This column expands on a story that originally appeared in the September 17, 1998 edition of the Comic Wire at Comic Book Resources.
I know I’m not supposed to be a partisan with this whole comic book thing, but when I got the news that DC Comics‘ “Chronos” was being canceled with issue #11, out this January, I was pissed. I haven’t felt this way about a superhero book since Milestone’s “Xombi,” which also was canceled prematurely (translation: “while I still liked it”).
This was a smart book, one where the character wasn’t poured into the templates so many others are, where the resolution to a conflict didn’t always (in fact, usually didn’t) mean whacking somebody.
But the questions and motivations that drove techonologist, thief and time traveler Walker Gabriel were ones that were easy to understand. He wanted to learn, he wanted to be a success, he wanted to sort out his messed-up family life. Hell, in at least one case, he just wanted to get a little.
So it was with a heavy heart that I read the following (shockingly forthright) letter from “Chronos” artist Paul Guinan, whom I met at the 1998 San Diego Comic-Con International. He and his wife are all-around great people. Yet another reason this all bites …
Yes, John Francis Moore has ‘pulled the plug’ on ‘Chronos,’ and in fact used that very phrase himself.
Among the reasons he gave me were: a deadline schedule that didn’t allow him to spend the time he needed on his scripts, editorial circumstances that contributed to the book going in a direction he didn’t care for, aesthetic disappointments, and low sales.
Before I launch into details, let me make clear that I think John is a great writer. I’ve been a fan since his stint on ‘American Flagg!’ when I was working on staff at First Comics, and my video collection includes all the ‘Flash’ TV episodes he worked on. It was a privilege to co-create a character with him for the DCU, and an honor to be able to depict that character without excessive angst or apathy, obsessiveness or callousness. “Chronos is an ex-thief on a character arc towards hero, providing a positive role model for self-improvement. I was given leeway to depict him and his costume in a highly iconographic style; one lettercol writer compared him visually to a character from the BATMAN animated series, which is high praise to me. Chronos is half-Mexican, half-Chinese. (Let’s see more heroes of color, please!) Best of all, he’s easy to describe: Chronos travels through time. The Flash runs fast. How many characters created in the last decade or so can claim that simplicity of premise?
With that said, here’s the play-by-play of ‘Chronos” demise as I see it.
The book’s production schedule was tight from the very start, with no room for delays of any kind. John’s ability to turn in his scripts on short deadlines was eventually hampered by his heavy workload as well as his family situation. (I hasten to add that I don’t personally resent John for being late, especially since it gave me more time to pencil some issues!)
This had a kind of snowball effect. With periodicals – especially ongoing, monthly comics – once you fall behind schedule, you’re forever playing catch-up. There’s no time to take a breather, the pressure becomes more intense, you start compromising your work to get it done quickly, and sometimes mistakes crop up. (One example was a draft script sent out with a plot hole that wasn’t caught until after the pages had been inked.) If a monthly comic book is running late enough, an unfortunate side effect is that covers can’t be done in time for it to be promoted well. Without a cover graphic, the marketing department can’t “push” a title in the phone book that is the monthly distributor’s catalogue, and the solicitation winds up being a small, easily overlooked block of text.
The passing of Archie Goodwin was a major blow to the book as well as the entire comics industry. The period following his death became an editorial vacuum from the perspective of the ‘Chronos’ creative team. There were communication breakdowns, and no one to “ride herd” on the title for a while.
One result is that the cliffhanger in CHRONOS #8 isn’t resolved until three issues later. Partly due to time constraints, the “DC One Million” plot proved difficult to integrate into the overall narrative of ‘Chronos,’ so instead it was treated as a stand-alone story that didn’t touch on how #8 ended. At about this time, DC’s marketing department arranged for ‘Chronos’ #9 (which came out after the One Million issue) to be overshipped to retailers, in an effort to promote the series and raise sales. Our new editor suggested that since the One Million issue was stand-alone, it could be drawn by a fill-in artist so that I could catch up on the schedule with issue 9. I agreed, and the art team from CHASE was assigned. Because #9 was to be overshipped, the editor decided that it should be a stand-alone story also. This meant John had to swap the events he’d already planned for issues 9 and 10. By the time the plot for #9 was approved by editorial and scripted, I’d had no ‘Chronos’ work for five weeks! (Luckily, the unexpected hiatus gave me time to wrap up my work on ‘Heartbreakers Superdigest.’) On top of that, in the confusion, DC forgot to tell me that Tony Harris had been assigned as cover artist.
John was also asked to make Chronos more pro-active, less swept along by events around him, and in the words of one editor, less whiny and more ‘kick-ass.’ For this and other reasons, ‘Chronos’ wasn’t turning out as he had hoped.
Archie, John, and I all figured the colorist would use a natural palette, taking his cue from the naturalistic story and art. Despite several conversations on this topic, he took a very stylized approach. He repeatedly made choices that didn’t complement the book’s tone (e.g., green skies, purple brick/masonry, blue walls, and orange floors), as well as inconsistent choices (note how many different ways the floor that the Timesmasher sits on is colored). It was demoralizing for me, after all the time I’d spent researching and drawing the settings in ‘Chronos,’ to see printed results like 1872 Metropolis in bright blue, or the 11th-century Chinese city of Kaifeng in dark purple and chartreuse.
My own choices also contributed to John’s aesthetic dissatisfaction with CHRONOS. I’m profoundly disappointed with much of the storytelling in contemporary film and comics, in which the audience’s point of view is almost always in close-up and medium close-up. Extremely few illustrators working in comics today show backgrounds with any consistency or verisimilitude. I therefore like to keep my “camera” farther back than most artists do. I also tend to keep shots at eye-level rather than using dramatic angles. This “proscenium arch” compositional approach results in scenes that sometimes look as if events are unfolding on a theatrical stage. John felt that in certain instances, not moving in to show specific facial expression or body language undercut some of the drama he was trying to convey.
Similarly, John wanted me to bring more expressiveness to some of the poses. I agree that my figure drawing could benefit from being more dynamic. (Blame it on my childhood – I grew up on comics drawn by Nick Cardy, Russ Heath, Gray Morrow, and Curt Swan!) As anyone who’s seen my work on ‘Heartbreakers’ knows, I enjoy changing my illustration style to suit different stories. For ‘Chronos,’ my stylistic template was Herge’s ‘Tintin.’ Because ‘Chronos’ isn’t a superhero slug-fest, and because it spans a wide range of historical locales, my focus was on environments. Being a huge history buff, I doubtless spent more time showing off objects and settings than people.
