What artist Dave McKean has to say about the Neil Gaiman scandal
Artist Dave McKean, who worked with the disgraced Neil Gaiman from the late 1980s to the late 2000s, was interviewed by Fumettologica (via Game Reactor), and here's what he has to say in response to Gaiman's sexual assault scandal, translated from Italian:
That said, McKean's cover illustrations for the Sandman series were nothing to write home about, and did little to add any kind of appeal to a series that was very depressing in tone. And if there's any fault in his statements, it's that he didn't seem to offer his condolences to Gaiman's victims. That's whom should matter, far more than the comics or the artwork itself. Interesting McKean doesn't really care about his past work, but maybe that's because he realizes the stories were overrated. Surely most telling is how the star character, Morpheus, was terminated towards the end of series, which only suggests Gaiman never really intended for the series to have long ranging impact. Now that I think of it, the regular cast of the series rarely appeared outside of it to date, yet several members of the DCU cast proper, not the least being Hector and Lyta Hall, made appearances there, and if Gaiman had special creative control over his books, it begs the query, why does he get to use ordinary DCU characters - and potentially influence how they go from there - but other writers don't get to make use of his character creations? Not that it matters, because the kind of stories that took place in the Sandman series were so contradicting of what the flagship DCU was meant to stand for, it's better the Sandman cast didn't appear in other comics.
Anyway, of course it's a shame regardless that so much ink and paper had to be wasted on the writings of an author as awful as Gaiman turned out to be. Something this scandal can make clear is that professional artists have to judge their partners carefully, certainly if they want their art and writing to matter as time goes by. It's to be hoped future generations of creators will take that into consideration, certainly when working on creator-owned comics.
Interviewed by Fumettologica during Comicon Napoli 2025, British cartoonist and illustrator Dave McKean commented on the harassment allegations against his long-time collaborator Neil Gaiman. The story emerged in July 2024, when a journalistic podcast reported the testimonies of several women.How ironic Gaiman would pen a title in 1987 about the very subject he was later accused of forcing upon several women he met. As for what McKean says, what's not mentioned is that in the past decade, Gaiman may have shunned McKean because of accusations of "Islamophobia" made against the latter, all over a book he'd illustrated that may have been cancelled altogether. However one looks at this, Gaiman's reaction was entirely unjust, but it's unsurprising that a man of his liberal standings could do that.
“I’ve never had a problem separating the art from the artist, but I say that because a lot of the art I like is old. And so maybe it’s easier to separate someone like Wagner from his music, because we’re talking about an artist who lived 200 years ago. It’s probably less easy to do that with a contemporary artist,” McKean said. “The other thing is that our collaboration goes back a long time. You know, I drew those works 20 or 30 years ago, so they seem very distant to me. I don’t even look at the stuff I did last year, so I certainly don’t look at the stuff I did 30 years ago. So it doesn’t really affect me.”
“The thing that does affect me about this whole sad story is that… you know, I haven’t spoken to Neil in 10 years. We were good friends for a while and I thought I knew him well,” the artist continued. “Maybe he’s changed over the years, or maybe I didn’t really know him. That really upset me. I think you can imagine, if you have a friend you think you know well and something, even related to his past, changes the perception you had of him. It is shocking and destabilizing. I have never spoken about it in public because I never talk about anything on social media. And then I knew him when he was still with his first wife, I never met Amanda Palmer. I don't know the truth, I'm waiting for a court to decide."
"I feel much more sorry for the fans, because for them those works have a meaning even in the present, but for me they remain things that I did 30 years ago and I have long forgotten them", McKean finally concluded.
Dave McKean has been one of the most important artistic presences in the path of Nel Gaiman, since the beginning. In fact, theirs is one of the longest-running and most recognizable collaborations in contemporary comics, lasting over twenty years. It began in 1987 with Violent Cases, the first graphic novel written by Gaiman and illustrated by McKean, which also marked the debut for both in the British publishing scene. In 1988 the two created Black Orchid for DC Comics, a miniseries that helped dictate the tone of the future Vertigo label of the publishing house. But it was with The Sandman (1989–1996) that the collaboration reached one of its highest points: McKean created all the covers of the series, developing a style that mixed collage, painting and photography and which defined the visual identity of the magazine, contributing significantly to its success.
In the years that followed, Gaiman and McKean worked together several times. Notable titles include Signal to Noise (1992), Mr. Punch (1994), and several illustrated books, including The Day I Traded My Father for Two Goldfish (1997), Coraline (2002), and Wolves in the Walls (2003). Their last collaboration dates back to 2009, with the publication of the illustrated book Crazy Hair.
That said, McKean's cover illustrations for the Sandman series were nothing to write home about, and did little to add any kind of appeal to a series that was very depressing in tone. And if there's any fault in his statements, it's that he didn't seem to offer his condolences to Gaiman's victims. That's whom should matter, far more than the comics or the artwork itself. Interesting McKean doesn't really care about his past work, but maybe that's because he realizes the stories were overrated. Surely most telling is how the star character, Morpheus, was terminated towards the end of series, which only suggests Gaiman never really intended for the series to have long ranging impact. Now that I think of it, the regular cast of the series rarely appeared outside of it to date, yet several members of the DCU cast proper, not the least being Hector and Lyta Hall, made appearances there, and if Gaiman had special creative control over his books, it begs the query, why does he get to use ordinary DCU characters - and potentially influence how they go from there - but other writers don't get to make use of his character creations? Not that it matters, because the kind of stories that took place in the Sandman series were so contradicting of what the flagship DCU was meant to stand for, it's better the Sandman cast didn't appear in other comics.
Anyway, of course it's a shame regardless that so much ink and paper had to be wasted on the writings of an author as awful as Gaiman turned out to be. Something this scandal can make clear is that professional artists have to judge their partners carefully, certainly if they want their art and writing to matter as time goes by. It's to be hoped future generations of creators will take that into consideration, certainly when working on creator-owned comics.
Labels: dc comics, Europe and Asia, history, indie publishers, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, violence
