As if the debut today of The Sandman: Overture weren't enough, Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, announced this morning that acclaimed fantasy author and comics writer Neil Gaiman will join its theater and performance faculty in the spring semester as a professor in the arts.

He'll teach courses in the Division of the Arts and the Division of Languages and Literature, beginning with an advanced writing workshop "exploring the history of the fantastic, approaches to fantasy fiction, and the meaning of fantasy today."

Gaiman, who this year launched what he calls his last U.S. signing tour (in support of The Ocean at the End of the Lane), lives with his wife Amanda Palmer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, about three hours away from Bard College.