Review: The Sandman #3: Dream Country

Title: The Sandman #3: Dream Country
Author: Neil Gaiman
Illustrators: Kelley Jones, Charles Vess, Colleen Doran, Malcolm Jones III
Genre: Graphic Novel, Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Published: September 1991
Collects Issues: 17 - 20
Pages: 160
Rating: 8 / 10
Challenges: Graphic Novels Challenge, A to Z Reading Challenge, 48 Hour Book Challenge, Dream King Challenge

Synopsis (from the back cover):

The Sandman is the most acclaimed and award-winning comics series of the 1990s for good reason: a smart and deeply brooding epic, elegantly penned by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by a rotating cast of comics' most sought-after artists, it is a rich blend of modern myth and dark fantasy in which contemporary fiction, historical drama, and legend are seamlessly interwoven. The saga of The Sandman encompasses a series of tales unique in graphic literature and is a story you will never forget.

Four chilling and entertaining episodes make up the tapestry that is Dream Country: the World Fantasy Award-winning tale of the first performance of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream; the story of Calliope, a beautiful muse enslaved by a novelist to feed his need for material; a cat's-eye view of the tyranny of mankind; and the final memoir of an immortal, indestructible woman who only wants to die.

My review: Dream Country is way different from The Doll's House. Rather than picking up where the second book left off (which is what I expected), this book contains four stand alone stories featuring Morpheus. Well, three that feature Morpheus and one that features Death. Not that I'm complaining; Death is my favorite Endless, so I was glad she showed back up again, even if I'm not well-versed enough in superhero comicbookland to know who (SPOILER) Element Girl is. Her vignette, "Facade," was sad even without that previous emotional connection. I actually own the single issue "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and had already read that story. It makes a lot more sense being reread now, especially after reading The Doll's House. The other two stories are equally interesting, and both deal with the evilness of men. "A Dream of a Thousand Cats" is great because it's just so different; how many comic books do you know are told from the point of view of a cat? And as for "Calliope," well...it was twisted and creepy, but still amazing.

My only complaints: the book was way too short (only four issues, although my TP did include the annotated script for "Calliope," which was fun to read) and it took the focus away from the main conflict. So now I have to get a copy of Season of Mists to satisfy my curiosity.

Cross-posted to the casual dread and The Dream King Challenge blogs.

If you've reviewed this book as well, leave a message in the comments and I'll link to your review.

Review: The Sandman #2: The Doll's House

Title: The Sandman #2: The Doll's House
Author: Neil Gaiman
Illustrators: Mike Dringenberg, Malcolm Jones III, Chris Bachalo, Michael Zulli, Steve Parkhouse
Genre: Graphic Novel, Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Published: September 1991
Collects Issues: 9 - 16
Pages: 240
Rating: 9 / 10
Challenges: Graphic Novels Challenge, A to Z Reading Challenge, 48 Hour Book Challenge, Dream King Challenge

Synopsis (from the back cover):

The Sandman is the most acclaimed and award-winning comics series of the 1990s for good reason: a smart and deeply brooding epic, elegantly penned by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by a rotating cast of comics' most sought-after artists, it is a rich blend of modern myth and dark fantasy in which contemporary fiction, historical drama, and legend are seamlessly interwoven. The saga of The Sandman encompasses a series of tales unique in graphic literature and is a story you will never forget.

In The Doll's House, Rose Walker finds more than she bargained for - long lost relatives, a serial killers' convention, and, ultimately, her true identity. The Master of Dreams attempts to unravel the mystery, unaware that the hand of another, far closer to home, is pulling the strings.

My review: Once again, I'm kicking myself for not having read this before. I mean, I call myself a Gaiman fan, and yet I've never read The Sandman series? What's wrong with me?!

