I've mentioned Neil Gaiman a few times before in this blog and listed his Sandman series among my favorite books. Well, a recent NPR article about Absolute Sandman, vol. 4, has just provided me with the perfect opportunity to rave to you about how spectacularly, mind-blowingly, brilliant this series is.
No, I'm not linking you to the actual NPR article; it contains some pretty huge spoilers. But the article, in turn, links to a graphic excerpt from vol. 4 which offers some more-important-than-they-appear glimpses of Sandman's world and two of its central characters: Morpheus, the King of Dreams; and his younger sister Delirium, who used to be Delight until the weight of the world crashed in on her...or something like that. It's never made clear, and doesn't need to be. Anyway, the gist of the Sandman series is this: alongside all the better-known gods and demigods and other supernatural beings that populate human (and inhuman) mythology are seven anthropomorphic personifications of eternal concepts: Destiny, Death, Dream, Desire, Despair, Destruction, and Delirium.
Dream is our hero...or at least our protagonist. Sometimes he behaves in distinctly unheroic ways. The story begins with his capture by some occultists who were aiming for Death but missed, resulting in seventy-odd years of imprisonment for the Lord of Dreams: both the blink of an eye for an eternal being (and for us readers) and an event which profoundly affects both him and the universe over which he presides.
The 75-issue series was first compiled into ten books, each of which is a story in itself, and all of which tie together into an epic of extraordinary depth and weight. There is also a new four-volume Absolute Sandman, as noted above. I believe the only difference there is that the artwork has been sharpened and a few minor errors corrected, but since I haven't seen that version for myself and own the ten-book set, I'll talk about that instead.
The first book is a tad uneven. Gaiman obviously knew where he was going from the start, but he was also still finding his footing, and not all that footing was equally secure. Thus we have some references to and cameos from other DC mainstays like Batman and John Constantine, which are cool in their own way but end up being more of a distraction than a help. Fortunately, things start to gel at the book's halfway-point with an MC tale that is absolutely horrifying and in no way erotic (well, maybe not unless you're Clive Barker); and then the story really takes flight in the book's final chapter, which introduces us to Dream's older sister Death.
Mmm, how to describe Death? She's wise, compassionate, cute, sexy...everything you'd want in an escort into the afterlife, all wrapped up in an adorable little goth-but-not-too-goth anthropomorphic package. And she's quite deservedly become a cult icon all by herself. She's even inspired two spin-off books, one of which people keep threatening to turn into a movie (Death: The High Cost of Living); but I hope that never happens because I don't see how anyone - writer, director, or actress - could do her justice.But we were talking about Dream, weren't we? Sorry, I got sidetracked. Death does that to me. ;-) Well, Morpheus is the Lord of Stories as well as Dreams, so he interacts with and inspires all kinds of interesting people, not least of whom are the fairy queen Titania and good old Will Shakespeare. Then, of course, there are Dream's siblings (some nice, some not so nice) and his son Orpheus...but now I'm getting close to spoiler territory. Fortunately, the overarching storyline is too big and powerful to summarize easily, even if I wanted to. And I don't. I'd much rather you enjoy the surprises as they come along - and enjoy the artwork. Both become more gorgeous - and more heartbreaking - as the series goes along.
So, since I can't share much more of the plot without spoiling any cool surprises, I'll share some art instead...some art with some tantalizing hints of plot. ;-) Enjoy.
Oh, and by the way, if you have already read Sandman, you might enjoy this excellent set of online annotations.
2 comments:
Oh yes. The word 'brilliant' doesn't begin to cover Sandman. The sheer scope of the story, the myths and archetypes it taps into and the fact that Gaiman manages to keep the tension going in so many different threads combine to make it a true masterpiece.
Death is my favorite character. I hope Death really looks like that when she comes for me.
A story about Sandman, the comic.
The comic always had excellent artists. And one got the job because of a nude Death sketch.
I've known Jill Thompson ever since she was a gangly teenager hanging around the artists row at the Chicago Comic Con back in the 70's and 80's. A mutual friend of ours commissioned a nude sketch of Death (that being one of his favorite subjects, nudity, that is, to commission) from her. He liked it so much that he sent a copy to Neil Gaiman. Neil thought it was an excellent sketch, mainly because it showed Death with small breasts, that he asked Jill to draw Sandman. Jill went on to draw the "Brief Lives" storyline and eventually many other DC titles.
Jill now works on other projects, including her own creation, "Scary Godmother".
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