Tuesday, November 05, 2013

Neil Gaiman, Class Act

I've made no secret of the fact that I'm a huge Neil Gaiman fan.  The first issue of his new Sandman prequel series, Sandman Overture, which came out last week, absolutely blew me away.  I'm waiting to do a second reading of it before posting anything about it here, but it's... just... amazing.  This is one of those rare cases where someone revisits a masterpiece of theirs from the past and manages to produce new work of the same, if not maybe even better, quality.

Anyway, today I was reading an interview with the artist of that series, J. H. Williams III, and got to the end only to see this quote from Williams about working with Neil:
I wanted to see if [Neil] was open to me approaching it the way I've approached many of my other projects, where I take what's there, and if I see, "Oh, these two pages work in a more interesting way if they're turned into a double-page spread, with some sort of design that encompasses the whole thing." How would he feel about me altering the pace in that way? And he gave me the most perfect, humbling compliment. He said, "It's you. We asked for you. Do what you do, I trust you."
That's Neil Gaiman, in a nutshell.  Total class act.

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