Dream Country is an interesting volume of The Sandman. While volumes 1 and 2 were very different
from each other in terms of both plot and sensibility, volume 3 is even more
its own monster. The four issues in this
collection feel like an interlude in the story, a waystation where Neil Gaiman
stops on the way to where he’s heading (premise spoilers.)
There’s
no solid plot really connecting the four stories here. Each is a separate, self-contained piece
sharing a common thread with the others only through an appearance by one of
the Eternals (Death in the last story, Dream in all the others.) We see an author buying and imprisoning a
Muse to keep his writer’s block at bay.
We see a cat prophet telling her fellow catkind her vision of the world
as it once was and could be again, if they can only dream it. We see the first first performance of A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, performed by Will and co. before an audience of
fairies who aren’t sure they like how Will is depicting them. And finally, we see a former superhero
cursing her powers when they take her too far from humanity and too far, even,
from mortality.
By now,
I’m coming to realize that The Sandman
is a story that lends itself well to offshoots like this. Much like the ever-shifting dreamscape the
titular Eternal rules, the narrative is at times like water or smoke, changing
its shape and remaining just a little intangible. Though it can feel a bit like an excuse for
Neil Gaiman to use a bunch of unconnected, creepy, high-concept stories he had
on standby, it’s definitely a satisfying read, and while I’m disappointed not
to get as much on the Eternals here, each individual story is an eerie winner.
The cat
story is probably my favorite, just because it feels so true to how cats
operate (and reminds me a bit of Franz Kafka’s “Investigations of a Dog.”) It’s like, of course there are cat prophets and secret cat meetings and cat
mythology, and of course they’re so self-impressed that they turn up their noses
at their own said prophets. The
superhero story is also super-fascinating, albeit depressing. It gets into the psychology of what happens
to a human when they’re so fundamentally changed and “elevated,” and there’s
some top-notch body horror stuff going on here.
As I’ve already said, I love Death, and this story own further
illustrates why; she’s just the perfect combination of down-to-earth and
exalted, and I like that she’s a warm, friendly Goth girl.
The Midsummer Night’s Dream one, I feel,
isn’t quite as good as it could have been, although I definitely enjoy it. It seems to me like it’s just shy of being
taken to another level – that said, the running audience commentary by the
minor fairies is really fun. And the
story about the Muse is fascinating but really disturbing, enough that I had a
hard time fully enjoying it. I feel it
wallows a bit too much in the sexual violence, which is always awful but takes
on another light when you’re talking about a human man abusing an immortal
godlike woman. (It doesn’t help that the
volume includes Gaiman’s original script for the issue, wherein I can’t help
but think that an author shouldn’t have
to spend so much time emphasizing to his artist that the image of the naked,
half-starved sex slave shouldn’t be titillating. It just makes me horrified that this needs
saying at all, let alone hammering it home to such a degree.)
Warnings
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