small followup

I should have checked. Alexa Kitchen has a website of her own at http://www.alexakitchen.com/. Lots of her comics up there.

And it seems to me that curiosity is an amazing weapon in the industrial espionage arsenal, as is the apparency of having obtained something for nothing -- http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=95556&WT.svl=column1_1...

....
It's letters like this one that make me glad that I don't do a problems page...


I really love your work and I think you're a very talented writer. However, I recently read Good Omens and my girlfriend who happens to be a devout christian caught me reading it (I had to read it while she slept beside me, otherwise bad things could (and did) occur). Yes, I probably should have read it in the bathroom or something. :)

I know this sounds absurd, but do you have any suggestions for getting her back? I love her and I love you. I don't know what to do.

-seymour

Your girlfriend left you because she caught you reading Good Omens next to her in bed? And she left you because she's a "devout Christian"? Had she read Good Omens and not liked it and told you not to read it too, or is it just the sort of book that she'd leave a boyfriend over without actually reading?

I keep trying to understand this one, and just end up with my mind sort of boggling.

I think that any attempt you make to get back together with her is going to have to involve you getting across to her the concept of fiction. It's made-up stories. They don't imperil anybody's immortal soul. Possibly pointing out that there isn't actually a verse of the bible where Jesus slags off funny fiction and explains that people who think that Good Omens is funny will send you straight to hell, then warns that there's a special place in Hell for people who read Harry Potter books too, might work. Or she might just think you were being facetious. Pointing out that Good Omens wound up nominated for a major religious fiction award in 1989, that I once got a fan letter about it from an Anglican bishop, and that most religious people find it, er, funny might also be a good idea -- better still would be getting her to read it too and having a discussion about the ideas in it if you want to have some kind of future together in which you can exchange ideas and communicate without fear.

Failing that, I can't see that life is going to be much fun if you wind up spending the rest of it with someone who forces you to sneak into the bathroom at night to get your secret fix of fictional matter. You can give up reading things by me for the rest of your life (I don't mind, I'll cope) but someone who leaves you because you're reading Good Omens is probably going to want you to give up reading an awful lot of other stuff as well before she'll come back. Good Omens is the equivalent of a lightweight gateway drug to the world of heretical ideas in fictional form. Think of the precautions you'd have to take to make sure you weren't discovered before you'd be able to read Dan Brown, or Preacher...

Sunday tabs etc....

The most excitement we're having at this end is that my assistant Lorraine has decided that it's time to join the landed gentry and is house-hunting, and, because I've wound up with an unexpected (but by no means unwelcome) few days at home, I had an enjoyable afternoon yesterday getting a little fresh air and sunshine by volunteering to be her driver as she went looking at houses. Being Lorraine, they tend to be scary-looking thin Victorian places, the scarier-looking, thinner and more Victorian the better. Today, she and her friend Betsy are out looking at more places, and I just got an excited phone call from her which began "I think I just found my house! It's just by the cemetery!" So no surprises there.

Right. It's Sunday Morning, and it's time to close a bunch of Tabs:

Someone sent in a clip from a video of me talking to Heidi MacDonald at the West Hollywood Book Festival last year about why I started this blog...

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&n=2&videoid=631337763

And looking at the Beat to do the Heidi link informs me that Alexa Kitchen (now 8 years old) has a new book out.

When Denis Kitchen first told me that his daughter (then about 5) was drawing comics I made the kind of noises that you make when friends tell you that their five year old daughters are writing operas, performing brain surgery or designing shopping malls -- a sort of a "how very sweet and I hope you aren't going to actually show me any of this please god" sort of noise.

And then one day Denis showed me her comics. Which were good. Really honestly actually good, rather than something you just say is good to keep a proud parent happy. So now Alexa has moved into Scott McCloud territory with a book called DRAWING COMICS IS EASY (Except When It's Hard). You can read about it at http://www.comicon.com/thebeat/2006/06/alexa_kitchen_comics_child_pro.html. I plan to buy a copy for myself, and another copy or two for local schools and godchildren and suchlike.

