The Dreaming

By Michael Niederhausen
© 1999 Michael Niederhausen
This essay was submitted to the faculty of Xavier University, Cincinnati, OH, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English.
Approved by:
Dr. Tyrone Williams - Faculty Thesis Advisor
Dr. Norman Finkelstein - English Department Chair
Table of Contents

• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2  Signifying
• Chapter 3 History of the Comic Book Medium
• Chapter 4  Intra-Comic Book Signifying
  The Crossover
  The Sandmen
  Alan Moore
  Other Comic Book Signifying
• Chapter 5 Literary Signifying
• Chapter 6 Signifying on History
• Chapter 7 Conclusion
• Appendix I  Personal Interview with Neil Gaiman
• Works Consulted

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Penny Blubaugh

Melissa Scott is the author of eighteen books, most classified as science fiction. She was asked The Question by a friend of her mother’s after publishing her first novel. “So tell me Melissa, why does someone who went to Harvard write this stuff anyway?”[1]

Emma Bull is the author of six books, short stories and poems, most classified as fantasy. She was asked The Question by her father as her second book was due to come out. “Have you ever thought about . . .do you have any interest in . . .do you think you’ll ever write something that’s not science fiction or fantasy?”[2]

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dave Mockaitis
mockaits@uiuc.edu

In 1975, Laura Mulvey’s essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” was published in the film journal Screen. A few years later in 1981, Mulvey published “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ inspired by King Vidor’s Duel In the Sun.‘” Since the publication of these seminal texts, psychoanalytic film theory has become a force to be reckoned with. Whether or not a film scholar accepts Mulvey’s Freudian and Lacanian position to cinema, one still has to deal with the theory. Among the theoretical insights provided by Mulvey was the idea that cinema provides two different types of pleasure from looking. The first type of pleasure is that of scophophilic voyeurism. This is often the function of sexual instinct and describes how male viewers look at women on the screen. The second type of pleasure detailed by Mulvey is that of scopophilic narcicissism. This is the function of the ego libido, the pleasure of identification, and makes up the comfort zone of the Lacanian Imaginary or the Freudian pre-Oedipal. Mulvey is quick to point out that these two types of visual pleasure interact and overlay each other, yet she also deals with them as dichotomous concepts.

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Contents:

p.2  Caveat - A Word to the Wise

p.3-8  Chapter 1 - There are no facts, just interpretations

• What is narrative?
• So what is narrative, and how is it portrayed in comics?

p.9-20  Chapter 2 - You shouldn’t trust the storyteller, only trust the story

• Finding the narrators.
• Similarity and potential chronological earliness.
• How does this fare with Vladimir Propp and his analysis though?

p.21-37  Chapter 3 - For the Eye altering alters all

• Imagery and interpretation.
• Names and identity.
• Hearts and eyes.

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This chat took place on the 30th of October 1998

<Puck> First, I’d like to thank Neil for joining us, and Andy at Avon Books for helping to organize this.

<Puck> First question is from Ehich. Ehich, go ahead.

<Ehich> On the event horizon chat you talked a bit about your interest in finding out the relationship between fairy tales, myths and religion. How do you think that this is related to philosophy? I mean; do you think there is any bridge between Mythos and Logos; litterature and Philosophy? and if so; how do you think this bridge can be explored?

<NGaiman> Ah, right. Let’s start with the small ones… (er, typed with a small amount of irony, that). Honest answer, I don’t know. And as an addendum… I try not to think about it too much. Especially when I’m writing. Mostly what I’m doing is telling stories, which is a strange sort of occupation — it’s part instinct, part craft, part skill and part luck. There are places I sometimes think that it’s wisest not to go… or rather, not to go on purpose. I was fascinated when Zelazny pointed out that the first books of Magic followed the traditional Cambellian Heroes quest pattern, as it was not designed or intended to go that way: it was just where the story went. As a final note on that… I’d hate to pretend to be unconscious of the craft. But when it comes to the relationship between myth and philosophy, hell, I’m still trying to figure out why we need fairy tales.

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Most of the creators identified herein as “comic book rebels” have bucked the status quo of how comic books are published and the role creative people are relegated to in the traditional business structure of the industry. Yet Neil Gaiman continues to regularly work with established publishers like DC Comics. How, then, is he “rebel”?

Gaiman was chosen as being representative of a new order of creators. Cosmopolitan and nomadic, they successfully maintain their creative autonomy while demanding the respect of their chosen publishers through a clear sense of who they are, what they are worth, and a canny blend of independence and diplomacy. In short, a creator plying the sharpened skills of both a seasoned professional and the shrewd businessman, able to freely move between all media, and work with any publisher.

Born in 1960 in Portchester, England, and growing up in Sussex, Gaiman left school purposely to become a writer. His first professional work in the early Eighties was as a journalist, meeting and interviewing many authors and cartoonists whose work he admired. Alan Moore showed him the rudiments and structure of how comic scripts were crafted, and in short order he chose to abandon his early company-owned comics to collaborate with artist Dave McKean on their first graphic novel, Violent Cases (Escape, Titan, 1987; reissued in color by Titan/Tundra, 1991).

