While media-king Gaiman develops his next comic-book project with Dark Horse (a dark romance to be painted by John Bolton, scheduled for next year), writes his next novel (American Gods) and prepares to embark on his final fundraising tour for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund this October, Dark Horse is getting ready to release one of his hard-to-find gems -- a paperback collection of the Michael Zulli-illustrated series The Last Temptation, which Gaiman wrote as part of a creative collaboration with rock-and-roll icon Alice Cooper in 1995. The Last Temptation is a supernaturally-charged coming-of-age tale about a teenager named Steven and his dark journey through the "Theater of the Real," where a bizarre showman -- Alice Cooper, in fact -- ushers him through a nightmare of psychological darkness and moral depravity.
I spoke with Gaiman in August about his work on The Last Temptation, his relationship with the musician Marilyn Manson stole all his best tricks from, and what inspired him to become a storyteller.
Shawna Ervin-Gore: In November Dark Horse is going to reprint The Last Temptation, which was first published by Marvel Music in the mid-'90s. How did your relationship with Alice Cooper come about?
Neil Gaiman: I got a phone call one day. It was one of those incredibly simple things that appear from time to time. The phone rang and a voice said "Hello, I'm from Epic Records in New York, and I have a artist who is a fan of yours who wants to make a concept album."
SE-G: Just like that?
NG: Just like that. And I said, "And...?" And he said "and he wondered if you could come up with a concept." So I said, "Well, who is it?" because the only people I could think of on Epic Records were Barbara Streisand and Michael Jackson, neither of whom I actually wanted to work with.
SE-G: Understandably.
NG: And he said Alice Cooper, which really pleased me. I mean, that was the thing that immediately made me think, "Ooh, this might really be fun!" For one thing, Alice was already a comic-book character at that point. I have a copy down in my basement, in a box. Actually I didn't have a basement at that point, but these days its in the basement. Actually, these days its actually on the wall. I pulled it out and put it in a little frame -- Marvel Premier No. 50 or whatever it was -- the Alice Cooper comic from the '70s.
I always thought Alice was one of the interesting faces and characters. In a peculiar kind of way he was right up there with Dracula and Frankenstein and the Wolfman.
SE-G: I know what you mean. He's sort of a familiar ghoul. I remember liking him a lot as a kid, even though I wasn't into his music at the time. He's strangely "friendly," I guess.
NG: Yes -- just like Frankenstein. But I am also, you know, elderly enough to remember the days when Alice was being about as shocking as you could get. And I was old enough to be very amused a few years ago when Marilyn Manson stole Alice's whole act.
Manson had everyone going "Oh, it's shocking! It's shocking!" -- except for those people who were saying "It's not shocking. Alice Cooper did this 25 years ago."
SE-G: That's so true. What was your take on the story once Alice approached you to collaborate on this?
NG: Well, I flew out and spent a day with Alice just talking about stories, you know, the classic "Welcome To My Nightmare" stuff. We talked about things that we thought would go well with a project like this, and I mentioned that if I was going to do anything with an Alice character, I wanted to put him back in the top hat and tails -- Alice as a showman of the dark carnival theatre.
SE-G: Tell me about the "Theater of the Real." What is it?
NG: Well, a lot of that came out of discussions of the nature of theater: What is scary? And we both came to the conclusion that what's really scary now is the world out there. Actually, there is nothing you can do on film that is scarier than the news. There is nothing you can do in your imagination that is weirder or more terrifying than the basest, real fears of growing up. That was the start of it. I got my idea thinking about Alice's classic "Welcome To My Nightmare," about a boy named Steven and the nightmares he has, which were all giant spiders and the dead girl and so on and so forth. And we thought, why don't we just look at what would happen if we did that now? And also out of that whole creative process came the comic. What wound up happening was I wrote a story for Alice to write songs from, and then Alice wrote songs from it and discovered at the end of the day that we actually had more story than we could fit onto one album.
SE-G: Oh, so this didn't originate as a comics project for you? It was a concept album?
NG: It was an album project -- we just had story left over. We hadn't planned it to be a comic, and then we had just one of those weird little things that just occasionally happens when everybody is suddenly interested in one thing or another. In 1993 or 94, everybody was starting a music line or talking about it, and when it became known that I worked with Alice on a project, we had -- quite literally -- a trail of people beating on our doors.
SE-G: How did Michael Zulli get involved?
NG: I phoned him. I had always loved Michael's art, and I felt that we should stray as far as possible from the "superhero Alice" of the original Marvel comic. Let's take it over into something much more delicate, interesting. And Michael had been doing a lot of work at that time in Zip-a-tone, which gave his art a real unique, dark look, and I loved it. Nobody had ever really seen it. So I phoned Michael, he did a bunch of concept sketches, we sent them out to Alice, he loved them -- and then I just settled down and wrote the story. And we never -- although we had two very good colorists working on the book -- we never found a method of coloring that actually worked with the Zip-a-tone that really enhanced it. I mean, my second colorist for the series was Bernie Mireault, who is one of the best in the business. But even he never really worked with the art needed. There was a sort of delicacy to the art that sort of got lost.
But, it was an odd time, when we were working on this project. I even went on a short European tour with Alice to promote the album, which was great, because I got to do all the thing I always wanted do, like go to the Top of the Pops video and watch that being filmed.
SE-G: Let's move on to a slightly different topic. Alice Cooper obviously wanted somebody to create a story for him and I think your role -- as far as your fans are concerned -- is more like that of a storyteller rather than a comics writer or a novelist.
NG: Yes, I think so.
SE-G: How old were you when you started telling stories?
NG: Oh, let me think. I was a kid. I mean, my first stories were what my daydreams were. When I was a kid, my daydreams were the kind of daydreams where you would be tumbled into a parallel universe with the only copy of The Lord of the Rings in existence -- a universe just like this one but they hadn't had Lord of the Rings. So I'd bring a copy along and get it published under my name, and that way I'd be the guy who wrote Lord of the Rings. That was one fantasy. And there was another that was really kind of fun where I kidnapped all of the writers that I liked through space and time and imprisoned them and made them work on a giant fantasy novel just for me. I had the plot for this twelve-book series based on this one daydream. I must have been 11 at this point.
SE-G: This must have been before you realized that you possessed the talent to actually create the stories yourself?
NG: Completely. That was when I was sort of a kid, and before I had any concept that I could write. But I knew that was what I wanted to do. I just couldn't see at the time that I was going to be good enough. I knew I couldn't sit down and write a great novel, so that was my solution at the time. And as I got older, I still loved telling stories. This is what I am; it's what I do. I make stuff up. I have the kind of head to make stuff up.
SE-G: Did you just discover your talent for throwing all the words together and making it sound pretty, or is that something that developed once you started taking writing assignments in school?
NG: I was always one of these kids who did incredibly well in English, but it was what I loved doing. It wasn't work. You get to sit down and make up a story, and I could never think of anything I'd rather do.