When Mike Carlin came on board as editor (the third in eight issues), I thought the series was poised for recovery. Not only did it seem like a show of faith from DC, but ‘Chronos’ would now be in the best hands when it came to dealing with questions of DCU continuity and guest appearances by DC heroes. With a new cover artist and colorist, the book would have a fresh look. Inker Steve Leialoha was no longer splitting his time between two projects (which is one reason issues 5 and 6 were inked by four separate people), and could focus more closely on ‘Chronos.’ John’s latest script called for Chronos to remove himelf from history – wiping the slate clean, creatively speaking, and positioning the character for his next phase. Our hero was about to get a shave and a haircut, confidence and maturity.
In San Diego I spent much time at the Comic-Con dispelling rumors of cancellation. I heard from three major retailers that they gave customers money-back guarantees on ‘Chronos,’ and no one had returned a single issue. Mike Carlin demonstrated his commitment to the book, telling me that other titles with higher sales figures had been canceled and that Paul Levitz himself had sat in on a meeting about boosting ‘Chronos”s numbers. Mike and I discussed ways of making Chronos more relevant to the DCU, and therefore fans, by weaving him into the origins of a major DC character. He said that when he got back to New York, he would ask editors to volunteer characters or ideas. He even asked me to submit a couple of plot concepts. One of the scenarios I came up with placed Chronos on a certain rural Kansas road one night, in the back of an old pickup truck just as it’s almost hit by an object from outer space …
I went home to Portland with my batteries recharged, began penciling issue 10, and called John. He told me he was pulling the plug on ‘Chronos’ – that the results were not what he’d expected, and not worth the continued investment of his energy and emotions. I understand where he’s coming from. Next year will be the tenth anniversary of ‘Heartbreakers’, a series I co-created with my wife, Anina Bennett. Sometimes I feel like Don Quixote, tilting at the windmills of the unpredictable comic-book market. I dream of the day when ‘Heartbreakers’ might become my paying ‘day job’ – and I don’t even have a kid to feed, just a house and an action-figure habit.
With ‘Chronos’ behind schedule, low-selling, and plagued by a myriad of minor scheduling and production problems, Mike agreed to John’s request to end the series. Mike joked that now he wouldn’t get a chance to claim credit for saving ‘Chronos.’ He suggested that, considering the current climate of the comics market, perhaps in a couple of years the character could be brought back in a different context, under a different title – ‘Tales of Chronopolis,’ for example.
Regardless of the character’s fate, my run on ‘Chronos’ has been among my proudest achievements in over a decade of working in comics. All the examples of penciling in my portfolio are from ‘Chronos.’ I’ve been told that the work I’ve done on it surpasses my ‘Heartbreakers’ art. Certainly, Chronos is closer to my own personality than any other character I’ve drawn. His wardrobe, furnishings, and taste in music are all taken from my own life. I’ll miss him.
My thanks to Mike Carlin for his handling and support of ‘Chronos,’ and to John Moore for allowing me the opportunity to co-create ‘Chronos’ with him. Above all, thanks to Archie Goodwin, who launched the series. He provided the layout for the image on the ‘Chronos’ poster, which hangs in my studio. I see it every day, I often think of Archie … and sometimes, I wonder what might have been.”
So it’s another series down. This IS a good time for comics, but so many of the good ones just seem to blink in and out so quickly. “Leave it to Chance” comes out in synch with solar eclipses. “Astro City,” while late for all the right reasons, has now had six months between parts one and two of what I seem to recall was a six-part series. And no one really believes either Alan Moore’s ABC books or his previously written “Awesome Adventures” will be timely and regular, do they?
Lord, I hope “The Titans” sticks around. I don’t think I can handle much more of this.
Oh, and buy the aforementioned “Heartbreakers Superdigest” #1. It’s great fun, and it’ll help out with that mortgage.
Portions of this article originally appeared in the July 13, 1998 edition of the Comic Wire at Comic Book Resources.
Devin Grayson, one can say without fear of contradiction, is a superstar of tomorrow. A relative newcomer to the world of comics, over the next six months, she’s about to become synonymous with one of DC Comics‘ most respected franchises: the formerly teen Titans.
Grayson has three separate projects featuring former members of the Teen Titans, culminating in a new ongoing series next January, called simply “The Titans.”
As opposed to the recent Teen Titans team created by Dan Jurgens, Grayson is starting with familiar faces:
Nightwing, Donna Troy, the Flash, Arsenal and Tempest “are on the team for good — there is no conflict with Flash being a JLA member, which he will continue to be, nor with Nightwing and Tempest being key members of other DCU books,” Grayson told the Comic Wire this weekend. “Eric Luke, the new Wonder Woman writer, is happy to let us use and rename Donna (which we’re attending to now), and Arsenal has been in our editorial jurisdiction for a while now.”
In other words, the core Titans members will be the same as when the team first debuted roughly a quarter-century ago. Robin, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash, Speedy and Aqualad have gone through a number of changes since then, though, including some of them getting bumped up to starring status. Grayson has that covered as well.
“Because many of these characters can be expected to periodically need to bow out of certain Titans adventures to tend to matters in their own books or what not, they themselves decide to nominate what I’ve been calling a ‘second tier’ team – five additional members with no serious prior commitments who can all be expected to be on hand every single issue, as the ‘originals’ rotate through (not the other way around). The lineup of those additional five has not yet been announced (though it has been established and approved), but will be revealed in ‘The Titans’ #1 in January.”
The new series has been one of the most discussed of any prospective project in recent memory. Along with that comes a good deal of misinformation, which Grayson set the record straight on.
Of the five second-tier heroes, four of them have been Titans at some point in their histories, and the fifth is new to the family, as Grayson likes to think of them. That probably means several members from the Wolfman/Perez “New Teen Titans” era and maybe some from the Jurgens run as well.
“Fans aching to see the Titans of old, though, should definitely check out the three part mini-series I’m doing with Phil Jimenez (due out in October): JLA/Titans. Though we’re doing everything we can to make it accessible and exciting to new readers, I’ll confess that it’s really a fanboy wet dream, and our biggest concession to the ‘when are we gonna see [insert favorite Titan here]?’ crowd. I’m hoping older fans will be gorged enough on guest appearances after JLA/Titans — which touches base with just about EVERYBODY at one point or another — to allow me some time to introduce new readers to our new core Titans group in the beginning of the actual series. Phil and I are having so much fun with JLA/Titans, I really think readers will get a kick out of it.”
