I would argue that the one character that he’s had the most success with is Death, and that’s primarily because it was such an original anthropomorphism. I would also argue that the titular Sandman of the famous graphic novels was merely a MacGuffin to write about The Dreaming. It tends to be his highly stylized fantasy settings that captures the interest of readers rather than the actual characters within them.

Unfortunately screenplays tend to revolve around character and dialogue. In this medium, all the nuance that he typically packs into a scene has to be converted to a form that’s unfamiliar for him. The result is that his subtext becomes supertext - one of the more noticeable examples of this was in Beowulf when Hrothgar offers the dragon horn as a reward for defeating Grendel, saying “She will be yours forever” while Wealthow stands in the foreground. It’s clumsy phrasing used to bludgeon a point home to the audience (and it doesn’t help that Robert Zemeckis is not the most subtle of directors either).

I’m hoping that it’s just a matter of finding his rhythm and the right creative talents to work with, but since three of his projects have been flawed (although still acceptable) I’m starting to wonder if he’s simply not very good at it. In which case the best option would be to let someone who understands the source material adapt it for him (although I could understand his reluctance given what’s happened in the past with adaptations of Alan Moore’s works).

I know this, but for someone who is not a fan, it’s not worth the investment of a huge hardcover book to find out if I like the series. It’s a shame that they are waiting to suck all the money out of the Gaiman fans before releasing the re-colored editions in softcover

You’ll be happy to know that the early issues did have legitimate coloring issues, and they have re-colored the stories recently for the huge hard cover Absolute editions.

A friend of mine is one of the lead story artists on this project, and he’s quite excited by it. He’s a typically cynical animation pro - damn hard to impress - so if he’s charged up there must be something to it. We can hope!

I think it goes without saying that writing comics/novels is obviously a completely different animal than screenwriting and moviemaking. If I had to guess, I’d say that Gaiman is in the process of learning to transfer his skills to the screen. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when he finally starts making Death: The High Cost of Living (a very popular 3-issue comic off-shoot of Sandman). He’s spoken about making it, but I haven’t seen nor heard of any confirmation that it’s being done. I believe in due time, Gaiman will find his voice in movies and hopefully blow us away!

That’s an odd statement. Sort of like someone saying they don’t understand why Stephen King is popular because you don’t like his movies, but have never read his books. The Cult of Gaiman has nothing to do with his movies.