It began with a sense of vague unease.
It seems hard to believe I graduated high school 10 years ago. Although I no longer feel close to those days, emotionally or mentally, neither do I feel like someone old enough to be going to his 10th year reunion, as I did on August 16.
Driving to the country club it was to be held at a country club (pay attention to that, as it’s significant), I felt … not trepidation, but a certain low-level annoyance. I’d paid $45 for the privilege of seeing these people again, and I wasn’t sure why.
It wasn’t that my two years at South Lakes High School in Reston, Virginia were unpleasant — I only spent two years there because my family moved quite a bit while I was growing up — but they made little impression on me. I’m a great believer in the idea that there are certain key moments in a person’s life that transform it, and mold the person irrevocably. I can think of perhaps four such key events in my life off the top of my head — traveling, joining Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, the time spent with my college-era girlfriend, working as a television reporter in college — but attending South Lakes is not one of them.
When I graduated back in 1987, Fairfax County, Va. was the second-richest public school district in America, and now that Orange County, Ca. has gone belly-up, it may be number one. Within the school district, South Lakes is probably the second wealthiest school, full of the children of lawyers, politicos, defense contractors and all the others that make the nation’s capital tick. There was a certain air of self-declared aristocracy amongst my classmates, a certain American classism existing independent of Ivy League schools or “old money.” Like other such groups, they felt a sense of entitlement as we graduated, as though the world was destined to give to us what we so clearly deserved.
Although I was friends with a number of such “A-list” people in high school, I was never really one of them. I had numerous friends — finding the popularity my senior year of high school that had previously escaped me — but they were scattered across grades and cliques, “cool” people, brains, artsy types and partiers.
As I pulled into the country club parking lot, Jimmy Buffett blasting from the stereo but unable to take the edge off my mood, I noticed with a sigh the convertible BMWs, Acuras and Volvos in the parking lot. My hard-working Hyundai was the only car of its brand in the lot.
The crowd was classically South Lakes, or at least the image the students had of themselves: Nearly all white, well-educated, and upper middle class sophisticated. It was essentially a really nice fraternity or sorority mixer, only without the music or the likelihood of anyone having sex with someone they didn’t come with.
I was there, hoping it’d be more fun than I feared, wanting to see about a half-dozen different people. I can only remember the names of three of my teachers. One I don’t wish to ever see again, or only to back over her with my car if I do, and the other two didn’t show. This was to set the tone for the evening.
About 568 people were in my graduating class (the figure has become hazy over the course of a decade) and 168 showed up. Alas, they were mostly the “A-List” people, and not my more interesting classmates. The classmates who showed, giving air kisses and squeezing biceps, actually kissing cheeks when they were really excited, were mostly pressed from a single mold, wearing the same few outfits — nearly all the women wore demure black cocktail dresses, except for one classmate seemingly showing off her boob job — with their hair neatly coifed the same way and telling the same stories over and over again.
Flipping through a list of classmates, as I sipped my single complimentary soda (I was not going to spend $2.75 for another), I saw that my senior prom date now lived in Las Vegas, where she’s presumably pursuing her singing career. Another high school friend of mine had moved to Phoenix. Neither were in attendance that evening.
The person I would have loved to spent the evening catching up with, telling her about all I’d done since last we talked, was absolutely not coming, as Aislinn has been dead for six years, a loss that still stings.
So I mingled, nodding and saying “hey, how ya doin’ to a succession of classmates who were, in most respects, the same as they always were. True, the women were typically a little heavier, and for all the cracks my family makes about my hairline, most of the men had lost far more of their hair than I have mine.
I ate with a friend whom I see periodically around the DC area, and ran into a few other people I was glad to see. But one encounter in particular sums up the whole of the experience, and what South Lakes means to me today.
[Old junk snipped. It’s been 10 years since I wrote this and 20 years since high school. No point in leaving this out there where it’ll cause unintended and thoughtless pain.]
I left feeling calm, untouched by anything I had seen or done that evening.
I got a diploma from South Lakes High School 10 years ago, but when I walked out its doors into the hot Washington summer, I left it behind. It recedes more and more in my rear-view mirror with each passing day. It’s where I came from, but it bears no impact on where I’m going.
This is one of three Potomac News reviews that won me a first place Virginia Press Association award in the Critical Writing category for medium-size newspapers in January 1998.
In its day, “Hair” was the musical that caused trouble. It insulted hallowed institutions, celebrated rebellion, featured nude actors — briefly — and rocked and rolled on Broadway.
Twenty-nine years later, “Hair” has returned to Washington, D.C., in a new production at the Studio Theatre.
The production is full of energy, sex-appeal and passion. But times have passed it by, and the anti-Vietnam, pro-hippie musical feels a little hollow in the 1990s.
For those of us who missed it the first time around — or weren’t even born — the legendary musical is about a group of drop-outs and protesters living on the streets, or in communal “pads.” But the spectre of Vietnam hovers over them, with one character finally getting drafted for the war.
The Studio production certainly captures the spirit of the times. The first act, the “love” portion of this “tribal love musical,” is enough to steam up anyone’s glasses. The cast is sexy, to put it mildly, and their gyrations and flirtations crank the heat up in the Studio Theatre’s Secondstage.