Donna Troy fans take note: Despite a rumor that recently cropped up online, Donna Troy will not be reclaiming her “Troia” name in the new series. And the vague power she apparently received during the “Genesis” crossover last night will be defined as well.
The last time Roy Harper, the former Speedy and now known as Arsenal, appeared in the Jurgens Titans series, he received a new costume very similar to the “Red Arrow” one he wore in Mark Waid’s “Kingdom Come” miniseries several years ago.
“Roy will be undergoing (yet another) costume change in the four-part Arsenal miniseries, ‘Six Degrees,’ (written by me, with art by Rick Mays) which comes out, I believe, in August. He will be keeping the name ‘Arsenal.’ Though I like the ‘Kingdom Come’ look and definitely want to keep him tied in with his archery roots, and I hate having to change his costume again so soon, I feel strongly that it’s too early for him, at this point in his life, to be running around in a costume that is essentially a salute to Ollie. There are things he needs to work out first. Maybe we’ll see him return to that costume again in the future, after he’s finished proving himself as his own man.”
Speaking of “Kingdom Come,” although Grayson is loathe to divulge too much at this point – “The comics industry is starting to get ‘movie trailer fever:’ we’re always rushing to give major plot points away, and what’s the fun in that? – look for either Changeling or Cyberion to take a big step towards their “Kingdom Come” incarnation (either Menagerie or Robotman) in the JLA/Titans miniseries.
One of the perks of doing these Titans projects for Grayson is being able to write the DCU’s other Grayson, the former Robin, Dick “Nightwing” Grayson. Her recent “Nightwing/Huntress” mini-series recently came to an end, and she’s already got ideas for other Nightwing stories. She thinks his appeal is obvious:
“I think the reason Nightwing is so popular, though I do speak only for myself, is that he’s an excellent projection target for the animus. To contrast Batman’s darkness, Dick has always been portrayed as being warmer, more human, one could even say ‘sweeter,’ than the typical male hero. He has some of the nicer, more traditionally ‘feminine’ traits (like thoughtfulness, compassion, and even a certain degree of innocence) wrapped up in a nonetheless very masculine, potentially fierce, I-could-kill-you-with-my-bare-hands package,” Grayson said. “It’s easy, I think, for females to project their ‘male selves’ onto him – he is a less harsh, frightening image of a protector than Batman, and more of a knight in shining armor type – who of course, in their archetypal roles, weren’t meant to carry women off to safety literally, so much as to help them integrate their more competent “masculine” traits into an idealized future self. Dick Grayson is a very well-integrated character. Part puer, part trickster, and certainly all hero, in the age-old business of using fictional narrative to address internal archetype integration, he’s a very powerful tool.”
(“Puer?” Grayson explains: “‘Puer‘ is a Jungian term (with Latin roots: ‘Puer natus est nobis,’: ‘a child is born’) for the archetypal child, though later it was given an almost romantic connotation by Vogler, et al, so that it sort of came to refer to ‘eternal young man,’ which was how I meant it. Poor Dick. Does he realize he’s going to be twenty-three or so for the rest of his existence? … But even if it wasn’t literal, I think it would still describe an obvious component of his nature.”)
And all this talk of Jungian archetypes and the symbolic appeal of Dick Grayson to female comic fans may miss some of the point. It works, Devin Grayson allows, “maybe on a subconscious level. Though those I’ve questioned tend to stick with the more basic assertion, and I quote: ‘he’s heckuv fine!'”
Of course, most superheroes, almost by definition, are good-looking studs. And it’s his other qualities that make him stand out to Grayson.
“Similarly, I think many males can relate to him, because, being a better-balanced character, he’s more real – though he is muscle-bound, he’s also intelligent and wracked with feelings of inadequacy. And, unlike many of our more prominent heroes, he’s human. Easy to relate to.
“Beyond that, and ignoring the obvious points about his good looks and charisma, I think in the Bat-mythos, at least, much as Batman has come to represent, as [editor] Denny O’Neil so perfectly put it, ‘urbanity co-opted,’ the Dick Grayson character has come to represent ‘loyalty endured.’ He has fought his whole life against a domineering, dark, difficult (though magnificently just and justified) father figure, and chosen, instead of vanquishing him, to aid him and uphold many of his ideals. It was an honorable choice, and a rare one in the history of stories, and one that I think really resonates for a lot of us Gen Xers, who grew up in a world without, for the most part, heroes or loyalty or ideals and/or people worth dying for. I look at a character like Nightwing and I see a gorgeously rendered picture of worthwhile loyalty. That’s a very rare quality.
“Also, it’s just plain cool that after more than 50 years of being handled by innumerable creative teams and editorial administrations, he, as a character, has managed to retain some core recognizability and sense of individuality. Again I think we’re seeing the power of the archetype here — in every incarnation, he’s been unique and in some way consistent. The same is true for, say, Batman and Superman, and it’s part of what makes comics so exciting.”
Grayson is new on the comic scene, with her first publication, in “The Batman Chronicles,” coming only a few years ago. Her meteoric ascent has meant she hasn’t lost her sense of wonder at working on some of comics’ most prominent characters.
“You can’t lose sight of the fact that it’s a tremendous honor to be working with these characters. I remember the first time I wrote the word ‘Batmobile,’ as a professional, I just fell off my chair laughing … and then I got back up and sat down again and just really felt a PART of something, which as a writer is actually a very rare experience. Most of writing is very solitary. One of the things I love about this medium is that it’s so collaborative.”
Grayson’s first professionally published work in comic books was in “The Batman Chronicles,” a quarterly anthology that covers all eras of Batman’s history and focuses on characters and events often pushed off-stage in the regular books. Her story depicted the first meeting between Dick Grayson, then still a very new sidekick named Robin, and Barbara Gordon, herself a neophyte hero just becoming known as Batgirl. The story is playful and silly, although Devin Grayson lightly implied a certain attraction between the two characters. Love and romance amongst the Spandex set is also the focus of 1998’s “Nightwing/Huntress” miniseries, and she has loose plans for another miniseries featuring Nightwing and another member of the Batman franchise.
