Книга: Jamie Delano, Grant Morrison, Neil Gaiman, Dick Foreman «John Constantine, Hellblazer: Volume 4: The Family Man»

Grant Morrison (born 31 January 1960) is a Scottish comic book writer, playwright and occultist. He is known^{[by whom?]} for his nonlinear narratives and counter-cultural leanings, as well as his successful runs on titles like Animal Man, Doom Patrol, JLA, The Invisibles, New X-Men, Fantastic Four, All-Star Superman, and Batman.

Early life

Grant Morrison was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1960. His first published works were Gideon Stargrave strips for Near Myths in 1978 (when he was about 17^[1]), one of the first British alternative comics. His work appeared in four of the five issues of Near Myths and he was suitably encouraged to find more comic work. This included a weekly comic strip Captain Clyde, an unemployed superhero based in Glasgow, for The Govan Press, a local newspaper, plus various issues of DC Thomson's Starblazer, a science fiction version of that company's Commando title.

Career

1980s

Morrison spent much of the early 1980s touring and recording with his band The Mixers, writing the occasional Starblazer for D. C. Thompson and contributing to various UK indie titles. In 1982 he submitted a proposal involving the Justice League of America and Jack Kirby's New Gods entitled Second Coming to DC Comics, but it was not commissioned. After writing The Liberators for Dez Skinn's Warrior in 1985, he started work for Marvel UK the following year. There he wrote a number of comic strips for Doctor Who Magazine, his final one a collaboration with a then-teenage Bryan Hitch, as well as a run on the Zoids strip in Spider-Man and Zoids. 1986 also saw publication of Morrison's first of several two- or three-page Future Shocks for 2000AD.

Morrison's first continuing serial began in 2000AD in 1987, when he and Steve Yeowell created Zenith, an early example of deconstructing the superhero genre.

Morrison's work on Zenith brought him to the attention of DC Comics, who asked him to pitch for them. They accepted his proposals for Animal Man, a little-known character from DC's past whose most notable recent appearance was a cameo in the Crisis on Infinite Earths limited series, and for a 48-page Batman one-shot that would eventually become Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth.

Animal Man placed Morrison at the head of the so-called "Brit Wave" invasion of American comics, along with such writers as Neil Gaiman, Peter Milligan, Jamie Delano and Alan Moore (who had launched the 'invasion' with his work on Swamp Thing).^[2]

After impressing with Animal Man, Morrison was asked to take over Doom Patrol, starting his uniquely surreal take on the superhero genre with issue No. 19 in 1989. Previously, a formulaic superhero title, Morrison's Doom Patrol introduced more surreal elements, introducing concepts such as dadaism into his first several issues.

DC published Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth in 1989 as a 128 page graphic novel. Painted by Dave McKean, Arkham Asylum featured uses of symbolic writing not common in comics at the time. (The story was to have included a transvestite Joker, an element toned down by DC.) The book went on to become one of the best selling graphic novels of all time. During the late 80s, Morrison also wrote various other titles for DC, most notably Gothic in issues 6–10 of the Batman title Legends of the Dark Knight.

Whilst working for DC in America, Morrison kept contributing to British indie titles, most notably writing St. Swithin's Day for Trident Comics. St. Swithin's Day's anti-Margaret Thatcher themes proved controversial, provoking a small tabloid press fury and a complaint from Conservative MP Teddy Taylor.

The controversy continued with the publication of The New Adventures of Hitler in Scottish music and lifestyle magazine Cut in 1989, due to its use of Adolf Hitler as its lead character. The strip was unfinished when Cut folded, and was later reprinted and completed in Fleetway's 2000AD spin-off title Crisis.

1990s

The early 1990s saw Morrison revamping Kid Eternity for DC with artist Duncan Fegredo, and Dan Dare, with artist Rian Hughes. Morrison coloured Dare's bright future with Thatcherism in Fleetway's Revolver.

In 1991 Morrison wrote Bible John-A Forensic Meditation for Fleetway's Crisis, drawn by fellow member of 'The Mixers' Daniel Vallely, and based on an analysis of possible motivations for the crimes of the serial killer Bible John. Covering similar themes to Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell, the story was highly experimental in terms of story and art, with Vallely and Morrison claiming to have used a Ouija board to write the script and Vallely using a series of collages rather than conventional panels to tell the story. Morrison used the term "Forensic Meditation" to refer his mixture of scientific and magical techniques to tell the story. Vallely allegedly destroyed his art work upon the story's completion and left the comic industry. Bible John has not been reprinted.

In 1993 Morrison, fellow Glaswegian comic writer Mark Millar and John Smith were asked to reinvigorate 2000 AD for an eight-week run called "The Summer Offensive". Morrison wrote Judge Dredd and Really and Truly, and co-wrote the highly controversial Big Dave with Millar.

DC Comics launched its Vertigo imprint in 1993, publishing several of Morrison's creator-owned projects, such as the steampunk mini-series Sebastian O and the graphic novel The Mystery Play. 1995 saw the release of Kill Your Boyfriend, with artist Philip Bond, originally published as a Vertigo Voices one-shot. In 1996 Morrison wrote Flex Mentallo, a Doom Patrol spin-off with art by Frank Quitely,^[3] and also returned briefly to DC Universe superheroics with the critically acclaimed but short-lived Aztek, co-written with Mark Millar.

In 1996, Morrison was given the Justice League of America to revamp as JLA, a comic book that gathered the 'Big Seven' superheroes of the DC universe into one team. This run was hugely popular and returned the title back to best-selling status. It was also influential in creating the type of "widescreen" superhero action later seen in titles such as Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch's The Authority.^{[citation needed]} Morrison wrote several issues of The Flash with Mark Millar, as well as DC's crossover event of 1998, the four-issue mini-series DC One Million, in addition to plotting many of the multiple crossovers.

