“The Art of Neil Gaiman” by Hayley Campbell (Harper Design, 320 pgs., $39.99)

If you haven’t heard of Neil Gaiman, you’ve missed a major force in creative fiction in the last 20 years. His offbeat writing runs from comics to films to television series to books.

The best way to meet the man, other than at a book reading, is in the new biography, “The Art of Neil Gaiman” by Hayley Campbell. Lushly illustrated, it’s a rich treat of an introduction to Gaiman and his work.

That “work” is imaginative fiction, science and fantasy, and all that lies outside the straight lines of a practical 9-to-5 life. It is also very dark, bloody and often drenched in Victorian gothic.

Campbell’s book shows the world of comic books where Gaiman found a home, ultimately creating a unique version of a classic DC title — “The Sandman,” who is generally known as benign. In Gaiman’s version, he becomes a dark, brooding figure, full of angst. Gaiman wrote the series for roughly seven years; “The Sandman” ended when he left.

It’s clear from “The Art of Neil Gaiman” that life, for Gaiman, always has something new to savor, investigate and use as grist for more stories. This is probably only Book 1 of his career and life.