I don't know if it'll be available through Amazon, but if you don't have a local comic shop I bet you can ask DreamHaven about it.

Then again, they may have more information over at http://www.deniskitchen.com/

...

On the theory that what North Carolinans think are the best books may not be what New Yorkers think, the NewsObserver puts together its own list (by asking 32 local authors) of the best books in the last 25 years, and Sharyn McCrumb earns herself a place in Heaven.

Meanwhile, the oddest thing about the reactions to the Book Magazine survey -- like this article in the Times -- is the general failure to notice that it was just another internet survey, and the widespread journalistic assumption that there are thousands of readers of Book Magazine who actually came out and voted. (It occurs to me that if I'd drawn attention to it here and actually asked people to go and vote for me I'd undoubtedly now be one of Britain's top five Greatest Living British Authors, and I'd be feeling sillier than I already am at #21.)

It's not that the survey itself is meaningless... hang on. Scrap that. Yes, it is.

...


Incidentally, if you want to suggest to the SF Book Club what the great SF novels of the 1990s might have been, you should go and investigate http://antickmusings.blogspot.com/2006/06/what-are-great-sf-novels-of-1990s.html

...

Gene Wolfe's story "A Sob In The Silence" is one of the most disturbing stories I've read in a long time. It's in Strange Birds, the chapbook he did with Lisa Snellings (a Locus review of it is at http://slaughterhousestudios.blogspot.com/2006/05/strange-birds-indeed.html).

...

Over at http://www.fabulist.org/ (a site well worth visiting daily - how else would you learn about the Avenging Unicorn Playset?) they are giving away wonders and freebies: http://www.fabulist.org/contests.html . Put up a banner, join their mailing list and win win win. (I was going to put up their little "Magnetic Fields and Damn Sexy Art" link picture here, but Blogger is not cooperating.)

...

While sick in bed last week, I got to read what's out there so far of Gunnerkrigg Court, a really enjoyable webcomic, of the kind that will undoubtedly be out sooner or later in paper form (actually it looks the author's self-publishing it currently in paper form -- http://www.lulu.com/content/215167). It starts at
http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=1. Lots of different flavours in there -- it's a semi-gothic funny-sweet school story with mysteries and robots and so forth -- but I kept finding myself reminded of the early days of reading Bone. Nice stuff.

....

Having taken some flak for saying what I thought about the problems with Wikipedia, it's interesting to see that there are people whose opinions of the Wikipedia "Hive mind" problem are significantly lower than mine - http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier06/lanier06_index.html.

...

Everyone I know (and many people I don't) has sent me this story and picture about a bear treed by a cat.

http://www.gothamist.com/archives/2006/06/10/picture_of_the_4.php

I've had words with my own cats about this. I've asked them what I pay them for and whether they think that cat-food and vet appointments grow on trees. I've explained that other cats can tree bears just by hissing at them. I refer them to my own short story "The Price" and point out that fighting devils is much harder than scaring bears.

My cats in their own turn point to the ten-foot tall reinforced steel bird-feeder pole in the garden that the bear casually bent into a boomerang shape in order to get to the bird-feeders, and tell me to just shut up and feed them and anyway they have some serious naps planned for this afternoon.

I suspect -- from the lack of obvious bear activity in the last few weeks, and from the fact that the most exciting thing that the motion sensitive garden camera has caught is a posse of eleven year old girls on a trampoline -- that the bear has finally moved on. We're right at the southernmost tip of their territory here, after all. I'll put up some birdfeeders next week and we'll all find out.

...

There's a Harlan Ellison short story in which the entire universe cries out for vengeance and starts to array itself against a crooked plumber. Reading this saga of some people who decided not to return a Sidekick that they found, I kept thinking of that story... http://www.evanwashere.com/StolenSidekick/

...

