My problems with Neil Gaiman as an author
With regard to what my livejournal friend John, aka : commonplacebook , has to say about Gaiman: I shall HAVE to try the "Sandman" series, I haven't really yet, just a couple of comics. I shall have to list my few experiences with Gaiman's work.
1) Read about 1 of his DC stories in his "Well at the End of the World" series in a comic at the end of 1993, which is when I was REALLY going off comics... I know, I know, as you were getting into them. Didn't like it. It was something about some guy who "studied civics from the age of 12 and amazed his teachers" (ie, a political "Jesus" figure!) who became US President at the age of 19 or something (!!)... I thought at the time, even JESUS took till he was 30, to be confident enough to go out, preach and do large-scale miracles! Crikey! But then this woman tried to assassinate him, but she didn't kill him but his wife, but the President showed compassion to her and went to talk to her in prison, where she proved to be mad, but she still was executed in the end. (Great!!)
And what REALLY galled me about it, was that there was NOTHING in it about conspiracies, which I was really getting into at the time!! All kinds, UFO and political.. and the X-Files was really into it's swing by then, and I was glued to that, and I thought: "Next to that, Gaiman, [bet you got teased for that surname at school!] you're pathetic!"
There weren't even any parallels with Kennedy in the story! Nowhere did Gaiman say that there was this shadowy elite in the US, which had been conspiring to assassinate presidents it didn't like, since Abe Lincoln at least!! All he had was some kind of vague metaphysical figure, a man with a balloon head who was supposed to be symbolic of something, I'd have to look up the story again, and "different realities", or sth! No tasty conspiracy stuff for me to get my teeth into.
Then, or soon after, I noted to myself: "American mainstream comics DO NOT feature the theme of conspiracies, no matter that this could make them a bunch of money and get them lots of fans - look at X-files and look at all the books catering to 'conspiracy nuts' of all stripes!
"Therefore I adjudge them to be FAR more conservative and stuck-in-the-mud than American TV!" (A comparison and contrast which still in my view holds plenty of water.)
"Is there a reason for this difference? I think it's because modern comics don't have enough Jews working on them (!), don't cater to the working class any more, are filled with stupid white men and conservatives/cryptofascists, you name it!
"I mean, even the one UFO comic which a mainstream company (Dark Horse) has published, and which has spawned a movie ("Men in Black"), it was a funny movie... but... WHO and what were the mysterious "Men in Black" presented as? Not aliens (which some genuine researchers believe them to be), nor some sinister bunch of spooks - but - get this - a BENEVOLENT supra-government agency, which is so secret it is answerable to nobody, and is funded by royalties on inventions!
"Great, guys!"
Imagine a picture of me however you want to imagine me, John (try fat, fairskinned, pleasant-faced (so I am told) and on the wrong side of 35 with not much in the way of wrinkles and just a few grey hairs. I must renew my hair dye.) Put all the above speech in quotation marks into think bubbles above my head.
2) Read Gaiman's "American Gods" in 2000 - was my Christmas present to self. Glued to it because of subject matter and intriguing dialogue, etc, intriguing premise of the pagan gods of the Old World reincarnating themselves in 21st-century America, with this second premise of there being this "Everyman" hero like in a fairy tale, an underdog who had just come out of prison - and he gets to meet Wotan!! In a business suit! Well, you see, in a TRUE folktale - THAT guy would be destined to go FAR, anyone who has the ear of the gods DOES... and here was me thinking that he really WOULD, in some tangible sense, become "King of America" (WHAT a concept!), for, that in my estimation, anyway, is precisely what a modern master of mythology and of the archetypes (gods) COULD BECOME... it worked for George Lucas, as an afterthought!
But he didn't, and the story was contrived and full of pointless chunks of red herring and there was a lot of rubbish about Everyman's dead wife who walked around as a zombie but a very polite one... WHAT was this supposed to be...
(Oh, and there were FACTS in the story he didn't even get right, about America... though he says in the intro that he did piles of research, some of which he didn't even use! Because it turned out to be irrevelant. Well so was much of the story.
But he SAID, he said that most of America had migrated out to the coasts and left a vast empty space in the middle... when THAT'S not true, because a) as you know, "the middle", the plains states, is where our enemy Dub gets most of his votes from! b) he completely misses out the more recent demographic phenomenon of "the new white flight", where half of California (the white conservative half) moved out to get away from the poverty-stricken blacks, as Michael Moore indicates, and ended up in the Rocky Mountain states, and made Denver, plus Colorado Springs (home of Focus on the Family, guys!) and surrounding settlements into the white Christian Right stronghold it is today!! As the creators of "South Park" also "celebrate"... Ergo, Neil Gaiman does not know what he is talking about!
Sigh! No good again!
3) And then I read "Stardust" (the version without lavish pictures!), a 19th-century-style (supposedly) fantasy novel about the land of Faery and a young man's search for true love, published in 1999. I liked the premise, but AGAIN, the working-out of it did not live up to its initial promise. It was... derivative, not as charming as it looked, full of pointless bits of plot that didn't go anywhere, like a housing estate with endless cul-de-sacs, (plenty of those in Britain!) and an eventual ending (AFTER the happy one) that was pointlessly downbeat...
Is he British? Or Irish?
Whatever he is, he should know better.
I must start writing fantasy novels and scripts for comics/GNs, I KNOW I could do better than that twit! (No, I just meant that if HE could make it as a writer, so could I, I KNOW it... so why haven't I? Depression at the prospect of being rejected as a socialist, probably! Depression because of my encounters during the early 90s with the British comics bureaucracy!)
