The Neil Gaiman Pipeline
D.C. Comics made a splash during a Comic-Con panel yesterday when they announced that Neil Gaiman is returning to his classic comic series, The Sandman. He is planning a miniseries to explain why “Morpheus [was] so easily captured in The Sandman No. 1, and why he was returned from far away, exhausted beyond imagining, and dressed for war.” It will be released some time next year from the Vertigo imprint.
The day before, HarperCollins Children’s division announced that Gaiman has signed a deal for three novels and two picture books. On his blog, Gaiman writes that one of the picture books, Chu’s Day, illustrated by Adam Rex, is finished and will be released on Jan. 8th (9780062017819). He says it is “the first book I’ve ever written for really little kids. Ones who cannot read. Ones who can only just walk.” The second Chu book is written, but there is no release date yet.
Interior art below (Chu is on the far right; click on the image for a larger version):
The other three titles are middle-grade books, says Gaiman, “Fortunately, the Milk (already written), and the next Odd novel (started and plotted) and a mysterious book that I think I know what it is (not even started, won’t be for quite a while, and I think I know the setting but not the story)…”
He is also at work on a novel for adults, Lettie Hempstock’s Ocean, “which should be out in 2013 some time, although contracts aren’t signed.”