Right. Off to work. I'm retyping a story I wrote in 1984 for the M is For Magic collection, and writing Eternals #3. When we did 1602, we had through to #5 finished before Marvel solicited #1, a much more civilised way of doing it, to my mind. Or at least, less stressful.

oops and nudity

I'm up and about again, thanks. Although I don't think I'm going to be able to fit in the trip to the UK that was meant to be happening before I went to Seattle next week. Which, considering how much I've been on the road in the last few months is probably a really good thing.

Cheers for the interview links - think I need to become one of these lucky people like you who gets to review beautiful looking books like Lost Girls for free.
However I think an NSFW was in order for the rest of the Suicide Girls site - I hit that 'First Time Here? Learn about" button and couldn't really hit Alt F4 fast enough as thoughts of my boss seeing the screen as he walked into work with his morning coffee dashed through my brain.
I hate to moan and know you're sick but it had to be said.

Ah, but the interviews themselves are work-safe. I think it's only if you go wandering off away from the interviews, into the Suicide Girls undergrowth that you find all the naughty nudie nakedness. (It's been many years since I wandered away from the interviews, and I'd thought that you had to be a registered member to actually find yourself looking at the tattoos and curvy bits.) So my goof, and sorry about that. The Suicide Girls website is, for interviews, the online equivalent now of what Playboy was from the 50s to the 70s -- an amazing number of conversations with an astonishing array of people.

...

I promised to mention my buddy Cat Mihos's art event in LA on Sunday. This is your invitation (http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c32/kitty-9thlife/THISlil.jpg) and Cat says to let you know that it's actually an open bar, not a cash bar.

Chip Kidd is guest blogging over at Powells -- http://www.powells.com/blog/?author=59. Chip's one of my favourite book designers, and a novelist and articulate speaker, and is generally speaking much too bright and talented for any one person. I think we should divide him into bits, like a starfish and see if each bit grows up into a mini-Chip.

Hi, Neil. I've never attempted to ask you a question until now because I never know what to say to you other than I love your work. This is not really a question as it is more of a.. have you seen this? type of thing. Since I am also a huge David J fan I see he's re-issuing the music he did for "V for Vendetta"...http://www.davidjonline.com/home.html

I just thought I'd inform you and whomever reads your journal that it will be available again soon.

Cheers,
Jocelyn


and if that weren't enough

Hey Neil,

The Ditty Bops are crossing the US by bike! Hooray for them! http://www.thedittybopsbiketour.blogspot.com/

Matt


I adore the Ditty Bops and love their music, although I have a horrible feeling I owe them a large pile of books that I promised to send them but suspect I never did. (Go and see them. Ask them about it. Report back.)

Here's a small Ditty Bobs video I'm fond of http://www.warnerreprise.com/asx/dittybops_wishfulthinking_450-v.asx

Dear Mr. Gaiman,
this isn't a question, exactly, but in case you are at all interested I wanted to let you know how the first stage production of Neverwhere is going. We, the Savannah Actors Theatre, have just moved into our brand-new space, which is a kind of warehouse compartment. It was originally zoned as industrial. The cast and crew have been sawing, hammering, painting, and coughing on sawdust nonstop for the past week getting it ready for opening. Neverwhere is the very first show to be produced in this space. It is very exciting for all of us, and I wanted to thank you for granting us the permission to do this so that it's even possible. If you happen to be anywhere near Savannah, Georgia from the 22nd of June to July 1st, and chose to come see our show, we would be honored and thrilled beyond description.
Sincerely,
Eve (Door)


I don't know if I'll be able to make it -- but I'll do my best. (A google gives us more information at http://svactorstheatre.livejournal.com/ and

Dear Neil,
there is a question that sometimes creates a nice discussion between me and some friends who criticize your works, I hope you can answer me.

The issue is related to the amount of references - to literature, music, mythology and so on - that you insert in your comics and novels. For me it is very intriguing and enjoyable to discover the origin of all these references: sometimes it is easy sometimes not. The "critics" say that it is difficult understand what you really want to say.

