The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes (1988-1989)

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.