Neil Gaiman weighs in on the flap over adult-oriented comics in a Denver Library:
It’s been twenty years, and newspaper headlines still oscillate between “Wham! Bam ! Pow! Comics Have Grown Up!” and “OH MY GAAAD THIS COMIC NOT INTENDED FOR CHILDREN HAS CONTENT NOT INTENDED FOR CHILDREN IN IT!” articles. Bizarre.
(Ironically, the people complaining don’t seem to care much about the content—they just wanted to get the Spanish-language books off the shelves.)
Whew, I’ve got to read Neil Gaiman’s blog more often. Catching up, I just discovered that his new novel, Anansi Boys, is being published on September 20. Coming sooner is the illustrated MirrorMask script in May. Still no solid release date for the film, but apparently it will get a theatrical release late in 2005: “I think it’ll be released in early autumn.”
Early autumn, eh? With a new novel released on the last day of summer? I don’t know how the numbers stack up on Neil’s name recognition vs. the average “art house” movie—which is how the studio seems to be treating it—but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Columbia/Tristar tries to capitalize on the publicity for Anansi Boys.
Of course, it also wouldn’t surprise me if they said, “Huh, he writes books? I thought he was a screenwriter.”
Neil Gaiman reports that Mirrormask will show at the Sundance Film Festival in January! (No word yet on an actual release date.)
Neil Gaiman has just posted a bunch of stills from MirrorMask.
![[MirrorMask Logo]](https://hyperborea.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2004/07/mirrormask.jpg)
Yesterday I mentioned the MirrorMask panel at Comic Con. Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean were both there to talk about the movie and play a trailer-like clip they had put together the night before.
MirrorMask came about when Sony noticed that while Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal didn’t do very well in theaters, over the years they’ve become strong, steady sellers in the home video market. So they went to the Jim Henson company and asked if they could do a fantasy film in the same vein, on a budget. So Lisa Henson called up Neil Gaiman by way of asking for Dave McKean, and explained the situation: They only had a $4 million budget, but they wouldn’t have any studio interference. They went on to say they knew they couldn’t afford Neil to write the screenplay, but could he at least come up with a story, at which point he said (Edit: corrected quote) “If Dave’s directing it, I’m writing it.” Continue reading
