Tim E. Ogline has a good, long interview with Neil Gaiman on the Wild River Review. (link via Heidi at the Beat). Asked how his award-winning comics work compared to the other forms of storytelling he has written, such as his (also award-winning) novels, if it was better or not he replied:
“I don’t know that it is better, but I know for me, at least, one of the joys of comics has always been the knowledge that it was, in many ways, untouched ground. It was virgin territory. When I was working on Sandman, I felt a lot of the time that I was actually picking up a machete and heading out into the jungle. I got to write in places and do things that nobody had ever done before.
When I’m writing novels I’m painfully aware that I’m working in a medium that people have been writing absolutely jaw-droppingly brilliant things for, you know, three-four thousand years now. You know, you can go back. We have things like The Golden Ass. And you go, well, I don’t know that I’m as good as that and that’s two and a half thousand years old.
But with comics I felt like — I can do stuff nobody has ever done. I can do stuff nobody has ever thought of. And I could and it was enormously fun. “
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