Reading Comics #97 "The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 #6"

(via vertigocomics.com)

Sandman #6 continues the story from the last issue, which itself continues the arc from the first issue, and if you can accept my chronicle as such, you may also like to know the issue also draws from that first issue more directly, since it too follows a bunch of random characters as they are affected by the continuing manipulation of Dream's function.  That's what the overall story has been, Morpheus working his way back to what he was before the start of the series (and actually the series is really about his ultimately relinquishing that role to Daniel, so it's kind of funny how it all begins).

Doctor Destiny, John Dee, has come into the possession of Dream's last remaining totem of power, a ruby he used and altered in his career as a supervillain when he fought the Justice League, before ending up in Arkham Asylum.  He's become grotesque, a rotten husk of a man, but he still has the ruby.  Last issue Morpheus discovered that Dee does in fact have control over the ruby, which leads him to a diner, where he affects the lives of its regulars.  Neil Gaiman takes the opportunity to explore some fairly mundane lives, where people have been kidding themselves, dreaming big as it were, for years.  With Dee's influence, over the course of twenty-four hours, their dreams become nightmares and they kill each other.

That's pretty much the whole issue.  It's a little strange, given that the series is called Sandman and not Doctor Destiny, but that's the way Gaiman has been doing it so far.  Leslie Klinger has few notes to make throughout this particular installment.  He talks about what's in the original script, mostly, and also how one particular character from the diner has some relevant connections to later developments in the series.

On page 16, Klinger helpfully points out how Gaiman returns to the motif of the three witches featured in the second issue, which is another echo to be found here, while there's another song referenced (as in the Constantine issue) on page 21 that has a connection to a relevant movie starring Sting called Brimstone & Treacle that I would otherwise have probably never known about, but may be worth checking out.  (Though it's still odd to think that Sting was ever once so motivated to be an actor, because that's not in his current interests at all; his most famous role was in David Lynch's Dune, which incidentally also has one of Patrick Stewart's earliest screen roles.)

I enjoyed the random insight into page 23 as well, which is six panels of Dee doing pretty much nothing except observing and eventually eating a fly.  In the script, apparently, Gaiman thinks he should be eating a raisin.  Obviously the artist went in a different direction.  It seemed to go that way a lot.

Oh, and Morpheus finally shows up on the last page.