Reading Comics #108 "The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 #17"

The final issues included in The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 collect what originally appeared in the volume titled Dream Country, starting with Sandman #17.

The first page introduces the concept of the magical hairball.  I should say introduces to me, because apparently that's a thing that for some reason I'd never heard about.  My sister's cat has been giving her these things all along and never told us?  Its official term is "bezoar," and "trichinobezoar" when derived from "Rapunzel syndrome," which is to say a bezoar that is made of hair.  People in crazier and more gullible days thought they were magical.  In fact, the famous Latin phrase caveat emptor ("let the buyer beware") is derived from the purchase of a magical hairball.

I will also take this opportunity to reference Tangled, the rare Disney animated movie not to feature its typical fairy tale heroine in the title.  This one, of course, is about Rapunzel.

Anyway, Leslie Klinger is quick with a reference to another movie, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which Neil Gaiman cleverly disguises as The Cabaret of Dr. Caligari.  These opening pages are introducing us to frustrated writer Richard Madoc in his desperate bid for some fresh inspiration.  The magical hairball he's acquiring will soon be exchanged for a far shadier transaction.  It may or may not be relevant (Klinger apparently didn't think so) that a Welshman named Madoc sailed to America three centuries before Columbus.  It may be the inverse of his meeting with Erasmus Fry on the third page.  The magical hairball is for Erasmus.  Klinger doesn't mention this either, but the historical Erasmus was a famous figure in the Reformation and was known for his arguments about free will.

Which is funny, because the point of the magical hairball exchange is the Muse he's been using to make his literary reputation.  I have no idea if Gaiman thought much about that.  His chief interest in the character seems to be the fact that he likes hearing the sound of his own voice, a replacement for a lonely writer just wanting to hear anyone's.

On the fourth page John Dee, the Elizabethan spy and magician, is referenced.  Klinger omits an explanation or at least reiteration, but the name evokes Doctor Destiny as featured previously in Sandman.  I'm also reminded of Detective Dee as depicted in the movie Detective Dee: Mystery of the Phantom Flame.  He's based on a historical figure from the Tang Dynasty.

By the fifth page, we learn about the Muses from both Gaiman and Klinger.  Aside from specific details, I'm sure you know about them.  In Star Trek, a parasitic muse in an episode called "The Muse" helped Jake Sisko finally write the book the earlier episode "The Visitor" claimed would be his lasting legacy, while another episode called simply "Muse" echoed the more traditional Greek approach.  They were from different series.  Anyway, Klinger references the main character from Homer's Odyssey as Ulysses.  Yes, and that would be the Roman form, just as the more famous Hercules was of the less famous Heracles original. If you call it The Odyssey, then the character's name is Odysseus.  Dude was played by Sean Bean in Troy. Show respect.  Ulysses is known as Grant's first name and the title of a James Joyce book.

But I promise not to snip at Klinger again for the remainder of this survey.  Although if I do get a chance to read the other volumes, who knows?

Anyway, the sixth page gives me a chance to talk about the art.  It looks like it was the inspiration for Frank Miller's Sin City, known as much for its hard-boiled storytelling as for the silhouetted forms of naked women.  Naturally this page features the latter.  The artist for the issue, interestingly enough, is Kelley Jones, who would make his name as a Batman cover artist and illustrator of several Dark Knight vampire tales.  The earliest pages in the issue are the clearest ones to identify the distinctive Jones style (giant muscles, usually, but also the faces and a generally Gothic outlook).  He's a natural fit for Sandman.  I wonder if it was this page that inspired Miller's work for the Dark Horse comics.  I had a similar epiphany when I first saw Andy Helfer's Shadow, when evokes the later Challengers of the Unknown from the budding partnership of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale.

Back to Sandman, however.  Klinger's notes for the page for some reason speak about more immediately relevant things like the identity of the naked woman, Calliope, who is the Muse in question.

On the seventh page he relates the British nursery rhyme "Oranges and Lemons," which Gaiman references.  I'd never heard it before.

Once in possession of Calliope, Madoc proves to be an ass.  He also gets busy writing.

The ninth page delves deeply back into Greek lore, but it also features another (this time acknowledged) appearance of the Triple Goddess seen repeatedly in Sandman.  They typically take the appearance of a Crone, a Maiden, and a Mother.  I'll just say now that it's a little weird that the oldest of them must be considered so ugly, but I guess the whole point is stereotypes, and crones are the stereotype of old women.  Maybe that's why the Hecate weren't so prominent in the arc that just concluded, because Gaiman was trying to be nice about the fairer sex.

On the tenth page we get our first reference to Dream in the issue, known as Oneiros in this particular context.  The relevant tale of Orpheus is apparently the subject of Sandman Special #1 (not in this collection).

For whatever reason, both the writers in this story take their ridiculously elaborate book titles from things Klinger gets to explain.

Like Hob Gadling before him, Madoc becomes the subject of a hopping through the timeline, seeing how his fortunes change.

It's worth speculating that how Madoc learns of Fry's death (different but in a way not completely unrelated to the time in Futurama another Fry died, from a bee sting; it might be argued that if you want another Sandman experience, that would not be a bad place to look) may tell you what Gaiman really thinks of all this artificial inspiration.  Though Fry was successful just as Madoc is shown as successful with big giant epic stories, he died in what appears to be obscurity, with the book he considered his best already out of the public's mind.  Perhaps that's the reason for the ridiculous titles?  Gaiman may be saying that flashy success doesn't always mean that it was earned, which of course in these instances it wasn't.

Dream shows up, pwns Madoc, exits.  Pretty standard Sandman at this point.  Through Klinger's notes in previous issues we've already had a glimpse of Gaiman's mindset at this point in the series.  At times he appears cocky and others frightened that he's already losing his own muse.  It's not hard to view this issue as a way of exploring the topic in the story itself.  Not to worry, though, as there are sixty-odd-and-counting stories in the future, Neil.