One day ago, Neil Gaiman wrote the beginning of a story, which was retweeted by BBC Audiobooks America as the first of a thousand or so tweets that would compiled and edited to become an audiobook. People are still contributing, and BBCAA's blog has four scenes compiled (1, 2, 3, summary of scenes 1-3, and 4), for a total of 175 tweets. When 1,000 or so tweets are logged, they'll be edited into a script, and produced in a studio to make the final audiobook, which will be released for free on BBCAA's website. This isn't the first game of exquisite corpse played via twitter that made a piece to be refined and presented in some way. The first Twitter opera was one of a few recent "gimmicks" to garner attention for the Royal Opera House (twitter opera feed, ROH twitter feed, ROH blog). The result, Twitterdammerung, was given a decent review by opera critic Igor Toronyi-Lalic.
posted by filthy light thief on Oct 14, 2009 - 32 comments

The 2009 Hugo awards have been announced at Worldcon. Winners include Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book for best novel, Ted Chiang getting best short story and Elizabeth Bear getting best novelette. Best Related Book was snagged by MeFi's own jscalzi. The award for best semiprozine, which was to be scrapped, has been saved, this year being won by Weird Tales - a surprise upsets as it's main problem was that it had essentially become the Locus magazine award for best Locus Magazine. As well as the Hugos other awards such as the Prix Aurora award for best Canadian SF and the Chesley Awards for SF art have been announced, and Cory Doctorow accepted the Prometheus award for Libertarian SF. Convention reporter provides continuing coverage (the convention still has another day to run) and Starshipsofa spin-off Sofanauts has an excellent series of podcasts with regular Amy H. Sturgis and others reporting from the con.
posted by Artw on Aug 9, 2009 - 63 comments

Vampires are over, argues Neil Gaiman. (Via the Guardian, who rather oddly suggest the similarly over-exposed zombies as a replacement)
posted by Artw on Aug 5, 2009 - 275 comments

Thanks to a combination of publishers going out of business and rights disputes Miracleman is probably the best superhero comic you never got the chance to read (previously on the blue). That looks set to change as today at SDCC, Marvel comics has announced that they now own the rights to the title.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm on Jul 24, 2009 - 55 comments

Wednesday Comics, DC's spectacular new oversize anthology featuring characters from Batman to Adam Strange and Kamandi in one page installments of serialized stories, launched yesterday to much acclaim from the internet. USA Today will be reprinting the Superman story for the duration of the comics 12 week run.
posted by Artw on Jul 9, 2009 - 30 comments

It’s only natural that if you wish to present yourself as a well-read person, a certain degree of complete bullshit is required. There’s no shame in lying about what you’ve read. There’s only shame in getting caught. Then you look like a doofus, and an illiterate one at that... How to lie about books.
posted by Artw on May 28, 2009 - 73 comments

It was a Dark and Silly night -- a cartoon written by Neil Gaman and drawn by Gahan Wilson. [more inside]
posted by Chocolate Pickle on Apr 17, 2009 - 30 comments

Leo Baxendale, Hunt Emerson Neil Gaiman, Melinda Gebbie, Brendan McCarthy, Pat Mills, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Posy Simmonds, Bryan Talbot - Paul Gravett's Heroes of UK Comics
posted by Artw on Feb 15, 2009 - 25 comments

The Day the Saucers Came was originally published in 2006, in the (now defunct) EZine Spider Words 1, no. 2. Neil Gaiman has read the story aloud, on occasion. In December 2008, the story was made into a poster by a Finnish artist. That poster was then transformed into a fancy Flash presentation on Microsoft's Infinite Canvas ("A Funky Side Project from Microsoft Live Labs"). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on Jan 26, 2009 - 15 comments

The makers of the soon to be released movie Coraline put together 50 unique boxes that were mailed to 50 different bloggers. Each box contained items that were used in the making of the movie along with letters and photographs. [more inside]
posted by Sailormom on Dec 22, 2008 - 36 comments

A man -- Christopher Handler -- has been arrested in Iowa for possession of explicit yaoi and lolicon manga. [more inside]
posted by peacheater on Nov 25, 2008 - 156 comments

