ComicBooker's Full Review: Neil Gaiman, Bryan Talbot, Kelley Jones, Todd Klei...
In dreams all things are possible. All items can be obtained, all places reached, all times visited and all people met.
It's that way too in the brilliant Sandman series by Neil Gaiman, a series of stories about dreams and all they are and can be. We'll get to the first volume, Preludes and Nocturnes, soon but first you need to know about the series itself.
At the center of the story line is the Sandman, who also is known as Morpheus and Lord Shaper and many other names. But most important he is Dream, the physical embodiment of what happens to our minds when our bodies sleep. Dream is lord of the Dreaming, the realm we visit when we surrender control of our thoughts to dreams.
Dream is one of the Endless. His brothers are Destiny and Destruction and his sisters are Desire (who sometimes is male so sometimes she's Dream's brother too), Despair, Delirium and Death. They have powers and they have personalities and sometimes their personality flaws cause them to use their powers in ways that seem unfair, just as did the gods of classical mythologies around the world.
And Dream is perhaps the most flawed. He can be noble and loyal but he's not very friendly. He is distant and sometimes seems sullen. The burdens of office are too much for him and he constantly contemplates the MEANING OF IT ALL. He's kind of like Hamlet, although Death describes him as "utterly the stupidest, most self-centered, appallingest excuse for an anthropomorphic personification on this or any other plane! An infantile, adolescent, pathetic specimen."
He is is also the hero in one of the most influential works of contemporary fiction. Echoes of Sandman stories can be heard in countless works of science fiction and other fantasy writing. One of the 75 issues was awarded a prestigious World Fantasy Award. Norman Mailer, Stephen King and other publishing superstars have sung its praises and introductions to collections of the stories have been written by authors Peter Straub, Clive Barker and Harlan Ellison and pop star Tori Amos.
The commercial success of the Sandman series led DC Comics, a division of the Time Warner Entertainment Company, to establish its Vertigo imprint. Vertigo in turn is responsible for landmark titles like Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis, The Invisibles by Grant Morrison and Preacher by Garth Ennis.
Sandman was so successful that Time Warner, the world's largest entertainment conglomerate, allowed its creator, Neil Gaiman, the unprecedented power to end the series when he wanted to. The series stops at issue #75 because that's the way Neil Gaiman wanted it. Some characters have appeared in a few limited series since then, but not Dream. DC and Time Warner allowed Neil Gaiman's artistic vision to prevail over the company's financial vision. They recently allowed Garth Ennis the same control over his Preacher series, which they probably wouldn't have done if Neil Gaiman's Sandman hadn't established the precedent.
In the Sandman stories many gods from all sorts of pantheons make appearances, from major deities of Greek, Roman, Norse and Egyptian mythology to diverse beings from much less familiar belief systems. Ordinary people and extraordinary ones take their turns on center stage. William Shakespeare and his family figure in more than one story and dozens of cats star in another. (But there isn't any annoying music.)
In one of the richest story lines ever created, Neil Gaiman reflects much of what is and also "that which is not, and was not, and shall never be."
PRELUDES AND NOCTURNES
The series starts in this volume that features art by Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg and Malcom Jones III. It is written by Neil Gaiman, who wrote all the Sandmand stories. The book collects the first 8 issues. Issues #1-7 tell what happens when a group of occultists imprison Dream by accident when they are trying to capture Death. Issue #8 is a self-contained story that introduces Death, who became really popular and was featured in two mini-series by Neil Gaiman: Death: The High Cost of Living and Death: The Time of Your Life. The tone is different from one issue to the next but that's not a flaw so much as a reflection of the variety Neil Gaiman brings to story telling.
ISSUE #1: Believers in the supernatural hope to cheat Death by putting her in prison so she can't end their lives when their time comes. When they capture Dream by mistake, the sleep of thousands of people around the world is disturbed. This goes on for 70 years before Dream finally escapes and his captors pay the price for tampering with power they couldn't even understand let alone control. One of Dream's jailers tells him "We wanted to capture Death." Dream answers "What? You wanted Death? Then count yourself lucky for the sake of your species and your petty planet that you did not succeed, that instead you snared Death's younger brother. You'll never know how lucky you were."
ISSUE #2: Dream starts his quest to reclaim the symbols of his office. These artifacts give him his powers. This issue introduces brothers Cain and Abel, the keepers of the House of Secrets and the House of Mystery who will be familiar to readers of the horror comic books DC published in the 1970s. Cain and Abel work for Dream and, as their names suggest, one of them kills his brother again and again and again.
When Dream finally returns to his realm, he is shocked to discover the structures that used to be magnificent are only ruins now. He asks his librarian, the protector of every book that's ever been imagined by a human being, what happened. "You are the incarnation of this dreamtime, Lord," The librarian tells him. "And with you gone, the place began to decay, began to crumble. The process was slow at first, my Lord. Things in the Dreamworld began to transmute. I was aware of it in my library. Slowly, the words began to fade. Some time after you vanished, my books became bound volumes of blank paper; the next day the whole library was gone. I never found it again."
ISSUE #3: Dream gets a human with experience in the supernatural to help him on his quest and they find one of the human's ex girlfriends. She's fallen on hard times. Very hard times. Dream isn't impressed by her suffering. "Her metabolism is obviously destroyed... She will die soon. Painfully, I would imagine."
ISSUE #4: Dream must go to Hell itself. He encounters Etrigan, a demon who speaks in rhymes and who once served King Arthur's Merlin. Later Dream crosses paths with hosts of various denizens of the underworld who serve the fallen angel who rules Hell. That ruler challenges him and Dream responds "You say I have no power? Perhaps you speak truly. But - you say that dreams have no power here? Tell me, Lucifer Morningstar, ask yourselves, all of you, what power would Hell have if those here imprisoned were not able to dream of Heaven?"
ISSUE #5: The last surviving Martian helps Dream recover another of the artifacts he needs to resume his control over the land of dreams. But things start to turn nasty as it becomes clear that some of Dream's power is being used by a murdering madman. This lunatic has an insight into the nature of dreams. "People think dreams aren't real because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes."
ISSUE #6: Several people come together in a diner only to suffer torments inflicted by the psychopath from issue #5. One of the diner's patrons asks him "Why us, goddammit? Why are you doing this stuff to us? You're going to kill us." And the madman answers "Why? Because I can."
ISSUE #7: Dream and the deranged man who has control of some of Dream's powers confront each other and their conflict causes a hundred million sleepers to stir "uneasily in their sleep."
ISSUE #8: With the events of issues #1-7 behind him, Dream visits his sister Death. His whining causes her to unleash the uncomplimentary assessment of him quoted near the beginning of this article. He follows Death on some of her rounds and he gains a renewed appreciation of his role in the scheme of things. "There is much to do in my kingdom. Much to restore. Much to create. I have found the solace I sought, though not in the way I imagined."
And then Dream moves towards the events that will carry him through nine more brilliant volumes of 67 more glorious stories.
/Neil Gaiman /Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg and /Malcolm Jones III, illustrators Critics, booksellers, and readers have spared no enthusiasm for Neil Ga...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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