With the three volumes of the creator-owned The Invisibles, Morrison would start his largest and possibly most important^[4] work. The Invisibles combined political, pop- and sub-cultural references. Tapping into pre-millennial tension, the work was influenced by the writings of Robert Anton Wilson, Aleister Crowley and William Burroughs and Morrison's practice of chaos magic.^[5] At DisinfoCon in 1999, Morrison said that much of the content in The Invisibles was information given to him by aliens that abducted him in Kathmandu, who told him to spread this information to the world via a comic book. He later clarified that the experience he labelled as the "Alien Abduction Experience in Kathmandu" had nothing to do with aliens or abduction, but that there was an experience that he had in Kathmandu that The Invisibles is an attempt to explain.^[6] The title was not a huge commercial hit to start with. (Morrison actually asked his readers to participate in a "wankathon" while concentrating on a magical symbol, or sigil, in an effort to boost sales).^[7] The first issues were critically acclaimed^{[citation needed]}, but many readers found the second arc in issues 5–8 too confusing or lacking in action^{[citation needed]}. When the title was relaunched with volume two, the characters relocated to America and the style became intentionally more "American", featuring more action while still maintaining Morrison's ideas and themes. Volume three appeared with issue numbers counting down, signalling an intention to conclude the series with the turn of the new millennium in 2000. However, due to the title shipping late, its final issue did not ship until April 2000. The entire series has been collected by Vertigo as a series of seven trade paperbacks.

2000s

In 2000, Morrison's graphic novel JLA: Earth 2 was released with art by Frank Quitely. It was Morrison's last mainstream work for DC for a while, as he moved to Marvel Comics to take over the writing of the main X-Men title, renamed New X-Men for his run, with Quitely providing much of the art.^[8] Again, Morrison's revamping of a major superhero team proved to be a critical and commercial success, with the title jumping to the No. 1 sales^[9] and established Morrison as the kind of creator whose name on a title would guarantee sales.^[10] His penultimate arc "Planet X" depicted the villain Magneto infiltrating and defeating the X-Men in the guise of new character Xorn and developing an addiction to the power-enhancing drug "Kick".^[11][12] This has since been retconned by other writers to portray Morrison's Xorn as a separate character distinct from Magneto.^[13]

Morrison at the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con International.

In 2002, Morrison launched his next creator-owned project at Vertigo: The Filth, drawn by Chris Weston and Gary Erskine, a 13-part mini-series,^[14] said by Warren Ellis to be heavily influenced by Chris Morris's Blue Jam radio series.

While at Marvel, Morrison also wrote the six-part Marvel Boy series,^[15] and Fantastic Four: 1234, his take on another major superhero team. Morrison helped challenge Marvel's reputation for being closed to new ideas^{[citation needed]}, but after finishing his New X-Men, he returned to DC Comics to work on several titles and help revamp the DC Universe.

In 2004, Vertigo published three Morrison mini-series. Seaguy, We3 and Vimanarama involving, respectively, a picaresque hero in a post-utopian world that does not need him; cyber-enhanced pets running from their captors in what Morrison calls his "western manga"; and ancient Hindu/Pakistani myths translated into Jack Kirby-style adventures. We3 came in for particular praise for its bold storytelling techniques and artwork by Frank Quitely. Morrison also returned to the JLA with the first story in a new anthology series, JLA Classified, tales set within the JLA mythos by various creative teams.

In 2005, DC Comics started publishing what was dubbed the first ever "megaseries". The Grant Morrison-scripted Seven Soldiers features both new characters and reimagined obscure DC characters: The Manhattan Guardian, Mister Miracle, Klarion the Witch Boy, Bulleteer, Frankenstein, Zatanna and Shining Knight. The maxi-series consists of seven interlinked four-issue mini-series with two "bookend" volumes – 30 issues in all.

Dan DiDio (current editorial vice president of DC Comics) was impressed with Morrison's ideas for revitalising many of DC's redundant characters. Giving him the unofficial title of "revamp guy", DiDio asked him to assist in sorting out the DC Universe in the wake of the Infinite Crisis.^[16] Morrison was also one of the writers on 52, a year long weekly comic book series that started in May 2006 and concluded in May 2007.^[17]

Starting in November 2005, DC published All-Star Superman, a twelve-issue story arc by Morrison and Frank Quitely. Not so much a revamp or reboot of Superman, the series presents an out-of-continuity "iconic" Superman for new readers. All-Star Superman won the Eisner Award for Best New Series in 2006, the Best Continuing Series Eisner Award in 2007 and several Eagle Awards in the UK. It also won 3 Harvey Awards in 2008 and the Eisner Award for Best Continuing Series in 2009.

In the same year, Morrison and Quitely worked on pop star Robbie Williams' album Intensive Care, providing intricate Tarot card designs for the packaging and cover of the CD.

In 2006 Morrison was voted as the No. 2 favourite comic book writer of all time by Comic Book Resources, beating Neil Gaiman at No. 3 (Alan Moore was #1).^[18] That same year, Morrison began writing Batman for DC with issue #655. He also masterminded the relaunch of The Authority and Wildcats, with the art of Gene Ha and Jim Lee respectively, for DC's Wildstorm imprint. WildC.A.T.S. went on hiatus after one issue, The Authority was discontinued after two. The scheduling of The Authority conflicted with 52 and Morrison was unhappy with the reviews: "I said fuck it.".^[19] It eventually concluded without Morrison's involvement in Keith Giffen's The Authority: The Lost Year.