This book picks up where the first one left off - Morpheus has recently regained control of his kingdom and is still looking to set things aright. Namely, finding some bad guys who disappeared while he was imprisoned. He's joined in this jaunt by his servant/pet raven, Matthew. So how does Rose Walker figure into this? Well, she's trying to find her little brother, who has inadvertently crossed paths with three of the aforementioned baddies. That's not the only reason she's so important to Morpheus, though...but I'm telling you the other reason, because that would just spoil the book for you. And it's way too good for me to do that.

I loved the minor characters in this one - Gilbert, Barbie and Ken (hee), Hal the cross-dressing landlord, the spider sisters...the people Rose meets while searching for her brother are all unique. I also really enjoyed the one-shot story, "Men of Good Fortune," about a man who simply chooses not to die. Instead, he and Morpheus agree to meet every one hundred years, just in case he changes his mind. It's quite an interesting idea: given the choice, would you want to live forever? Robert Gadling, the character in question, never ages, but he has to watch everyone he loves grow old and die. He certainly seems to think it's better than the alternative, but I'm not so sure. Another aspect of that particular issue that I liked was the way Morpheus viewed Robert, eventually thinking of him as a friend. To me, that really helped humanize Morpheus, which was nice.

All in all, an excellent book. Much easier to understand than Preludes & Nocturnes; I found "the story so far" bit at the beginning very helpful. Off to start the third book in a bit...I'm looking forward to this, as the events in The Doll's House seem to indicate that some serious intra-Endless fighting is on the horizon. I just hope Delirium pops up soon.

Cross-posted to the casual dread and The Dream King Challenge blogs.

If you've reviewed this book as well, leave a message in the comments and I'll link to your review.

The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes

Hi folks, it's been awhile! I'm Olga from Get Thee to a Punnery!

I'm not really sure why, but it's taken me years to finally read a book by Neil Gaiman. Yes, I've heard lots of things about him, and they've all been good things. He sounds like he would be right up my alley: dark, brooding stories about mysterious people in interesting and (sometimes) made-up lands.

Part of the problem is that Neil Gaiman has a huge bibliography and I didn't know anyone who could point me in the right direction. This is the same problem I have with Terry Pratchett. I would love to read Pratchett, but I don't know where to begin. If anyone would like to recommend me a Pratchett book to start reading, I would be thrilled.

Anyway, back to Gaiman. I have finally broken through the bibliography and started where I probably should have years ago: The Sandman, Volume 1: Preludes and Nocturnes.

Preludes and Nocturnes introduces us to the Sandman, the king of the Dreamworld. When we first meet him, he is captured by an ambitious magician, stripped of his clothing, his helmet, his magic sandbag and his red jewel. Naked and powerless, he is imprisoned in the basement of the magician's estate for decades inside a magical sphere. Years go by and the magician dies of old age, feeble and no closer to the Sandman's power than before he had captured the demi-god.

The magician's son, frightened by the Sandman's power, is too afraid to set the king of dreams free after so many years of imprisonment. Finally, when the son is nearing his own death, the Sandman is able to break through his prison and wrecks revenge on the cowardly magician's son.

Meanwhile, the Dreamworld is in a shambles. While the Sandman is imprisoned, chaos reigns through the dreams. Some people simply stop sleeping, while others fall asleep and never wake up again—until the Sandman escapes.

While he finally has his freedom, the Sandman must now find his stolen possessions, no easy feat now that they have been scattered. The Sandman travels through hell to challenge a demon for his helmet, finds his sand in the possession of a former lover of John Constantine, and his red jewel in the hands of a crazed man who has turned it into a weapon powerful enough to bring down society.

To say that this introduction to the Sandman is fast-paced and rivetting is not giving the book justice. I can see why people rave about the series. Gaiman is a masterful storyteller. Part comic book hero, part fairy tale, it's unlike any comic book I've read in awhile.

Rating: 4/5

Ethel & Ernest by Raymond Briggs

Ethel & Ernest is a true story of Briggs' parents, from their first encounter to their deaths. It's a story of two ordinary people, who experience the changing of the world around them: Second World War, the arrival of television, people landing on the moon, as they brought up their only son. It's really nice for a change to read a book about ordinary lives. No abuse, violence, extreme poverty, and all the things that make the world dark and gloomy. This time, it's intimate insight into life of a simple working class couple, who have simple wants and dreams, who are happy and sad for things that are important to them (not necessary to the world of course).

