And you can thank Gwynedd for this one, as it didn’t show up in my searches:
The Jeff Zaleski interview with Neil has been posted on Publishers Weekly’s website.
That silence you are hearing is the absence of the word “Who?” being said when the question of “Do you have any books by Neil Gaiman?” is asked in bookstores across the country.
The Quilt has it’s own page on Michelle’s corner of cyberspace. As well it should.
###
Gnooks recommends what authors you should read next based on three authors you have previous enjoyed. It also attempts to map all the writers in the world in relation to each other.
From the ALA:
The American Library Associations (ALA) Graphics department is pleased to introduce a new ALA Graphics poster featuring the Sandman (Lord of Dreams) in his library with the phrase A book is a dream you hold in your hand.
The poster from Neil Gaiman, creator of the Sandman series, features original artwork by illustrator Craig P. Russell and was created in cooperation with DC Comics.
Gaimans landmark comic book, The Sandman, first appeared in 1989. Original and fresh, it focused on the art of storytelling, running the gambit from African folk tales to Shakespeare. The Sandman won several awards, including the only World Fantasy Award ever given to a comic book. Russell will be featured in the new DC Comics graphic novel Endless Nights.
ALA Graphics produces the popular line of celebrity READ posters, featuring notables such as Oprah Winfrey, Mel Gibson and Tony Hawk. By adding the Sandman to the Graphics series of promotional materials that support literacy, libraries and reading, libraries can reach an audience interested in Graphic Novels and comic books.
Copies of the poster are available for sale at the ALA store Web site www.alastore.ala.org for libraries and fans alike. Proceeds from the sales of this and other READ posters helps fund the work of ALA.
“I can say that smiling, because I haven’t just had to make a $100 million movie for $4 million, but Dave was about three foot taller than he is now, and had hair.”
And that’s only one of the numerous quotable lines in Rob Worley’s rather length piece about the MirrorMask presentation at Comicon. The Comic Book Resources article includes new images as well.
Rob Worley also posted to CBR about the press conference in which Neil discussed projects ranging from Miracleman to The Graveyard Book, but focusing on 1602. It included this quote from Neil:
“The premise of ‘1602′ is as follows: It’s 400 years ago and the Marvel universe, for reasons that we do not know when we begin, has started occurring 400 years early. It’s not an Elseworlds. It’s not a ‘What If.’ It’s actually happening and it will have some spillover into the real Marvel Universe,” he said, adding that the series would make some alterations to the universe.
###
More teasers for 1602 have been posted at ComicCon Pulse, including a number of preview pages.
###
And it’s a pretty good week in terms of audience numbers when Neil not only gets mentioned in People, but in Time as well (albeit that’s only online), as part of their roundup of ComicCon coverage.
And yes, I fully appreciate the wonder of being able to say “Time magazine” and “ComicCon coverage” in the same sentence.
From a children’s books round up in the August 4th People magazine:
The Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Dave McKean.
In a mildly scary tale, a girl’s confidence grows after she detects strange sounds in the house and persuades her family to help dispel the intruders.
While that is a summation of the plot, it leaves out two of the main joys of the story; the first being that it’s very funny, and the second being that the wordplay is a delight to listen to. This is a book very suitable to be read aloud to any of the children in your life, even if they are in their mid thirties.
SciFi Wire has posted more details on MirrorMask.
###
From Comicon Pulse:
New York Times best-selling author and comic book legend Neil Gaiman’s long-awaited Marvel Knights limited series 1602 is just a little more just 3 weeks away, set to debut on August 13th. Featuring art by the ORIGIN team of Andy Kubert and Richard Isanove - with cardstock covers by Scott McKowen - the 8-issue series takes place in the year 1602, in the final days of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. But if the series is set 400 years in the past, how are familiar contemporary Marvel Universe stars like Nick Fury, Daredevil, Dr. Strange and the X-Men exerting great influence over those times?
According to Gaiman, that’s the question at the heart of his story…
“Although 1602 will look at first glance like a ‘What If…?’ story, it actually isn’t,” Gaiman said during a recent Marvel press conference. “If you read it much more as a puzzle and an adventure, things will become more apparent as the story goes on. We’ll learn how the world got this way, whether we can get it back, and what it means.”
But in addition to being tremendously satisfying for long-time fans of the Marvel Universe, Gaiman also wrote the series as a fun, all-ages romp - created to be highly accessible and appeal to Marvel fans as well as those who don’t know a Spider-Man from a Black Widow.
The 40-page Marvel 1602 #1 (JUN031581, $3.50) goes on sale 8/13 and retailers are reminded its Final Order Cut-off date (FOC) is 7/24. Readers, ask your retailers to reserve you a copy.
Look for color preview art from 1602 later this week, and attached are several character sketches from Andy Kubert featuring some faces that should be familiar to most comic book fans, and a few that may or may not be familiar faces…
###
From Jonah Weiland’s roundup of day four ComicCon news at Comic Book Resources:
Neil Gaiman spoke on the subject of Miracleman at his panel with Dave McKean on Sunday:
“We know that [holding company] Marvels & Miracles … has at least a third share of Miracleman,” Gaiman said. “We’re planning on bringing the Miracleman stuff back into print.”