At the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con, DC Comics announced that Morrison would write Final Crisis, a seven issue mini-series slated to appear in 2008 with J. G. Jones handling the art. Morrison also announced that 2008 would see publication of the follow-up to 2004's Seaguy called Seaguy 2: The Slaves of Mickey Eye, the second part of a planned three part series.^[20][21]

At the 2008 New York Comic-Con, Morrison announced he would be working with Virgin Comics to produce "webisodes" (short animated stories) based on the Mahābhārata; it would not be a direct translation but, "Like the Beatles took Indian music and tried to make psychedelic sounds... I'm trying to convert Indian storytelling to a western style for people raised on movies, comics, and video games."^[22]

2010s

Morrison signing copies of his 2011 superhero analysis, Supergods, at Midtown Comics in Manhattan, 19 July 2011.

At San Diego Comic Con 2010 it was announced that Grant Morrison would be leaving Batman and Robin with No. 16 and launching a new series entitled Batman Incorporated with artist Yanick Paquette; a more team-oriented Batman book inspired by the Batman: The Brave and the Bold animated series.^[23][24][25]

Morrison's latest creator-owned work, an eight issue Vertigo series titled Joe the Barbarian, launched in January 2010 with artist Sean Murphy.^[26] Originally a six issue series, Morrison felt that the story would benefit from an extra two issues. The titular Joe is a diabetic young boy who begins to hallucinate a fantasy world populated with his toys and other fantasy characters when he stops taking his medication.^[27]

Following the closure of Virgin Comics, Dynamite Entertainment and Liquid Comics announced a partnership to publish a hardcover of illustrated scripts of Grant Morrison's Mahābhārata-based, animated project 18 Days with illustrations by artist Mukesh Singh, that was released in August 2010.^[28][29]

He is the subject of a feature-length documentary titled Grant Morrison: Talking with Gods. The documentary features extensive interviews with Morrison as well as a number of comic artists, editors and professionals he has worked closely with.^[30] Talking with Gods was co-produced by Respect Films and Sequart Research & Literacy Organization, and was released in 2010 at the San Diego Comic Con.^[31]

Morrison was featured in My Chemical Romance's music video "Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)" from their 2010 album Danger Days: True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys as the concept's villain Korse.^[32] He reprised the role of his character in the "SING" music video.

Morrison will be completing the first 'season' of Batman Inc with issue #10, before returning in 2012 to complete the story with an additional 12 issues. He will be teaming with artist Chris Burnham for the relaunch.^[33]

In June 2011, as part of DC Comics' massive revamp of their entire superhero line, Morrison was announced as the writer on the new Action Comics #1, teaming with artist Rags Morales, marking Morrison's return to the Superman character after the All Star Superman.^[34]

Morrison's nextcitation needed major comic book project will be Multiversity, a metaseries of eight one-shots set in some of the 52 worlds in the DC Multiverse.^[35][36]

In July 2011, Morrison's analysis of superheroes, Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero, was published by Random House Spiegel & Grau in the United States and Jonathan Cape in the UK.^[37]

Screenwriting and playwriting

Morrison has become more involved in screenwriting and has written numerous scripts and treatments.

His screenplays include Sleepless Knights for DreamWorks and WE3 for New Line (both in development with Don Murphy producing, John Stevenson is attached as Director for WE3). Most recently he wrote the adaptation of the video game Area 51 home console game^[38] for Paramount (in development with CFP Productions producing). Morrison has written a film to be directed by Adam Egypt Mortimer called Sinatoro, to be released in 2012.^[39][40] He is working on another screenplay called Dinosaurs vs Aliens for Sam Worthington's production company Full Clip Production and when that is done he has said he will be working with them again on a screenplay based on the 2000 AD story Rogue Trooper.^[41]

He has pitched a science fiction television series entitled Bonnyroad to the BBC with director Paul McGuigan and Stephen Fry, which is currently in development.^[42]

Morrison provided outline story and script work for two video games (Predator: Concrete Jungle and Battlestar Galactica) both by Vivendi Universal, though the finished products often did not contain all his contributions.

He has also been a successful playwright, with two plays written for and performed by Oxygen House at the Edinburgh Fringe. The first was Red King Rising in 1989, about the (partly fictional) relationship between Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell and the second in 1990, Depravity about Aleister Crowley. Both plays were critically acclaimed and won between them a Fringe First Award, the Independent Theatre Award for 1989 and the Evening Standard Award for New Drama. A film adaptation of Red King Rising is in discussion. Both plays were included in his collection of prose, Lovely Biscuits released in 1999.^[43]

Appearances as a comics character

Grant Morrison first appeared as a comics character with a cameo in Animal Man #14. He made a full appearance at the end of issue #25, and spent most of issue #26 in a lengthy conversation with the comic's title character on the impact of realism on comic books. He is killed off in Suicide Squad #58.^[44]

Morrison would later be counted among the Seven Unknown Men of Slaughter Swamp, the body of "reality engineers" seen throughout the Seven Soldiers miniseries event, all of whom look exactly like him. During the series, one of these – referred to as the "Eighth of Seven" – went rogue, consolidating magical power for himself, releasing the Sheeda warrior-race on their Twenty-First Century ancestors, and becoming the silver-age character Zor, "The Terrible Time Tailor", a figure who looks exactly like Morrison but also wears a magician's outfit and sporting dark hair and a self-described 'magnificent beard'. This Zor was introduced in the original Spectre adventures in More Fun Comics No. 55 before he was re-invented in "Seven Soldiers." Zor is defeated by Zatanna and captured by his fellow Time Tailors who 'judge' him. Morrison himself, bearing a DC Comics-logo tie clip then becomes the narrator of the final chapter, treating the readers as if they were Zor themselves. Zor is eventually dressed to resemble a paedophiliac miser named Cyrus Gold, killed by an angry mob^[45] (in DC history, after being killed by the mob Cyrus Gold's body falls into the swamp, and he is reborn as the Golden Age villain Solomon Grundy.

