I have never read a single book by the author, but I’ve seen two adapted movies and both involved a fantasy world with an idealized good mother that turns out to not be so good. Common theme?
Common theme in literature? Yes.
I’m not sure what the second one you’re referring to is, but Gaiman has said that Coraline was inspired by the Lucy Clifford story “The New Mother”, in which the misbehaving children’s mother is replaced by a monstrous new mother with glass eyes.
In Coraline, the title character does learn to better appreciate her real mother after her experience with “The Other Mother”.
Both Coraline and Mirror Mask are fairy tale-ish stories, and mothers/step-mothers are a very big part of fairy tales.
That being said, if you read any of Neil Gaiman’s other stuff - Sandman, American Gods, and any of his collection of short stories - you’ll understand those two movies are a very small sample, and the statistics are skewed. If anything, Gaiman has an issue with . . . well, everything. Death, love, sex, honor, dreaming, life, the universe. His oeuvre has a very wide scope.
Read Stardust, American Gods and *Anansi Boys *and you’d say he definitely has daddy issues.
Read his blog, and you’ll see the guy actually is relatively issue-free. He’s just a good writer.
Is he still fucking Amanda Palmer? I would kill most of you to get “issues” like that.
He is. He’s also getting to write Doctor Who episodes now. What a waste of a life 
I assume so, since they’re married. What I want to know is: does he eat Vegemite?
Was coming to mention the marriage…But you just knocked it out of the park with the Vegemite! 
NSFW (language) http://youtu.be/RJhDV0MMPAs?t=45s
Fairytales in general have issues with parents, as that’s the hook to get the child/younger protagonist into an adventure. The father is distant or remarries an “evil stepmother”; the real mother is dead or otherwise warped into an evil version.
I was just curious if the mom thing was a common theme in his work, I thought his Who episode was one of the best of the entire series.
I didn’t mean it in a negative way really, plenty of authors have themes they keep returning to, It just stood out to me.
I see now also that Mirrormask was not an adaptation but an original work he co-wrote.
The authorial voice is merely that of a narrator. In other news, Agatha Christie was not a serial killer.
But she did disappear in mysterious circumstances for a couple of weeks once.
The OP should read American Gods, hell I think everyone should. I rate it as one of the best novels of the past 20 years.
Actually she hid herself in a hotel to embarrass her husband who had been cheating on her. Several people recognized her but she would deny who she was. Then they found her and took her home.
I looked it up after that Who episode, which is one of my favorites.
No, she’s still Amanda Fucking Palmer.
But maybe you can, too.
Enthusiastically, heartily, thoroughly seconded. When the OP said he/she’d never read Neil Gaiman, my first thought was, “But you must! Now! Go to the bookstore right now and get - well, anything by Neil! Take my car!”
I saw Neil Gaiman speak once at a book festival, and he said at one point that people sometimes tell him they’re surprised he seems so pleasant and well-adjusted considering he’s written some pretty creepy things. He said that in his experience writers of horror are typically pretty pleasant and well-adjusted, and that the real sickos are the people who write self-help books.
What about Jessica Fletcher?