Mistake...not what I expected...but I'm intrigued anyway...

Neil Gaiman is a master. His run of The Sandman is among the finest comic book runs that I've ever read. If you have a chance and any inkling - either for comic books or for amazing storytelling - get them all (eleven or so volumes collected, I think).

When I saw a preview for a new movie based on a Neil Gaiman story, Mirrormask, I thought that I should see if I could grab the book before the movie came out in the fall (or maybe winter, perhaps) so I headed to my local public library website and went to Worldcat (awesome catalog that lets you search the collections of hundreds of libraries throughout the US) and found thirty-some copies of Mirrormask and made my interlibrary loan request (ILL). A couple of weeks later, Mirrormask arrived at my local branch library for me.

Here's where the mistake comes in. Wheat I got was a book that didn't exist before the movie did. This isn't a Neil Gaiman novel that was turned into a movie. This is a movie made by the Jim Henson Corporation in the vein of Labyrinth and with the art direction of Dave McKeon who did the spectacular cover artowrk for the Sandman series. The book presented an introduction about how the story and movie came into being, then a sketched storyboard for the entire movie, closed with some notes about the writing of the story and a song over the closing credits. I still want to see the movie, and I have a little idea of what the movie is about, but I didn't read the storyboard. Didn't want to ruin the movie for me for when I do get around to seeing the movie. Looks beautiful and intriguing...