Dang. It’s creepy.

For some bizarre reason, the blogosphere can’t get enough of this item: the Barbie Whistle Torch. So I have recovered the post from the old blog and preserved it. Because it’s a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

There’s a video interview with Neil Gaiman over on his blog, from a show called Prisoners of Gravity. I cannot recall if I was ever on this show, but it sure looks familiar, so sorry, Jon Marvin, I can’t help you there.

Jon Marvin wrote to let me know about this clip, and to inform me that other swell episodes of Prisoners of Gravity are available on Youtube.

About the Barbie Whistle Torch: Neil mentions that he gave it to me to keep forever.

I told Neil I would treasure it forever. I did. It still sits in the jar that holds my paintbrushes. I admire it every day.

Behold. The wonder of it.

Good times, good times.

PS: Neil Gaiman won the Newberry Medal for the Graveyard Book. Congratulations, pookie.

Thanks to Andrea Ross of Just One More Book for sending along this link to a podcast of this evening’s Neil Gaiman interview about his Newberry Award winning Graveyard Book and the joys of Twitter. Listen to it here.

I first met Neil Gaiman back in 1989. I had received a grant from the Delphi Institute to study American pop culture with cartoonists from around the world. The group traveled across the USA visiting various companies and museums.

One of our stops was DC Comics. Since I already worked there, it didn’t strike me as a particularly unique experience. So, while the others got a lecture from Archie Goodwin, I wandered off to scare up some gigs and meet people. One of the people I met was the not-yet-famous Neil Gaiman who was hanging out in Karen Berger’s office.

I didn’t know who he was. After leaving the office and getting halfway down the hall, I suddenly realized he was that Neil Gaiman, author of the comic I thought was keen, but the rest of the world had yet to discover. After my double take, I ran back to the office and shouted “You’re that Neil Gaiman! Sandman!”

We did the mutual admiration thing. He told me he enjoyed A Distant Soil, a revelation which made me all tingly. He said would like to work with me sometime, which made me tingle even more.

It was rather comical to watch I am sure, because as I recall, we both burbled a lot.

Sandman was on the ropes, alas. To stave off cancellation, DC decided to try publishing a special edition of issue #8 as a freebie and introduction to retailers.

He gave me one of those promo Sandman #8′s which wasn’t in stores yet. In it he left his name, address and phone. Don’t you wish you had one of those?

Later I began receiving a series of charming postcards – all the way from England – written in Neil’s own dainty hand.

I considered donating these to a charity auction. By golly, they are just too cool. I’ve decided to keep them.

And with Neil’s kind permission, I am posting the first of them here, the one where he asks if I would work on Sandman sometime. A little bit of comics history.

At More Intelligent Life, a profile of Art Spiegelmen.

…Spiegelman explained his rationale for what is perhaps one of his most shocking drawings from the 1970s: a decapitated man getting fucked in the neck.

“I did the most vile comics I could possibly think of, because I thought that’s what underground comics were all about,” he said with an unapologetic shrug. He then admitted that Robert Crumb, a comic artist renowned for testing the limits of taste in his own drawings, banned him from his house in San Francisco in the 1960s. His wife was just too disturbed by that particular image.

The Weird World of Alan Moore at The Independent.

Moore, who describes himself as an anarchist, is also deeply immersed in the occult. He belongs to a group called The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels, which performs “occult workings” – prose and poetry set to music. He is said to worship a Roman snake god called Glycon, and has a shrine in his home. He is currently working on a “grimoire”, or black-magic handbook, called The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic.

Alan Moore is now tabloid news. From the UK Daily Mail:

The 55-year-old author says he wants nothing to do with the film because his story, published in 1986, is not suited to the big screen. He said: ‘It was designed to exploit all the things that comic books can do and no other medium can.’

Go look: Neil Gaiman on The Colbert Report. Full broadcast available here.