He has also appeared in an issue of Simpsons Comics, where he is seen fighting with Mark Millar over the title of "Writer of X-Men".^[46]

In the notes to the Absolute Edition of DC: The New Frontier, writer Darwyn Cooke mentioned that this version of Captain Cold was visually based upon Morrison.

It has also been suggested by Comics Bulletin's Thom Young that the near-future Batman depicted in Batman No. 666 is based on Morrison: "Oddly, the shaved-headed Batman in the trench coat looks a bit like Grant Morrison and he has a cat named Alfred. In other words, it looks like Morrison (who is known to love cats) made himself Batman in this story. Of course, in Animal Man, Morrison appeared as himself as the teller of tales of Animal Man's life; in Seven Soldiers, the tailors who tell the tales of the universe looked like Morrison; and now he seems to be the Batman of the not-too-distant future."^[47] However, Morrison has stated that the decision to base the appearance of the future Batman on him was that of artist Andy Kubert: "I had written him as having a buzz cut, I think, but Andy drew him bald. I think a lot of people just assumed that I stuck myself into a comic again, but that was never intended."^[48]

Bibliography

Notes

References

• Callahan, Timothy (2007) Grant Morrison: The Early Years. Masters of the Medium. Sequart Research & Literacy Organization. ISBN 9780615212159
• Meaney, Patrick (2010) Grant Morrison: Talking with Gods. Documentary film.
• Morrison, Grant (2003) "Pop magic!" in Book of Lies, pp. 16–25 ISBN 0-9713942-7-X
• Disinformation: The Complete Series Disc 2: DisinfoCon. (1999) Speech by Grant Morrison. Distr. Ryko Distribution.
• Meaney, Patrick (2009) Our Sentence is Up: Seeing the Invisibles. Sequart.com. ISBN 9780578032337
• Grant Morrison at the Grand Comics Database
• Grant Morrison at Barney
• Blazing Through the Secrecy, about uncredited authors on Starblazer

External links

• Official website
• Grant Morrison at the Comic Book DB
• Grant Morrison at the Open Directory Project
• The Story of Zero – Morrison's ambient, erotic prose for Cook and Brattell's Skin Two feature
• Grant Morrison at the Internet Movie Database
• Extended look at Morrison's work by Timothy Callahan on Sequart
• Video of Morrison speaking at DisinfoCon
• Video of Grant's performance at Steven Cook's 2002 Alternity show
• Alternity – Morrison performed this spoken word piece at Steven Cook's first solo exhibition in London, (May 2002)
• Grant Morrison on Cracked.com
• Deep Space Transmissions, Fansite with bibliography, interview collection, annotations, proposals, and lists of unpublished works
• Review of Supergods at comicbookgrrrl.com

Interviews

• The Grant Morrison Interview Archive
• Archive of interviews from 1976 to 1997
• PopImage interview, February 2001
• Punching Holes Through Time, Sequential Tart, August 2002
• Barbelith interview, 2 September 2002
• Catching up with Professor M: Talking with Grant Morrison, Comic Book Resources, 2 August 2003
• PopImage interview, 2004
• Comixfan interview, 18 May 2004
• Grant Morrison's big-time return to the DCU, Newsarama, 7 August 2004
• Suicide Girls interview, 4 March 2005
• Three-part interview on: Final Crisis, Batman and All-Star Superman, Newsarama, February–March 2008
• All Star Grant Morrison I: Final Crisis, II: Batman and III: Superman, Comic Book Resources, 15–17 April 2008
• Grant Morrison Talks Comics, Magic, Life, and Death, Publishers Weekly, 12 August 2008
• Killing Batman And The DC Universe, IGN, 26 August 2008
• Klaehn, Jeffery. Grant Morrison, Batman and the Superhero Genre, Publisher Weekly, 13 January 2009
• Alex Ness Interviews Grant Morrison, ComicNews.info,Moviemotion, Ghaneli, 20 January 2009
• Klaehn, Jeffery. Grant Morrison, Final Crisis and the Superhero Genre, Publishers Weekly, 20 January 2009
• Interview with Grant Morrison at comicbookgrrrl.com, 18 July 2011

Neil Richard Gaiman ( /ˈɡeɪmən/;^[3] born 10 November 1960^[4]) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. Gaiman's writing has won numerous awards, including Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker, as well as the 2009 Newbery Medal and 2010 Carnegie Medal in Literature. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work.^[5]

Early life

Gaiman's family is of Polish and other Eastern European Jewish origins;^[6] his great-grandfather emigrated from Antwerp before 1914^[7] and his grandfather eventually settled in the Hampshire city of Portsmouth and established a chain of grocery stores.^[8] His father, David Bernard Gaiman,^[9] worked in the same chain of stores;^[8] his mother, Sheila Gaiman (née Goldman), was a pharmacist. He has two younger sisters, Claire and Lizzy.^[10] After living for a period in the nearby town of Portchester, Hampshire, where Neil was born in 1960, the Gaimans moved in 1965 to the West Sussex town of East Grinstead where his parents studied Dianetics at the Scientology centre in the town.^[11] They remained closely involved with Judaism; Gaiman's sister later said, "It would get very confusing when people would ask my religion as a kid. I’d say, 'I’m a Jewish Scientologist.'"^[11] Gaiman says that he is not a Scientologist.^[11]

