The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Non-Fiction

by Neil Gaiman

back in 1986 I was commissioned by the Sunday Times Magazine, in England, to do a feature article on comics. I interviewed a number of people for it – Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Dave Sim, Brian Bolland and many others. I worked incredibly hard on it – this was going to be the first major national article promoting comics as a medium in England. I sent the article in to the gentleman who had commissioned it, and heard . . . nothing. Not a sausage. So, after a couple of weeks, I rang him up. He sounded oddly subdued. ‘How’s the article?’ I asked. He told me that he had a problem or two with it. I suggested that he tell me what the problem was. I could rewrite it, get it better. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it lacks balance.’ ‘In what way?’ ‘These comics.’ He paused, then spat it out. ‘You seem to think they’re a good thing.’