“As someone who didn’t grow up reading comics, I’m really interested in bringing more realistic relationships into the medium. If real, superheroes would be very physically driven, often emotionally challenged individuals, in need of a lot of reassurance about being safe and alive, and also in need of a lot of freedom and ‘space.’ The ‘hero’ community would also be relatively small and close-knit, so it’d be really hard to completely avoid former flames. I think there would be a lot more variations in their relationships with one another than just ‘meet, fall in love, get married,’ or ‘meet, fall in love, break up and never speak again.’ I’m hoping to explore some of those variations (as NW/H was meant to do).
Although she’s already looking at a very full plate – Grayson is also writing “Catwoman” monthly and will be doing at least one four-issue story in the upcoming “No Man’s Land” year-long story in next year’s Batman books – 1999 will also bring her very own creator-owned team book from DC, the details of which she’s keeping to herself.
“We’ve been referring to it in the press, for the time being, as ‘Project W’ – just because we’re deliberately being mysterious. Yvel Guichet, who worked with me on the [just released] Batman Annual, is penciling the first issue as I write this.”
Mention Southern writers and vampires in the same sentence, and the first thing most people think of is the works of Anne Rice. But Rice’s New Orleans’ Garden District full of homoerotic, chatty immortals isn’t the beginning and end of Southern horror.
Nancy Collins’ corner of the world of Southern horror is considerably more grungy, much more punk than gothic. The world of the Sonja Blue vampire novels and comics, and her take on DC/Vertigo Comics‘ venerable “Swamp Thing” comic and her abortive “Dhampire” series for the same have a hard-headed sense of a not-always-pretty reality about them, even when filled with plant gods or human-vampire hybrids.
Sonja Blue’s story, in the novel “Sunglasses After Dark,” begins in a mental hospital, the cast of “Swamp Thing” were the outcasts that exist on the fringes of Southern life, and the cast of “Dhampire” were more horrifying for their desperation than their supernatural powers.
Collins’ world begins in rural Arkansas, where she was born and raised, and Louisiana, where she lived for 10 years, and even though she now lives in Pennsylvania, she still retains a rural Southern twang to her speech.
The vampire Sonja Blue has been a part of her life for a long time now.
“Basically, I created the character of Sonja Blue back when I was in junior high or high school. And I basically kept tinkering with it and tinkering with it, knowing the character exceptionally well,” she said by telephone from her Pennsylvania home. “When the black-and-white boom in the early ’80s happened in comics, I tried finding an artist to do the comic book. I couldn’t find an artist. But I had the comic book script all written out. … So, it was a bunch of short stories that got turned into a comic script that got turned into a novel, that got turned into a comic book.”
Her vampire, who has appeared in gone from starring in her own novels to her own comics, to crossing-over with the worlds of the White Wolf games and the Crow, with more to come.
“It’s nothing I would think to do,” she says of the crossovers. “If someone asks me, I’ll do it.”
Even with the success in comics, Sonja Blue is still who Collins is most closely identified with. She takes a pragmatic view of the situation.
“I still enjoy the character, although it’s definitely part of my career, whether I like it or not or accept it or not,” she says. “If the character is popular and people want to read about her, I’ll continue to write about her. I don’t feel like I have another novel about her in my right now.”
Recently, though, she has written Sonja Blue short stories, but would really like to do a comic book series about Sonja Blue.
“And, of course, there’s a movie coming out.” The project is still in the final negotiations, but Collins feels confident that there’ll be a Sonja Blue movie early in the 21st century. “Being in comics has actually made this easier for me: ‘I can’t draw, so whatever you guys do is OK with me!’ … ‘And make sure you pay me.'”
And Sonja’s trek from middle school notebook to comic scripts to novels opened the doors to the comic-writing career Collins had sought.
“Before ‘Sunglasses After Dark,’ I didn’t really exist as a writer,” having only had some small press short story publications. “I didn’t exist as a professional until 1989. And within a year and a half, I was on ‘Swamp Thing’ as the writer.
“I’d been doing very well with ‘Sunglasses,'” her first novel, “And about the same time [editor] Stuart Martin had gotten hired by DC, and he wanted to bring in some honest-to-goodness prose writers and scrap some of the more comic booky elements of the series. So Stuart contacted me, and lo and behold, I happened to be a ‘Swamp Thing’ fan from the get-go and he didn’t have to bring me up to speed.” She submitted a year’s worth of synopses, filled with her local Louisiana flavor, as the Swamp Thing lives in the swamps, unsurprisingly. “I was basically on it for two-and-a-half years.”
“I enjoyed working on it. I left it largely because I was more used to work on my own projects, and I had the chance to go work on a creator-owned project. And I found that with someone that powerful, it’s hard to find something he can’t accomplish in a panel. … I liked to focus on the lives that are satellite to him. … Basically, trying to make it more realistic about relationships. Which the fans don’t always love …”
Of course, bringing any sort of realism to the title about the plant god means rocking the boat some:
“He disappears for months on end, and very few women would put up with that!” Collins laughed. “I tried to move away from his narrative, because at some point we don’t need to know what he thinks anymore, and at some point we can’t know what he thinks with it anymore,” as part of the character’s evolution is his continuing detachment from his own humanity and that of his wife and friends. But, again, the fan reaction wasn’t uniformly positive.
“It kind of broke down into two camps: The people who had relationships and children and liked it. The unattached, teenage kids just wanted more monsters and cool stuff going on.”
“I do think, especially when it comes to comics, how I see things, and how things are portrayed in my books, are influenced by being a woman.” And she believes she’s very different from “male writers whose sexual psychoses were formed by comics.”
“I’m really offended by the guys who create bad girls and claim they’re ‘strong women.'” “Black Widow is a strong woman,” not the bimbos so many comic books are now populated with. “You can’t pick up a comic book with a woman in it and not see that.”
“I deliberately made a point of doing an arc in ‘Swamp Thing’ where I had Swamp Thing and Abby to relate to each other in a sexual way. Not in a prurient way, but in the way married people really relate to each other: touching her arm all the time and all that.”
She also drew a lot of heat for having homosexuals in the story.
“It’s OK to have gay people in a comic book if they’re there to die of AIDS,” she said wryly. But she defends her choices on the series. “None of the people Abby and Swamp Thing would know would be normal.”
Collins played up the alien nature of some of the “Swamp Thing” characters, including the demi-plant goddess Tefe, the daughter of the Swamp Thing (via the surrogate fatherhood of antihero sorcerer John Constantine) and his wife, Abby Arcane, the daughter of his greatest enemy.