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Straight from AOL, here’s a transcript of Neil’s interview on February uh… 24 (?) 1996. I’ve done a bit of editing to clean it up and boldface the speakers’ names.

OnlineHost:
OnlineHost: *** You are in “The Odeon”. ***
OnlineHost:
DCOMLeib: Tonight’s event with SANDMAN creator NEIL GAIMAN will begin in three minutes.
DCOMLeib: Tonight’s DC COMICS ONLINE event with Sandman creator NEIL GAIMANwill begin in two minutes!
DCOMLeib: Tonight’s event with DEATH creator NEIL GAIMAN will begin momentarily….
DCOMLeib: Welcome to tonight’s VERY special DC COMICS ONLINE EVENT!
DCOMLeib: With me here this evening, making his first DC ONLINE appearance is SANDMAN creator NEIL GAIMAN!
DCOMLeib: The highly anticipated sequel to the DEATH miniseries is on sale now!
DCOMLeib: DEATH: THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE is its title!
DCOMLeib: Welcome Neil!
NGaiman223: Thanks. Hi. Fire away!
DCOMLeib: Okay…first up….from SHADES30….
Question: Why did you decide to focus on Foxglove and Hazel in the first issue of DEATH: TOYL?
NGaiman223: Because it was their story. Death crops up a bit more in ish 2 an d3.
NGaiman223: but DTOYL is the story ABOUT Foxglove and Hazel. That’s why I focused on them.
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To The Best Of Our Knowledge, broadcast May 31, 1995
A production of The Ideas Network, University of Wisconsin

INTRODUCTION

Neil Gaiman: I remember when I was about seven, somebody gave me books of American comics. They were just the most wonderful, alien things. Everything about them was strange. I was perfectly willing to believe that America was this country filled with people in strange costumes who hit each other through walls. It seemed every bit as likely as the other odd things in there, like fire hydrants and pizzas and things that we didn’t have in England.

Jim Fleming, ANNOUNCER: Neil Gaiman kept up his childhood fascination with comics by becoming a comic writer. He creates the best-selling adult comic, SANDMAN — definitely not pulp. Open a SANDMAN comic, and it’s full of pictures and word balloons. But start reading along and you enter a somber, mysterious world. It’s the dream world of Morpheus, Prince of Sleep, Gaiman’s leading man. Dressed all in black, with dead-white skin, gaunt body and jet-black spiky hair, he looks nothing like the other flying superheroes. He’s not out to save the world, either. Instead, he haunts his way through tales of myth, history, horror and fantasy. Gaiman has only six more adventures planned for Morpheus, but he told me where they all began.

NG: When I was 15, we had one of those things where you do a battery of tests and then they bring a careers advisor in to talk to you about careers, and the careers advisor said, “What do you want to do?” And I said, “I want to write American comics.” And there was a very, very, very long pause. And then he said, “Well, how do you go about doing that?” And I said, “Well, you’re the careers advisor, I thought you were gonna tell me.” And there was another really, really, really long pause, and then he looked at me rather desperately and said, “Have you ever thought about accountancy?” And I had to confess …

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This file courtesy of Aron Wallaker - wallaker@vnet.ibm.com

August 23/94

The Beguiling presented Neil Gaiman at the Bathurst Street Theatre in an even to raise funds for The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Representatives were on hand from both the Canadian and US branches of the CBLDF distributing information and selling CBLDF merchandise. The evening was split into two segments; in the first Neil read from among his prose works, in the second he answered questions submitted by the audience.

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Interview with Neil Gaiman. Conducted October 26, 1989 12:30 am. by Brian Hibbs, Owner of San Francisco’s Comix Experience. Transcribed by Brian Hibbs. Edited by Brian Hibbs, and Neil Gaiman.

Editor’s Spoiler: If some of the questions and answers seem non-linear, please keep in mind this interview began at 12:30 A.M., and didn’t finish until nearly 2 A.M. (Or 11 am in whatever time zone I was on.-NG)

COMIX EXPERIENCE: Let’s start off with an incredibly typical question — the obligatory “Why did you decide to start writing comics?”

NEIL GAIMAN: Because they were there? No. Because I wanted to, because it was a medium that I loved. I’d read comics extensively as a kid, and wanted to write comics as a teenager. I drifted away in the late seventies when there was very little interesting to read. I would occasionally pick up and flip through a comic, then put it back down in disgust. Then one day in early ‘84 (or very late ‘83) I was on Victoria Station in London and they had a pile of comics at the newsagents, including Swamp Thing. It was a title that I had loved as a kid, so I picked it up, thumbed through it, and thought. “‘ang on, this is literate, this is really interesting.” But by this point I had a very deeply ingrained prejudice against comics, and put it back down. Over the next month or so I’d pick up the Swamp Things, flip through them, and put them back down again. And finally, I think it was Swamp Thing #28, I bought it and took it home with me, and that was that. I’d discovered Alan Moore, discovered what he was doing. I realized you could do work in comics that was as every bit as mature, and interesting, and exciting, as anything that was being done in mainstream fiction or in modern horror literature. It was like coming back to an old lover, and discovering that she was still beautiful.

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