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calimacTwo years ago, Mythcon had Neil Gaiman as Guest of Honor. A good chance for me to give a paper on the work of an author I actually like. My favorite storyline in Sandman, "A Game of You", had received what I thought some seriously wrongheaded criticism - including from Chip Delany in the bound volume's introduction - so I gave a talk defending and, I hope, explaining the piece.
Well, Neil liked it, as I reported at the time (he says it "said a number of things I thought about that problematic story"), and soon afterwards he told me by e-mail that Joe Sanders was editing a collection of papers on Sandman, so perhaps I should submit mine to him.
This volume had already had a long chequered career of searching for a publisher, but Joe told me that though it was settling down with Fantagraphics, he also liked my piece and still had room for it. Skip a reasonable length of time and a lot of work by Joe and the publisher, and yesterday the mail came with my contributor's copy of The Sandman Papers: An Exploration of the Sandman Mythology. Looks really spiffy, especially the layout. So far the papers look good too. Findable at Amazon, Fantagraphics (just search on "Sandman"), or, I hope, at comics and book stores.
My favorite spot in my own paper occurs where, mentioning the serial killers' convention in The Doll's House, I put Gaiman "in the company of a distinct category of great humorous horror writers such as John Bellairs and Joss Whedon." I cannot tell you how much I loved juxtaposing those names.
Well, Neil liked it, as I reported at the time (he says it "said a number of things I thought about that problematic story"), and soon afterwards he told me by e-mail that Joe Sanders was editing a collection of papers on Sandman, so perhaps I should submit mine to him.
This volume had already had a long chequered career of searching for a publisher, but Joe told me that though it was settling down with Fantagraphics, he also liked my piece and still had room for it. Skip a reasonable length of time and a lot of work by Joe and the publisher, and yesterday the mail came with my contributor's copy of The Sandman Papers: An Exploration of the Sandman Mythology. Looks really spiffy, especially the layout. So far the papers look good too. Findable at Amazon, Fantagraphics (just search on "Sandman"), or, I hope, at comics and book stores.
My favorite spot in my own paper occurs where, mentioning the serial killers' convention in The Doll's House, I put Gaiman "in the company of a distinct category of great humorous horror writers such as John Bellairs and Joss Whedon." I cannot tell you how much I loved juxtaposing those names.