In fact, you don't provide any explanation to these references, neither in footnotes nor in appendices or in any other form. It seems that you don't care whether the readers can or cannot grasp them.
Why this choice?

Thank you.
Clizia


I think that the references to other things in stories are a bonus -- they can add texture and resonance and sometimes humour and magic. But I also tend to believe that stories should work as stories for someone coming to them perfectly cold knowing nothing -- (well, maybe not completely nothing).

And for that matter, if people come back to the stories later, knowing more than they did the first time, sometimes they'll find that the stories have changed and grown while they were away.

Still sick and in bed. Getting really bored of bei...

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

in the wee small hours of the morning

From the a bit late now dept...

Hi Neil,I was wondering if I could ask the advice of an expert in this area...many of my friends are now counting down the days until the end of the world, which happens to be next Tuesday, June 6. Do you think this one will be it and if so, do you have any plans for the Apocolypse? I think, if it were to happen, that I would stock up on movies to see before I die, and chocolate, but I wanted a second opinion first. Sarah

Hi Sarah. Well, I'm sure by now you've learned the bitter-sweet truth. Who would have dreamed that the end of the world would have come to us on rivers of molten chocolate? ("This is the way the world ends -- Not with a bang, but with a Wispa," I thought, before remembering that Wispa bars were discontinued in 2003 and never made it to the US anyway.)

Dear Neil,I'm absolutely thrilled to see the preview page for Absolute Sandman. The colouring seems to improve the story a lot. However, I was wondering if there was a cut off point for the colouring, such as not re-colouring the stories in volumes 9 and 10, since they really don't appear to need them. (This is, of course, assuming that all goes well and there will be more than one volume of Absolute Sandman.) Thank you.-Meg

From Sandman 50 on we're in good shape. I've suggested that we may want to look at newly separating the colour in 21-50, because we could do it better now, but not really changing anything (except for when we get to Brief Lives, which was beautifully coloured by Danny and completely and continuously botched up by the Irish colour separators).

I think you can rest assured that all four volumes will come out. They're already planning the huge display box to put the four volumes into.

...

Hi Neil,
I've been a fan of your work for awhile now and I just came across your site. I've had this nagging question, about authors, stuck in my brain for awhile now and I thought you might have an answer or opinion.
If you really enjoy an author's stories and then you find out the author (not you) is a jerk or believes in some fairly wretched things would you keep reading this author's works?
I suppose it's similar to the whole crazy celebrity dilema. Do I really want to go see a movie that looks good even though that guy is in it?
Thanks,
Kyle

If I were only allowed to read or enjoy art or listen to music made by people whose opinions and beliefs were the same as mine, I think the world would be a pretty dismal sort of a place. I love the work of many creators who self-avowedly believe or believed things that I consider to be "fairly wretched", not to mention wrong-headed, lunatic, irresponsible or simply wrong. Worse yet: there are artists, actors, songwriters, authors, whose work I love, like or admire and who, biographers or historians tell us, actually did things that were utterly reprehensible. And worse even than that, there are all those things by Anonymous, who could have been or thought or done, well, anything, and we'll never know...

Ezra Pound was a fascist, an antisemite on a level that makes the Aryan Nation seem wishy washy, a traitor (or at best, a collaborator), and I'm very glad I got to read his poetry, and appreciate it and learn from it. I could list dozens more without breaking a sweat. Most, probably all, human beings get to do awful things and believe things that other human beings think they should be burned for believing, and they get to do and believe wonderful things too, and artists, writers, musicians, creators, actors, are nothing if not human beings.

The art isn't the artist, the poem isn't the poet; trust the tale, not the teller.

