Sunday, April 26, 2009

NEW CONTEST UP: identify the comic?





First one to tell me which comic this panel was rescued from, will win it.
please send your answers to: neverwear@gaiman.net

winner of SMOKE AND MIRRORS contest announced tomorrow.
happy Sunday to you all.
Kitty

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

SMOKE & MIRRORS contest up!

that was a rollercoaster ride!!
I can always count on Neil's readers to bring smart to the party & be funny at the same time.

thank you all.

I am (despite the cat naysayers) going to crown
VERONICA the queen of the contest.

she won with her suggestion of :

On the front, "Cats don't need names..."
And on the back," We know who we are."

got the most commenting back and forth.

(and it was a personal favorite of your ol' miss Kitty)


although with entries like these....yeow, the choice was tricky.

Ethan's SHOGGOTH will show up down the line, in some incarnation.
pint glasses have been a thought all along, just have to research packing & shipping so
they don't come out the other end in a shower of glittery broken bits...

and i WANT a JACKS tee, thank you @Jesteram.


there will be many upcoming contests to look forward to-
will usually announce them via TWiTTER.com (@Neverwear)
but will repost here & on the various social outlets...

in related news:
this is the winner of the FAVORITE FRAGILE THINGS QUOTE contest:

@nothnbuttherain
'we save our lives in such unlikely ways'

something we can all live by.

she will get this homemade recycled comic-book magnet:



I know I have told the story, but once more, I had a flood and lost a huge chunk of comics to water damage (look how old that Spidey was!) and just couldn't throw them away. So i dried them in the sun and began to save the panels that needed saving.
I cut the glass, which is rescued from the cast off bins at my local Baller hardware...and I use recycled bits for the backing too.

(name the products?)




the new contest up until Monday is:

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE QUOTE FROM SMOKE & MIRRORS?

please send me your entries at NEVERWEAR@GAIMAN.NET

the winner will receive this:



@Kinravipmade me laugh with this tweet: What a dumbass you are, Mr. Sinister! The Devil ALWAYS reneges. That's how he got the job!
to which i responded: haha, mister sinister always did seem a bit one-dimensional... and apparently easily duped... but what great make-up!

Now must tend to Drew (@thinkceltic) who just returned late last night from the final load-out of Coachella. I made him let me take photos of his hands, it looks like he just crawled out of a grave filled with razors and charcoal. Poor bruised and battered roadie! Quiche never looks this destroyed after a gig...do you, Q?

Monday, April 20, 2009

in which we judge another contest....




when i announced a contest for this handmade reycled Batman magnet,
i opened a floodgate of response...
unleashed a torrent of glittery twitters...

should not have been surprised, but i was.
and then i looked in my spam folder, after i thought i was done viewing all the entries,
and there were more...and more and even...more.

and so many of them were good.

I sent several on to Neil. He laughed and used some choice blue language to show his delight.
our Newbery Medalist, with every word in the English language at his ready command, swearing like a sailor....in all caps, to boot.

so...how to judge this contest?
(many of you pleaded to win, seems you like that magnet)

We pulled out the ideas that stood out as shirts I could see in my mind.

i am going to detail the finalists here,
and let you all decide:


lots of you love the green bowler from ANANSI BOYS.
many spider God ideas...

Demeter's Child asked for the words to the Macabray on a shirt, illustrated with some of the white flowers that are being passed around in the GRAVEYARD BOOK.

Andrew made this very stark & clean suggestion:
"A simple, foreboding quote: "FEAR IS A WEAPON OF THE SLEER.""

*******he also asked for Neil's original and un-edited Newbery winner tweet on a tee.
(you'll just have to google it...)

John suggests a Coraline tee, with the words to the rat song::
(perhaps illustrated with one of Neil's doodly rats)

We are small but we are many
We are many, we are small
We were here before you rose
We will be here when you fall.


another Coraline tee thought up by Katie:

"The mice have a message for you."

"The Fan's Belief" submitted by Scott made Neil laugh:

Photobucket




great idea from Veronica:

. On the front, Cats don't need names.
And on the back, We know who we are.


(I want one of these myself, Veronica!)


