The final issue in The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 is here!
We're talking about Sandman #20, the final issue included in the original Dream Country collection. Like Dream/Morpheus/Sandman himself, it's a story about someone who in some other life was a superhero, in this instance Element Girl, a one-time sidekick of Metamorpho (whom Grant Morrison famously killed off in his initial issues on JLA, although the redoubtable Rex Mason eventually got better).
Before we go much further, it's worth noting that Element Girl recently resurfaced in the rebooted continuity of the New 52 within DC proper thanks to Geoff Johns and Justice League. Neil Gaiman later wrote a Metamorpho story for the Wednesday Comics experiment (basically a twelve week comic book version of the cartoon section from your Sunday paper). The latter Leslie Klinger might have referenced in his notes, but he neglects to, while the former occurred after publication of Annotated Sandman.
Anyway, it's just interesting that the collection begins and ends on Gaiman's particular interpretation of superheroes. Hardly anyone will ever confuse Dream with a typical comic book superhero (although Death made a mainstream appearance a few years ago in Paul Cornell's Action Comics), but as his most basic level he's indeed linked to the Golden Age Sandman tradition, Wesley Dodds and his gas mask that is reflected in Dream's warrior helm. Martian Manhunter appeared, Doctor Destiny ran a whole arc, the Jack Kirby Sandman helped inform another one. Then we reach Element Girl. The difference between a Neil Gaiman and a Garth Ennis is that Gaiman isn't rejecting the mainstream, he's looking beyond it. Ennis, well, he's rejecting and subverting it every chance he gets, but try as he might he never quite influences the landscape. Gaiman did. Oh, did he.
The basic story of the issue is that Element Girl is clinically depressed, retired from the superhero game and everything else that used to define her life. She no longer sees a point in anything, because she no longer recognizes herself, has lost nearly all connection to the outside world. She's what Ben Grimm might have become if he were, well, grim, didn't have a Fantastic family around him. Unlike the other women to have been featured in the series so far, she fits a fairly typical feminine psychology, which has been shattered by her altered appearance.
If there's anything to criticize in Sandman it's when Gaiman doesn't trust himself. He doesn't trust himself in this issue. He admits in notes Klinger reveals that he feared he'd go too far in depicting Element Girl's state of mind. He saw only dark corners, and was afraid of the depression that might overtake him if he pursued them.
Because this is the last one and also because I played fast and loose with my formula with the last issue, I will omit checking in with specific pages and notes for this final look.
By the way, Gaiman achieves something pretty spectacular in the issue in managing to finally completely avoid employing Dream in his own narrative. Instead it's Death who appears, having a little chat with Element Girl, making sure she's absolutely sure that she wants to die. It's like Calliope a few issues ago, but because it's Dream who answers the call, there's no evasion. There's a lot to love about Dream, and this is one of them. Everyone else interprets Death to be pretty lifeless, and they think that makes perfect sense. I think Gaiman has it right, seeing that Death would be the one who most understands what life really means. I mean, if not her who?
And because it's Death who shows up, Element Girl's story ends with a kind of redemption, again a nice little bow on the top of this present to conclude Dream Country and The Annotated Sandman Volume 1. The first issue was bleak through and through, and the stories that followed weren't much better. I keep trying to figure out what Gaiman was trying to say about Shakespeare, why he thought the Bard needed some kind of agreement with Dream. He has two plays to present Dream, and A Midsummer Night's Dream is the first. The Tempest, meanwhile, is the last, which informs the conclusion of the series as well. Does this mean that Gaiman envisions Shakespeare as owing a debt to Dream? Does this cheapen Shakespeare's legacy?
I guess it's a little like Death and Element Girl. Death isn't in the habit of unscheduled collections. She visits Element Girl because she happened to be in the area (and explains that she's in a lot of areas, actually), and has to be convinced that concluding the transaction is a good thing. She also lets the reader know that the whole Metamorpho story is a lot more complicated than an archaeologist accidentally unleashing an Egyptian god's safety net (in so many words). Gaiman could very easily have run with that. He didn't even particularly run with it in Wednesday Comics. That was a fairly straightforward superhero action adventure.
So instead of talking about Klinger's notes, which in the end I can only describe as invaluable and therefore I hope I serve as testament to the worth of the whole idea of The Annotated Sandman, I will simply say that the whole experience has helped guide me along in ways that I wouldn't have expected when I started out. The more I meditated on each individual issue, the more I got from reading Sandman. Finding the connections was one way of helping me make my own connections, getting me involved. This is the end of the road for now, but the story continues...
