Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Reading Comics #102 "The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 #11"

The second issue of "The Doll's House" is an opportunity to see a Sandman arc that doesn't involve obscure comic book villains at work.  Following the events of last issue, it's Rose Walker we get to explore as her story continues.

She's settling into a new home, in Florida as the notes for the second page carefully explain.  Like the entire series before it, the issue digs into a scenario filled with weird characters, though Rose initially believes her new landlord to be perfectly normal.  It's the so-called Spider Women who appear to be most peculiar, and Leslie S. Klinger's notes allow us to see how Neil Gaiman envisioned them.  It amounts to a lot of thought for characters who are perhaps the least significant in the issue.

Klinger points out the raven in Rose's window on the third page, though the issue does explain what that's about.

It's the fourth page where Gaiman arguably reaches completely beyond anything he's done in the series so far, introducing Rose's brother Jed into the story by way of an allegorical sequence Klinger gets to helpfully explain is derived from the classic comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland.  Stuff like that is absolutely helpful.  Little Nemo is pretty legendary but his legacy becomes more and more distant, so that he's all but a footnote at this point.  It's also the same, alas, of Bill Watterson's chief inspiration for Calvin & Hobbes.  Would you be able to recognize the name Pogo?

It may be worth noting that Gaiman originally didn't have very kind things to say about previous incarnations of Sandman.  He said they weren't particularly important to him.  Yet in this sequence, and in the whole story of Jed, he's drawing from the 1970s Jack Kirby incarnation.  It's easy to assume that Gaiman found new inspiration from and respect for his title's predecessors as he was developing his own version.  It would be nice if his publishers did the same.

Astute readers will also note that Jed's tormentors aren't directly related to the creepy Corinthian, the mouth-eyed monster who closed out the last issue, but fellow escapees from Dream's realm, Brute and Glob.  Gaiman doesn't look to be dragging that particular arc out.  It's a sign that he's got much fancier ideas in mind.

It's also worth adding to Klinger's notes from the fifth page that the character of Fury was at one point directly considered to be the daughter of Wonder Woman, a point of continuity that I figure could use a little attention.

The sixth page begins the issue's exploration of another resident of Rose's new home, Gilbert.  Klinger keeps it a secret for now that Gaiman bases this character on writer G.K. Chesterton, a noted literary figure of the early 20th century.  I first became aware of Chesterton as a noted religious writer, and yet the name continues to pop up.  He's at least revered by other writers, and is all but one step removed from C.S. Lewis.  His reputation these days is a little like Little Nemo's, although as long as anyone keeps bringing them up, there's always the chance that their work can be popularly revived.  After all, Melville went through a long process before anyone thought he was worth talking about again.

On the seventh page we learn that the landlord is a drag queen.  Whatever you think of the LGBT community, it's a little odd that Gaiman associates it with the eccentrics of Rose's new home.  Although Gilbert soon enough redeems all of them, so maybe there's less to worry about that.  Klinger explains in the notes that cross-dressing has an extensive history in British culture, concluding with the ever-curious distinction that Peter Pan used to be played by women.  It's true.

Klinger spends two pages of notes trying to clarify the exact family history behind Rose and Jed and why and how they haven't seen each other in seven years.  It's fascinating scholarship that's concluded by admitting Gaiman himself...didn't particularly care.  Anyway, on the second of these pages is Gaiman's own explanation within Sandman itself of just who that raven was from earlier.  It's just as well!

Sometimes Klinger will also transpose the lyrics of a random song Gaiman has had someone sing, and that happens on the eleventh page.

On the twelfth and thirteenth pages, Rose is rescued from would-be attackers by...the mysterious Gilbert!  He turns out to look exactly like G.K. Chesterton.  The "G" of course stands for Gilbert.

It's odd, and perhaps a quirk of Gaiman's own emerging writing style, that the mystery of Gilbert would be so quickly explained.  It took the entirety of Jane Eyre to accomplish the same, for instance.  That Gilbert turns out to be such a capable ally for Rose is another pleasant development.  We've been following both Rose and Jed throughout the issue.  Jed's been in the worse predicament, and Rose's whole reason for coming to Florida was to discover his fate.  Some of the successful results by the end of the issue are to her own sleuthing work.

It's also worth noting that Gaiman was apparently pretty rude in his script for the eighteenth page, whether jokingly or not I don't know.  I don't know how Gaiman tends to behave, or if he's changed over the years, but it was certainly interesting for Klinger to bring that to light.

Klinger notes when Corinthian again appears, on the nineteenth pages, very helpfully, that he's eating the whole time he's talking.  Because he's eating with his eye mouths!

Gaiman's very impressed with Dream preparing to go to war on the final page.  But he's also careful to instruct the artist not to present him like a typical comic book superhero.  It's Klinger's notes that continue to enlighten Gaiman's attitude in these early issues.  Clearly he knows he's on to something, and that he's already got devoted fans, yet there's also...a touch of ego?  And maybe that's not such a bad thing?

4 comments:

  1. Are these the only comics you're reading? Because I'm really not interested.

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    1. Oh, I figured you weren't interested, given your silence. I'll be writing about other comics soon enough, but I find Sandman fascinating, and there are only nine issues to go. I don't have the second volume.

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    2. You talking about someone else talking about a comic I've never read isn't that great.

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    3. Still, it's what I always wanted to do with this particular graphic novel. There is apparently some dispute that Klinger's notes being at all worthwhile. I'm talking through his notes and Gaiman's story, and my experience with both.

      You are not required to read.

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