Comics writers who turn to writing novels

simu

What do ye think about comics writers who move to writing prose fiction? Are they traitors to the comics genre, abandoning it in favour of the more lucrative prose fiction market? Or is it nice to see them experimenting with new ways of expressing their ideas?

Well, these questions are very general. To be more particular, I've looked through a novel written by Neil Gaiman recently (American Gods) and it seemed to be inferior to Gaiman's comics writing in many ways - it was dull and badly written. Does any one know of any writers who have managed to excell at writing both prose and comics? What are your opinions on Gaiman's novels as opposed to his comics?

ThenComesDudley

Personally i like neil gainman's books over his comics, i personally found the sandman boring.
maybe you should give his other stuff a look, like the book neverwhere, or the one he wrote with terry pratchett Good Omens , there but in my opinion good books. The only other writer i can think of that does both comics and books is, steve niles, but his books are based on the same characters as the comics. being Cal Mcdonald mystery.

monkeymagic

Grant Morrison has also been known to write a coupe of books, never read any of them though, as has Chris Claremont and Peter David writes them regularly. On the other hand of course you have novelists like Michael Chabon and Brad Meltzer turning to comics as well, are they out for a quick buck or indulging themselves in a favourite genre?

Fysh

My problem with American Gods is that it seemed to try and use a few of the tricks that worked very well to make Sandman a compelling story, but instead ends up feeling like a bad Stephen King novel. And bear in mind I'm not a particularly huge Stephen King fan. The fact that the plot feels as if it was stolen from Long Dark Teatime Of The Soul and shoved through a washing machine briefly doesn't help.

Good Omens, on the other hand, I enjoyed, but mostly because of the Pratchett influence (I'm a great bit Pratchett-loving fanboy). In retrospect, the more obviously Gaiman-y parts are the ones that made me wonder why they were there, a little bit. Such as the bit where the phone operators getting eaten by Hastur.

I might take a look at another Neil Gaiman book, but it'd take a lot to make me part with cash for one.

According to his journal, Warren Ellis is writing a book of short stories as well as a novel. He's posted some of the short stories and they seem pretty cool so far, but I'm still not entirely convinced that it'd work over an entire book.

projectmayhem

i write comic books (not published... erm... yet) and recently decided to write a novel. just got a cool idea one day and went with it. so far so good, as they say.

someone mentioned neil gaiman. he really shows his best work outside of the comic book genre. and calling people who write novels outside of comics traitors is ridiculous... they're just being creative. if you get tied down into one thing then you loose all your creative juices and end up resenting the work...

simu

Originally posted by projectmayhem

someone mentioned neil gaiman. he really shows his best work outside of the comic book genre. and calling people who write novels outside of comics traitors is ridiculous... they're just being creative. if you get tied down into one thing then you loose all your creative juices and end up resenting the work...

So what are Gaiman's best works in your opinion?

From what I've seen this far, I'm very unimpressed with his non-comics work and I'm wondering if he's not a bit of a sell-out!

PhilH

I'm a big fan of a lot of Gaiman's work. I think you might have had a bit of bad luck running into American Gods as your first investigation of his non-graphic fiction. I thought this was okay, but nothing terribly special.

I would highly recommend Stardust (the full illustrated book if at all possible - its prose, but with numerous illustrations by Charles Vess), or Coraline (short, nominally a children's book, but nearly the best thing I have read in years).