Alicia Lozano makes her return to the Hero Complex with coverage of a packed-house event at UCLA's Royce Hall.

Neil Gaiman had a rough year. His father died while the 49-year-old author was working on a screenplay of his 2005 novel “Anansi Boys” and financing crumpled for a film adaptation of “The Graveyard Book.” But standing before a rapt audience (and a wildly diverse one, considering the children carrying copies of “Coraline,” the parents toting “American Gods” and goth kids wielding “Sandman” issues) at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Thursday night, Gaiman was nothing but sprightly storytelling and good omens.

“I always wanted to be the kind of writer who can tell whatever stories he wanted,” said Gaiman, dressed in his ubiquitous uniform of black on black with appropriately shaggy hair and alabaster skin. “It never occurred to me not to be.”

And this is exactly the kind of storytelling that has made Gaiman “the most famous writer you’ve never heard of,” according to the Times of London. At Thursday’s event, hosted by UCLA Live, the journalist-turned-comic-book-writer-and-eventual-novelist breezed through almost 30 years of literary works, ranging from whimsical poems to devilish short stories and culminating with full-blown adult novels.

He kicked off the evening with a reading of “My Last Landlady,” a poem inspired by the “horrors” of off-season English seaside resorts that once vacated in the winter become dark and twisted traps for unsuspecting tourists. 

After the reading, Gaiman launched into a brief retrospective of his work as a “crossover artist,” one who can deftly navigate the sometimes conflicting worlds of horror versus fantasy, children’s versus adult, comic versus fiction writing.

His first book, 1991’s “Coraline,” which became a 2009 silver-screen hit, took more than two decades to write, Gaiman confessed. He started it as a 22-year-old journalist, who soon after turned to comic books, “a medium that people mistake as a genre,” he explained. But his publisher argued that the children’s book he sought to create was too scary for kids and too juvenile for adults. It was tucked away until Gaiman found considerable success through his “Sandman” comic series and he was finally allowed to experiment with prose suitable for anyone with enough imagination to accept the “other.”

Sticking with the crossover theme, Gaiman continued with a reading from “The Graveyard Book,” originally conceived as a ghost version of the “The Jungle Book,” inspired by his then-2-year-old son, Michael, now 26, who enjoyed riding his bicycle through a cemetery, which coincidentally was one of Gaiman’s favorite places to visit when he himself was a child. This book also took almost 20 years to write. He kept putting it away until he became a better writer, Gaiman said. Eventually, he realized that he wasn’t getting any better and decided to finally give it a go. The result won the Brit a 2009 Newberry Medal.

His last reading came from a 100-page novella called “Odd and the Frost Giants,” about a young Norwegian boy living among Vikings who runs away from home with a broken leg, only to be followed by a bear, fox and eagle. In the novella -- originally written for World Book Day, during which English schoolchildren can buy books with 1-pound vouchers -- Odd comes face to face with some of Gaiman’s favorite, and most often invoked, gods: Loki, Odin and Thor.

When asked about writing for children versus adults during question-and-answer time, Gaiman noted that young readers “don’t come to stories with preconceptions,” making them a perfect vehicle for introducing the fantastical and horrific.

He ended the night by reading from “Instructions,” a poem about what to do when you find yourself living in a fairy tale. “Trust your dreams, your heart and your story,” he advised. The poem will eventually be published in a collection of the same name illustrated by Charles Vess. Gaiman is also working on a nonfiction story about Buddhist myths in China called “A Monkey in Me.”

-- Alicia Lozano

RECENT AND RELATED

Neil Gaiman says "Graveyard Book" film dead -- for now

Neil Gaiman and the stuff that dreams are made of

Neil Gaiman's short film "Statuesque" comes to life

Neil Gaiman on the Hollywood future of "Sandman"

Gaiman says Alan Moore was the Beatles: "I was Gerry & Pacemakers"

"Crying Game" director Neil Jordan will direct "Graveyard Book"

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" film: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

Exclusive set photos: "Coraline" coming to life

Henry Selick's maquettes charm the Con

Neil Gaiman on foot in rural China researching next project

Photos: Top, author Neil Gaiman in Manhattan in 2007. Credit: Jennifer S. Altman / For The Times. Bottom, Gaiman on a cemetery stroll. Credit: Philippe Matas / HarperCollins

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of interviewing Neil Gaiman, who is one of the signature talents over the past two decades in comic books as well a writer of increasing renown for his novels and work in Hollywood.

