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Paraphrased all to Hell from James Kennedy Toole
"SHOCKING!" screamed Ignatius.

"The men responsible for putting this abortion on film should be executed!" he bellowed ever louder in the theater as he took another handfull of popcorn and further frightened the children in the audience with his chewing habits.

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Originally posted by Mustapha Wormwood:

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Originally posted by mischief the dancing polarbear:
and I never said comics were 'dull'. Read my post. Again... I wrote my thesis on Sandman. I DO NOT THINK COMICS ARE DULL, and never said so.

Yes and if you've read both of my posts, you can understand that the first one, in which I asked "how can a lifetime's work of comics be considered dull" was directed at you, while the second post was directed at GMZoe, who I felt had not grasped my point from the first post. As for your thesis, it's pretty cool that you did it on Sandman, any chance I could read it? If not, that's cool too, it's just that I can't seem to find much scholarly work on comics that actually has something to say about the artform as an artform, unique in itself, and that's something that's really missing from the field, in my opinion. Also, you mentioned that a lot of Neil's comics work wasn't great. I was just wondering what you didn't consider great. Aside from those spawn stories and the second death miniseries (haven't read last temptation) I really can't think of much comics work he did that I wouldn't consider great. Even his 8-page story in Batman black and white was cool as hell.

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Originally posted by Cavenagh:
That's a neat precis of Confederacy of Dunces.


If it isn't well, stap me zur

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Originally posted by the BEAR:
Then I get a story of abstracts. To me the ending didnt work.

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Originally posted by Opportunities for Mischief:
The Sandman does overshadow his other work in the medium for the moment. In the long run he'll benefit from this, I reckon.

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Now, the only thing that really does bother me about Neil is how so many of his themes and idea gets repeated throughout his different stories.

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Originally posted by Cavenagh:
So Frodo, are you saying that you object to the content of a book differing from what you expect it to be according to your personal notions of genre? Or that you dislike visions of sex and violence full stop?

American Gods is a Modern Fantasy. That’s a very broad genre. There are no rules saying that masturbation, ritual sacrifice, sucking vaginas or tattooed penises must be excluded for the sake of readers with a nervous disposition. If you find such visceral passages objectionable then that’s not the authors fault. Bad writing is an authors fault, misinformation is an authors fault (I’m looking at you Dan Brown, guilty on both counts), you disliking content is not an authors fault. If the content of a novel disturbs you and you dislike such feelings, put the book down. Just because a book is not shelved in the Horror section does not mean that it won’t contain horror. A book placed amongst the Teen novels can easily contain scenes of heroin abuse. A novel with the orange spine of a Penguin Classic might well be light pornography. A genre is a broad band containing many variations upon a theme. And anyone not expecting sex and violence from fairy tales hasn’t read many.

I get the impression that you are disapproving of the writing more than disturbed by it. Are sexual acts, references to genitalia, consumption of body parts and references to the occult objectionable to you because of your moral beliefs? If so, fine. Just don’t be shocked that others do not share such beliefs, especially when reading fiction.

As to the accusation that writing such scenes is cheap and supposed to shock the reader, no. Not at all. They are not exploitative nor titillating but integral parts of the story and of character. Anubis eats human hearts. That’s what he’s done since he first doggy paddled in the Nile and that is what he will always do. Snow White has always been about sexual power. All that Gaiman is doing is telling the stories according to the events and the characters according to their lights. In fact a fair amount of his writing is the retelling of old versions of bleached tales.

Gaiman hasn’t forced anything upon you. Remember that you have chosen to read the book. You have opened yourself up to be told a story. You always have the option of not reading.