Showing posts with label The Annotated Sandman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Annotated Sandman. Show all posts
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Reading Comics #110 "The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 #19"
This penultimate issue in The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 is all about Shakespeare! Want to know how it's obvious Leslie Klinger is a fan of the Bard? He fairly vomits trivia all over the issue! (It can't hurt that Gaiman is part of this obsession as well.)
We're talking about Sandman #19, based on A Midsummer Night's Dream, and in fact titled as such. The play is being performed throughout the issue, as the actual fairy creatures serve as audience, making comments about how weird people are (wait, is this all some sort of meta observation about people making notes?!?). All of this is possible because Neil Gaiman previously had Dream converse with Shakespeare during the Hob Gadling episode making a still-undetermined bargain, possibly linked in Gaiman's mind to the Madoc episode a few issues back. It's still odd to me that there must be some sort of explanation to the genius of Shakespeare outside of his own abilities. As this presentation of Midsummer more or less proves, it's not so different from Much Ado About Nothing. All great artists are aware of the variations and patterns in their work, and know how to use them to their advantage. You can see that in the strands of the Bard's work, whether in the tragedies or the comedies or histories.
I think I'll be sparing you an extended look for a change. Plenty of people have talked about Shakespeare, and I'm not really up to do much of that myself. I am but a poor player upon the stage. A couple things worth noting, however, are Gaiman's presentation of Shakespeare's son Hamnet (which makes me wonder if a story however fictional like Shakespeare in Love about the Bard himself won't always be almost as fascinating as his plays) and the fact that his version of the "real" Puck later becomes a major player within the Sandman narrative (although of course not in this volume).
It's pretty funny, though, that of all the anxieties I've been detecting in previous issues it's this one where Gaiman discusses in his script (as related by Klinger) apprehension about how well a particular story works. I think it works well enough, certainly nothing that could possibly embarrass him (to be read about on the twelfth page, for the record).
One other thing that was pretty interesting to read about was the Long Man of Wilmington, details of which are explained on the third page (an actual image appears on the fifth page).
That's it for this issue. Amusingly, it concludes with the sort of these-people-ended-up-this-way notes that movies based on (or sometimes if they just want to be clever) real events include just before the credits.
We're talking about Sandman #19, based on A Midsummer Night's Dream, and in fact titled as such. The play is being performed throughout the issue, as the actual fairy creatures serve as audience, making comments about how weird people are (wait, is this all some sort of meta observation about people making notes?!?). All of this is possible because Neil Gaiman previously had Dream converse with Shakespeare during the Hob Gadling episode making a still-undetermined bargain, possibly linked in Gaiman's mind to the Madoc episode a few issues back. It's still odd to me that there must be some sort of explanation to the genius of Shakespeare outside of his own abilities. As this presentation of Midsummer more or less proves, it's not so different from Much Ado About Nothing. All great artists are aware of the variations and patterns in their work, and know how to use them to their advantage. You can see that in the strands of the Bard's work, whether in the tragedies or the comedies or histories.
I think I'll be sparing you an extended look for a change. Plenty of people have talked about Shakespeare, and I'm not really up to do much of that myself. I am but a poor player upon the stage. A couple things worth noting, however, are Gaiman's presentation of Shakespeare's son Hamnet (which makes me wonder if a story however fictional like Shakespeare in Love about the Bard himself won't always be almost as fascinating as his plays) and the fact that his version of the "real" Puck later becomes a major player within the Sandman narrative (although of course not in this volume).
It's pretty funny, though, that of all the anxieties I've been detecting in previous issues it's this one where Gaiman discusses in his script (as related by Klinger) apprehension about how well a particular story works. I think it works well enough, certainly nothing that could possibly embarrass him (to be read about on the twelfth page, for the record).
One other thing that was pretty interesting to read about was the Long Man of Wilmington, details of which are explained on the third page (an actual image appears on the fifth page).
That's it for this issue. Amusingly, it concludes with the sort of these-people-ended-up-this-way notes that movies based on (or sometimes if they just want to be clever) real events include just before the credits.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Reading Comics #109 "The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 #18"
After this there are only two issues to go in this extended look at The Annotated Sandman Volume 1...
The great thing about this installment, looking at Sandman #18, is that it's all about cats. People who don't like cats are obviously bad people.