Ben writes in:
I know I’ve always wanted a shirt with Richard Mayhew’s back as he’s drawing that final door on the London wall. Also, a Croup and Vandemar would be awesome. (perhaps with the caption, some of us are SO SHARP… we could just CUT ourselves.)

the ever-lovely Oona/Oz suggestes a quote from Neverwhere's Hunter:

In human years I am
“as old as my tongue and slightly older than my teeth”


Norm sent this great bumpersticker idea (would work on a tee as well:

This one is fresh from Neil's tweet last night.
"Dream dangerously."


we got several (SEVERAL!) requests for an OLD SHOGGOTH's label/pintglass/teeshirt.
you really love this idea. only Ethan went the distance and drew one:

shoggoth


thank you, Foz, for this:

You can't make an omlette without killing a few people. (quote paraphrased from Neverwhere)


a gorgeous little drawing from Elise:

stardust by Elise

Lauri's idea? a simple declaration from Stardust:

"I've been through the wall"

while on that topic, Katie and many others asked for this:

"Have been unavoidably detained by the world..."


Ruth sent in this visual inspired by THE GRAVEYARD BOOK:

a grey shirt, tomb stones print all over it and right over the right breast
(pocket) leaning against a stone is "Bod". here and there, little ghosts of
the "residents": kind of like a shirt map?



Rachel wants to see this printed on cotton:

"Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people in the whole world. I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing, worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe."

Meg wants to see a "Snow, Glass, Apples" design.. in fact, many mentions for this one. We do have plans for a future print...

Teresa, you picked my favorite HOW TO TALK TO GIRLS AT PARTIES line:
"You wouldn't want to make a universe angry."



Evelyn sent us this zinger:

I only consume one food, and it is not bananas. <--For those bloodsuckers who despise Twilight.

BillyBones suggests this:
London tube sign that says London Underneath, or a gothic version of the tube map with Neverwhere locations.
(me: will have to check on copyright infringement, but like it!)



RYAN has this beautiful idea:
I still would love to see a fading Cantrip shirt. The text from The Witch's Headstone chapter of the Graveyard book. You know, the spell that she uses to help Bod fade when he's in the back of the pawn shop.

the ever-lucid @PERGAMOND:
i would buy a "slaughtered prince" pub t-shirt in a heartbeat.

Ryan @Jesteram, whom i swear I do not know personally, he just is full of grande ideas, suggested two ideas:

1. blood-spattered text: "We Can Get Them For You Wholesale" .
and
2. How about a shirt with a playing-card jack on it and the names of all the Jacks from the Graveyard Book? I love how Neil tends to have a secret society in just about all his books ...


Nikki also thought of a Jack's tee, but the day after Ryan. Good call, Nikki.

Lara sent me this, which i love, from The White Road :

"Ultimately, everything comes down to Foxes."

lots of you wanted to see the new and old gods from AMERICAN GODS having a face off/show down.


there were many other great ones, and believe me, you can always write in with ideas on what you'd like to see....neverwear@gaiman.net

for now, go in the comments section and say what you like.
I will let you decide... and perhaps Neil will ring in too. Quiche? thoughts?

also with the Batman prize, i threw in a BEOWULF swag hat from Paramount Pictures.

this post is getting way too long.
thanks so much for let me know what you think.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Neil's Mailbox, part two

more items arrive in the LA mailbox from the wonderful friends of Mr. Neil Gaiman:




"GOOD OMENS"! Neil and Terry's gorgeous award from Audible.com for Download:



this glittering beauty arrived from Tori in Eliicott City, MD for THE FABULOUS LORRAINE Neil's on-site right hand woman: (apparently Tori forgot to send mine...wah.)





Steven Archer and Donna Lynch, my old Baltimore friends from EGO LIKENESS
sent Neil a few thank-you gifts....

Donna finished her new book ISABEL BURNING & sent Neil a signed copy, while Steven sent one of his detailed paintings that live on vintage book covers:





here they are in their Neverwear!






look for them on their upcoming tour....