“We basically have mixed Constantine and Arcane blood. That should be like mixing nitroglycerin in a bumpy truck. And this is supposed to be the child who is supposed to be the future of nature,” she laughed.
She also created a female predecessor to the Swamp Thing, who also served as a nanny to Tefe.
“Most fans seemed to find Lady Jane an intriguing character. I set her up to be played with writers on down the line. … If I had stayed on, she would have melded with Abby.”
Instead, after Collins left, Lady Jane was burned to a crisp soon after. She doesn’t take it personally.
“I try not to feel proprietary towards stuff I don’t own.”
Her next project with DC’s Vertigo imprint (where the publisher of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, et al. lets its dark side out) was to be “Dhampire,” the saga of a half-human, half-vampiric original character. But only the dark and moody introductory story, “Dhampire: Stillborn,” actually made it to the stands, though, as the editor Collins had been working with died suddenly.
“The book was at least supposed to run for two more years.” While she’d like to publish more of the series, “DC is like the co-owner of the copyright. In order to do that, I’d have to pay DC everything they’ve already spent on it.”
As for the future, Collins has just finished her next novel, “Angels of Fire,” to be published by White Wolf Books later this year.
“It’s something of a standalone, an attempt at a breakout book. Nonseries, commercially viable,” she says. “The closest thing I can compare it to is ‘City of Angels,’ only a lot stranger. Sort of like ‘City of Angels,’ only heretical. But it’s a romantic fantasy. Or a romantic dark fantasy, I guess that’s its subtitle.”
“The only other thing I’m working on is a novella called ‘Lynch: A Gothik Western.’ It’s basically a combination of ‘Frankenstein’ and ‘Hang ’em High.'”
Since the, well, stillborn death of “Dhampire,” Collins hasn’t had a regular comic writing gig, but she’s kept busy:
“I’ve done a lot of work-for-hire stuff, which I call pinch-hitting.”
They haven’t always been glamorous gigs: One was Topps Comics’ “Jason vs. Leatherface,” starring the villains/stars of the “Friday the Thirteenth” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” slasher movies.
“The one review I got I’ll treasure forever: ‘This is much better than it has any right to be!'”
Collins wrote the final issues of Marvel Comics‘ “2099 Unlimited,” at the end of one of their more ambitious experiments of recent years, featuring a possible Marvel Universe of a century hence.
She wrote “Magic: The Gathering” comics based on the collectible trading card game for Acclaim Comics.
She wrote an installment in one of Dark Horse’s successful movie monster franchises, “Predator: Hell Come A’Walkin’,” featuring the alien hunters running loose during the Civil War.
“I’ve got a couple of series I’ve been all signed-up to do, then the publishers have yanked the carpet out from under me.”
She’s also adapting her own works of fiction for Verotika.
“I try to keep my hand in, but that’s hard to do nowadays. … It’s like a sphincter-clenching right now in the industry. They seem to prefer guys who can both draw and write,” she said, noting that “there’s very few people who can do both well.”
This might seem like butting one’s head against a wall to some people, but Collins doesn’t see it that way.
“I have a genuine fondness for comics,” she said, “And there’s only so many markets for a writer to work in, in this country, and comics is one of them.”
In other words, beggars – even beggars with successful novels and comics under their belt – can’t be choosers.
“Being a writer for a living is one of the most stressful things you can do for a living, except maybe defuse bombs,” she laughed. “Being a writer is a very stressful thing to be, since I don’t have another job.”
“At one point there were upwards of 40 or 50 magazines publishing fiction on a monthly or bimonthly basis … but there’s only a handful left,” she said. And magazines like “The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction” and “Asimov’s Science Fiction” are now filled with higher-profile authors. “If they’re gonna pick between me and Stephen King, they’re gonna pick Stephen King.”
Quite simply, Collins said, “I’m not in the business to starve.”
All this pinch-hitting is leading somewhere:
“What I’ve basically been hoping to do is set enough money aside to take year off and not feel like I’m starving and do some Southern gothic like Flannery O’Connor. There’s not that much room in horror and fantasy, and that’s where I’d like to spread my wings. I have a body of Southern Gothic in short fiction that I feel is the best things I have ever done.”
But Collins is no fool: She’ll be paying the rent before she takes off time to do work without an immediate commercial market apparent.
“Whenever anyone talks about ‘art for art sake,’ you know they’re living at home.”
Few comic books deal with such heavy and complex issues as race relations. Even fewer try to tackle the issue in the pages of a superhero comic. But Christopher Priest has wrestled with the subject more than once and “Quantum and Woody,” from Acclaim Comics, is a critical hit, blending action and comedy in the “buddy movie” tradition. But the book’s fun has been moderated by a recurrent thread dealing with remembered racism.
One of only a handful of black comic book professionals working for mainstream companies, Priest, 36, saw his first comic book at age 7, an issue of “Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen,” featuring the red-headed cub reporter decked out in pirate garb. Although he now laughs at the goofy nature of the book, it was enough to get the Queens, New York, native hooked on comic books.
He got his start in comics as a student at the New York School of Media Arts vocational high school, when he landed an internship at Marvel Comics. He mostly spent his time making photocopies, but he was in the door, and that was all that mattered.
“I never stopped working there. After the internship I did freelance copyediting.” That lead to a job as an assistant editor at “Crazy,” Marvel’s “Mad” knock-off.
An idea he pitched to Marvel’s then-Editor-In-Chief Jim Shooter turned into the 1984 “Falcon” miniseries, his first break into the world of superheroes, five years after he graduated high school.
“After that I did a lot of nothin’, a lot of fill-in work,” he said, during a July visit to Comics and Cards in Woodbridge, Va. “And one day Shooter took me down the hall and forced Denny O’Niell to hire me to write ‘Power Man and Iron Fist.'”
The legendary comic book writer and editor – who helped mold the modern vision of Batman, and introduced R’as Al Ghul – was assigned to teach Priest the craft of comic book writing.
Although Priest now pooh-poohs the early issues of his run, which began with issue #111 and extended through the series’ conclusion at #125, they were a hit with the fans, and marked the first time he worked with “Quantum and Woody” penciller Mark “Doc” Bright. And it’s no coincidence that when Acclaim Editor-In-Chief Fabian Nicieza came to Priest, he wanted a series like “Power Man and Iron Fist,” with its love/hate racially mixed buddy movie feel.
“Power Man and Iron Fist” featured a black ex-con hero of the streets and a rich white hero raised by Himalayan monks, whose fractious friendship made the two “heroes for hire” a staple of Marvel’s comics in the 1970s and ’80s.
