn great in it though.

oh nevermind, this thread is in comics... didn't realize

Discussed on the Amazon Prime thread.

any version of the phrase "This is a story about stories" - argh.

― Chuck_Tatum, Monday, 14 August 2017 12:57 (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

"Sandman is a story about stories"

Author @neilhimself explains the story of his famous comic ahead of its Netflix release#KayBurley MT pic.twitter.com/Zv0DjukouI

— Kay Burley (@KayBurley) August 3, 2022