So, we have closed the contest for the new Neverwear tshirt, I will be mulling over the submissions and consulting with
Neil on the finalist......results up Monday evening. Follow us on Twitter.com @Neverwear
for more random prizey giveaways... I just posted almost all of the #100K prizes, some goodness coming to your mailboxes, winners.... See Joke Contest winner Rob here
thanks everyone for your imaginations.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Neil's Mailbox, part one

Some very interesting items pass through this mailbox on their way to rest with
Mr. Neil, and I thought I would post a few of them from time to time.
Since our hero travels so very much, I thought it would also do him a tiny service, a mini-preview of what people are sending his way.

this is the first in a series I will do, we’ll call it: Neil’s Mailbox.

I love this reimagined Morpheus from Cody in Montana (surely with a nod to both Warhol & Shepard Fairey) :




and just today, this arrived from Emily in the UK, a beautiful little reprint of a War Department typescript guiding the Americans to "native customs" in Britain in WWll.



Full of hilarious little tidbits, I scanned some pages for you, Boss.
Another chapter is titled “ British reserved, not unfriendly”---love it!




and another postcard from one of Neil’s Clarion kids, Monica, who is traveling about the world, here she writes from Fiji....



will be going through the mailbox as things get piled up.

thanks everyone for making my dream job even dreamier---

to send Neil mail:
Neil Gaiman
c/o Cat Mihos
4470 W. Sunset Blvd. #339
Los Angeles, CA 90027

ps the NEVERWEAR contest outlined HERE is up until Friday, then we'll give out some prizeys:

a promo BEOWULF hat from Paramount Pictures:



a Kitty-made BATMAN magnet:

Friday, April 10, 2009

new NEVERWEAR CONTEST...

the newly re-vamped NEVERWEAR.NET will be up shortly, the WebElf & WebGoblin have been toiling away for me since December to bring the website out of the dark ages...

One of the new features will be a section where I will sell my comic book magnets, or my "glass candy bars".

Many years ago, I had a heart-breaking flood in my beach apartment, and i just couldn't chuck the (big) box of water-damaged comics. I put them out in the sun to dry and found that I could salvage many of the panels. These are all made out of the original comics, not reproductions or xeroxes, that would be some copy-right madness...
Some of the comics themselves were reissues, but I had some real old beauts in that box.
(have since changed from cardboard to plastic to store my collection)

...i never collected to resell, just to re-read. Everything from Sandman to HATE to Eightball to vintage EC horror books..House of Horror, Creepy. Comics form other countries... Greek THOR and French Spidey. Jim Lee X-men, Namor, Spawn and KISS comics. I had DUNE, Star Wars, Aquaman, Plasticman, WonderWoman, Batgirl, old Richie Rich & Archies.. all over the map.

Lately, people have been donating their damaged comics to my art cause and I frame them the panel of their choice in thanks.

The glass, I cut myself, sizing to fit and frame the panels (with the scars to prove it). I rescue the glass from the hardware store throw-away bins, so there is a truly recycled nature to this project. I then frame the pieces in copper and I make them into magnets and/or hanging art.

I first sold them at the Fiddler's Green convention in Minneapolis back in 2004.



At the convention, Neil picked out about 35 of my magnets and he put them up in the various bathrooms at his Addams Family mansion....that made me very happy, to tell the truth. thanks, Boss.







look how young our Maddy was! ... that's me in the top hat, third from the left:




MAGNET CONTEST:
to win this Batman magnet (the dime is just for size ref!):



come up with the best suggestion for a new Neverwear t-shirt.
source material is any of Neil's short stories or his books, Neverwhere, Anansi Boys, Graveyard Book, American Gods, Fragile Things etc... but sorry, nothing from Sandman, as that is DC territory.

send me your ideas: NEVERWEAR@GAIMAN.NET

You have a week from today!
results up on Friday, April 17th....after 5 pm west coast time...
thanks all.

ps my gratitude to Xtopherfor updating my blog page...do you like it?

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Neverwear special for April



Young Charles Cole from Baltimore made me some adorable punk rock lapel pins
that come free for you Neverwear customers in the month of April with any purchase of ten dollars or more---(those who already bought something in April, don't worry, I put them in the package for you too, we are nice here...)
They are only available here!





and my thanks to Desiree and Owen for sending in this photo of Owen in his Scary Trousers Neverwear tee: