Neil Gaiman Addresses the Class of 2012 from The University of the Arts on Vimeo.

I know I posted on the sad passing of the great Maurice Sendak yesterday, but Charles Santoso’s tribute art is simply too lovely not to share on here. And on a related note Neil Gaiman asked the New Yorker very nicely if they could unlock a couple of pages of comics by Sendak and Art Spiegelman showing the pair of them in conversation, which the New Yorker has nicely done as a tribute.

But as I said few details other than the project being a stage musical – not quite West End/Broadway style musical, we are told, but not at the opera end of stage music either, perhaps somewhere between, a three-act operetta type piece. There are hints that an old and much admired collaborator has been working with Neil on designing the stage layout and artistic look for the production and it is hard not to suspect this can only be P Craig Russell, who was worked so well with Neil before and, as we know, has a passion for music and opera. Given Craig’s love of Wagner-esque productions it does make me wonder if this new work could perhaps be based on Neil’s American Gods novel? I could easily imagine Craig creating set designs and concept art for such a production.

More details are promised soon, although we are told that the idea is not to go down the traditional Broadway and London West End route of giant production, but to have something which will tour so more fans can enjoy it without having to travel to only one city where it is running; after enjoying several weeks in my beloved Edinburgh during the Festival Fringe and Book Festival last summer Neil is also hinting that we may see the production at the world’s biggest arts bash, the Edinburgh Festival. But subject matter, well that is still wide open to guesswork – based on some of his existing material or something totally new? Much as many of us might enjoy seeing some of our favourite work of Neil’s adapted into a new production I strongly suspect if he is penning his first stage musical then knowing Neil he will come up with something totally original, story-wise. Whatever it is I can easily imagine that it will end up drawing in fans all dressed up for the occasion and singing along, a la Rocky Horror Show style performances. More as and when we hear it.

On the left Neil Gaiman. On the right Todd McFarlane.

They’ve been having a disagreement.

And here I could spend many, many words explaining it all, working in all the relevant characters (Spawn, Angela, Medieval Spawn, Marvelman, Miracleman etc etc), and putting it all in a highly detailed blog post.

I could. But then again, I could just point you in the direction of Pádraig Ó Méalóid and his excellent post Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane: The Story So Far (March 1993 – March 2012).

That more than covers it. Excellent summary of the whole twisty turny saga so far.

“Sit tight. We’ll have some additional news soon.”

Yep, that’s as good a summary as you’ll find regarding Marvel and their plans to bring back the Marvelman stories written by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman.

It’s the final piece in a long, extensive, and informative round-up by Pádraig Ó Méalóid of everything that’s gone on over the last couple of years since Disney/Marvel obtained some of the rights to the Marvelman character.

Here’s how it starts:

“On Friday the 24th of July, 2009, Joe Quesada, then Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics, accompanied by Dan Buckley, Marvel’s publisher, made an announcement at San Diego’s Comic-Con International, saying that Marvel Comics had bought the rights to Marvelman.

That’s now two and a half years ago (or a bit over 900 days, if you like), and we’re all more or less still waiting for them to announce what their actual plans are. Without attempting to draw any conclusions of my own here (because I’ll be doing that somewhere else, before the year is out), I thought I’d try to find out what theyhave said in those two and a half years.”

But if you’re in any way interested in the recent history of this long and tortuous saga, I definitely recommend you have a read at Pádraig’s blog.

Update: Andy Turnbull points out the Miracleman/Marvelman logo above isn’t actually from the comics as we thought, it’s from a really nice, crisp, clear experimental version he tried out himself.

So here, let’s share:

Adi Granov:

Marc Hempel:

Steve Rude:

Chrissie Zullo:

Cameron Stewart:

Death, Contantine & Bansai Swamp Thing – David Baldeon:

Bruce Timm:

David Petersen:

But to end on…. three from the definitive Death artists (in my humble opinion); Jill Thompson:

Mike Dringenberg:

And Chris Bachalo:

Comics Continuum has a couple of pics up and the US airdate for the Simpsons episode that sees one Neil Gaiman guest-starring – it should go out on November 20th Stateside, hopefully on Sky in the UK soon after. Neil teams up with Homer and others to group-write the next ‘tween lit’ hit. It’s nice to see Neil following in the cartoon footsteps of his friend and comics mentor Alan Moore by being in the venerable animated show, but I’m not sure the animators quite caught Neil’s famously unruly hair. Then again (no offence, Neil!), who could?! Or they may be waiting for 3D digital animation to progress a little further to capture it properly. (image from the episode is (c) Fox)

Jean Kang has made a lovely little short animated film, using the audio of the story Neil had made freely available for people to play around with, and finished it just last week – in time for Neil’s birthday, as it happened. Short but very nice, have a look:

Some nice stuff, but these just jumped out….

Left: Sean Hartter. Right: Derek Charm.

Simon Wilches. On sale here.