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Notes -
Sandman was good. I liked Good Omens (probably I liked the Terry Pratchett parts more than the Neil Gaiman parts). Most of the other stuff of his I've read has been "meh," and struck me as a bit on the pretentious "Look at me, an Artist, making Art" side.
As far as people digging through his "problematic" material, he got some flack even back in the 90s for the character of Wanda, a transwoman, who was positively portrayed, but at one point couldn't participate in a magic ritual because the moon goddess or something didn't recognize her as a woman. (Transphobic goddesses!)
I did kind of notice that in American Gods, the main character's wife dies while blowing another guy in a moving vehicle. Like, that's the sort of narrative detail that is, um, a choice. And it was not the first or last time I noticed that Gaiman makes these sorts of choices in his stories, so him turning out to be a little skeevy doesn't surprise me. That said, I admit to being rather skeptical of these "abuse" allegations (which sound to me a lot like "Never meet your heroes and definitely you shouldn't fuck them"), and finding considerable irony in that it seems to be the TERF brigade who dragged them out and is currently boosting them most heavily on social media (because Gaiman has been quite vocal about being pro-trans rights).
Every writer who is trying to be edgy, particularly ones who are trying to be both literary and edgy, is going to put something like that in their work.
(Especially for a writer who learned his trade writing comics, where the medium has traditionally been for kids, so writing like that is subversive and artistic and an especially good signal of literary merit.)
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