A Gaiman View


In early August, Miss Violet DeVille asked for suggestions on Twitter for the title of a burlesque show based on the work of Neil Gaiman.

Naturally, I threw out a few ideas. They all riffed on Gaiman book titles; at least one of them was redundant to someone quicker on the draw.

While I’ve been thinking about running them on the blog as a Top X list, there are just five — and that’s counting the one that I came up with belatedly for the title of this post. So I decided to monkey with the covers to the books in question to spice things up visually. Comme ça:

The House Dolls logo

You’re not gonna get these if you aren’t familiar with the original books, of course.

I’m presenting the covers in order of increasing vulgarity, more or less, although only the last — the sole cover on which I did more than simply rework the typography of the title a bit — is actually racy by any stretch. That one has impolite slang for boobs as well as boobs themselves, albeit covered up by pasties (since this is, after all, burlesque).

Buck Orchids logo  The Sandman: Preludes and Knockers logo
faux cover for I Swapped My Dad for Two Gold Tits with Neil Gaiman's head in fishbowl under a bowler hat and on top of photocopied woman's torso with pasties

I can’t apologize enough to Dave McKean, who illustrated all of the covers.



Covers to Black Orchid, The Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes, and The Sandman: The Doll’s
House
collected editions © 1991, 1995 DC Comics. Cover to The Day I Swapped My Dad For
Two Goldfish
© 1997 Dave McKean. All original covers: Dave McKean. Photo of Neil Gaiman:
Kelli Bickman © 1995. Photo of boobs: Unknown. Typographical parody and disturbing
composite on the final cover: Brian Saner Lamken. I’m not sure why I kept the bowler.


Related: Miley at Twerk Blonde on Blonde What’s in a Name

8 comments:

  1. I am not familiar with his work but I was delighted at the "naughtiness" tag.


    J


    :)

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  2. Chorusline?
    Ooh... Netherwear!!!
    I like what you did with these, Blam. That last one is flippin' hilarious, although the boobs are kind-of sad. Not that I would ever trade my dad, even for two gold tits, but if for some reason I had I would definitely cry foul on this deal.

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  3. I liked these when you posted 'em to Twitter, but they're vastly improved this way.

    I'm not sure why I kept the bowler.
    As Joe Cocker once said, "You can leave your hat on."

    I've gotta agree with LK that you did not choose the most impressive boobs. I'm not even sure if that's a man's torso or a woman's. I agree with Joan on the "naughtiness" tag as well.

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  4. @Joan — Since you don't read comics, I'd suggest maybe his YA prose novella Coraline; it's a quick read, and good. The 2009 animated film based on it was pretty good, too, so if a movie feels more up your alley in terms of time or attention span, you could rent that to whet your appetite. He also wrote the book that the uneven 2007 movie Stardust was adapted from. I reviewed Coraline the first week of the blog, and I reviewed The Graveyeard Book, also recommended, here as well. For more grown-up stuff — not that that's any better, just different — there's American Gods. Or if you've ever read and enjoyed Douglas Adams, I'd suggest his first novel, co-written by Terry Pratchett, Good Omens, with a similar feel to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but fantasy/occult rather than science fiction. You might like some of his comics work if you tried it, though; I hooked more than one person on his Sandman run with the relatively stand-alone collection Dream Country.

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  5. @LK — Great titles!

    @Arben, @Joan — I thought you'd like "naughtiness". I'm looking forward to seeing what else it might apply to as I continue to reformat older posts far too slowly.

    Next time I'll run my selection of bosom past you guys for approval. 8^) They are a woman's boobs; my stretching the torso out a bit horizontally when placing it and finessing it into something that was a passable approximation of Dave McKean's work in the context of the extant cover probably made it look more masculine, as did covering the nipples with pasties. I was against selecting breasts that were obviously implants but I also didn't want to spend too much time going through the Google Image search, just because, y'know.

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  6. I'm not sure that approving bosoms is an allowable indulgence for me anymore.

    You did a great faux-McKean on the last cover. Don't let us in the peanut gallery bother ya!

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  7. You can finesse my torso anytime, Blam.
    "I'm Brian Saner Lamken and I approved this bosom."

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  8. "...so if a movie feels more up your alley in terms of time or attention span..."

    Pfft, there were too many more words to read after that statement but I can assure you that your ideas about me are incorrect!

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