Thoughts on Neil Gaiman?

What does Veeky Forums think of Neil Gaiman?

His comic books are honestly better than his novels.

not much

he tries to write entertaining easy-to-read pulp, and fails

Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough and looked don't-fuck-with-me enough that his biggest problem was killing time. So he kept himself in shape, and taught himself coin tricks, and thought a lot about how much he loved his wife.

The best thing—in Shadow's opinion, perhaps the only good thing—about being in prison was a feeling of relief. The feeling that he'd plunged as low as he could plunge and he'd hit bottom. He didn't worry that the man was going to get him, because the man had got him. He was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, because yesterday had brought it...
He had noticed it in the first few days, when everything, from the slang to the bad food, was new. Despite the misery and the utter skin-crawling horror of incarceration, he was breathing relief.

Shadow tried not to talk too much. Somewhere around the middle of year two he mentioned his theory to Low Key Lyesmith, his cellmate.

Low Key, who was a grifter from Minnesota, smiled his scarred smile. "Yeah," he said. "That's true. It's even better when you've been sentenced to death. That's when you remember the jokes about the guys who kicked their boots off as the noose flipped around their necks, because their friends always told them they'd die with their boots on."

"Is that a joke?" asked Shadow.

"Damn right. Gallows humor. Best kind there is."

His best work was just a rip off of swamp thing. And that's not even moore's best. Full of plot convenience by american gothic

he peaked with Sandman, and even that relied too heavily on "girl trapped in a dream world of her own creation" thing, which seems to be his favorite theme.

read one of his short story collections, and was mildly surprised and how cotton-candy-like it all was. very light. i kept waiting for him to say something of substance.

still waiting.

All of this cliche and shit on page one is just a symptomic of a writer who simply doesn't care, right?

'Despite the misery and the utter skin-crawling horror of incarceration, he was breathing relief.'

These sentences haven't even been read over before publishing, much less re-drafted and crafted. Anybody who pays money for this shite is morally culpable in the fall of civilization.

Nicholas Was...

older than sin, and his beard could grow no whiter. He wanted to die.

The dwarfish natives of the Arctic caverns did not speak his language, but conversed in their own, twittering tongue, conducted incomprehensible rituals, when they were not actually working in the factories.

Once every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless Night. During the journey he would stand near every child in the world, leave one of the dwarves' invisible gifts by its bedside. The children slept, frozen into time.

He envied Prometheus and Loki, Sisyphus and Judas. His punishment was harsher.

Ho.

Ho.

Ho.

This hasn't even been edited in coherence. How do you become a published writer before learning how to use a comma?