With the release later this month of The Graveyard Book, and an appearance this weekend at the National Book Festival, author and comics writer Neil Gaiman is making the interview rounds.
The Washington Post has the transcript from Wednesday’s online chat in which Gaiman answered questions ranging from his upcoming projects to the future of his blog to an unanswered 20-year-old question from The Sandman #1:
Takoma Park, Md: Did we ever find out what made Dream so weak that he could be captured in Sandman No. 1? If no, when do we find out? Thanks!
Neil Gaiman: We never did. I was hoping to tell that story in a book DC Comics would publish this year, for Sandman’s Twentieth Anniversary (20! Years! Unimaginable!) but we weren’t able to come to an agreement. Maybe for Sandman’s thirtieth anniversary…?
In the meantime, I’m writing the last Batman story for DC, for Andy Kubert to draw. I’ve seen the first eleven pages of pencils and they are things of beauty that make me feel guilty for having written words that will, when lettered, cover bits of the artwork up.
Elsewhere, at Goodreads, Gaiman reveals that he doesn’t plan to tackle anything of The Sandman’s scope again:
It definitely didn’t leave me thinking, “I need to write more giant things.” Depending on how long I get to live, I will probably get to do another two, maybe even three, more American Gods books, and they are all great, big things, 500 to 600-page books, so it will probably be that length. But I can’t imagine doing anything that takes up my life and my headspace in the same way that Sandman did. There were times when what was going on in Sandman was much more real to me than anything that was going on in the world outside, just because I was spending more time with these characters.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
I remain amazed that DC didn’t do whatever it took to make that book happen.