Gaiman was able to read at the age of four. He said, "I was a reader. I loved reading. Reading things gave me pleasure. I was very good at most subjects in school, not because I had any particular aptitude in them, but because normally on the first day of school they'd hand out schoolbooks, and I'd read them--which would mean that I'd know what was coming up, because I'd read it."^[2] The first book he read was J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings from his school library, although it only had the first two books in the trilogy. He consistently took them out and read them. He would later win the school English prize and the school reading prize, enabling him to finally acquire the third book in the trilogy.^[2]

For his seventh birthday, Gaiman received C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia series. He later recalled that "I admired his use of parenthetical statements to the reader, where he would just talk to you...I'd think, 'Oh, my gosh, that is so cool! I want to do that! When I become an author, I want to be able to do things in parentheses.' I liked the power of putting things in brackets."^[2] Another childhood favorite was Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which he called "a favourite forever. Alice was default reading to the point where I knew it by heart."^[2] He also enjoyed Batman comics as a child.^[2]

Gaiman was educated at several Church of England schools, including Fonthill School in East Grinstead,^[12] Ardingly College (1970–74), and Whitgift School in Croydon (1974–77).^[13] His father's position as a public relations official of the Church of Scientology was the cause of the seven-year-old Gaiman being blocked from entering a boys' school, forcing him to remain at the school that he had previously been attending.^[11][14] He lived in East Grinstead for many years, from 1965–1980 and again from 1984–1987.^[12] He met his first wife, Mary McGrath, while she was studying Scientology and living in a house in East Grinstead that was owned by his father. The couple were married in 1985 after having their first child, Michael.^[11]

Journalism, early writings, and literary influences

As a child and a teenager, Gaiman read the works of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, James Branch Cabell, Edgar Allan Poe, Michael Moorcock, Ursula K. Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, Lord Dunsany and G. K. Chesterton.^[2] He later became a fan of science fiction, reading the works of authors as diverse as Alan Moore,^[15] Samuel R. Delany, Roger Zelazny, Robert A. Heinlein, H. P. Lovecraft, Thorne Smith, and Gene Wolfe.^{[citation needed]}

In the early 1980s, Gaiman pursued journalism, conducting interviews and writing book reviews, as a means to learn about the world and to make connections that he hoped would later assist him in getting published.^[2] He wrote and reviewed extensively for the British Fantasy Society.^[16] His first professional short story publication was "Featherquest", a fantasy story, in Imagine Magazine in May 1984, when he was 24.^[17]

When waiting for a train at Victoria Station in 1984, Gaiman noticed a copy of Swamp Thing written by Alan Moore, and carefully read it. Moore's fresh and vigorous approach to comics had such an impact on Gaiman that he would later write; "that was the final straw, what was left of my resistance crumbled. I proceeded to make regular and frequent visits to London's Forbidden Planet shop to buy comics".^[15]

In 1984, he wrote his first book, a biography of the band Duran Duran, as well as Ghastly Beyond Belief, a book of quotations, with Kim Newman.^[2] Even though Gaiman thought he did a terrible job, the book's first edition sold out very quickly. When he went to relinquish his rights to the book, he discovered the publisher had gone bankrupt.^[2][18] After this, he was offered a job by Penthouse. On one side, it was steady income to support his wife and two kids. On the other, it was an adult magazine. He refused the offer.^[2]

He also wrote interviews and articles for many British magazines, including Knave. As he was writing for different magazines, some of them competing, and "wrote too many articles", he sometimes went by a number of pseudonyms: Gerry Musgrave, Richard Grey, "along with a couple of house names".^[19] Gaiman ended his journalism career in 1987 because British newspapers can "make up anything they want and publish it as fact."^[20][21]

In the late 1980s, he wrote Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion in what he calls a "classic English humour" style.^{[citation needed]} Following on from that he wrote the opening of what would become his collaboration with Terry Pratchett on the comic novel Good Omens, about the impending apocalypse.^[22]

Comics and graphic novels

After forming a friendship with comic book writer Alan Moore,^[15] Gaiman started writing comic books, picking up Marvelman after Moore finished his run on the series. Gaiman and artist Mark Buckingham collaborated on several issues of the series before its publisher, Eclipse Comics, collapsed, leaving the series unfinished. His first published comic strips were four short Future Shocks for 2000 AD in 1986–7. He wrote three graphic novels with his favorite collaborator and long-time friend Dave McKean: Violent Cases, Signal to Noise, and The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch. Impressed with his work, DC Comics hired him, and he wrote the limited series Black Orchid.^[23] Karen Berger, head of DC Comics's Vertigo, read Black Orchid and offered Gaiman a job: to re-write an old character, Sandman, but to put his own spin on him.^[2]

The Sandman tells the tale of the ageless, anthropomorphic personification of Dream that is known by many names, including Morpheus. The series began in December 1988 and concluded in March 1996: the 75 issues of the regular series, along with an illustrated prose text and a special containing seven short stories, have been collected into 12 volumes that remain in print (14 if the Death spinoff is taken into account). Artists include Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, and Malcolm Jones III, lettering by Todd Klein, colors by Daniel Vozzo, and covers by Dave McKean.^[2]

In 1989, Gaiman published The Books of Magic (collected in 1991), a four-part mini-series that provided a tour of the mythological and magical parts of the DC Universe through a frame story about an English teenager who discovers that he is destined to be the world's greatest wizard. The miniseries was popular, and sired an ongoing series written by John Ney Rieber.