The musical, unfortunately, is structured in such a way that the first act, while fun, doesn’t have much drama to it. That’s all saved for the second act, where Claude (the excellent Jason Gilbert) wrestles with what to do about being drafted. His friends urge him to burn his draft card, and while he’s scared of death — hauntingly portrayed in two battle scenes — he also feels an uncool pull of patriotism.
Being a hippie for Claude is a lifestyle choice, not a political one, and although he’s the not the only one of his “tribe” of hippie drop-outs and protesters who feels that way, he’s the only one willing to even come close to admitting it.
More than two decades after the fall of Saigon, Gilbert and the cast of “Hair” make the idea of death in Southeast Asia, for a cause that was murky at best, terrifying.
The cast is uniformly excellent, with standout acting performances by Gilbert as Claude, Nell Mooney as the pregnant Jeanie, Chris Noll who plays Woof as though the character were on loan from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and Larry Baldine as the self-centered Berger. The cast are no slouches in the musical department, either, with Rebecca Davis, Tracie Nicole Thoms and Kathleen Maguire blowing the roof off the theater with their vocal chops.
Not content with just the story, songs and costuming, even the Studio production’s staging harkens back to the 1960s. Audience members shift rooms with the players several times, and the cast is very “hands-on” with the audience. (In 19 months of reviewing plays for the Potomac News, “Hair” on Sunday was the first time an actress has kissed me during a performance.) The approach prompted a few nervous giggles from audience members at first, especially those sitting on the floor with cast members, but ultimately it works.
Seeing “Hair” may be a revelation for those too young to know it except from its soundtrack. Who knew that “Let The Sun Shine In” is actually a haunting, even eerie sorrowful song? (Well, my parents did, but who listens to their parents talk about the 1960s?)
This isn’t to say the Studio production is total flashback to the 1960s: Most of the men’s hair styles are hardly the flowing locks celebrated in the title song, and K’dara Korin (who plays Hud) sports a wildly anachronistic nipple ring. And there’s at least one bad, bad wig worn by an ensemble member.
And although the performance itself works as a whole, the production comes off as little more than a time capsule, with the same relevancy as the animatronic robots in the Hall of Presidents in Disney World. The sting of “Hair” is lessened, to put it mildly, when we have a president who has smoked marijuana and protested the Vietnam War.
The musical would been more of a rebellion during the Reagan-Bush years — when ’60s nostalgia was still hip, incidentally — or, if Studio had really wanted to ruffle some feathers, during the Persian Gulf War.
For all the love, lust, passion and pain in this production, its timing means it comes off feeling a little too … safe.
Which is a total bummer, man.
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.”
Originally published in the July 24, 1997 edition of the Potomac News.
At the moment, John Denver isn’t anywhere near the mountains he celebrated in song 20 years ago. Instead, he’s relaxing in a setting more fitting to a Beach Boy.
“I love it, too, I want to hang out by the ocean,” Denver said by telephone Monday, while sitting on a porch swing overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Monterey, California. “I’m renting a place out here, but I haven’t had much time to hang out. I’ve been doing an awful lot of work.”
Denver may not be at the top of the charts as he was in the ’70s and early ’80s, but he’s still keeping busy. Next Wednesday he’ll be performing at the Wolf Trap Filene Center. He has just returned from a tour of Europe, recorded an album of train songs for Sony/Wonder and just wrapped up taping a PBS special.
“It’s about some people I’ve met over the years,” he said, the chains of his porch swing creaking as he rocked. “One guy is perhaps the most knowledgeable man in the world about birds of prey. … [It’s] about people who have given their voice or lives to wildlife preservation.”
No surprise here: The man who once sang “Rocky Mountain High” is still a big environmentalist.
“Nature is my first and best friend, always has been. Consequentially, my songs are full of images of nature,” Denver said. He’s still busy using his fame, “trying to wake people up, so that we don’t take our world, our environment for granted. That, in a very small way, is what I’m trying to do with my music.”
Although Denver is still a household name, his current fame is a far cry from the 1970s, when he had 11 hit songs and a string of gold and platinum songs.
“On one hand, I don’t necessarily want to do all that again. I had a taste of that stardom, or superstardom, and it can be fun, but I don’t want to do that again. On the other hand, it’s frustrating when you’re doing the best work of your career … and I don’t have the audience I had. And the same thing when you want to get a message out, and it’s harder to get people to listen,” he said, speaking quickly.
“I think that I’m singing better than I ever had before. I’m starting to learn how to sing. … I think the songs are as good if not better than they ever [were] before,” Denver said. Not that he has anything against his older songs, which he says are still his favorites. “It’s always wonderful, you never know when any particular song is going to get you.”
Those attending his concerts nowadays are a mix of the hardcore fans who have kept up with his career and those going for nostalgia reasons.
“I’m finding a wonderful new audience of young people who were raised on my music and are listening to it now with new ears,” he said. “I think they are the ones who are most surprised by – well, I’m just going to say it, I don’t mean to be presumptuous or arrogant – by the richness of the show. And there’s always someone who gets dragged along to the show, who is not a John Denver fan. And when their opinion gets changed over the course of the show, I always enjoy that.”
At 53, Denver has accomplished more than most entertainers ever will. But he’s not ready for retirement.
“There are a lot of things I would like yet to do,” he said. “I would like to have done more with films. But otherwise, I feel like in every aspect of my life, I’m still growing.”
Denver died in a plane crash three months later, in October 1997.
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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