08 November 2005

Cult of Neil

This is a tribute to the Cult of Neil. Neil Gaiman appears to be just about the most popular comic book writer around here. Every designer, young person and comics fan worship him. Thus, I have a little tribute to the local Cult of Neil. Simple ink sketch.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Nice character drawings!!

Merv Kwok said...

i went to neil gaimen's book signing n didnt even know who he was until someone told me he's the guy who wrote 'sandman'.

i know. i deserve to be flogged. but i was queueing up for a friend! haha

Chuang Shyue Chou said...

Thanks Alina. I'm learning to do more of those. It's great fun.

Chuang Shyue Chou said...

Merv, you don't know God Gaiman? It's Singapore's most popular comic book writer. You have the newspapers editors (Straits Times) gushing about him and his Sandman comics. You are going to get brutally lynched by every little black-clad whiney Singaporean kid who is into alternative culture and MTV. You know, the alternative ones who read alternative comics, listen to alternative music, watch alternative movies. (You know, very alternative!) Neil Gaiman is their torchbearer. Their standard. Their God to say the least.

Go to Comics Mart at Serene Centre. That is their altar. Hahaha.

Anyhow, I have read a number of the Sandman comics, his novels (ie Neverwhere, etc) over the years. I can't say I am impressed by his insertion of Shakespeare into the cast of characters (and also the use of the Midsummer Night's Dream). Perhaps, when one has read the work of Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Angela Carter, John Fowles, Tim Powers, Jonathan Carroll (and lots more) and the comics of Moebius and other European avant garde artists and so forth, Gaiman appears to be a rank amateur in the realm of the fantastic, an author of the vulgar with a prediliction for crude symbolism, not unlike Piers Anthony and maybe Terry Pratchett. Anyhow, he is competent but VERY overrated.

Merv Kwok said...

Hehe i know who he is now! thinking of getting a copy of Good Omens coz i heard its damn funny

Chuang Shyue Chou said...

'Good Omens' was in production for some years and was listed on IMDB. Terry Gilliam was making 'Good Omens' but somehow, the film was postponed.

"In March 2002, Terry Gilliam put the Good Omens project on hold due to the difficulty of finding an American backer for the project. Apparently funding had been secured for all territories outside of the United States, but no studio would commit to American rights."

WOO! You have saved your own life! You could have been lynched by mobs of black-clad whinos armed with copies of Sandman!