I posted a three-part Q&A from that interview right here on Hero Complex (it began here, continued here and then finished up here) but I also used the conversation as the foundation for a feature on the 20th anniversary of "The Sandman." That feature ran (finally) this morning on the cover of the Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times. It won't have many surprises for readers who checked out the full Q&A, but here's an excerpt for everyone else and those Gaiman die-hard fans who just can't get enough when it comes to this sparkling storyteller.

--Geoff Boucher 

Even in casual conversation, British author Neil Gaiman sometimes sounds as if he's narrating some dark fairy tale -- his sentences slither across old stone floors or flit on gossamer wings. He also happens to live in a rambling Minnesota manse that looks, Gaiman says, as if it were "drawn by Charles Addams on a day he was feeling particularly morbid."

So it's no surprise that fans of the fantasy novelist have whispered for years that Gaiman bears more than a passing resemblance to his signature creation, the Sandman, the spooky comic-book character that debuted 20 years ago and brought a new literary ambition to the pop medium.

"He's a lot like me, only with an immortal's superpowers and no sense of humor of any kind," Gaiman said. "Hmm. So in fact, he isn't anything like me at all, but he does have very messy hair. That was a great point of correspondence between me and the character. He's much paler than I am too."

Gaiman came up in the comic-book world, but his prowess as a storyteller took him far beyond its bordered pages. His bestselling novels "American Gods" and "Anansi Boys" helped establish his credentials with the critics, and the sly 1998 fantasy "Stardust" was adapted to the screen in 2007. His other Hollywood pursuits have included the Robert Zemeckis computer-animated epic "Beowulf" (Gaiman co-wrote the script) and the February release "Coraline," which director Henry Selick ("The Nightmare Before Christmas") is adapting from Gaiman's novel for young adults.

But despite that career climb, it is the character of Sandman that follows most closely at the feet of the 48-year-old Gaiman like some staircase shadow. Far from a superhero, Sandman was a supernatural lord of dreams, going by several names, including Dream and Morpheus. In 75 monthly issues that spanned seven years, the spectral being brought readers into often nightmarish worlds like some cross between Rod Serling and one of the Christmas spooks from Dickens.

Gaiman said that he came to the premise with a sort of "1,001 Arabian Nights" motivation.

"It was an idea of trying to take something very literally: What would it be like to live in dreams? A lot of that came out of terror. I was a young writer and had never written anything monthly. I needed a story shape that could take me anywhere, because my fear was: What if I run out of stories? So I thought, 'I will have somebody who has existed since the dawn of time, so that gives me the entirety of human history to play with for stories.'"

                                            READ THE REST OF THE STORY

RECENT AND RELATED

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" film: "I will be spitting venom all over it."

Neil Gaiman on the Hollywood future of "Sandman"

Exclusive set photos: "Coraline" coming to life

Frank Miller searches for the "Spirit" of Will Eisner

Christopher Nolan says his Batman doesn't play well with others

Photo of Neil Gaiman in Manhattan in 2007,  by Jennifer S. Altman for the Los Angeles Times. Photo of Alan Moore, circa 2001, in Northampton, England, shot by Graham Barclay for the Los Angeles Times.

EXCLUSIVE: This is the third and final part of our interview with Neil Gaiman on the 20th anniversary of "The Sandman." In this installment, the British native talks about the film future of Morpheus, his disappointments with the "Stardust" movie and his anxieties about the upcoming "Coraline" adaptation.

(Read Part One and Part Two)

GB: This seems to be the golden age of comic-book films and your Hollywood profile has risen with "Beowulf," "Stardust" and the upcoming "Coraline." So what can you tell us about the status of "The Sandman" as a Hollywood project?

NG: Back in about 1991 or 1992 I got sent into a meeting with an executive at Warners. He told me, "They're talking about a 'Sandman' movie," and I said. "Please, don't do it." He said, "What?" I told him I'm still writing this thing, it's not done yet, and a movie would throw everything off of its course. He said, "You are the first human being ever to come into my office and beg me not to make a movie." [Laughs] Which was incredibly sweet...