Alas, things didn’t work out for the Priest and Bright “Power Man and Iron Fist.”
“We were selling about 110,000 copies when they canceled it,” in favor of Marvel’s most notorious boo-boo, the “New Universe.”
From there, Priest went on to write “Conan the Barbarian” and “Conan the King.” Even in ancient Hyperboria, American race relations reared its head.
He was once asked to change the depiction of the Pygmies of Pictland, who were short, spear-carrying and had bones in their noses, much as Pygmies on Earth once did, “because we don’t want to offend black people, because you know how they are. And I just looked at the phone and said ‘uh, yeah, I think I do.'”
He delivered the revised script to Marvel Comics in person.
He continued to freelance for Marvel, writing both “Conan” books, as well as “Green Lantern,” “The Unknown Soldier” and some “Batman” issues for DC Comics. Then he took several years off from the industry, selling screenplays that were never produced and driving a commuter bus in New Jersey.
“As long as I’ve got that CDL [Commercial Driver’s License], I can pay the rent,” he grinned.
“I was driving the bus and I got offered this editorship at DC. And I couldn’t stop laughing, because at Marvel, DC was always this joke.”
But DC, fresh from the shakeup it’d given its line in the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” 12 issue limited series, had changed since Priest’s days at Marvel. Many of Priest’s old colleagues, including Mike Carlin and Denny O’Niell were there now, and he came aboard, working for DC’s development group. The group worked on expanding the company’s line to appeal to adults and younger children.
Soon after, Priest changed his name from Jim Owsley (for reasons he will not discuss), and “The Ray” miniseries lead to an ongoing one. He also wrote for “Justice League Task Force,” the “Total Justice” miniseries and the “JLX Unleashed” Amalgam special.
“At some point during all this I got a call from Fabian, because he wanted me to do a buddy book for Acclaim. He wanted it to be ethnically diverse, edgy.”
The series he got, of course, was “Quantum and Woody.”
A series that hearkened back to the “Power Man and Iron Fist” days meant an opportunity to work with Bright again.
“I was pretty adamant about working together with Bright,” Priest said. “We’re good friends. The dynamic of ‘Quantum and Woody’ is based on us.”
The series has been a critical hit, with everyone from Wizard magazine to fellow comic creators declaring it a top book.
“It’s tremendously gratifying, but it has not turned into sales yet,” he said. “But the book has a buzz to it, and that usually translates into sales.”
Although Priest has tweaked his editor in the pages of “Quantum and Woody” for Nicieza’s initial nervousness over the word “nigger” and a supporting character’s nickname being the same as DC Comic’s Dark Knight’s, “for the most part, they just got the hell out of my way. If anything, Fabian wants it more edgy.”
Race isn’t an issue normally discussed in comics, partly due to the almost uniformly white superheroes in the Marvel, DC and Image comics, but partly due to a nervousness about dealing with taboo concepts, like racist characters and the differences that remain between blacks and whites in America.
“The thing about it, it’s also a double-standard. As an African-American, I can talk about race all day. But as a white guy, you’d get hit over the head and called racist,” he said. That’s especially true for use of the word Priest has now replaced with “noogie.” “If it’s based on ‘White Men Can’t Jump,'” the Wesley Snipes/Woody Harrelson movie that featured two basketball hustlers taking advantage of stereotypes about racially based athletic ability, “It’s all about race.”
Although Priest jokes about racism, both in “Quantum and Woody” and in person, he goes after the subject quite strongly in the first issues of the series, with Quantum mis-remembering a childhood incident in an elementary school bathroom, after his best friend Woody has moved away without warning, without leaving word.
Quantum, then simply Eric, remembers a classmate telling him Woody moved away without saying goodbye “because you’re a nigger.”
The scene is based on an incident from the life of Priest, who has a picture of Quantum on his business card.
“The first time I heard the word ‘nigger,’ I paid a kid a quarter to tell me what it meant” in the bathroom of Priest’s mostly white elementary school for gifted students. “He said ‘it means you.'”
That scene, one of the most painful of a series of emotionally charged scenes in the first story arc of “Quantum and Woody” is the “foundation” of Quantum’s character, Priest said.
The foundation of Woody’s character will be revealed in issue nine, where the time between him leaving Eric’s school and meeting him again as an adult will be explored. Among the incidents in Woody’s past are his family’s careening into poverty, his mother becoming a drug dealer and a big surprise Priest isn’t ready to reveal.
“I think we all have at least one big defining moment in our lives” where everything changes.
The series was also notable in its first arc for its disjointed structure, with scenes told out of chronological order, similar to the film “Pulp Fiction.”
“I was on the road” and overworked, Priest said. “I would literally just sit down and write whatever came into my head.” At the time, an editor at DC was giving him trouble over sending them scripts with scenes out of order, so out of sheer orneriness, Priest submitted his “Quantum and Woody” scripts that way. To his surprise, fans liked it, and he’ll be experimenting with the style more in coming issues.
The book was also funny, certainly as compared to some of Acclaim’s darker books, like “Shadowman” and “Bloodshot.” That, too, wasn’t intentional.
“It didn’t start out as a comedic book, it started out as ‘Power Man and Iron Fist,’ but I was mad about having to do it at the last minute” due to all his other commitments, so Priest just threw in all the sarcasm and scorn he was feeling. “Now, if I’d have to position it, I’d say it’s like ‘M*A*S*H.’ It goes back and forth from comedy to tragedy seamlessly.”
The most notorious surprise the series has taken, though, at least from the standpoint of Priest and Bright, is the runaway appeal of a character meant to be a throwaway: a goat Woody threatens the life of to get the cooperation of a group of monks in issue three.
“And Fabian [Nicieza] just loved it,” commissioning a cover for the issue proclaiming “introducing the Goat!” “I’m writing three issues later, and Fabian calls me up ans said ‘you gotta put the goat it, they love him.’ And I said ‘what goat?'”
Thus the goat makes several walk-on appearances in the comic, where he has been drawn in as an afterthought by Bright, whose extreme distaste for the goat was explained on the letters page to issue six.
“Mark [Bright] hates the goat. I don’t hate the goat. I love whatever pays my rent. I am a goat whore. Fabian wants me to do a goat one-shot, but I only want to do it if it’s a drama,” Priest said, eyes twinkling. He’s making the best of it, though: The goat will be gaining teleportation powers around issue 12, after eating a “fold map” belonging to the immortal Eternal Warriors.
