(Also Known As: Overrated Writers I Hate #1. Maybe.)
I have no idea whether or not the allegations against our beloved, saintly Lord Neil of Gaiman have any validity. It wouldn’t necessarily surprise me, but I’m happy to be on the fence.
However, it’s not the worst time to indulge my view about his character and his work. I believe the two, being more or less inseparable, are best summed up with the word charlatan. I’ve spent 30-odd years being astounded (and quite disappointed) by the amount of praise and gushing idolatry directed at this insufferably smug, annoyingly fey, all-appeasing goon. His work is, without doubt, amongst the most shallow, meaningless, insincere and vacuous ever to be published to significant acclaim.
LOVELY NEIL… having teased every single strand of his pseudo-scruffy hair with tender, loving care, all the more to maximise the gothic, windswept image he’s so carefully manufactured—gorgeous.
Worst of all, his powerful influence upon comics, and indeed the whole of pop culture, hasn’t a single redeeming quality. The influence is gigantic, pernicious, leeringly oppressive. It swept along a whole generation (several generations?) of disenfranchised youth looking for something to buy into (even if it was a big fat nothing)—and an awful lot of insecure, older nerds got swept along too, with the seductive allure of being part of something the “cool kids” approved of. And that was crux of it. Gaiman came up with a marketing strategy. Not a “creative vision”—a posture and an image, a vibe that would sell itself to a particular set of receptive sensibilities vulnerabilities.
This man, who owns literally dozens of identical black T-shirts, whose meticulously-crafted unkempt hair may be his greatest artistic triumph, has absolutely no relationship with honesty or conviction. A mediocre hack journalist, whose father was a Scientology bigwig, by the end of the 1980s he somehow tapped into a gestalt—conceived a manipulative, thoroughly fake formula that would drag him out of his mediocrity. It was a victory of marketing genius over artistic merit or unique viewpoint.
And where does it end, I wonder? 35 years after his absurdly overrated, confoundingly influential, thoroughly asinine Sandman reboot for DC took off, would it really take accusations of sexual misconduct to burst this utter phoney’s bubble?
Better, surely, if people had noticed long ago that he was a complete fake based on his rotten, tiresome work.
In summary: if he really abused these women, I hope he gets what he deserves, and then some. But, I’m otherwise very sad & disappointed that the Emperor’s Extremely Old Clothes are otherwise intact, naked balls flapping in the open air…
Not familiar with his work, though I seem to remember a Prez tale in Sandman (reprinted in a collected edition of Prez) which I quite enjoyed. However, I thought his Doctor Who episode was a pile of p*sh, though I understand it had a substantial rewrite by other hands, or so I was told. I suspect his unruly hair is to mask the fact that he’s thinning on top – or maybe he just doesn’t brush it (or wash, by the look of it).
Mr Gaiman was one of the main guests at the 2009 Worldcon in Montreal, and the waves of adoration from his mostly female fanbase was quite the sight. He had a personal photographer in tow, and seemed to be collecting shots of himself with pretty much every other guest or attached creative present (including, I confess, myself and the other two ‘fan fund’ delegates, when we were rehearsing presenting one of that year’s Hugo Awards).