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

Thursday, August 3, 2017

The Sandman, Vol. 4: Season of Mists (1990-1991)



Compared to the first three volumes of The Sandman, Season of Mists has a relatively-straight plot.  It takes fewer meandering detours than the previous volumes, but while there’s some good stuff, the main throughline of the story doesn’t grab me as well as it could (a few spoilers.)

Destiny of the Endless, who has some knowledge of the the turning of fate, realizes that it’s vital to call his siblings together for a meeting.  While there, Dream has a revelation:  he must enter Hell and retrieve Nada, a woman he imprisoned there long ago when she refused to be his queen.  However, he arrives to find Lucifer closing up shop.  The demons and departed alike have scattered, and the fallen angel, ready to retire, bequeaths his realm to Dream.  As gods, faeries, angels, and all manner of spirits descend on the Dreaming to try and coax/bribe/threaten Dream to turn Hell over to them, Dream grapples with the decision of what to do with the Underworld.

There’s some interesting stuff in the Hell storyline – I like the cast of otherworldly characters clamoring for the key to Hell (this series always does well when it shows assorted supernatural beings from various realms mingling with each other,) and some of their bargaining chips are pretty intriguing.  However, the plot kind of sputters at the end, and in general, I’m not a fan of the whole thing kicking off because of a woman Dream condemned to eternal torment because she rejected him.  I get that that’s kind of the M.O. for a lot of these supernatural beings, majorly upending the lives of mortals at their whim, but I still don’t have to like it.

What I do like, though – what I love – is the big family meeting of the Endless.  The sibling group is rounded out by older brother Destiny and younger sister Delirium, both of whom are pretty awesome (although Death remains, for me, the best,) and it’s beyond cool to see them all interacting at once.  Gaiman simultaneously makes them completely otherworldly and totally “human,” the way they loom so large and yet still fall into their same ages-old petty squabbling and rivalries.  I also really enjoy the one chapter that’s an off-shoot of the main storyline, a sequence exploring what’s happening on Earth now that Hell is closed.  It’s cool, creepy, and creative – basically, the Neil Gaiman trifecta.

Four volumes in, I’m still a little mixed on The Sandman as a whole.  I’ve pretty wholeheartedly loved the (admittedly-limited) Gaiman stuff I’ve been exposed to elsewhere:  namely, his Doctor Who episodes, Neverwhere, and Coraline.  This one, though, eludes me a bit, and I’m not sure why.  It might be the strong horror bent with the more grotesque images, because parts of this story are definitely disturbing.  But even just from a narrative perspective, I don’t know.  It’s not quite coming together for me.  I see these flashes of brilliance, dark beauty, and stunning inventiveness, but on a pure nuts-and-bolts level, it’s not fully coalescing.  It certainly holds my interest enough to keep going, but at this point, I’m not sure if I’m going to cross some threshold in the series where it suddenly gets amazing, or if this is essentially where it’s going to stay.

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