In the mid-90s, he also created a number of new characters and a setting that was to be featured in a title published by Tekno Comix. The concepts were then altered and split between three titles set in the same continuity: Lady Justice, Mr. Hero the Newmatic Man, and Teknophage.^[24] They were later featured in Phage: Shadow Death and Wheel of Worlds. Although Gaiman's name appeared prominently on all titles, he was not involved in writing of any of the above-mentioned books (though he helped plot the zero issue of Wheel of Worlds).^{[citation needed]}

Gaiman wrote a semi-autobiographical story about a boy's fascination with Michael Moorcock's anti-hero Elric of Melniboné for Ed Kramer's anthology Tales of the White Wolf. In 1996, Gaiman and Ed Kramer co-edited The Sandman: Book of Dreams. Nominated for the British Fantasy Award, the original fiction anthology featured stories and contributions by Tori Amos, Clive Barker, Gene Wolfe, Tad Williams, and others.

Asked why he likes comics more than other forms of storytelling Gaiman said “One of the joys of comics has always been the knowledge that it was, in many ways, untouched ground. It was virgin territory. When I was working on Sandman, I felt a lot of the time that I was actually picking up a machete and heading out into the jungle. I got to write in places and do things that nobody had ever done before. When I’m writing novels I’m painfully aware that I’m working in a medium that people have been writing absolutely jaw-droppingly brilliant things for, you know, three-four thousand years now. You know, you can go back. We have things like The Golden Ass. And you go, well, I don’t know that I’m as good as that and that’s two and a half thousand years old. But with comics I felt like – I can do stuff nobody has ever done. I can do stuff nobody has ever thought of. And I could and it was enormously fun.”^[25]

In 2009, Gaiman wrote a two-part Batman story for DC Comics to follow Batman R.I.P. It is titled "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" a play off of the classic Superman story "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" by Alan Moore.^[26][27][28] He also contributed a twelve-page Metamorpho story drawn by Mike Allred for Wednesday Comics, a weekly newspaper-style series.^[29]

Novels

Neil Gaiman at the 2007 Scream Awards

In a collaboration with author Terry Pratchett (best known for his series of Discworld novels), Gaiman's first novel Good Omens was published in 1990. In recent years Pratchett has said that while the entire novel was a collaborative effort and most of the ideas could be credited to both of them, Pratchett did a larger portion of writing and editing if for no other reason than Gaiman's scheduled involvement with Sandman.^[30]

The 1996 novelization of Gaiman's teleplay for the BBC mini-series Neverwhere was his first solo novel. The novel was released in tandem with the television series though it presents some notable differences from the television series. In 1999 first printings of his fantasy novel Stardust were released. The novel has been released both as a standard novel and in an illustrated text edition.

American Gods became one of Gaiman's best-selling and multi-award winning novels upon its release in 2001.^[31] A special 10 Anniversary edition, with the "author's preferred text", which includes an additional 12,000 words. This is identical to the signed and numbered limited edition that was released by Hill House Publishers in 2003. That limited edition version was also 12,000 words longer than the mass market editions and, again, represents Neil Gaiman's preferred edition. This is the version that has been in print from Headline, Gaiman's publisher in the UK even before the 10th Anniversary edition. The 10th Anniversary edition marks the first time the author's preferred text has been available in wide release. He also did a very extensive sold-out book tour celebrating the 10th Anniversary and promoting this book in 2011.

In 2005, his novel Anansi Boys was released worldwide. The book deals with Anansi ('Mr. Nancy'), a supporting character in American Gods. Specifically it traces the relationship of his two sons, one semi-divine and the other an unaware Englishman of American origin, as they explore their common heritage. It debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list.^[32]

In late 2008, Gaiman released a new children's book, The Graveyard Book. It follows the adventures of a boy named Bod after his family is murdered and he is left to be brought up by a graveyard. It is heavily influenced by Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. As of late January 2009^[update], it had been on the New York Times Bestseller children's list for fifteen weeks.^[33]

As of 2008, Gaiman has several books planned. After a tour of China, he decided to write a non-fiction book about his travels and the general mythos of China. Following that, will be a new 'adult' novel (his first since 2005's Anansi Boys). After that, another 'all-ages' book (in the same vein as Coraline and The Graveyard Book). Following that, Gaiman says that he will release another non-fiction book called The Dream Catchers.^[34]

Film and screenwriting

Gaiman wrote the 1996 BBC dark fantasy television series Neverwhere. He cowrote the screenplay for the movie MirrorMask with his old friend Dave McKean for McKean to direct. In addition, he wrote the localized English language script to the anime movie Princess Mononoke, based on a translation of the Japanese script.

He cowrote the script for Robert Zemeckis's Beowulf with Roger Avary, a collaboration that has proved productive for both writers.^[35] Gaiman has expressed interest in collaborating on a film adaptation of the Epic of Gilgamesh.^[36]

He was the only person other than J. Michael Straczynski to write a Babylon 5 script in the last three seasons, contributing the season five episode "Day of the Dead".

Gaiman has also written at least three drafts of a screenplay adaptation of Nicholson Baker's novel The Fermata for director Robert Zemeckis,^[37][38] although the project was stalled while Zemeckis made The Polar Express and the Gaiman-Roger Avary written Beowulf film.

Neil Gaiman was featured in the History Channel documentary Comic Book Superheroes Unmasked.

