Me, too. On the other hand, I’m probably getting close to having read everything that Gaiman’s ever written.
If you didn’t like the first compilation, I don’t blame you. But it got better.
Yet I know who Gaga is (through no effort on my own) and I only know of Gaiman’s name because I’ve seen it on this board countless times. If I wasn’t on the Dope I’d have never heard of him.
Never heard Neil Gaiman’s name before (though I have heard of the Sandman books). Heard of the other one and know what she does, though have as much respect for her as I do for that which I trod in yesterday while walking the puppy.
Two years. And though I love Gaiman, his influence is negligible compared to Gaga, who I don’t like at all.
I just realized I forgot to link the thread in question from the OP. Here’s the post that triggered the discussion on whether or not Neil Gaiman is a part of pop culture.
Thanks, and hardeeharhar.
The point is that I don’t think Neil Gaiman is part of the pop culture vocabulary, while Lady Gaga is. The former was supplied by another poster; the latter was someone I pulled out of my ass as being very “of the moment.”
That kind of media attention, to me, is what defines pop culture.
And it’s responses like this that make me say that Neil Gaiman is not part of popular culture.
Because someone said that anybody conversant with popular culture should know who Neil Gaiman is, and I strongly disagree with that assertion. I think that Neil Gaiman is a very big name in certain circles–not in pop culture. Lady Gaga, on the other hand, pretty much personifies pop culture.
All due respect to your taste in literature, but if you think *Sandman *is in the top 10 of the past hundred years, IMO you should *really *consider expanding your reading horizons.
Taken out of context? Do you mean that in the same way that watching Batman Begins would be out of context unless you watched it along with The Dark Knight?
The fact that this is even up for debate shows just how much this place is out of step with popular culture. Neil Gaiman is a respected author among comic book fans and various literary types, but he’s pretty well unknown outside of them.
If anything, he’ll probably go down in “pop culture” annals as a children’s author after the success of Coraline (and its namesake movie) and The Graveyard Book (which won the Newbery).
Let’s not forget the posters in this thread who somehow thought that Octomom and JonBenét Ramsey were more famous than Lady Gaga.
I think the point is that *Sandman *is very arc-based, and it was a bit slow to start. So if all you read was a single issue, or even the first TPB, you missed the best bits.
Indeed.
I’d say they’re both firmly ensconced in the history U.S. pop culture, or were at one point. (And both more so than Neil Gaiman.) I doubt that they’re as well known abroad, nor that they’re as well known as she is right now even in the U.S. alone.
I don’t think so. (I haven’t seen Batman Begins myself, so I don’t really know.) Sandman is a single story told over some 70-odd comic issues (or 10 book collections), with a rich and complex web of allusions, foreshadowings, and parallels connecting the various parts. Something like Babylon 5 might be a better comparison, insofar as you won’t “get it” by watching an episode or two.
A snotty, presumptuous, and condescending remark like that neither signals nor deserves any respect whatsoever.
I know of both. I have a bunch of Gaiman stuff and I enjoy a couple of Lady Gaga’s songs.
I’m not going to give him an entire series to entice me. He’s got to show me that he’s worth spending money on in the first comic or I won’t bother with him. If it’s great as a series I can respect that but if I disliked the first book I doubt that my mind would have been substantially changed.
I agree with **SFG **- Gaga is a full-on crossover pop culture phenomenon; Gaiman is huge within ComicCon circles but virtually unheardof outside that…
I also agree with **SFG **about Gaiman as a writer (American Gods was fun from page to page but doesn’t hold up as a story at all), but that is not the point to this OP…regardless of his actual talent, we aren’t going to hear about whether Gaiman showed up at an MTV show in a meat suit…
More like watching a single episode of Lost. I don’t like *Sandman *either, personally, but I really like his novels and short stories.
I think you mean **devilsknew **instead of posters. Isn’t he the same guy that thought bermuda shorts were the same thing as Daisy Dukes, or something?
If by “a single episode” you mean “the first episode”, then sure. I watched the first episode of Lost and didn’t enjoy it, either, and that’s what led me to not watch any others. 
What’s the rest of your top 10, then? I can tell you quite honestly that I couldn’t give you a list, but I can tell you that it would have to be at least an order of magnitude larger for anything by Gaiman to be on it. While he writes *very good, very enjoyable *fiction, I don’t think any of it comes close to the art or complexity of the works of the *truly greatest *authors of the 20th century.
Here, off the top of my head, I’ll give you ten books from the 20th century that I think were better than Sandman:
Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids, Kenzaburo Oe
The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kenndy Toole
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Ulysses, James Joyce
Please tell me which of these books you think *Sandman *is better than, and why. (Because you believe it’s one of the top ten, it must be better than at least one of these.)
No. I meant a single episode. You didn’t indicate what issue of Sandman you read, but if it’s something from the middle, I am sure it would make as much sense as something from the season of Lost where everyone was living in two concurrent timelines.
It takes investment, and I’m not saying you have to read a dozen issues, or watch a full season of shows. There’s a lot more out there that I am sure would grab you immediately. I’m just explaining why a single episode from who knows when in the arc isn’t a good launchpad for a neophyte.
Enh. That’s up to you. I’m not going to prosyletize for Gaiman or Sandman. (Nor am I going to take his side in the intensely stupid issue of whether or not he is as famous as Lady Gaga.) I’m just pointing out that you have to be willing to give Sandman a chance to “get going” in order to get anything out of it.
This is true of a lot of serial work. Most often the first few issues or seasons are ungainly while the newborn finds its stride, then afterward it really comes into its own.