We had a tale of time travel getting a man out of a speeding ticket. (Previously) Now we have a man trying to pay a bill with a spider drawing --not a speeding ticket this time. (He mentions time travel as well.) [more inside]
posted by cjorgensen on Nov 20, 2008 - 24 comments

Neil Gaiman celebrates 20 years since the first publication of Sandman. Yes it’s that old. Io9 lists five ways in which Sandman changed the comics world.
posted by Artw on Nov 19, 2008 - 66 comments

Neil Gaiman helps Jonathan Coulton perform the song "Creepy Doll." [slyt] [more inside]
posted by Caduceus on Nov 18, 2008 - 14 comments

Neil Gaiman's latest work, The Graveyard Book, is a kind of undead Jungle Book, with a man-child being raised by various ghosts and ghouls rather than animals. He's been the whole thing a chapter at a time on each stop of his American promotional tour, and posting the videos online (and blogging about it of course), which means that with tonights reading the entire thing will be available online.
posted by Artw on Oct 8, 2008 - 38 comments

A film adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Hugo Award winning novella, Coraline will be out (in 3D) in early 2009. [Previously] [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin on Aug 12, 2008 - 27 comments

The 100 best comic book runs as voted for by the readers of Comics Should be Good. [more inside]
posted by Artw on May 2, 2008 - 97 comments

The novel American Gods by Neil Gaiman is being offered for free in its entirety at the Harper Collins website (only viewable using HarperCollins' BrowseInside system). It was put up in celebration of the seventh birthday of Neil Gaiman's blog. Which is appropriate since Neil Gaiman started his blog to chronicle the process of turning the text of American Gods into a physical book. [via the man himself, natch]
posted by Kattullus on Feb 29, 2008 - 25 comments

Photoshopped pictures of people with mouths instead of eyes via Neil Gaiman who may or may not have pioneered the concept with his nightmarish creation The Corinthian.
posted by Kattullus on Dec 26, 2007 - 58 comments

Gunnerkrigg Court is a lovely and strange webcomic by Tom Siddell. While its scenario bears a passing resemblance to Harry Potter (magic school, main character with a strange destiny, etc.), there's something quite different going on here. Chapter One, for instance, deals with how to get an anthropomorphic shadow back to its forest home, using only a box of discarded robot parts and a young girl's initiative. And that's just the beginning. Need a more trustworthy endorsement than mine? Neil Gaiman likes it.
posted by Lentrohamsanin on Oct 12, 2007 - 19 comments

Co-creator of Spider-Man, Steve Ditko is famous for weird, distinctive art, his 1966 departure from Marvel Comics, and granting very few interviews in the course of his decades-spanning career, preferring to let creations such as The Creeper, the Objectivism-inspired Mr. A, and Squirrel Girl speak for him.
Okay, Squirrel Girl not so much.
Jonathan Ross turns the spotlight on the artist in the BBC4 documentary, In Search of Steve Ditko. Did they find him? Well, that's The Question, isn't it?
posted by Alvy Ampersand on Sep 23, 2007 - 26 comments

Are you tired of NOT smelling like characters in Neil Gaiman books?? Well thank Morpheus, just like Alex Burgess in The Wake, your long nightmare is at an end thanks to this collection of Gaiman-inspired perfumes & colognes.
posted by jonson on Jul 23, 2007 - 50 comments

Weird Tales: The Strange Life of HP Lovecraft is a 45-minute BBC radio documentary: "Geoff Ward examines the strange life and terrifying world of the man hailed as America's greatest horror writer since Poe. During his life, Lovecraft's work was confined to lurid pulp magazines and he died in penury in 1937. Today, however, his writings are considered modern classics and published in prestigious editions. How did such a weird, wild and ungodly writer get canonised? Among the writers considering his legacy are Neil Gaiman, ST Joshi, Kelly Link, Peter Straub and China Mieville." ST Joshi, a biographer of Lovecraft, has an essay up on The Scriptorium. Wikisource has an extensive collection of his writings, including not only his most famous novels and short stories, but also essays, letters, poetry and legal documents. He is buried in the city of his birth, Providence, Rhode Island, where he does eternal lie, even though someone made an unsuccessful attempt to exhume him in 1997.
posted by Kattullus on Jun 11, 2007 - 43 comments