(The sad flip-side is I've met people -- writers and artists -- over the years who I liked immediately, with whom I found myself agreeing on everything to do with art and aesthetics so closely that we might have shared the same head, people whose world-views were pretty much mine, whom I'd talk with far into the night and whom I parted from excited that I'd met them, looking forward to nothing more than reading their writing or looking at their art... and then I would find what they had done, and, at least as far as my taste was concerned, the books would be uninteresting, the drawings ugly or clumsy. And in an odd way, that hurts more than liking the work of someone who behaved badly, or thought in a way that I consider offensive or wrong.)

...

Lots of people have written in asking what I thought about DC's New! Buxom! Lipstick Lesbian! Batwoman!, but luckily the Onion has gone out and surveyed several fictional people, so I no longer need to have an opinion on the matter. http://www.theonion.com/content/node/49201

...

Harpo's Ghost is coming.... and you can win a musicphone with Thea's back catalogue preloaded. http://www.theagilmore.com/

Damn. We should have done a big Good Omens ad today.

That my family doctor is also a friend is a very good thing. It meant I could call him from an airport, drive myself home, and have him turn up a few minutes later at about 10:30 at night, peer down my throat, put me on antibiotics and tell me to stay in bed and out of trouble for a bit. (Which is what I'm doing. Along with sipping the Nin Jiom Pei Pa Koa, which is a wonderful throat syrup that Mimi Ko has been bringing me from Hong Kong every few years, and which tastes exactly like a medicine that works ought to taste in my head, and thus must work.)

Ever since I was a schoolboy, serious throat ick seems to be my body's way of telling me that maybe I should stop moving around for a day or two and think about getting some sleep, so I guess this is best seen as an enforced day off.

I've finally now seen a few rushes from Stardust, which looked really cool - the De Niro/Gervais scene was wonderful. Visually, it's really interesting - it didn't look like a fantasy film, which I liked, but to be honest I only had a few minutes to look at a heap of DVDs, which then vanished again, so there's not a lot more I can tell you. Some photos of locations are up on ain't it cool - http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=23514 and at this forum http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=266999.

Over at The Dreaming -- http://www.holycow.com/dreaming/ -- Lucy Anne has done a recent update, but also appears to be getting tired. (If you like what she's been doing, let her know. I think she's been doing a fabulous job...)

I see that ANANSI BOYS has been nominated for a Mythopoeic Award this year -- http://www.mythsoc.org/awards.html -- which made me happy. But I wouldn't want to be a voter or a nominee in any category of those awards this year -- too many excellent books for the voters to choose from.

Hi Neil.Is it OK to like the old Sandman colors a lot more? Will they disappear forever?I know the old colors looked real bad in some places, but the one page you showed us was, I think, OK, but the new coloring seemed too computer-y for my taste.Weel, sorry to bother you with color discussion, I shall go back to my own colors now. Thank You.Cédric

Of course you can like them more if you want. But you'd be amazed at the places in the recolouring where you can now tell what's going on, where you couldn't before.

The biggest difference is in the first five issues, when everyone was new to this and none of us had a clue what we were doing.

Neil buddy,I just finished reading Eddie's Fate of the Artist and I seem to remember hearing about the "Pantry pry spoon" mentioned in the book, from this very blog. Still, I find myself asking, because Eddie seems so esoteric and quirky in the book, is Eddie Campbell like that in real life and does his family really at the mercy of the "whims of the artist" as they appear to be? You would know having known him for so long, so is this really Eddie's world and we're just living in it? Aaron

I think it would be fair to say that, in my experience, the portrait of Eddie and the assorted members of the Campbell family and occasional visitors, as portrayed in his ALEC comics series are accurate. If you were to ask the members of the Campbell clan about it they would probably point out that they spend very little of their life on that sofa, or perhaps that that stopped wearing the dress Eddie always draws them in about a decade ago, or that their perspective on events is perhaps under-represented. But it's just like that.

At the end of this post from last year -- http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2005/09/leaving-soon.asp -- Miss Hayley Campbell wrote to tell of an incident that hasn't turned up an Eddie comic, but might as well have done.