“The neat thing about making the goat a teleportation goat is the indignity it puts Eric through. He needs to get to Paris now and he has to go in the presence of a goat.”
The goat will also be the plot device behind the major story arc for the second year of “Quantum and Woody.” Due to problems piloting the goat – there’s a phrase rarely used – the heroes end up wandering throughout time and space in the Acclaim Comics universe, including a visit to “Turok”‘s Lost Land.
Priest is philosophical about the twists his series has seen its first six months of life.
“If you had to calculate it, you couldn’t predict the fans were going to love. The goat? There was no stupid goat in the proposal.”
The success “Quantum and Woody” has gained has been enough to spark discussions of a movie or television deal.
“Fabian’s actually negotiating movie rights now. Jim Henson Productions has approached Acclaim about a movie. I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “I would hope they’d ask me to be a creative consultant, but there’s no guarantee.”
The “stupid goat” will appear on a “Quantum and Woody” T-shirt coming out in December, along with Eric and Woody.
There will also be a “Quantum and Woody” trade paperback coming out, costing between $6.95 and $8.95. It will collect the first four issues, and include “additional footage. We’re trying to do the ‘director’s cut,’ showing you the stuff from between the issues.”
Speaking of “zero,” in addition to the “Steel” movie (based on the DC Comic Priest writes, and starring Shaquille O’Niell) coming out this summer and the proposed “Quantum and Woody” movie – which Priest would love to see Harrelson and Snipes in – a third Priest-penned comic, “Xero,” may be made into a film as well.
Finally, be on the lookout for action figure versions of Quantum and Woody.
“We’re currently talking about it,” Priest said. If either potential movie or television deals get beyond the talking stage “you can expect to see toy stuff ad naseum, whether or not the deals go through.”
The goat “will probably be something you send four box tops in for, as it’s the one everyone will want.”
This story originally appeared, in abridged form, in the Potomac News newspaper in July 1997.
Once upon a time, Neil Gaiman wrote a literate comic book that catapulted him into the realm of comic book royalty. Now the King of Vertigo Comics is branching out, trying to conquer other realms.
Gaiman’s “Sandman,” which blended ancient mythology, classic literature and a few Spandex-clad superheroes, was the first and only comic book to win a mainstream literary award, to the apparent chagrin of the group that gave it to him. This summer, he’s trying to duplicate that success with two more traditional literary ventures.
His novel, “Neverwhere,” is an urban fantasy in the “Sandman” mold and “The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish” is a children’s book more akin to a dark Dr. Seuss.
But while his future success with them remains to be seen, he is best-known today as a comic book writer.
Gaiman, 36, got his start in writing as a freelance journalist, writing for papers and magazines throughout England, and writing fantasy short stories. But “comics was what I wanted to do. I wrote a few scripts for ‘2000 A.D.,'” a British comic book anthology best-known for introducing Judge Dredd. “I ran into a man in a pub who said he was starting a comic. Although he really wasn’t, one of the other men who he lured in was Dave McKean.”
The off-and-on partnership of Gaiman and artist McKean has lasted for more than 11 years. The first work they did together was a “2000 A.D.” spin-off called “Violent Cases.” Originally slated to be a simple short piece, it had become a 48-page graphic novel by the time DC Comics came to London on a scouting expedition looking for British creators. Of course, McKean and Gaiman were only half-done at that point.
“We went up to their hotel room to get scouted, and we came out with a commission to do ‘Black Orchid,'” Gaiman said by telephone from his Minnesota home, “Based on half of ‘Violent Cases.'”
“Black Orchid,” published in 1988, was an odd limited series, about a plant woman’s surreal adventures. DC Comics may be the home of Superman and Batman, but Gaiman’s world-view was a little quirkier than that.
“The stuff I always really liked, the stuff I responded to was the weirder stuff, the stuff out on the edges, whether it was ‘The Phantom Stranger’ or ‘Swamp Thing,'” two of DC Comics’ 1970s horror/fantasy books. “Obviously, I read the Supermans and the Batmans, but it was the odder stuff that I really responded to.”
“Black Orchid,” lushly illustrated by McKean, was a critical success, and Gaiman immediately turned to “reviving” a rather moribund character, the Sandman. Previous incarnations had been developed in the 1940s and 1970s, but by 1988, the characters were little more than historical footnotes.
Gaiman took the relatively blank slate and revamped the character concept, writing stories of the mythological Sandman, also known as Morpheus or Dream, one of seven god-like embodiments of concepts, known as the Endless. Morpheus had inadvertently inspired the previous Sandmen, but Gaiman quickly left the brightly colored world of superheroes behind to tell stories drawing on “Paradise Lost,” Norse mythology and urban myth.
The stories included regular appearances by William Shakespeare, whose artistic gifts were given to him by Morpheus in return for two plays to be written for the dream king. The first, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” was the subject of a comic published in 1990. The comic became the first and only comic book to win the prestigious World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story in 1991. The World Fantasy Association then changed the rules, making sure subsequent award winners would have to be standard prose.
The comic went on to attract a much larger, and more diverse audience than most comics, and established Gaiman as a giant figure in the field. DC Comics capitalized on its success by spinning off Vertigo Comics, which shared the mature subject matter and dark worldview of “Sandman.”
Gaiman’s decision to end “Sandman” in 1996, with the death of the principal character, raised some eyebrows, but cemented the series’ reputation as a literary work.
Gaiman doesn’t regret his decision to end the lucrative series.
“No, not at all. It would be like asking a builder if he regrets no longer building a house that’s already done,” he said. The series is now available in reprints and in paperback and hardback collections. “They’re still selling as well as they ever have, which is a relief. I didn’t know without the monthly comic to sustain interest in it, if they would.”
But the Endless — including Dream’s siblings Death, Desire, Despair, Delirium, Destiny and Destruction — are still near-and-dear to Gaiman. Two previous limited series about Death were critical and commercial successes, and film rights to the first series, “Death: The High Cost of Living,” have been bought by Warner Brothers, which also owns the film rights to “Sandman.” Both films are currently in developmental limbo, however.
In the meantime, there will be a new Endless story very soon.
“Right now, I’m writing a very, very short story about Desire and the pre-Raphaelites for this winter,” to be published in “Winter’s Edge,” a holiday anthology special from Vertigo Comics.