Several of Gaiman's original works have been optioned or greenlighted for film adaptation, most notably Stardust, which premiered in August 2007 and stars Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer and Claire Danes, directed by Matthew Vaughn. A stop-motion version of Coraline was released on 6 February 2009, with Henry Selick directing and Dakota Fanning and Teri Hatcher in the leading voice-actor roles.^[39]

In 2007 Gaiman announced that after ten years in development the feature film of Death: The High Cost of Living would finally begin production with a screenplay by Gaiman that he would direct for Warner Independent. Don Murphy and Susan Montford are the producers, and Guillermo del Toro is the film's executive producer.^[40][41]

Seeing Ear Theatre performed two of Gaiman's audio theatre plays, "Snow, Glass, Apples", Gaiman's retelling of Snow White and "Murder Mysteries", a story of heaven before the Fall in which the first crime is committed. Both audio plays were published in the collection Smoke and Mirrors in 1998.^{[citation needed]}

Gaiman's 2009 Newbery Medal winning book The Graveyard Book will be made into a movie, with Neil Jordan being announced as the director during Gaiman's appearance on The Today Show, 27 January 2009.^{[citation needed]}

Gaiman wrote an episode of the long running science fiction series Doctor Who, broadcast in 2011 during Matt Smith's second series as the Doctor.^[42][43] Shooting began in August 2010 for this story, whose original title was "The House of Nothing"^[44] but has been retitled as "The Doctor's Wife.^[45] In 2011, it was announced that Gaiman would be writing the script to a new film version of Journey to the West.^[46][47]

Blog

In February 2001, when Gaiman had completed writing American Gods, his publishers set up a promotional web site featuring a weblog in which Gaiman described the day-to-day process of revising, publishing, and promoting the novel. After the novel was published, the web site evolved into a more general Official Neil Gaiman Website.^[48]

Gaiman generally posts to the blog several times a week, describing the day-to-day process of being Neil Gaiman and writing, revising, publishing, or promoting whatever the current project is. He also posts reader emails and answers questions, which gives him unusually direct and immediate interaction with fans. One of his answers on why he writes the blog is "because writing is, like death, a lonely business."^[49]

The original American Gods blog was extracted for publication in the NESFA Press collection of Gaiman miscellany, Adventures in the Dream Trade.^[50]

To celebrate the 7th anniversary of the blog, the novel American Gods was provided free of charge online for a month.^[51][52]

Personal life

Home and family

Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer (Vienna 2011)

Gaiman lives near Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States,^[53][54][55] in an "Addams Family house",^[56] and has lived there since 1992. Gaiman moved there to be close to the family of his then-wife, Mary McGrath, with whom he has three children: Michael, Holly, and Madeleine.^[2][57]

Gaiman is married to songwriter and performer Amanda Palmer. The couple publicly announced that they were dating in June 2009,^[58][59] announced their engagement on Twitter on 1 January 2010,^[60] and confirmed their engagement on their respective websites two weeks later.^[61][62] On 16 November 2010, Amanda Palmer hosted a flash mob wedding (not legally binding) for Gaiman's birthday in New Orleans.^[63] They were legally married on 2 January 2011.^[64] The wedding took place in the parlour of writers Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon.^[65]

Friendship with Tori Amos

One of Gaiman's most commented-upon friendships is with the musician Tori Amos, a Sandman fan who became friends with Gaiman after making a reference to "Neil and the Dream King" on her 1991 demo tape, and whom he included as a character (a talking tree) in Stardust.^[66] Amos also mentions Gaiman in her songs, "Tear in Your Hand" ("If you need me, me and Neil'll be hangin' out with the dream king. Neil says hi by the way"),^[67] "Space Dog" ("Where's Neil when you need him?"),^[68] "Horses" ("But will you find me if Neil makes me a tree?"),^[69] "Carbon" ("Get me Neil on the line, no I can't hold. Have him read, 'Snow, Glass, Apples' where nothing is what it seems"),^[70] "Sweet Dreams" ("You're forgetting to fly, darling, when you sleep"),^[70] and "Not Dying Today" ("Neil is thrilled he can claim he's mammalian, 'but the bad news,' he said, 'girl you're a dandelion'").^[70] He also wrote stories for the tour book of Boys for Pele and Scarlet's Walk, a letter for the tour book of American Doll Posse, and the stories behind each girl in her album Strange Little Girls. Amos penned the introduction for his novel Death: the High Cost of Living, and posed for the cover. She also wrote a song called "Sister Named Desire" based on his Sandman character, which was included on his anthology, Where's Neil When You Need Him?.

Gaiman is godfather to Tori Amos's daughter Tash,^[71] and wrote a poem called "Blueberry Girl" for Tori and Tash.^[72] The poem has been turned into a book by the illustrator Charles Vess.^[73] Gaiman read the poem aloud to an audience in Palo Alto on 5 October 2008 during his book reading tour for The Graveyard Book.^[74] It was published in March 2009 with the title, Blueberry Girl.

S. Alexander Reed has written about the intertextual relationships between Gaiman's and Amos's respective work. Reed does close readings of several of Gaiman's allusions to Amos, arguing that the reference to Amos happens as the texts expand and broaden their focus, and that Amos serves to disrupt the linear flow of the narrative. He reads this disruption in terms of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's idea of the mirror stage, arguing that the mutual referentiality serves to create an ideal vision of the reader-as-fan that the actual reader encounters and misrecognizes as themselves, thus drawing the reader into the role of the devoted (and paying) fan. The essay also contains a fairly thorough list of known references in both Gaiman's and Amos's work.^[75]

Litigation

In 1993, Gaiman was contracted by Todd McFarlane to write a single issue of Spawn, a popular title at the newly created Image Comics company. McFarlane was promoting his new title by having guest authors Gaiman, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, and Dave Sim each write a single issue.

In issue #9 of the series, Gaiman introduced the characters Angela, Cogliostro, and Medieval Spawn. Prior to this issue, Spawn was an assassin who worked for the government and came back as a reluctant agent of Hell but had no direction. In Angela, a cruel and malicious angel, Gaiman introduced a character who threatened Spawn's existence, as well as providing a moral opposite. Cogliostro was introduced as a mentor character for exposition and instruction, providing guidance. Medieval Spawn introduced a history and precedent that not all Spawns were self-serving or evil, giving additional character development to Malebolgia, the demon that creates Hellspawn.