The story of my visit to Eddie's house, as reported in After The Snooter, is actually a combination of two different visits, but everything in there happened like he says it did.

Which reminds me -- I loved this little Eddie comic/interview at Powells.com http://www.powells.com/ink/campbell.html

And you can read the first nine pages of After the Snooter at http://www.artbomb.net/pdf/snooter.pdf courtesy of the fine folk at artbomb.net (here's Matt Fraction's review of Snooter.

And I hope that sooner or later someone gets all of Eddie's Alec material collected into one huge book. ABSOLUTE ALEC or ABSOLUTE EDDIE CAMPBELL. I'd buy a copy anyway.


I can't wait to get my hands on the complete Absolute Sandman set. I've read in your journal that Vol 1 is due November 2006. Any target release dates for Volumes 2-4? Will a boxed set of 4 ever be released? If yes, when? I've been trying to complete the 10-volume hard cover set of the Sandman series (specifically the numbered unifying trade dress designed by Dave McKean... I believe it's the second print... Vol 1 is purple and the colors go all the way to green...yellow...red...). I'm missing volumes 2,3,4 and 6 and I can't find them anywhere. I've even tried Amazon.com and eBay. Any idea/tips where I can get my hands on these books?I must say, you are a god among men. Thanks for the wonderful stories.Kind regards,Tonichi Tuason

I believe that Volumes 2 and 3 will be out in 2007, and the final volume should follow in 2008, along with a Bloody Great Box that they will all fit neatly into, for purposes of display. I can't help on the missing hardbacks, but my default answer to "Where can I get..." is usually start with DreamHaven Books' online store http://www.neilgaiman.net/ . (Current info at http://www.neilgaiman.net/news-home.php)


Hi Neil,Thanks very much for the time you took for an interview at Balticon, I know you were tired and I very much appreciate your time. I wanted to let you know the podcast with your interview is live, located at http://shouldwrite.blogspot.com/2006/06/special-show-7-neil-gaiman-interview.html Best,Mur lafferty
I Should Be Writing - www.ishouldbewriting.com

You're welcome. I have no memory of what, if anything, I said during the interview with Mur and Paul, or during the interviews with Count Gore De Vol (http://www.countgore.com/Rack.htm this week only) or with Fast Forward TV, done on the same day.

I just fell asleep WHILE TYPING THIS. Which is my cue I think to stop.

Several Answers

Dear Neil,

the new coloring for the new Absolute Sandman looks great.
I have a couple of questions regarding it:
1) Who's supervising the new coloring, and who's doing the coloring?
2) Were the new reproductions made from the orignal inks/art?
3) Do you feel that the new coloring better represents your original vision, the artist's original vision? is it a matter of technology?
4) will the Absulote Sandman be your "Artist's definitive version" in terms of coloring?

thanks (and very much looking forward to seeing you in Israel),

Avri

1) Danny Vozzo is doing Sandmans 1-8, 17 and 18. Lee Loughridge is doing The Doll's House (9-16). It's being supervised by Karen Berger, Absolute editor Scott Nybakken, and me. And I'm signing off on every panel.

2) No. Most of that stuff was sold 17 years ago. We got a few pages, although the most useful thing was a cache we found in my attic of photocopies I was sent for proofing purposes, and some of the artists had clean photocopies of some pages. There are only a couple of pages now, in Sandman 16, where the black line leaves something to be desired. I bet the originals will surface as soon as Absolute Sandman Volume 1 comes out.

3) Yes, to all three. The original technology means that with every new printing on cleaner paper with sharper inks, it looks worse. There was never the time or the money to fix anything in the old days, and stuff simply went out as it was, sometimes to the detriment of the story. As things went on, we got to computerise the colour, and the technology gradually made things better. Compare Preludes and Nocturnes to The Kindly Ones, just from a standpoint of colour and you'll see what I mean.

4) I very much hope so. Maybe in 30 years the technology will have advanced to the point where we have to do it again, but probably it won't.