Read my complete review here...

This is my first post for this blog. The other graphic novels that I've read for this challenge:

1. The Tale of One Bad Rat by Bryan Talbot (finished 02/09, rating 4/5)
2. The Sandman Vol 1: Preludes & Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman (finished 03/09, rating 3.5/5)
3. The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman (finished 03/09, rating 5/5)
4. Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall by Bill Willingham (finished 03/09, rating 4.5/5)
5. Burnout by Rebecca Donner (finished 04/09, rating 3.5/5)
6. Fables Vol 1: Legends in Exile by Bill Willingham (finished 04/09, rating 4/5)
7. Clockwork Girl by Sean O’Reilly and Kevin Hanna (finished 04/09, rating 3.5/5)

I was going for Minor, but I'm now aiming for Major :)

Sandman:The Wake & Sandman:Endless Nights - Neil Gaiman

I have come to the end of the Endless. Tis a sad moment.

The Wake is the last of the Sandman series and while the others could be read in any order, this one should be read last or it doesn’t really make any sense. Dream has died and now his brothers and sister, Delirium, Destiny, Desire, Death and his friends and lovers come to the Dreaming to attend the wake.
The family speaks about Dream and we reconnect with Bast, Rose, Hob and Matthew the Raven. Dream may be dead, but Dream is alive and well in the Dreaming, the young boy Daniel has become/is the Dream King. As Matthew says, “the King is dead, long live the King”

Sandman: Endless Nights could be a standalone. It’s a collection of tales about various members of the Endless, sort of a biography. We learn about the lives of Despair, about Delirium when she was Delight, a younger-looking Death as she goes about her business and it ends with Destiny.

Neil Gaiman is my favorite graphic novelist at this point. The Sandman series is a wonderful, complex set of stories that one could read over and over and find something new. I preferred some stories over others and didn’t always like the artists work but overall this is the best series of graphic novels I’ve read yet and I can see going back to them.

Neil Gaiman: The Absolute Sandman, Volume 1

I'm only on my 2nd book for the Graphic Novel Challenge and already I'm departing from my original list. It's been much harder to find my first choices at the local library.

I read Gaiman's short story "I Cthulhu" a couple years back and enjoyed it enough to promise exploring him further. It's taken me this long to come round to him again, but when I saw the massive Absolute Sandman, Vol. 1 (612 pages, comprised of the first 19 issues of Gaiman's Sandman comics first published in 1989), it refreshed my memory.

My first Graphic Novel Challenge book was Seth's It's A Good Life, If You Don't Weaken, and the two books couldn't be more different. Where Seth's art had simplistic lines with white, black and shades of gray, Gaiman, who didn't draw himself, had a team of artists (including Sam Kieth, Michael Dringenberg, Chris Bachalo, Colleen Doran and others), who drew with lots of hatching, cross-hatching and general scratches for detail and worked in colour. But the differences didn't just exist in art. Whereas Seth's story was realistic, slow-paced, and tame, Gaiman's was surreal, fast-paced, and often pretty horrific. The Sandman (a.k.a. Morpheus, The Lord of Dreams, and a few other names) is supposed to be the anthropomorphic personification of dreams. With a description like that, you'd be correct in assuming he's a little more cerebral than Freddy Krueger.

