Neil Gaiman and Bruce Dickinson on Watchmen

Cover art by Iain Clarke (after Gibbons)

Below, two little excerpts by Neil Gaiman and Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden lead singer) from Journey Planet n. 77.

Journey Planet: Do you have any opinion on Watchmen's place in comics' history?
Neil Gaiman: For me, it was a revelation. I had imagined comics that literate and smart but they didn't exist. I loved the process of reading one issue and then rereading it all. For me Watchmen exists in black and white. That's how I read them, in photocopy form.

Journey Planet: What sort of impression on you did [Watchmen] leave?
Bruce Dickinson: Watchmen for me is the gold standard of comics. It can stand repeated readings and still have secrets to reveal. It's something to aspire to in my opinion.

Journey Planet is an acclaimed sci-fi and comics fanzine. Its 77th issue, released at the end of December, is fully focused on Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and John Higgins' Watchmen. 

Editors: James Bacon, Michael Carroll, Chris Garcia, Helena Nash and Pádraig Ó Méalóid.

The 96-page project, free to download right HERE, presents analysis and contributions on Watchmen from different angles including short interviews with Neil Gaiman, Bryan Talbot, Antony Johnston, Bruce Dickinson and Peter Hogan; longer interviews with Paul Levitz and John Higgins; Todd Klein on Dave Gibbons’ iconic lettering and... much more!

 

You can get the complete package HERE. Highly recommended!

Neil Gaiman on Illuminations

Illuminations is a wonderful collection, brilliant and often moving. A few are stories I've loved for years (in one case, for decades), some were new to me, often managing to be both mind-expanding and cosmic while utterly rooted in our urban reality, written in language that coruscates, concatenates and glitters. But the short stories in this book also turn out to be a sort of camouflage, or a frame, for 'What We Can Know About Thunderman,' a short novel that's a scabrous, monstrous, often hilarious, unmasking and reinvention of the people who made the comics, and the lives destroyed by the four colour funnies. It's Alan Moore's Guernica, a time-hopping ontological Imaginary Story that refuses to leave your head after you've read it. - Neil Gaiman

Regular edition - Limited edition

The Ogre or rather... Time is a loop

Tweet by Leah Moore

I was diving into my smoky archive and I found some interesting stuff. So, above a tweet posted by Leah Moore in April 2020.  

 

Neil Gaiman's replied:

More from Gaiman and The Ogre here too.  

You can read the whole thread HERE.

Neil Gaiman on a lost Bojeffries story

I've dug up this in my archives (which are bigger than Idea Space, I suspect).

 

Some months ago, Neil Gaiman commented on a Facebook post by Brian Bolland about The Bojeffries, here.

Gaiman wrote: "Many years ago, Alan described a Bojeffries story to me he would be writing. It was hilarious and heartbreaking. Some years later I asked about it, and he had absolutely no memory of it. Which says something about his prodigious imagination because I wouldn't have let one that good escape."

And then he added: "It was Ginda's wedding."

on Neil Gaiman and Sandman

Neil Gaiman moderating the Watchmen panel at UKCAC in 1986.

Excerpt from Some Moore - Part Two, an interview by Steve Darnall published in Hero Illustrated n. 8, February 1994.

MOORE: Neil is one of the only people who's working at Vertigo- with a couple of other exceptions-who succeeds. Neil is not writing like me anymore. He used to when he was starting out, and I think he'd be the first to admit that. It was very flattering. Everyone's got to start somewhere, and we all start out aping someone to a degree, but Neil, I think, has done more to move away from the sort of territory that I've created, and to establish something that is uniquely his own. The flavor in Neil's stories is very different to mine, and it's not unrelenting horror. Neil is somebody who understands the benefit of putting in a lovely little story like that "Midsummer Night's Dream" story [Sandman 19]. He uses interesting storytelling techniques, he's constantly trying to think of new ways to do things and there's a sense of genuine enjoyment in Neil's stories that I don't always feel in some of the other ones. You get the impression that Neil's enjoyed writing this story, he enjoyed researching all these little odd bits of obscure historical facts and putting them into his Sandman mosaic.
I read, for the first time, the whole run of Neil's Sandman about a month ago, because I've got a strange, pathological aversion to picking up DC comics [laughter]. I don't know what it is; I just see that bullet in the top left-hand corner and I start to go all clammy, my stomach contracts, I just cannot bring myself to shell out money...

DARNALL: You're back in the jungle in 'Nam...

MOORE: That's it, that's it. I can hear the 'copters going overhead. Neil, understanding this sort of pathological condition of mine, saved me the problem of going into a shop and buying them by sending me a great big bunch of them. I read them all through and I thought they were great. Reading them, I thought, "God, this must have been what it was like for Neil reading my Swamp Things." I never actually got the experience of reading Swamp Thing, because I'd written it, so I knew what the ending was [laughs]. Not that I want to compare the two, but I think I got the same feeling looking at Sandman that I hope people got out of reading Swamp Thing.