Paramount does Neil: Gaiman's book (illustrated by Charles Vess) is being made into a film called Stardust. You can watch the trailer or read the first chapter online. The film is directed by Matthew Vaughn, who doesn't exactly have a strong fantasy background. Cross your fingers, Gaimanites.
posted by chuckdarwin on May 16, 2007 - 46 comments

You are what you eat? How about eating Gingerbread House on the Rock, Neverwhere Soup, Coraline-au-prune, and having ambitions to eat the Compleat Works of Neil Gaiman. I agree with his taste in books, but I thought people grew out of that paper-eating phase by their teenage years (except when meals are prepared by a Sous-Chef with an Inkjet).
posted by Silki on Mar 28, 2006 - 19 comments

Neil Gaiman gets cease-and-desisted. In a rather bizarre legal turn of events, Neil Gaiman posted in his journal today that he received a cease-and-desist letter from Mark I. Reichenthal of Branfman & Associates insisting that he remove an "unauthorized" link from tomatoesareevil.com to the official movie website for "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes". (Interestingly enough, Reichenthal evidently has previously been deployed to defend the "... For Dummies" trademark.) Problem is that Neil doesn't own the site; they merely posted a photograph of him with a particularly evil-looking tomato, a tomato which Gaiman is turning into salsa in the hopes of becoming "the Paul Newman of satanic salsas." Neil's reaction: "What an astonishingly small amount of research they must do before firing off these bizarre letters."
posted by WCityMike on Mar 19, 2006 - 36 comments

In Neil Gaiman's "American Gods", the central character spends quite a bit of time in a fictional small town called Lakewood, WI. Lakewood closely resembles Gaiman's hometown of Menomonie, WI. It's all there: The Buck saloon, the manmade lake, even "the klunker". When Shadow goes for a walk in the area, the rivers, streams, and trails he uses are thinly disguised names for similar attractions around Menomonie. Is Lakewood Gaiman's love letter to his new home-town, or just an author following the rule of "write what you know?"
posted by cosmicbandito on Aug 17, 2005 - 74 comments

Neil Gaiman 1997 essay on the myth of artistic inspiration
posted by Pretty_Generic on Jul 19, 2005 - 26 comments

Miracleman is arguably one of the finest superhero comics ever made, but it has been dogged by legal disputes even in its pre-post-modern, pre-Alan Moore days, when it was called Marvelman. But the many fans and would-be fans of the modern comic have suffered greatly as a result of a big rights dispute which kept the existing work from being reprinted, so enthusiasts and interested parties have had to pay big bucks for the existing copies out there or console themselves with companion books (which also go out of print!).

But there is an end in sight! Neil Gaiman, one of the parties in the dispute, has good news to report.
posted by sninky-chan on Feb 28, 2005 - 15 comments

Do Mole People- subway tunnel dwellers- exist? Mole People by Jennifer Toth says yes, and the Straight Dope agrees, while others aren't so certain. On the other hand, Some have decided to make a movie about it. [link via Neil Gaiman]
posted by drezdn on Jan 14, 2004 - 14 comments

Neil Gaiman Q&A on Slashdot. Another on Sequential Tart. If you loved the books find out about the author (who has a blog and has been mentioned here a few times).
posted by srboisvert on Nov 3, 2003 - 18 comments

Sandman READ poster Anyone passing through libraries will have seen the series of READ posters, starring any number of actors, sports stars, musicians, and other celebrities. Everyone from Alex Baldwin to WWF wresllers to Yoda have been so honored.

Now you can add a comic character to that list. Neil Gaiman's creation of Morpheus, the Sandman, is now available as a poster. The artwork is by P Craig Russell, who was the artist for an issue of Sandman.
posted by dragonmage on Jun 15, 2003 - 20 comments

Neil Gaiman's Journal - powered by Blogger no less. Most well known for his Sandman series, and as screenwriter for the english release of Princess Mononoke, Gaiman is now finishing a novel titled American Gods. It's an interesting, candid look into his daily life. Now I feel the urge to re-read some of those old Sandman books I have tucked away in my closet. via [cold][wet][durham]
posted by kokogiak on Mar 9, 2001 - 42 comments