In addition, look for a Randy Bowen Miracleman bust “mostly because Todd is doing an ugly Miracleman statue, so we said ‘well, let’s make a nice one.’”
As for who actually owns the character at this point, it’s a tough one, but there’s good news for Gaiman-supporters.
“One of the things that came out of the end of the court case last year is that we couldn’t tell if Todd actually owned any pieces of Miracleman or not. We thought he did, until we got access to all the legal papers.”
Those who think Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean are a little tough on parents in their children’s books will be glad to know they plan on giving parents some equal time in a future children’s book, to be called Fortunately, the Milk.
“I felt so sorry for the dad in The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish that I wanted to do a book about the dad and all the cool stuff he’d done,” Gaiman said in a panel Sunday.
Work hasn’t begun on the book, but the duo plan to do it “one day.”
Hopefully that means it will find it’s way out of Lucien’s collections sooner rather than later. There’s still enough projects filed under Gaiman to fill a few shelves, though.
From Zentertainment by way of Marvel…
From Comicon Pulse:
Reported by Greg Hatcher from CBR:
Neil Gaiman explained today at Comic-Con International in San Diego that his newest venture, A Short Film About John Bolton is really all Dave McKean’s fault.
“It looks like the Death movie is actually chugging forward, and might actually get made, with me as director,” Gaiman said. “So Dave McKean, who is very practical, suggested that I direct something else first. And, well, here it is.”
After that introduction, an enthusiastic audience of fans was treated to the first-ever public screening of “A Short Film About John Bolton,” which purports to be a documentary about a gallery opening featuring an exhibit of Bolton’s paintings. However, there’s a lot more to it than that — but you won’t find any more information about it here, as Gaiman explained he would prefer not to have the surprises spoiled. Although it is billed as a documentary, it is actually fictional and the “John Bolton” character is actually a paid actor (although the real Bolton has a cameo.)
Gaiman also said that there have been several distributors wanting to put the movie on the market as a DVD and it’s just a matter of working with Scar Films to finalize a deal with one. “But there’s no one at Scar to answer the phone, they’re all shooting a film called ‘Layer Cake’ in east London. As soon as that’s done we can talk about the DVD.”
After the screening, there was a question-and-answer session where Gaiman fielded inquiries about various other projects as well as the film.
Asked about the ongoing “Miracleman” controversy, Gaiman smiled and said, “Let’s save that for Saturday, shall we? There’s a panel where I’ll be talking about ‘Miracleman’ and ‘1602′ and give the long version then, but for now I can tell you that buying ‘1602′ would help a great deal.”
But tonight his focus was mostly on the film. “There’s a really cool thing about being a director,” Gaiman said. “You get to justify decisions simply by saying, ‘because I say so.’ And it’s done the way you want it.
“The two most important things that I learned about directing is you have to have an answer. It doesn’t have to be the RIGHT answer — but when you have thirty people waiting for you to make a decision you can’t just say, ‘well, I can see both sides.’ You need to be definite.
“The other thing I learned is that you do have to get it right. You can’t fix everything in the editing room. You have to have it to start.”
Asked if he was going to direct other films, Gaiman said, “Well, Death is chugging along. It’s not like, you know, ‘Well darling what I really want to do is direct,’ it’s that Death is my baby and I don’t want someone else to muck it up. And there are things I am good at, like storytelling and writing novels. And there are things I’m bad at, like putting up shelves. You don’t want me to put up your shelves. I’ll be terribly unhappy and the shelves will just fall down and it’s bad all around. So I wanted to see if directing a film was like putting up shelves for me, or if it was something I could do. And it was enormous fun.”
Reported by Beau Yarbrough from Comic Book Resources:
Neil Gaiman will help relaunch Books of Magic a title he originally created as a miniseries numerous iterations ago. In that series, the heavy hitters of the DC/Vertigo magical universe showed a young boy, Tim Hunter, that he was destined to be the greatest of them all, and to warn him to ready himself of a coming threat. That coming threat has failed to be an issue in previous series, but will be taking center stage in the new Books of Magic, to launch in early 2004.
“It was sort of sad that the character I’d created … sort of petered out because he had nothing to do,” Gaiman said. He “had several long conversations with [series writer Sy Spencer] about it … and we liked telling the story in Vertigo’s future.”
The war that Tim was prophesied to have a central role in will be the focus of the series, featuring an older and “cooler” Tim Hunter.
We can do a lot of actual damage to characters. Characters that are live right now, we can kill,” Gaiman said. “It doesn’t render anything non-canonical that happened, it just gives it all a point.”
Gaiman co-write the first issue and will be actively consulting on the series.
“The first script is unbelievable,” editor Shelly Bond said. “It’s Tim like you had never imagined that Tim could become”
Neil's Journal Where's Neil?
lucy_anne | 
07 31st, 2003| 