1) Read about 1 of his DC stories in his "Well at the End of the World" series in a comic at the end of 1993, which is when I was REALLY going off comics... I know, I know, as you were getting into them. Didn't like it. It was something about some guy who "studied civics from the age of 12 and amazed his teachers" (ie, a political "Jesus" figure!) who became US President at the age of 19 or something (!!)... I thought at the time, even JESUS took till he was 30, to be confident enough to go out, preach and do large-scale miracles! Crikey! But then this woman tried to assassinate him, but she didn't kill him but his wife, but the President showed compassion to her and went to talk to her in prison, where she proved to be mad, but she still was executed in the end. (Great!!)
And what REALLY galled me about it, was that there was NOTHING in it about conspiracies, which I was really getting into at the time!! All kinds, UFO and political.. and the X-Files was really into it's swing by then, and I was glued to that, and I thought: "Next to that, Gaiman, [bet you got teased for that surname at school!] you're pathetic!"
There weren't even any parallels with Kennedy in the story! Nowhere did Gaiman say that there was this shadowy elite in the US, which had been conspiring to assassinate presidents it didn't like, since Abe Lincoln at least!! All he had was some kind of vague metaphysical figure, a man with a balloon head who was supposed to be symbolic of something, I'd have to look up the story again, and "different realities", or sth! No tasty conspiracy stuff for me to get my teeth into.
Then, or soon after, I noted to myself: "American mainstream comics DO NOT feature the theme of conspiracies, no matter that this could make them a bunch of money and get them lots of fans - look at X-files and look at all the books catering to 'conspiracy nuts' of all stripes!
"Therefore I adjudge them to be FAR more conservative and stuck-in-the-mud than American TV!" (A comparison and contrast which still in my view holds plenty of water.)
"Is there a reason for this difference? I think it's because modern comics don't have enough Jews working on them (!), don't cater to the working class any more, are filled with stupid white men and conservatives/cryptofascists, you name it!
"I mean, even the one UFO comic which a mainstream company (Dark Horse) has published, and which has spawned a movie ("Men in Black"), it was a funny movie... but... WHO and what were the mysterious "Men in Black" presented as? Not aliens (which some genuine researchers believe them to be), nor some sinister bunch of spooks - but - get this - a BENEVOLENT supra-government agency, which is so secret it is answerable to nobody, and is funded by royalties on inventions!
"Great, guys!"
Imagine a picture of me however you want to imagine me, John (try fat, fairskinned, pleasant-faced (so I am told) and on the wrong side of 35 with not much in the way of wrinkles and just a few grey hairs. I must renew my hair dye.) Put all the above speech in quotation marks into think bubbles above my head.
2) Read Gaiman's "American Gods" in 2000 - was my Christmas present to self. Glued to it because of subject matter and intriguing dialogue, etc, intriguing premise of the pagan gods of the Old World reincarnating themselves in 21st-century America, with this second premise of there being this "Everyman" hero like in a fairy tale, an underdog who had just come out of prison - and he gets to meet Wotan!! In a business suit! Well, you see, in a TRUE folktale - THAT guy would be destined to go FAR, anyone who has the ear of the gods DOES... and here was me thinking that he really WOULD, in some tangible sense, become "King of America" (WHAT a concept!), for, that in my estimation, anyway, is precisely what a modern master of mythology and of the archetypes (gods) COULD BECOME... it worked for George Lucas, as an afterthought!
But he didn't, and the story was contrived and full of pointless chunks of red herring and there was a lot of rubbish about Everyman's dead wife who walked around as a zombie but a very polite one... WHAT was this supposed to be...
(Oh, and there were FACTS in the story he didn't even get right, about America... though he says in the intro that he did piles of research, some of which he didn't even use! Because it turned out to be irrevelant. Well so was much of the story.
But he SAID, he said that most of America had migrated out to the coasts and left a vast empty space in the middle... when THAT'S not true, because a) as you know, "the middle", the plains states, is where our enemy Dub gets most of his votes from! b) he completely misses out the more recent demographic phenomenon of "the new white flight", where half of California (the white conservative half) moved out to get away from the poverty-stricken blacks, as Michael Moore indicates, and ended up in the Rocky Mountain states, and made Denver, plus Colorado Springs (home of Focus on the Family, guys!) and surrounding settlements into the white Christian Right stronghold it is today!! As the creators of "South Park" also "celebrate"... Ergo, Neil Gaiman does not know what he is talking about!
Sigh! No good again!
3) And then I read "Stardust" (the version without lavish pictures!), a 19th-century-style (supposedly) fantasy novel about the land of Faery and a young man's search for true love, published in 1999. I liked the premise, but AGAIN, the working-out of it did not live up to its initial promise. It was... derivative, not as charming as it looked, full of pointless bits of plot that didn't go anywhere, like a housing estate with endless cul-de-sacs, (plenty of those in Britain!) and an eventual ending (AFTER the happy one) that was pointlessly downbeat...
Is he British? Or Irish?
Whatever he is, he should know better.
I must start writing fantasy novels and scripts for comics/GNs, I KNOW I could do better than that twit! (No, I just meant that if HE could make it as a writer, so could I, I KNOW it... so why haven't I? Depression at the prospect of being rejected as a socialist, probably! Depression because of my encounters during the early 90s with the British comics bureaucracy!)