"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Saturday, June 24, 2017

The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country (1990)

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

Violence (including rape,) sexual content, disturbing images, and dark themes.

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