I definitely prefer Seth's book, but after a while, I also came to enjoy Gaiman's. At the beginning I was enjoying the story but was distracted and unimpressed with the artwork. It reminded me of the style of Tales From The Crypt and seemed too stereotypically comic book (which for some readers might be a good thing.) Plus, I wasn't crazy about the Sandman's look. Resembling the unholy love child of Alice Cooper and the Cure's Robert Smith couldn't possibly be a good thing, but it was made even worse when the artists couldn't decide on a consistent head size. Eventually I either got used to it or Sam Keith's departure (after the first five stories) made the subtle difference. Towards the middle I thought it came together really well. Then, at the end, I thought Gaiman was stretching for story ideas. The Sandman's siblings started to get bigger roles, there was a whole story devoted to cats (apparently a popular issue with the fans), and while I enjoy Shakespeare, and although it's the one Gaiman won a World Fantasy Award for, I really didn't like the 19th Sandman story, "A Midsummer Night's Dream." It seemed silly and felt out of place with the rest of the collection, hardly having anything to do with dreams. I hope those last few stories are not representative of the later volumes because I'd still like to continue on with the series.

(Cross posted at The Book Mine Set.)

Sandman: The Kindly Ones - Neil Gaiman

The Kindly Ones is one of my favorite of the Sandman series. There’s a little of everything in this one. It wraps up a few story lines, brings characters from previous Sandmans and has a very dramatic ending. Events put into action in previous issues create problems in The Dreaming. Nuala, the Faerie tries to help, but causes more harm. We find out what happens to the Ravens. We learn about Puck and revenge and responsibility. A new Corinthian, Lucifer and the Angels and a baby Daniel all play a role. No matter what Dream tries, the Kindly Ones keep coming, until Death arrives for Dream.

Sandman: Brief Lives & Sandman: Worlds' End by Neil Gaiman

Sandman: Brief Lives v. 7

The story of the Endless continue in the 7th volume of Sandman. In this one, Delirium enlists the help of Dream to find their missing brother Destruction. Destruction abandoned his realm about 300 years ago, Age of Enlightenment convincing him that humans could cause enough destruction without him. Delirium however misses him and thinks things would be better if he came back to the family. Dream reluctantly agrees to help. During their search, they encounter people whose lives have been touched in some way by Destruction and trouble ensues. Dream, Delirium and Destruction do meet up and the family reunion isn’t all that Delirium hoped for and was difficult for Dream also but for different reasons.

I love this series, the stories are odd and entertaining and I always feel like I’m missing levels of meaning. It’s worth reading and pondering and rereading.

Sandman: Worlds' End v. 8

Worlds’ End, the 8th of the Sandman series has a great phrase - “it’s a reality storm”. I love that. In the Inn at Worlds’ End people, fairies and other creatures have congregated to wait out the snow storm and to pass the time, they tell stories. Are the stories true tales of their lives or just made up tales to pass the time? While Dream appears briefly this is not a tale of the Endless. While I love the idea of the Inn at Worlds’ End and reality storms, I missed Death, Dream and Desire.

Review: Violent Cases

Violent Cases
by Neil Gaiman

Synopsis from bn.com:

An exploration of the trappings of violence and the failings of memory, Violent Cases marks the beginning of the astonishing and award-winning collaboration between author Neil Gaiman and the artist Dave McKean, offered in its first Dark Horse edition, in softcover format with cover flaps. Set only in the memory of its author, this brillant short story meanders through levels of recollection surrounding a childhood injury. After dislocating his arm, a young boy is taken to see a doctor - an aged osteopath who was once the doctor of legendary gangster Al Capone. Through studied observations and painstaking attempts at truthful recall, the author reconstructs his tattered memories of the events surrounding his meeting with the doctor, and delves into the psychological complexities that emerged from the doctor's bizarre tales of Capone's life of crime. Gorgeously illustrated in mixed media by Dave McKean, Violent Cases is a sensuous and thought-provoking meditation on our memories.

My thoughts:

This was a quick and interesting read. It was drawn in browns, blues, grays, so it has dark feel to it, and slightly sinister. This was Neil Gaiman's first graphic novel and apparently one of his favorites. I didn't really get it. That's not to say I didn't like it, I just had another one of those moments when I felt like I wasn't seeing the bigger picture.

I recommend this as a quick read, especially if you get it from the library.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Challenges: 100+; Read and Review: A to Z; Graphic Novel; Dream King; 999