As intended,^[76] all three characters were used repeatedly throughout the next decade by Todd McFarlane within the wider Spawn universe. In papers filed by Gaiman in early 2002, however, he claimed that the characters were jointly owned by their scripter (himself) and artist (McFarlane), not merely by McFarlane in his role as the creator of the series.^[77][78] Disagreement over who owned the rights to a character was the primary motivation for McFarlane and other artists to form Image Comics (although that argument related more towards disagreements between writers and artists as character creators).^[79] As McFarlane used the characters without Gaiman's permission or royalty payments, Gaiman believed his copyrighted work was being infringed upon, which violated their original, oral, agreement. McFarlane initially agreed that Gaiman had not signed away any rights to the characters, and negotiated with Gaiman to effectively 'swap' McFarlane's interest in the character Marvelman^[80] (McFarlane believes he purchased interest in the character when Eclipse Comics was liquidated; Gaiman is interested in being able to continue his aborted run on that title) but later claimed that Gaiman's work had been work-for-hire and that McFarlane owned all of Gaiman's creations entirely. The presiding Judge, however, ruled against their agreement being work for hire, based in large part on the legal requirement that "copyright assignments must be in writing."^[81]

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court ruling in February 2004^[82] granting joint ownership of the characters to Gaiman and McFarlane. On the specific issue of Cogliostro, presiding Judge John Shabaz proclaimed "The expressive work that is the comic-book character Count Nicholas Cogliostro was the joint work of Gaiman and McFarlane—their contributions strike us as quite equal—and both are entitled to ownership of the copyright".^[83] Similar analysis lead to similar results for the other two characters, Angela and Medieval Spawn.

This legal battle was brought by Gaiman and the specifically formed Marvels and Miracles, LLC, which Gaiman created in order to help sort out the legal rights surrounding Marvelman (see the ownership of Marvelman sub-section of the Marvelman article). Gaiman wrote Marvel 1602 in 2003 to help fund this project.^[84] All of Marvel Comics' profits for the original issues of the series went to Marvels and Miracles.^[84] In 2009, Marvel Comics purchased Marvelman.^[85]

Gaiman returned to court over three more Spawn characters, Dark Ages Spawn, Domina and Tiffany, that are claimed to be "derivative of the three he co-created with McFarlane."^[86] The original three characters, whose first appearance was never reprinted in Spawn trade paperback collections, are just now appearing printed for the first time. The judge ruled that Gaiman was right in his claims and gave McFarlane until the start of September 2010 to settle matters.^[87]

Gaiman is a major supporter and board member of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.^[88]

References in popular culture

• In the science-fiction television series Babylon 5, one of the races (The Gaim) is named in homage to Gaiman, and they are similar in appearance to the protagonist (while in full attire, not the anthropomorphic appearance) of Gaiman's graphic novel series "The Sandman".^[89]
• In the Star Trek novel How Much for Just the Planet?, the character "Ilen the Magian" is an allusion to Neil Gaiman.
• There are two laws named after Gaiman:
  • Gaiman's First Law: Picking up your first copy of a book you wrote, if there's one typo, it will be on the page that your new book falls open to the first time you pick it up.^[90]
  • Gaiman's Second Law: All scientifically possible technology and social change predicted in science fiction will come to pass, but none of it will work properly.^[91]
• Gaiman himself made a guest appearance in season 14 of Arthur in the episode "Falafelosophy".^{[citation needed]}
• Gaiman is to make a guest appearance on long-running cartoon series The Simpsons in 2011.^[43]
• Gaiman made a guest appearance on The Guild (season 5, episode 7 "Downturn"), playing himself.

Literary allusions

Gaiman's work is known for a high degree of allusiveness.^[92] Meredith Collins, for instance, has commented upon the degree to which his novel Stardust depends on allusions to Victorian fairy tales and culture.^[93] Particularly in The Sandman, literary figures and characters appear often; the character of Fiddler's Green is modelled visually on G.K. Chesterton, both William Shakespeare and Geoffrey Chaucer appear as characters, as do several characters from within A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest. The comic also draws from numerous mythologies and historical periods. Such allusions are not unique to Sandman.^{[citation needed]}

Clay Smith has argued that this sort of allusiveness serves to situate Gaiman as a strong authorial presence in his own works, often to the exclusion of his collaborators.^[94] However, Smith's viewpoint is in the minority: to many, if there is a problem with Gaiman scholarship and intertextuality it is that "... his literary merit and vast popularity have propelled him into the nascent comics canon so quickly that there is not yet a basis of critical scholarship about his work."^[95]

David Rudd takes a more generous view in his study of the novel Coraline, where he argues that the work plays and riffs productively on Sigmund Freud's notion of the Uncanny, or the Unheimlich.^[96]

Though Gaiman's work is frequently seen as exemplifying the monomyth structure laid out in Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces,^[97] Gaiman says that he started reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces but refused to finish it: "I think I got about half way through The Hero with a Thousand Faces and found myself thinking if this is true – I don’t want to know. I really would rather not know this stuff. I’d rather do it because it’s true and because I accidentally wind up creating something that falls into this pattern than be told what the pattern is."^[98]

Selected awards and honours

Bibliography

Notes

References

External links

• Neil Gaiman's personal website
• Neil Gaiman's weblog
• Neil Gaiman at IMDB.com
• Neil Gaiman at the Open Directory Project
• Works by Neil Gaiman on Open Library at the Internet Archive
• New Yorker profile of Gaiman by Dana Goodyear, 25 January 2010.
• An Evening with Neil Gaiman @ Your Library
• In-depth interview: Neil Gaiman in conversation with Tom Chatfield