My feeling today is that I would so much rather there be no movie than there be a bad movie. We're getting closer and closer to the point where you could make a Sandman movie just because the world is changing. The thing that has really made it practical for the superhero movies to exist is the simple fact that you can put it on screen now. With trying to make superhero movies over the years, it has always been that you simply couldn't do it. They would say, "You will believe a man can fly," but you really wouldn't.

Now, you pretty much can. And now you have an era of cheap special effects and people who have grown up reading and respecting comics. Fifteen years ago, when I would go in for meetings at studios, the people who had the power to greenlight things and make things happen, they didn't really know who I was. They weren't sure what Sandman was. Their assistants weren't sure what Sandman was. But the guy who would bring you the bottle of water, the interns, the assistants to the assistants, the bottom-rung people -- they knew who I was. These were the guys who would sidle up to me in the corridors and say, "I love what you do." The interesting thing is now, 15 years on, those guys are running studios.

The people making the decisions now, they know who I am, they know who Alan Moore is, these are the people looking forward to a "Watchmen" movie for 20 years. So a Sandman movie is an inevitability, sooner or later.

GB: And what would be your most important compass point in moving forward with a Sandman film?

NG: The only thing I hope for is that whoever it goes to has the same amount of passion for it that Peter Jackson brought to "Lord of the Rings." I want someone who will make the film because he loved it and he cared about it and if anybody was going to screw it up, it was going to be him. That's what Jackson did and it seems like the same position Zack Snyder is in with "Watchmen," from the interviews. He was scared somebody else wouldn't get it right. I hope when "Sandmen" gets made it's by somebody like that. Guillermo del Toro has his "Hellboy" as his thing that he loves that is important and personal, that's what "Sandman" needs. There is someone out there. Or there will be someone out there in five or 10 years.

EXCLUSIVE: The second installment of our three-part interview with Neil Gaiman finds the writer musing on the "British Invasion" in comics, describing his love for "mythology mash-ups" and wondering if maybe he pulled off the impossible with sustained excellence of "The Sandman"

(Read Part One and Part Three)

GB: How would you describe Morpheus, your flawed Lord of Dreams, to someone who was coming to the tale for the first time?

NG: He's a lot like me, only with an immortal's superpowers and no sense of humor of any kind. Hmm. So in fact, he isn't anything like me at all but he does have very messy hair. [Laughs] That was a great point of correspondence between me and the character. He's much paler than I am too. No, really, with the character, it was an idea of trying to take something very literally: What would it be like to live in dreams? A lot of that came out of terror. I was a young writer and had never written anything monthly. I needed a story shape that could take me anywhere because my fear was: What if I run out of stories? So I thought, "I will have somebody who has existed since the dawn of time, so that gives me the entirety of human history to play with for stories."

And I wanted someone who is absolutely and utterly powerful. It's interesting because at the time, John Byrne had just taken over Superman and had announced that he was making Superman less powerful because he had become too powerful and you couldn't write interesting stories about people that were too powerful. That started me thinking, "Well, no, actually you can, because what makes a person interesting or not interesting isn't how powerful they are, but who they are."

GB: There's also the compelling problems that come with that power. Your Morpheus may be able to bend reality to his wishes but he still has to deal with the consequences of his excesses and his relationships.

NG: Which is why I created Dream, this god-like being of immortal power, and then I gave him a family. Most characters in comics simply didn't have any families, and it was something I loved. It was something I loved to write about. When I first came out to America, people told me that in "The Sandman" I created a dysfunctional family, which was not a phrase I had heard before that in England. I talked to people about it, and I realized that what people in America called "a dysfunctional family" was the same thing that we in England referred to as "a family." You didn't see a lot of functional ones. So I gave him a family, the Endless. I gave him Death and Delirium and Desire and Despair and Destiny and Destruction.

GB: It became such an amazing tapestry as the series moved on. There was the feeling of epic fantasy on a scale that wasn't really there in those earliest issues.

