Back in 2013, a delightful musical set went down at Comic-Con, where George R.R. Martin smashed a guitar right in front of Neil Gaiman. That soon led to an onstage reiteration of what The Sandman author and “werefish” inventor declared in 2009 while defending Martin to a fan who felt that the Game of Thrones author simply took too long to write thousands of intricately layered pages of fiction. In the words of Gaiman, “George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.” He had followed up with this: “People are not machines. Writers and artists aren’t machines.”
Gaiman had stressed, back in the day, how “I keep trying to come up with a better way to put it” and “this may not be palatable” in terms of how he was describing the situation, and all of it is very funny. That leads to a similar situation happening this week, where Gaiman answered to a fan who inquired about the release date of Good Omens 2 (the series adaptation starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant) on Amazon. Neil answered with a tweet, obviously in written form, and with a tone that some people appear to have misinterpreted: “No. And if you ask again like that we may not release it at all.”
No. And if you ask again like that we may not release it at all. https://t.co/zJlFx2U8ds
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) May 10, 2022
Defenders of artists can often be a bit, well, passionate. And as it turns out, Neil felt the need (after undoubtedly seeing some replies to the original fan’s tweet) to ask his followers to be kind. “I thought it was funny, and hoped my reply was funny,” he further explained. “WE WILL RELEASE GOOD OMENS 2, WHEN IT IS DONE. We only stopped shooting in March. There is much to be done.”
Also, please don’t be mean to @conkamarvel123 — I thought it was funny, and hoped my reply was funny. WE WILL RELEASE GOOD OMENS 2, WHEN IT IS DONE. We only stopped shooting in March. There is much to be done.
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) May 10, 2022
Not incidentally, George R.R. Martin recently trolled the heck out of his own fans over the (non-)arrival date of Winds of Winter, which he previously promised would arrive in July 2020. A year prior, he had even declared, “[Y]ou have here my formal written permission to imprison me in a small cabin on White Island, overlooking that lake of sulfuric acid, until I’m done.”
The lesson here? Not only are artists not robots, but they have wicked senses of humor. And if you’re really jonesing for Good Omens 2, rest assured (via Gaiman) that it will arrive. In the meantime, there’s plenty of other glorious, new, and funny TV to watch while you wait. (Fill up those queues, you won’t be sorry.)