DARNALL: Neil said he chose to do "The Doll's House" and risk interrupting the previous tone of the book, because he knew if he didn't he ran the risk of becoming another X-Men. Looking back, that decision actually changed the entire direction of the book, because from there he could spring off and do "Midsummer Night's Dream" or "Dream of a Thousand Cats."

MOORE: "The Doll's House" is one of those watershed things, which Neil probably didn't realize at the time. But, sometimes you do stories because you have to and they put a spin on the series that you hadn't expected. They open up all sorts of new possibilities. I agree, and I think it's important that writers be given the freedom to develop according to their own instincts. Of course, that doesn't always work out; some people's things are not as good as others', but...it would have been so easy to crush Neil as a talent before he developed by giving him edicts and telling him, 'Do it like this, do it like that.' I mean, nobody at DC would've ever said, 'Hey, we think it'd be a really good idea if you did a sort of light fantasy story about Shakespeare's 'Midsummer Night's Dream." Nobody would've done that because those don't sell, according to the conventional sort of wisdom of the marketing department. Of course, it did sell. When people think of Sandman, these are the stories they remember, the little oddities.

Watchmen, 10 years later

From Wizard n. 62, October 1996.

Article Watchmen, 10 years later by Craig Shutt.

Watching the Watchmen box.

Here's a sampling of what other creators say about Watchmen 10 years later.

Neil Gaiman: "I was astonished by its sheer technical bravura as well as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' willingness not to make a big deal out of how impressive it was. If Watchmen has a problem, it's that they didn't realize how big it was going to be. Their rigid and brilliant structure didn't give them enough room to change, and the story outgrew its structure. They started off telling the ultimate superhero story, but it got bigger than that. As a result, it's ultimately less satisfying than it could have been."

Alex Ross: "It showed that something really epic and pure could be created in a multi-character, multi-part storyline. But its importance is not so much in its scale but in its execution and the intelligence with how it was created. It inspired a lot of my thinking today on superheroes. In fact, I went to some Halloween parties dressed as Rorschach."

Mark Waid: "Watchmen was a masterpiece of plot structure. Everything meant something, and everything advanced the story. It's lean and cuts right to the bone, which should be the ultimate goal of any story."

Kurt Busiek: "It raised the level of discourse because it was so well-made. It was thought through on a level that comics hadn't reached before. And we can't hold Alan and Dave responsible for their cheesy imitators. They did something new, interesting and clever, and writers who were inspired by that should have done something else that was new, interesting and clever."

Ron Marz: "Combined with Dark Knight, it reignited my interest in comics, because it showed the possibilities inherent the medium. There are a lot of children of Watchmen out there."

Chuck Dixon: "It was part of an era in which comics were raised to a new level of maturity, and I don't mean just nudity and graphic violence. There was a lot of subtext and deft characterization. We need another Watchmen, something to cut through the clutter." CS

In principio... Moore in Italian!

Art by Daniele Caluri

Above, cover for In principio - Storie crudeli della Bibbia, art by Italian comic book artist Daniele Caluri. The Italian 128-page volume, to be published by Kleiner Flug/Double Shot in May, contains Outrageous Tales From the Old Testament and Seven Deadly Sins both originally published by Knockabout respectively in 1987 and 1989. 

 

The book includes stories by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman (both writers are featured in the cover), Bryan Talbot, Dave McKean and others.

 

Moore's stories are Leviticus with art by Hunt Emerson and Lust illustrated by Mike Matthews.

Superman Goes to Hell

Excerpt from The Art of Neil Gaiman by Hayley Campbell, page 70-71. 

Buy it: it's a great book!

At that same convention [The British Fantasy Convention, 1985] Gaiman met Diana Wynne Jones, who was guest of honor at what was the first convention she had ever attended. Neil kept her company while she stood nervously at the bar, and downstairs Moore was reading Jones's The Ogre Downstairs to his daughters, Amber and Leah, as their bedtime book. With the kids safely asleep he'd come back out and talk about comics. "I remember the stuff that he was telling me about that hadn't come put yet. He was telling me about the last Superman story ("Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?"), which hadn't yet come out. And he was telling me about a thing he did that never came out, which was Bernie Wrightson and him collaborating on "Superman Goes to Hell" and Lex Luthor going to rescue him.

Neil Gaiman: Moore is "Hairy, like a yeti"

Below an excerpt from The Sandman Companion a book by Hy Bender, published by Vertigo/DC Comics in 1999. The book contains several original interviews with Neil Gaiman about the comic and his career.

MOORE, MCKEAN, AND MAGIC (page 17-18-19)

Hy Bender: During that same period, you became friends with Alan Moore, who - present company excluded - is arguably the finest comics writer in the history of the medium. How did you and Alan first hook up with each other?
Neil Gaiman: When my book Ghostly Beyond Belief which I wrote with Kim Newman was published in 1985, I sent Alan a copy accompanied by a note that basically said, “You’ve given me an enormous amounts of pleasure, I think you’re terrific, and this is something I’ve done. Hope you like it.” Alan called me a week later and went [doing an uncannily accurate impersonation]: “You bastard. I lost an entire afternoon's work reading your book!” [Laughter] From then on, we were phone pals.

HB: You’ve since met Alan many times. How would you describe him?
NG: Hairy, like a yeti. [Laughter] And huge - Alan looms at you, like a lion. But he’s also very gentle; incredibly funny; and utterly brilliant.

HB: I know that Alan is the one who taught you about writing a comics script. Do you recall how that happened?

NG: Oh, certainly. About eight months after we first chatted, I mentioned to Alan that two of his favorite writers, Clive Barker and Ramsey Campbell, were going to be at the British Fantasy Convention at Birmingham. As a result of my journalism work, I knew both Clive and Ramsey,so I told Alan, “Come on down; I'll look after you and make sure you don't feel out of place."And he did, and I did, and we had a great time.
Toward the end of the day, we were  about comics, and I said, “I don't understand what a comics script looks like. How do you tell the artist what to draw?" So he showed me a scripts format, step by step, in a sheet of paper: “Put down 'Page 1 panel 1' like this, then describe what happens in the panel then write the name of the first character who talks, then put down his dialogue,» and so on.
After receiving that tutorial, I went home and wrote a short comics script titled “The Day My Pad Went Mad” based on Alan’s wonderful John Constantine character. In retrospect, the story wasn’t very good, and the ending was wrong. But I sent the script to Alan, and he told me, “Yeah, it’s all right. The ending’s a bit off.” And then he actually used a few lines of my story in Swamp Thing 51, "Home Free," which was very encouraging to me.
I next wrote a sixteenth-century Swamp Thing script titled “Jack in the Green” and sent it to Alan. When I asked him if it was okay, he said “Yeah, I would’ve been proud to write that.” That made me very happy.
And then - proving the driven nature of my ambition to begin a fiction career - I wrote absolutely no other scripts. I went, “Okay, now I know how to write a comic book" and left it at that.

Neil Gaiman on HBO's Watchmen series

Above Neil Gaiman's tweet, dated 12th of December, replying to a user who solicited him to tell Moore that "HBO's Watchmen is a work of genius en par with, and because of, the original series."

I stand with Gaiman!

Chris Riddell, Neil Gaiman and... Alan Moore!

Art by Chris Riddell.

We already talked about the poetry written by Neil Gaiman to celebrate Moore's 50th birthday. The piece was published in 2003 in Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman tribute book. 

You can also read it here.

Now, Chris Riddell - Master illustrator, well-known political cartoonist and Gaiman's frequent collaborator - realized an illustrated version of the poetry and posted it on his Instagram page.

Here all the links. Enjoy!

Title

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3 

Page 4

Page 5

Page 6 

Page 7

Page 8

Page 9

Art by Chris Riddell. Page 2.

Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore: The Scorpio Boys

Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore at Moore's wedding. Photo by José Villarrubia.

Hereunder you can read the poetry written by worldwide acclaimed writer NEIL GAIMAN as contribution to Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman, a book published in 2003 to celebrate Moore's 50th birthday.

Posted on this blog with the author's permission. 

THE SCORPIO BOYS IN THE CITY OF LUX SING THEIR STRANGE SONGS
for Alan Moore
© Neil Gaiman

The Scorpio Boys in the city of Lux sing their strange songs
and smear the windows of your car with cheap rags,piss on your doorstep.
It's lucky to see them. If you see them you won't die today.

There's an old man. He's all that stands between us and the End of the World.
The End of the World knocks on his door once or twice a week,
they have cake and tea and a chat, and crumpets in the winter, and a battle of wits.
So far the old man is winning, the world only ends every now and again.
We don't remember it ending. We're from this go around.

Oh, they stare, the Scorpio Boys, it's an act of magic of course
if you believe in them at all. If you see them you'll be lucky. So damn lucky.

Beaten up and left for dead by the Piltdown Men
singing *we are we are the Piltdown men we are we are*
they stumble down the roads of the cities of twilight
breaking bottles and puking in gutters,
someone finds you and picks you up and carries you home.
Maybe it was us. You never know.

A cigarette traces a shape in the air,
Something made out of light and smoke, so you know it's magical
someone says it's lucky and who knows what will happen?
Stranger things happen in cities. Even small cities.

Take Lux, for example: a city that isn't even there,
Like all cities it is a magical description,
a way of making impossible things happen at a distance,

like a poem or a whisper or a saucer filled with ink --
you can stare into it, or dip your pen.
Either way it will take you to invisible places,
open a door in your hearts to us,
sharp-nosed and shabby genteel, with ink-spots and cinder-burns on our clothes.

When there are enough of us, we will become a city.

Doing it because we believe in it. Because the stories need to be described.
And come to us for their faces.


© Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman and that Watchmen original art page

Watchmen #7, Page 16: the page that Gibbons and Moore gave to Gaiman.

From Neil Gaiman's Journal post dated 7th of February 2014.

"I ran into Dave Gibbons in Las Vegas in early December [2013], and he told me about a book they were putting together showcasing Watchmen original art. I reminded Dave that he and Alan had given me a page as a thank you when we were all much younger, and he suggested I might put it in the book.

As Dave says on this interview page...

I was talking to Neil Gaiman a couple of weeks ago - managed to have a catch-up with him over a cup of tea, which was great - and I mentioned this project [IDW’s forthcoming “Watchmen Artifact Edition”] to him and he’s got one particularly prime page that Alan (Moore) and I gave him back in the day when he used to help us with sourcing quotations and so on. He’s got the dream sequence - the Nite Owl dream sequence where there are, I think, like 20 panels on the page. So that’s a real iconic and favorite page.

[The complete Gibbons interview can be read here.]"

Reading the following lines you can better understand the reason why Moore and Gibbons gave a Watchmen page to Gaiman.

Excerpt from an interview with Neil Gaiman conducted in 1989 by Brian Hibbs, owner of San Francisco’s Comix Experience. 

Comix Experience: You’re listed in the credits of the Watchmen and Elektra paperbacks as “Special thanks to…” What gives? Have you been secretly plotting the course of western civilization’s comics these last few years?

Neil Gaiman: Yeah. I’m actually one of the secret masters. It’s the Gnomes of Zurich and me.
No, no… I remember Alan ringing me up when he was writing Watchmen #3, and said, “Neil, you’re an educated bloke. Where does the quote `Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?’ come from? I think someone said it when they were dying, but I don’t know when.” I went out, and found it for him, rang him back, and said, “No. It’s Genesis. God threatening to nuke Sodom and Gommorah.” He said, “Thanks”, then went off.
He rang me back a few months later and said, “Neil, I haven’t any quotes for the titles of #7 and #8. This is what happens in them, go find me a quote.” So I went off and got him “Brother to dragons, and companion to owls…” from Job for #7, and the poem for #8, Eleanor Farjeon’s “Hallowe’en”. “On Hallowe’en the old ghosts come.”
Also, while I was researching the Old Testament stuff, I was working my way through a huge Biblical concordance, getting various details. It fell open to a page on obscure history, and the name Rameses jumped out at me. I discovered this quote that said, roughly, “I’ve killed all these places, and left the widows weeping there. Everything is at peace, and everything is great in the world.” So I rang up Alan, and said, “What do you think of this?” He said “Great! I’ll stick it in #12″ So you’ve got Ozymandius quoting Rameses in Watchmen. (ED: #12, Pg. 20)

[The complete interview can be read here.]

Gaiman talks about Moore, Morrison, himself and... pop music!

Moore, Gaiman, Morrison... through the years!

Excerpt from Los Angeles Times Hero Complex site.

Neil Gaiman: One of the things I had in common with Alan Moore and a whole generation of comics writers around us — certainly Grant Morrison — was a love and respect for what had gone before but also a healthy interest in seeing where we could go with it. It was a combination of those the two impulses. We were in a period then in mainstream American comics that things had gotten a bit hidebound. Comics read very much like a mixture of what had come before. And I think at the time you had this wonderful little transatlantic thing that happened, this mini-British Invasion. Looking back on it, the analogy of what happened to pop music in the 1960s was probably pretty accurate. Alan Moore got to be the Beatles and, along with Grant Morrison, I was Gerry and the Pacemakers. 

GB: Well, don’t sell yourself short. What about the Kinks or the Stones?

NG: Right, maybe the Kinks or the Stones. But maybe I was Herman’s Hermits. …

GB: I’ve got it: the Animals. Then you can have a spooky Eric Burdon, “House of the Rising Sun” kind of thing going on.

NG: The Animals, yes. That would be cool. But yeah, the idea that you had Brits listening to this [American] stuff and fell in love with it and for all the right reasons, and then realized they could do something new with it, something with different cultural impulses. The British Invasion did that in music, and in a way, we did it in comics.

The complete interview can be read here.