NG: At the beginning it was a horror comic. Those first eight issues was a sort of horror comic. After that it became more of, I guess, a fantasy tale, but one that allowed me to go off and write about Shakespeare or history or do a modern-day road trip or really go anywhere I wanted to with an unlimited special effects budget. [Laughs]

GB: I was fascinated when you began plucking the deities of different cultures and putting them together in a sort of mythology mash-up. It was something you would come back to in your non-comics work later with the "American Gods" novel ...

NG: It was something that I had always loved so much about the nature of comic-book universes. Those Marvel and DC heroes all seemed to exist in worlds where you had gods and you had fairies and robots and aliens. It was all there, and there was the potential for this amazing mash-up. All I did was take joy in it and mash it up much, much further. It was all there to be mashed, but nobody had mashed it up just yet in that way.

GB: Well, in Marvel Comics, when Thor and Hercules both ended up in Manhattan, they tended to blend in with the superhero except for their Old Vic accents. Your stories, though, presented the gods as mistrustful tribes forced into the same room.

NG: That's it, yes, the idea of putting them together wasn't something that nobody had done before; it's just that whenever it had been done, they tried to downplay the awkwardness. I wanted to revel in the joy of that awkwardness. It's something I keep coming back to. This wonderful, great-big, post-modern grab bag. It's all up for grabs; it's all metaphor and mythology, and if I can find a kitchen sink, I'm throwing that in too.

EXCLUSIVE: The first of a three-part interview with Neil Gaiman on the 20th anniversary of his signature comics work, "The Sandman." The writer says it's like awakening from a dream. "It is has been wonderful and baffling and inspiring."

In late 1988, a strange new comic book written by a British newcomer named Neil Gaiman hit the shelves with a singular style and rhythm. The protagonist of "The Sandman" was no superhero at all; he was the Lord of Dreams, a tall, willowy and haunted figure, both magical and deeply flawed, who for the next 75 months would challenge the ambitions and limitations of a monthly comics series. This is the first of a three-part interview with Gaiman reflecting on that 20th anniversary as well some of his other key works in comics and beyond, among them "American Gods," "Coraline" and "Stardust." 

GB: It's great to get to finally talk to you. I've been enjoying and admiring your work for many years now.

NG: You know it's funny, you don't think you've been doing it for very long and then you get e-mails from people who say, "I've been reading you since I was in school," and they have real jobs. It's at that point where you find myself in lines signing things for people who weren't born when you wrote them. And they are waiting in line and holding their babies. It is very strange.

GB: I'm sure the 20th anniversary of "Sandman" is another one of those things that has you looking back with some amazement and, I'm sure, some measure of pride.

NG: It really does. And certain amount of bafflement as well. People have such amazing 20/20 hindsight and a lot of the questions. I've been asked by people who seem to always pre-suppose that I knew exactly where we would be now. And it gets to the point where you're having to explain to them, "No, no, I didn't know it would be like this." For example: Graphic novels these days, the collections of comics tends to harbor around eight issues.

That was something that began really with "The Sandman" No. 1. When I explain to people that the reason that the first story, "Preludes and Nocturnes" was eight issues long was because back in those days DC Comics didn't like canceling things before they gave them a year because it made them look bad. So they used to give things a year -- which meant that I was pretty sure that I would be getting my phone call at issue eight letting me know, "No, we aren't going to be doing this, the book is canceled."

GB: Was there a particular reason you expected the ax so early?

NG: If you were a betting man, up until that point in ongoing comics, critical success was completely synonymous with commercial failure. The two were so utterly hand-in-hand. With "Sandman," we were getting the critical success but we weren't getting the commercial failure. At issue No. 8 we were selling more than anything comparable had sold for 25 years before that. At that point, I let myself starting dreaming of this world, in which I was actually going to tell this whole story.

It was another six or seven years before I could get DC Comics to agree that it would stop the "Sandman" monthly comic book when I stopped. Again, it simply wasn't heard of. Batman didn't stop when Bob Kane or Bill Finger stopped doing it. "Fantastic Four" didn't stop when Stan Lee stopped writing it. That simply wasn't how comic books worked. There were so many ways that I was wandering around as a guinea pig. I was also very, very pragmatic about existing in a world in which everything was disposable. That was the joy of comics, wasn't it? Nobody was doing their PhD on me back then. Nobody was publishing books on symbolism in "The Sandman." All of this, it has been wonderful and baffling and inspiring.