I’m a big Sandman fan. It somehow makes it better that it was something wonderful that came, and then ended rather than spending years slowly dying until commercial concerns pulled the plug.
I picked up The Sandman Companion a few years ago (at an “Art of Star Wars” exhibition at the Barbican Centre. I have no idea why the book was there). It’s an interesting insight into the series as it contains interviews with Neil Gaiman about each of the stories.
I think my favourite story is probably The Wake. There’s just something about the combination of artwork and the dreamlike storytelling that makes it compelling to me. I was interested to read in the book I mentioned above that this was the first comic book format story not to have gone through the traditional pencil, ink, colour process. The raw pencil drawings were scanned and coloured on a computer, giving it an unusual, soft feel.
I agree there are some pretty good stories there; Gaiman’s mythology leant itself to all sorts of possibilities.
BTW, if you read the dedication, you’ll notice Gaiman apologizes to several authors. What happened is that they submitted stories to the anthology that Neil accepted, but they withdrew them when DC insisted on claiming copyright to the characters created in them.
Picking individual stories, I favor “24 Hours,” “A Dream of 1000 Cats,” “Men of Good Fortune,” “Three Septembers and a January,” “Ramadan,” “The Golden Boy,” and “Sunday Morning.”
“The Golden Boy” is especially good (I hadn’t read it since it first came out). I remembered the old Prez comics (never read them, since it seemed such a stupid idea – a teenage president). Gaiman had brought back some pretty obscure characters (many of the denizens of the dreaming were from old DC horror comics anthologies) to good effect, but Prez? But the story was pure greatness.
[This reply first written last night, but eaten by hamsters]
It’s an excellent series – although I’ll disagree with Chuck that it’s the only long-running comic that qualifies as literature; The Invisibles certainly counts and a handful of other series can make the case.
It’s funny he mentions Game of You and Doll’s House – Gaiman has noted those as some of his favorite parts of the series, but they’re the two sections I liked the least. My favorites are Season of Mists, The Wake, and several of the single-issue stories (in particular 24 Hours, Calliope, Faces, The Sound of Her Wings, Three Septembers and a January, Clurucan’s Tale, Hob’s Leviathan, Cerements, Sunday Mourning, and of course the gloriously executed Ramadan.)
There are about a million Sandman spin-off projects of varying quality. Most notably the two Death miniseries, written by Gaiman (the first one much better than the second). Also fantastic is Mike Carey’s ongoing Lucifer series. Gaiman also just wrote “Endless Nights,” a hardcover anthology featuring stories of each of the Endless – it comes out sometime in the next few weeks, IIRC. Also worth checking out are Carey’s The Furies OGN and Bill Willingham’s Merv Pumpkinhead: Agent of Dream.
I’d have to say my favorite storyline is the Traveller’s Inn, where each of the lodgers are lost in their respective journeys and pass the time by telling each other stories. A different artist illustrated each story, which served to transport the readers to a different world each time. Then when the storm lifts, the travellers witness Dream’s funeral procession, and they get to return home, none of them truly realizing they had all been permitted to walk into lands no one would ever get to see again.
My favorite single graphic novel in the series was FABLES AND REFLECTIONS. In addition to Ramadan, there’s The Emperor Norton and Cæsar Augustus, both of which weave history and mythology and lots of imagination perfectly. Truly awesome.
Are the graphic novels with Death (High Cost of Living & the other one) as good? There is a Sandman story in a post-9-11 anthology as well in which Dream and Death comfort a boy whose mommy was killed in the WTC.
I think the mods might want to put a “spoilers” tag on this thread, even though I said that knowing Dream’s fate doesn’t really spoil things. Some people might not feel the same way.
Anyone noted in World’s End how MANY stories within stories there are in the tale that deals with the city of morticians? It gets up to like, five levels deep of stories within stories.
It’s a bit more than that since as I recall it goes guy in inn telling story about hearing a story after a funeral about some stories heard as a child which included the original guy telling the story at the inn. I think that counts as infinite levels.
Cerements goes to five levels, I think: Mistress Veltis tells the story of getting lost in the catacombs to Klaproth and her other 'prentice, whose name escapes me. (1) That 'prentice, now a master, tells this story at the air burial to Petrefax and the others. (2) Petrefax tells the story of the air burial to Brant and the others at the Inn. (3) Brant relays his experiences at the Inn to the woman at the bar. (4) And Gaiman is telling this story to us. (5)
As for the Death miniseries, I liked the first one (High Cost of Living) quite a lot. The second one (Time of Your Life) I didn’t like nearly as much, although I recently reread it and liked it a little better – I think originally my expectations were too high. Also, the TPB reprint adds a couple pages during the climactic scene which help a lot.
If you are reading the Death minis, make sure you read both the first one and Game of You before reading Time of Your Life. (High Cost came out after Game of You originally and I guess it’s a little better to read them in order, but there’s really no need. Not so with Time of Your Life.)
Upon further reflection, there’s one more level (briefly) in Cerements, although it only takes up a half-sentence. Along with her adventure in the catacombs, Mistress Veltis tells her 'prentices other stories, such as the one about the undertaker who is captured by a hungry giant and tells stories to keep the giant’s mind off his dinner. I think there may be a mention or two of the actual stories told by this undertaker – if so, then this is yet another level, although too minor to really be considered one. Of course, what it really is is a nod to the work that inspired Gaiman’s structure in this issue, Thousand and One [Arabian] Nights, which does the same thing with nested stories.
