Man of the hour, Neil Gaiman has not one but two films out and about to come out. And we find ourselves torn, with regards to the man. Do we love him or are we completely sick of him?
Stardust was a fun story but we read it not so much for Neil's imagination and fairly good word-smithing, as for Charles Vess' incomparable skill with ink. Yes, we own a much cherished hardbound and illustrated original copy signed by both men. We will see the movie on Saturday but we find ourselves sketchy on whether or not certain members of the cast will let us down. Each of them has been fantastic in something before, but most of them have also bombed abysmally at least once as well.
We feel the same way about Beowulf due out November 16th, half-excited, half-horrified at what may have been done with one of our favorite stories. Although, we do have to give Neil credit for the wonderful job he did with the screenplay for Princess Mononoke. But then, alack, we remember Mirrormask and the whole process reverses itself.
We feel the same way about the man himself. He is an absolute darling in this interview he just gave for MySpace Comic Books, but we well remember a time when we saw him in person, way back when at the Mysterious Galaxy bookstore in Clairemont, California. We were getting the lovely Smoke and Mirrors signed, along with the questionable American Gods, (he looked askance at the book club version) and the man was a complete prat to the people who'd been lined up waiting to see him, including us! We know you're tired and all but pull it together, man; for God's sake you're a professional.
PS. He had to keep two of our friends from an old fashioned sibling brawl that day, pretty hilarious.
Check out this video: MySpace Comic Books: NEIL GAIMAN answers YOUR questions!
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The man is brilliant but very aware of it. There's no questioning his innate skill and his ability to string together a yarn, but he's constantly turning the pretention up to eleven.
I recently read the first few issues of his run on the Eternals, not knowing that he was the writer, and I remember saying 'God, whoever is writing this is too full of himself for his own good.' I checked the cover, and yessir, Neil Gaiman.
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