(I did look in the FAQ and your blog archives, but I didn't find an answer, so sorry if it's there and I missed it).
Is there a publication schedule, even tentative, for the Absolute Sandman? When should I start looking for it in shops, or dropping heavy hints to my relatives and friends that they should buy me copies?
Thanks
Nicolai

I believe Volume 1 comes out in November 2006.

Hi Neil,

I know I shouldn't trust much of anything I find on wikipedia, but, well, color me gullible. I was reading a bit about the Justice League animated series and how they have essentially banned all Batman characters from the show to prevent liscensing issues with the movie. Then I stumbled on this:

"-Bruce Timm stated in a Wizard interview that they considered featuring an appearance of Neil Gaiman's interpretation of the Sandman character but they weren't sure how to incorporate that character into the tone of the show. He went on to say "But now, it's not even an issue. The whole Vertigo universe is closed off for us . . . ." (Wizard 173, Mar. 2006, p. 69). This is partially due to Gaiman's deal with DC Comics, that no other writer may use the characters he created without his permission."

Now, I can't remember if I read it on your blog or not, but I know that when you had a conference call with my Graphic Novels class last fall, I asked you specifically how you felt about other people using your characters. It certainly does not seem like you to do something like this.

Thanks,
David

I think that goes from an actual Bruce Timm quote to silly editorialising by someone writing the Wikipedia entry.

I always loved the idea of doing a Sandman/Batman Animated cartoon episode, and we were definitely talking about it in '93, after Vertigo came into existence -- I remember talking to Paul Dini about what actors could do Morpheus's voice, and had voted for, I think, John Hurt, although I may be misremembering.

I'd assumed that they lost interest. But there was definitely some kind of Vertigo/DC divide that came into existence in there somewhere, imposed from DC/Vertigo editorial and above, worried, I was told, that a kid would feel pressured by continuity to pick up a "For Mature Readers" title and the world would end.

Either way, nothing to do with me, guv.

Hey, As you've begun The Eternals I realized I had a (somewhat) relevant question for someone who has been in the comic book, graphic novel, whatever we seem to be calling it nowadays world for a while. What with the amount of comics that are out nowadays and the increase in distribution and interest due to comic book based movies and games and the like. Does it phase you at all that the latest releases of the newest sparkliest issues are becoming just as easily-and illegally- available as the mp3? I only ask because a quick search on any bit torrent search engine for V for Vendetta or Hellboy, or xmen will brign up VERY large compendiums of scanned in comics. My question therefore is do you think that in the future this will start causing problems? Do you think someone will step up as comic book equivalent of the drummer from Metallica? Your journals, a great diversion from what is normally a boring graphic design class. Keep it up and keep us informed.
-Jeff

I think mostly people rather like legal things, and tend only to go for the illegal versions when they can't easily access the legal ones. I wish that you could get Sandman, say, through, f'rinstance, iTunes, or just download your monthly comics, if that's what you want to do. It'd be an additional income stream for publishers, and also, I trust, for creators.

Me, I'd still read the paper version. But that's me. I don't download the eBook versions of my novels, either, but I'm glad they're out there for people who want them. (Here's a link to a free sampler -- http://www.neilgaiman.com/works/ebooks/ebookdownload.)

sunday morning again...

Working hard right now, but the last few weeks of travel seems to be taking its toll -- mostly right now I want to sleep, and my throat feels sort of painful, although it could be a side-effect of the vaccinations the other day, or just accumulated jet-lag (I was asleep by 9.00pm last night).

So it's time to close a bunch of tabs...

Lisa Snellings talks about the convention and some of my favourite things over at http://slaughterhousestudios.blogspot.com/2006/06/strange-birds-more-strange-and-mimi-ko.html

Over at Comic Book Resources they show side by side an example of the old colouring side by side with the new ABSOLUTE SANDMAN recolouring and reproduction....




