In 1990, in the 17th issue of his comic-book series The Sandman, the writer Neil Gaiman told the story of a character called Erasmus Fry. In the story, Fry is a world-renowned author with a dark secret: he had kidnapped and imprisoned a muse, whom he raped for inspiration while forcing her to call him “Master.”
For years, this story was received warmly. It was as if Gaiman had chosen to ridicule the notion of the “great man of letters” by explicitly showing us the toll that these men take on the people—more specifically the women—around them. However, that reputation has just been complicated enormously by a new podcast series from Tortoise Media (written by Air Mail Writer-at-Large Rachel Johnson and Air Mail contributor Paul Caruana Galizia), which accuses Neil Gaiman of sexually assaulting two women decades younger than he is. The podcast is entitled Master. According to one of his accusers, this is what he made one of the women call him.