In 1990, Gaiman came out with his first novel, “Good Omens.” Although the book was in the same thematic territory as “Sandman” — the book is about the end of the world, as described in the Book of Revelations — it’s funny, something that “Sandman” is rarely accused of being.
“People tend to forget, though, that I’m also the same person who wrote ‘Don’t Panic,’ the guide to Douglas Adams’ ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,'” written in the same tongue-in-cheek style as Adams’ work. “So, it wasn’t a style that was particularly difficult. And the idea for ‘Good Omens,’ and the first chapter and so forth were all mine. But I hesitated because I didn’t want to be pigeonholed as a ‘funny writer.'”
Gaiman wrote the first 5,000 words of the book, then set them aside. His friend Terry Pratchett, the novelist behind the popular comedy-fantasy “Discworld” series, called up one day, insisting that Gaiman finish the book as a collaboration with Pratchett.
“And the delightful thing about writing with Terry was that everyone assumed that he wrote all the funny bits and I wrote all the squirmy bits with maggots. Now, I did write my fair bit about maggots, but I also did a fair bit of the jokes.”
“Good Omens” is described as a “cult hit” by the publishers, which does it a bit of a disservice.
“In the case of America, it means it never got onto any bestseller lists, but it’s quietly gone on to sell better than any of the bestsellers.” All told, the book has sold more than 200,000 copies worldwide. “I think we’ve sold more than any of the O.J. books.”
A native of Sussex, England, Gaiman now lives in Minnesota, the “ancestral stomping grounds” of his American wife, where he lives in a “nice ‘Addams family’ house.”
Gaiman’s first solo novel, “Neverwhere,” was published last month by Avon Books, to positive reviews. Although his fans will be pleased to discover his clean, somewhat ironic writing, the subject matter will be more familiar, a fantasy set in modern-day London. Sort of.
“It’s composed of a bunch of different ideas, really. One of them was a desire to write about homelessness and the people who fall through the cracks. But to use it through fantasy. Not to glamorize it. Because I’ve had too many friends who’ve been homeless. And it’s not glamorous. If you do it, it may well kill you.”
“Falling through the cracks” is rather literal in “Neverwhere“: the protagonist finds himself invisible to the residents of conventional London, his identity erased by a brush with the magical inhabitants of “London Below,” an underworld filled with bloodless thugs, vagabonds who can speak to rats and a little girl who can open a door in any wall.
Juxtaposing the London we know, London Above, with the darker, weirder London Below was part of the fun for Gaiman.
“Taking this London that was a mythological London, making London into a magical city,” he said, “Getting these two places to play off one another. One is sort of a distorted reflection of the other.”
As with “Sandman,” Gaiman packs a lot into the story, including mythic allusions and fairly heavy thematic issues, making “Neverwhere” a sometimes cerebral adventure story.
“My intended audience is always me, or someone like me. I will do my reader the credit of being reasonably intelligent, or reasonably well-read. If not, nothing’s lost. But I’d rather put too much into it,” he said.
Gaiman has heard from many fans who enjoyed his “Sandman” stories when they were younger, and upon rereading them years later, found more subtle subtexts to enjoy.
“I love the fact that ‘Sandman’ is being taught a lot in Shakespeare classes. … Students present it to professors, and professors show it to their next classes.”
Although “Neverwhere” is new to American audiences, it’s already spawned a BBC television series in Britain. Gaiman is unsure whether the series will be imported to America.
“I have no idea. People seem to be doing a very thriving business right now in bootlegs. That’s very much up to the BBC,” he said. One thing he is excited about is that “currently we’re negotiating for ‘Neverwhere: The Movie.'” Jim Henson Productions is negotiating for the rights.
Unfortunately for fans of the show, it’s probably over.
“We had a bunch of conditions for the BBC [before there would be another season]. Basically, that it not be shot on video and that we didn’t have to do a bunch of half-hour episodes. Because the first series looked a bit too much like ‘Dr. Who’ for anyone’s comfort,” he said. “There were some lovely performances, but I look at it and think it could have been better.”
“Neverwhere” isn’t Gaiman’s first brush with mainstream publishing success. His children’s book “The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish,” illustrated by McKean, was published by White Wolf Books in May.
“I actually got the idea when my son was about 8. Because he turned around to me one day — because I’d said something to offend him — and he said to me ‘I wish I didn’t have a dad,’ and then he paused ‘I wish I had goldfish.'”
Gaiman stored the idea away, and now that it’s seen print, his oldest son is 13.
In the story, the protagonist forced to swap the goldfish back for his father, only to discover his friend has swapped his father for other loot, as “well, he wasn’t very exciting … all he did was read the paper.”
The book has caught on with readers and is doing so well that Gaiman is now worried about being pigeonholed as a children’s author.
“The question I get is ‘how does it feel to be Neil ‘Sandman’ Gaiman?’ Now I have this fear that 50 years from now, people will say ‘I just learned something interesting; the guy who did that book also wrote a series of comic books.'”
Gaiman isn’t resting on his laurels in the wake of his two book publications.
On one front, he’s negotiating with comic creator Todd McFarlane over compensation for characters Gaiman created for McFarlane’s “Spawn” comic, one of the biggest-sellers in the industry, which has gone on to, well, spawn a toy line, movie and animated series. One possibility is that Gaiman may be swapped the rights to Angela, Medieval Spawn and other characters for the rights to “Miracleman,” a British comic he wrote in the 1980s.
“But it’s being negotiated. And I have no idea if anything will actually happen with it.”
The next work comic fans can look for will be “Stardust,” a “fairy story for adults,” published every six weeks starting in October.
Although it will be prose, it will be heavily illustrated with “at least a painting on every page” by sometime “Sandman” artist Charles Vess.
“It’s about a young man who’s in love with a village girl, busily promising her anything, and promises her a falling star, and she says ‘go on, then.’ … The star in question is a beautiful young lady with a broken leg.”
He’s also working on a short story collection, including some stories from an out-of-print small press anthology. The new book will be out next year, about the same time as “Neverwhere” appears in paperback.
Gaiman’s ambitions don’t end there. He’s written the screenplay for “Death: The High Cost of Living,” which he may also direct, and will make his acting debut in an upcoming film about the life of artist Salvador Dali. His ambitions extend further still.
“I’ve always wanted to do a Broadway musical, but I don’t know when I’d have the time. The problem is if someone called me up tomorrow and said ‘OK, let’s do the musical,’ I’d have to say ‘OK, let’s fit it in sometime in 1999.”
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