Neil
Gaiman’s The Sandman has been on my
radar for a while. The dipping of my
toes into Gaiman has been pretty gradual, and I admit that I’ve still mainly
skirted the edges (Neverwhere, his Doctor Who stuff, Coraline.) The first volume
of this comic is definitely different from his other works that I’ve read, but
while the story here is still finding its feet, I can see the potential.
In
1916, a wealthy aristocrat/leader of a secret society performs a ritual to
ensnare Death. He does succeed in
capturing one of the Endless, otherworldly beings of immense power, but it’s
not Death he catches. Instead, it’s
Morpheus, the god of dreams (also known, simply, as Dream.) As the decades pass and Dream bides his time
in captivity, people around the world are affected by a strange sort of living
death known as “sleepy sickness” and his captors go mad while they grow old
waiting for the impassive Dream to give them the power they seek. When he finally escapes, a weakened Dream
sets off in search of three relics that have been stolen of him which,
together, can restore him.
There
are elements of a great story here. I
like Dream (and I kind of love Death, his older sister, who’s introduced in the
last issue of his volume,) and there’s a lot of unnerving fantasy/horror type
stuff to reel you in. While my limited
exposure to Gaiman has already shown me his penchant for the bizarre and
unsettling, it’s heretofore been on quite a different scale. I mean, the Other Mother in Coraline wants to steal a young girl’s eyes and sew buttons in their place (and this is after she’s already stolen
multiple souls,) all of which is horrifying, but it’s still horrifying for a
children’s book. The Sandman, on the other hand, has scenes that are much more
high-octane disturbing, in part because it’s pitched toward an older audience
and in part because, as a comic book, it has artwork that lives up to the
freaky stuff going on in the story.
However,
the comic is still finding its way here.
Dream’s hunt for his stolen relics feels very episodic, especially due
to the “special guest star” feel of characters from various other DC properties
who make appearances in each vignette. I
don’t know a ton about DC, but I recognize John Constantine, and of course I
know Arkham Asylum. While none of these
individual plotlines are bad, they do feel kind of disjointed, less of a
continuous story and more a collection of well-known threads tied together by
the introduction of a new character.
But like
I said, there’s enough good to keep me going (the intro by Karen Berger, which
promises a lot more of Dream, Death, and the other members of his supernatural
family in future volumes, helps a lot.)
Meeting Death in the last issue of the book feels like a shift, a new
direction as the comic lets go of the more familiar DC crutches and decides for
itself what it wants to be.
Warnings
Violence,
sexual content, language, drinking/smoking/drugs, thematic elements, and
disturbing images.
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