While we’re on the subject of comic books, here’s Neil Gaiman’s priceless description of Frank Miller and Alan Moore:
I all-too often fail to recognise Alan in pen-portraits done by other people — he’s larger than life already, but sometimes in interviews or articles I read he suddenly turns into someone who looks like the photographs. When Frank Miller realises someone is taking a photo of him, he looks at the photographer like a mad falcon who’s just focused on a tiny dot of a mouse a long way below that is just about to be dinner; and when Alan gets his photo taken he sort of looms grimly, and shadows wreathe around him, and he looks like Santa Claus’s thinner, more murdererous, magical younger brother. Whereas in real life and out of photos, Frank Miller is someone who, in conversation, mostly guffaws with delight, and has the sense of fun and continuous wicked grin of a really dangerous eight-year old who has just realised that the Grown-Ups can’t stop him now; and when I think of Alan, I think of the way he grins, in real life, like Maxwell the Magic Cat, the strip he used to write and draw (as Jill de Rais), and of his enthusiasms, and unfailing politeness and lack of bathroom carpeting.
Gaiman’s going to be giving us lots of love in the near future. 1602 debuts August 13 — it’s a “what if” scenario where the heroes of the Marvel canon come into their own in the year . . . you guessed it. Another month down the pike we get Endless Nights, a new batch of Sandman stories. Good times.