The Time of Your Life is nice, and it’s great to see the return of Hazel and Foxglove from A Game of You, but isn’t the whole premise of the story antithetical to Death’s very nature? Death doesn’t make deals. And the Death books just aren’t anywhere near as rich as the original Sandman.
The last frame of ‘The Wake’ made me just sit there in awe for about an hour and a half. It was, IMHO, the -perfect- way to end the story. Left me speechless.
And favorite story? Ramadan. Hands down. The story, the artwork, the whole ‘idea’ behind it, aboslutely blew me away.
I actually know one of those authors. Not exactly what you’d call a friend (though we used to be), but she always bitterly complained about DC’s treatment of her and her story.
Which was a bummer, because the story was about Delirium, and really quite good.
And yeah, I know that Dream Hunters isn’t really a “comic book,” but then again, Sandman as a whole wasn’t exactly a “comic book,” either. Not, at least, in the way that most comics are comic books.
A great series that I have only recently read despite being a comic fan for 20 years. I always thought it was goth and moody. All the people who liked it seemed pretentious and could never really describe what the series was about (“It’s…literary!” they’d say.) Boy was I wrong. What an excellent series. Probably the best ongoing series ever.
I will recommend Moore’s Swamp Thing run to anyone who liked Sandman. Not quite as good, but I think you’ll see a LOT of similarities, even some of the same supporting cast.
I agree with the earlier poster that the art was hit or miss, but rarely was it so bad that I couldn’t figure out what was happening.
Sounds like my favorite Endless was pretty popular. Destruction was the best IMHO, though I was troubled with his traps he left to kill his friends should someone begin looking for him. Of course this development DID provide one of the most poignant lines in the entire series: when the several hundred year old man dies from falling bricks he brags to death that he had a long run. She replied (paraphrasing) “You had a lifetime. Nothing More.” Nice line!
My favorite supporting cast members were Hob, Matthew, and Merv.
Hob’s story, along with 24 hours, and the Emperor of the USA were my favorite single issues.
Season of the Mists was by far the best arc. If they ever turned Sandman into a musical (which there have been rumors), this would be the best arc to translate.
I was not impressed with the Midsummer’s story. It is the most praised, but it was really not that original… especially compared to others.
I’ll wait to see how others feel about the knew Endless project before I buy it. The series is over as far as I am concerned…but if it is great…
The problem there is it is hard to get a fair review on Gaiman. His fans like him so much that everything is a rave. Of course, most of the time it is well deserved…
One theory on that would be that Destruction didn’t do that deliberately–
Where the hell is my copy of Brief Lives?
–but that they occurred simply because of his very nature.
Ah, here it is.
Despair’s comment has more to do with Dream and his doom-triggering than with any of the lives destroyed during the quest for Destruction, but it does point up an essential fact of Destruction’s nature. You have to dream to find Dream (unless he comes looking for you, as is the case in Sandman #3, “Dream a Little Dream of Me”); perhaps you have to destroy to find Destruction.
No no no! It IS a comic book, dammit. C’mon, lookit it – the story is told in page after page of pictures presented in sequential panels with word and thought balloons coming out of people’s mouths to indicate who’s talking, it came out in regular monthly installments, and it even has frikkin’ Superman in it. If that’s not a comic book, then you’d be hard pressed to find something that answered to the description.
I know that your point was that “Sandman” was nothing like the stereotypical comic wherein one muscle-bound fellow with implausible powers dukes it out with another one for no particularly good reason, both of them wearing brightly-colored leotards, but it’s important that people realize that that is a sterotype, not an archetype. While Sandman is without doubt one of the very best comic books ever written, it was not then the only jewel in a sea of dross, and it certainly isn’t now. Today, a significant minority of the comics that come out every month (and in more than the occasional month, the majority) are intelligent stories created with passion and thoughtfulness – and most of them don’t have a superhero in sight. There’s nothing about the medium which confines itself to empty-headedness; quite the opposite, actually; comics can display emotion better than prose and can decribe delicate, important but minor changes better than film.
There are admittedly few comics as good as Sandman, but there are many, many good comics.
I was bothered a lot by Destruction’s callousness in Brief Lives too, but I think I’ve figured it out now. Destruction, while a charming guy and certainly not malicious, doesn’t really care about the mortals any more than Desire does. I mean, he doesn’t feel any pleasure in causing them pain, but he’s still interested in them (us, rather) as toys or knick-knacks – this is why he floats from job to job and life to life; he’s sight-seeing. If some of them end up getting hurt, that’s unfortunate (and he may be honestly saddened by this, tho’ not much), but ultimately it just ain’t that big a deal. Destruction is the ultimate hedonist – he didn’t hang up his hat because he chafed under his responsibilities, he just wanted to do something else, and unlike Morpheus he was unconcerned with who might bear the consequences. Morpheus was the same way a long time ago (witness his behavior towards Nada), but after he got his heart broken so many, many times he started to understand how painful and lonely it is to be mortal and he began to empathize.
