‘What I like best is being able to go from TV to comics to prose to audio’: Neil Gaiman

Author Neil Gaiman on the phenomenal success of The Sandman, audiobooks and how he handles fame

Four weeks into its release on Netflix, in August 2022, The Sandman garnered 400 million hours of viewing time, becoming “one of the most watched shows on the planet”. And its writer, Neil Gaiman is curiously calm about the phenomenal success of the show. “Yes, it is amazing, you don’t get things like that often,” he says over a call, “but I think I am very lucky, because The Sandman wasn’t an overnight success.”

Lucky because “I have watched people that I know be destroyed or injured by success. Going from nowhere to being incredibly successful incredibly fast is very bad for people. It came to me very slowly,” he explains.

Gaiman’s seminal fantasy comic series that tickled the imagination of the 1990s kids, took over three decades and several attempts to be adapted to television. When it came out (in 1989), published by DC Comics, it was popular among those who read fantasy fiction. “But not many people bought that kind of thing. We were always in the ‘Top 100’ of the best-selling comics. But we spent a lot of that time in the ‘70s, ‘50s, ‘40s and ‘30s. And honestly, the first time The Sandman outsold Batman and Superman was its very last issue — The Sandman #75. That was incredibly slow,” he says. It became the first original graphic novel on the New York Times’ bestseller list in 2003. 

However, he is pleased that the 30-year wait for a TV adaptation has produced something “wonderful”. “The first time I was asked about doing The Sandman movie adaptation was in 1990. And I have watched The Sandman adaptations try and happen, over the years and they didn’t and I was patient. Finally, we [writer, radio producer, director Dirk Maggs] got to make a TV adaptation with me in control and we got to make something that tastes and feels like Sandman and that, for me, was an important thing. I have had 34 years to get used to this. I’ve had 34 years of watching the crowds at the signing go from 12 adolescent boys to 3,000 people of all ages and kinds and genders. Basically, I love that I have had the time,” he adds.

The first time Gaiman pitched The Sandman as an audio project, with Maggs to the BBC in 1992-93, they were turned down. “Over the years, we kept trying to get an audio of The Sandman adaptation together. But the important thing was that we were willing to wait. If it wasn’t right then we were not doing it. I think I made the right choice. I love the wait.” 

The audio adaptation of the book was launched on audio streaming platform Audible in 2020. “It was the fastest selling; I got these astonished phone calls I got after the first part of The Sandman was released — selling faster than Harry Potter adaptations ever did.” 

In his almost four-decade literary career, there are few genres the British author has not attempted — from comic to graphic novel, novels, film and screenwriting, radio, his own blogs. He also performs readings of his poetry and stories. Gaiman is known for his works Stardust and American Gods. His 2013 book The Ocean at the end of the Lane was ‘book of the year’ in the British National Book Awards. “What I like best is being able to go from TV to comics to prose to audio. I love that freedom. But if you told me at gunpoint that I could only do one for the rest of my life, I would probably choose audio because I have things that I can do in audio that I cannot do in prose. I can have real actors bring characters to life, I can have music, I can force you to build pictures in your head,” he says.