(Leaving aside the crispness of the reproduction here, one thing that's impressed me over and over as we've worked on ABSOLUTE SANDMAN is the number of places where what seemed like poor storytelling on an artist's part turned out to make perfect sense once the colouring was fixed. Danny Vozzo coloured 80% of Sandman anyway, so he's fixing Preludes and Nocturnes and two issues of Dream Country. In addition to the first 21 issues, we're also reprinting the thumbnails, script and pencils for Sandman #19, "Midsummer Night's Dream". And there will eventually be a box-case large enough to hold all four volumes of Absolute Sandman.)

Here's a little article about Stardust filming on location in Norwich. (And I hear rumours that two of the dead princes will be played by half of Little Britain and half of The Mighty Boosh, respectively. I'll leave it to you to wonder which half of each.)

The Slingbox has been released in the UK. So if I got a UK Slingbox and plugged it into say a relative's broadband and TV box, could I legally watch UK TV anywhere in the world? Could I if I bought a separate TV license? (A little article at the Stage blog.) And then once I'd pondered that, I started fantasising about a warehouse filled with hard disks and Slingboxes and connections and immediate access to ALL THE TV IN THE WORLD... And, of course, in reality I don't watch much TV. But I love the idea of being able to do it if I want to...

JaNell Golden has made a page about me at Squidoo (http://www.squidoo.com/neilgaiman), for which she seems to have dug up a remarkable number of obscure things, including a video interview with Tori about me, and many other cool oddments.

podcasty thing

When I was in Australia last week, I got a very early in the morning phone call from Joe Quesada. He wanted to talk about The Eternals.

I am not at my best at 6:30 am.

My voice, after a night-before of talking/reading/answering questions, sounded like something rattling around in a tin box.

The conversation was taped.

http://makeminemarvel.blogspot.com/2006/06/eternals-podcast.html

...

PS. According to the Bureau of Homeland Security, New York Has No National Landmarks That Might Interest Terrorists. "That was a key factor used to determine that New York City should have its anti-terror funds slashed by 40 percent--from $207.5 million in 2005 to $124.4 million in 2006." The official list omits..."The Empire State Building, The United Nations, The Statue of Liberty and others found on several terror target hit lists. It also left off notable landmarks, such as the New York Public Library, Times Square, City Hall and at least three of the nation's most renowned museums: The Guggenheim, The Metropolitan and The Museum of Natural History."

I keep finding myself wondering whether there's a little footnote in the report somewhere explaining that New York did once have a National Landmark, but some people flew a couple of planes into it.

Births, Eternals and Clean Bills of Health

This blog (and its author) would like to tender its official congratulations to Michelle (aka Miss Mousey) and the inestimable Kurt on the birth of Allistair.

Lots of information on the Eternals over at Newsarama -- http://www.newsarama.com/marvelnew/Eternals/GaimanEternals.html is an interview with me filled with lots of strange little hurriedly transcribed typos, but comprehensible for all that, while http://www.newsarama.com/marvelnew/Eternals/preview/issue1.html is the first 8 pages of Eternals #1. (Also on the Newsarama site is a three part Bob Greenberger article on the history of the Eternals.)

(And after a long morning and early afternoon of blood work, probes, etc, I got a clean bill of health. My HDL levels are still too low, but they're also the highest they've been since we started keeping records, about ten years ago, so I'm not too worried. I was also informed that I'm dehydrated, and should drink more water, which is a fine thing to hear from one's doctor. But I shall do my best.)

A lovely article from the Times about how, in the UK, placement in bookshops is bought and paid for -- http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2202068,00.html. (It's not much different in the US, while in US supermarkets and airports, I believe that the "top ten" paperbacks are simply paying their money to be in that position.)

To end with, a warning about foolish spam filters... http://society.guardian.co.uk/localgovt/story/0,,1786189,00.html.
(These days I use Cloudmark as a spam filter, which I highly recommend -- http://www.cloudmark.com/?rc=n7hj4 is the link with code it gives me.)