The Sandman, Vol. 5: A Game of You (1991-1992)

This is an interesting volume.  I’d call it one long self-contained tangent – a story with very little to do with the greater Sandman mythos, and only brief appearances from Dream himself, but with a complete cast of characters and its own beginning, middle, and end.  I’m getting the sense that, as a whole, The Sandman is less about a story than it is about a jumping-off point for numerous ideas branching out from the same theme, anchored by certain characters and images.

Barbie, a young woman trying to find herself in New York, is thrown for a loop when she meets one of her childhood dreams on the sidewalk.  Martin Tenbones, giant dog/faithful servant of the dreamworld Princess Barbara of her youth, was sent to her from that dreamworld – simply called The Land – to return her to it.  In the years since Barbie outgrew the dream, the Land lived on and is now languishing under the oppression of a cruel ruler known as the Cuckoo.  Soon, Barbie is trapped in her own dreams, and her friends and neighbors band together to try and wake her.

I definitely like the story that comes together here.  The interplay of scenes in both New York and the Land is neat – the Land is a nicely built-up dream world, equal parts whimsy and terror, but with touches that remind you that its formation was influenced by the mind of a child, while New York is a dingy, gritty “reality” that finds itself increasingly pressed in on by the supernatural.  In the latter, the characters include people with experience in the phantasmagorical, novices who are completely flabbergasted by everything that’s happening, and Barbie herself, someone who’s very much a “real girl” but who slips easily back into the dreams of childhood.

Both sides of the story also offer up a compelling plot.  In New York, Barbie’s friends encounter magic to try and bring her home, and in the Land, Princess Barbara’s former subjects take her on a quest to recover the Land from the Cuckoo.  Each side has cool moments, shocking twists, and inventive takes on little things.

If I have a complaint to make about this volume (other than “not enough Eternals,” which is true, but doesn’t strictly bother me here since the story is strong enough without a heavy presence from them,) it’s in the way one of the characters is handled.  Barbie’s friend Wanda is trans, and while she herself is an enjoyable character – as fierce as she is caring – the story’s use of her leaves a lot to be desired.  She’s inappropriately-pronouned often, deadnamed a number of times, and experiences way too much of other characters’ preoccupation with her genitals.  Obviously, this is something that trans people deal with all the time, so I wouldn’t necessarily be automatically against the inclusion of these things, but the way the story presents them feels so undercutting, like it’s not about other people being ignorant or insulting, it’s about Wanda not being a “real” woman.  Even on the fantastical side of things, the story posits that magic is cisnormative, which just feels like crap to me.  While I understand that the early ‘90s were a very different time where trans-related stories are concerned, that doesn’t mean I have to like it.