Dirk Maggs: ‘Audio is a visual medium’

The director of the blisteringly popular audiobook adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s iconic comic book series, The Sandman, says he creates pictures with sound 

Listening to the audiobooks of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, makes for the perfect Eureka moment. As you listen to the all-star cast taking you on a mind-bending trip, you tell yourself, of course this is a home for Dream’s travels through time and space.

Translating comic books into sound, while not being easy, is a joy, according to Dirk Maggs (67), the director of the audiobook adaptations. “It wasn’t hard because the two media complement each other,” he says over a video call from his home in Winchester, UK.

Maggs, who was a  panelist at the recently held Delhi Comic Con held from December 9 to 11, says, “The story sits in the middle. On one side, you can have pictures drawn by great artists, and on the other, I provide the soundtrack; the voices to the characters. I’m not battling these two elements, I’m augmenting them.”

The reason audiobooks and comic books are complimentary is because you can do anything in audio for the fraction of the cost of doing it in movies, says Maggs. “Marvel has turned its product into this gigantic series of movies, which cost millions of dollars with special effects and top actors. Well, we have Hollywood actors, huge sound effects and a brilliant score by an award-winning composer (Jim Hannigan) for the price of a day’s catering on a Marvel production!”

Another plus in an audio adaptation, Maggs says, is that unlike a movie, the audience is a partner in the enterprise. “We don’t treat them as objects and show them stuff. We let them walk into this world that we have created and populate it with their imagination.”

Earlier this year there was an excellent Netflix adaptation of the comic books headlined by Tom Sturridge. “I had actually started writing the first episode the audiobook when I heard that Netflix was doing a series. I immediately tore up what I’d done and started again because I knew the series was going to change stuff.”

In a show, Maggs says, there are a vast number of people influencing the storytelling process. “I realised, with all these people affecting a television series, I had to go back to the mother lode and concentrate on the original stories as written by Neil back in 1989.”