It's not only about cats but strictly from a cat's perspective. The storytelling here is a little tricky, balancing one cat with their recollections of another cat's call to revolution. It's a little trickier without color, I think. Still, it's like Neil Gaiman's We3 (the great comic from Grant Morrison), with art again by Kelley Jones. Considering I've previously referenced Jones as best known for his human figures, it's quite a revelation to think he could just as easily have made a career of doing stories with animals. Apparently this is not his last work in Sandman, but it is in this volume.
I wrote a story (or two) myself that involved dialogue from animals, although it was in prose (you can read it in Monorama), but I sympathize with Gaiman's desire to distinguish it from human speech and not particularly wanting it to be considered thought, as Leslie Klinger's notes explain on the first page.
On the sixth page is a wonderful rendering of a cat's head in close-up from Jones. Klinger makes reference on a later page to Gaiman's instructions to Jones about making a standout portrait that will make other artists jealous. To my mind, this one's more striking. Perhaps owing to the black and white nature of my edition's depiction, it looks like woodcut art.
There's a spare amount of notes in this issue. It's funny that notes meant for the thirteenth page are printed on the twelfth's. The twelfth page is also noteworthy for the beginning of a travel narrative that works exceptionally well, with variations on the phrase "and I walked on" concluding the captions in most panels. I tend to be a reader who appreciates a writer's grasp of distinctive storytelling. This is the sort of thing I eat up.
This sequence leads us to Dream, who in this story naturally is a cat (as discussed before he tends to take the form expected of him).
Another terrific sequence from the issue involves a vision of the past where cats were large and men were small, a complete inverse of their present relationship. This is what the issue is all about, since it was a dream of men that reversed it, and subsequently the vision of the cat I mentioned earlier to cause another dream to reverse it again. Not only did man's dream reshape reality, but it caused the previous one to no longer exist at all, like it never happened. This I think is a pretty big idea on Gaiman's part. I wonder if he explores it more in Sandman. It's metaphysical and glorious. Yes, we have a hard enough time convincing people to believe the same things about science and religion. To through something like this in the mix? I guess that's what great fiction like this is all about.
The twentieth page, for the record, references Gaiman's directions to Jones about the cat rendering.
The end of the story is the main cat sleeping, and its owners wondering what it can possibly dream about. I should explain that the big development that causes the cat to go on its quest is having kittens and the humans cavalierly taking them away, like the cat can't possibly have any real concern about that (much like what Madoc does to Calliope when he gains possession of her in the previous issue). The cat I know is usually pretty discreet when she sleeps, hidden away from public consumption as it were. My sister's dog, however, regularly twitches in his sleep, so it's not hard to imagine that he's dreaming about something. In Gaiman's view it must be profound indeed...
The great thing about this installment, looking at Sandman #18, is that it's all about cats. People who don't like cats are obviously bad people.
It's not only about cats but strictly from a cat's perspective. The storytelling here is a little tricky, balancing one cat with their recollections of another cat's call to revolution. It's a little trickier without color, I think. Still, it's like Neil Gaiman's We3 (the great comic from Grant Morrison), with art again by Kelley Jones. Considering I've previously referenced Jones as best known for his human figures, it's quite a revelation to think he could just as easily have made a career of doing stories with animals. Apparently this is not his last work in Sandman, but it is in this volume.
I wrote a story (or two) myself that involved dialogue from animals, although it was in prose (you can read it in Monorama), but I sympathize with Gaiman's desire to distinguish it from human speech and not particularly wanting it to be considered thought, as Leslie Klinger's notes explain on the first page.
On the sixth page is a wonderful rendering of a cat's head in close-up from Jones. Klinger makes reference on a later page to Gaiman's instructions to Jones about making a standout portrait that will make other artists jealous. To my mind, this one's more striking. Perhaps owing to the black and white nature of my edition's depiction, it looks like woodcut art.
There's a spare amount of notes in this issue. It's funny that notes meant for the thirteenth page are printed on the twelfth's. The twelfth page is also noteworthy for the beginning of a travel narrative that works exceptionally well, with variations on the phrase "and I walked on" concluding the captions in most panels. I tend to be a reader who appreciates a writer's grasp of distinctive storytelling. This is the sort of thing I eat up.
This sequence leads us to Dream, who in this story naturally is a cat (as discussed before he tends to take the form expected of him).
Another terrific sequence from the issue involves a vision of the past where cats were large and men were small, a complete inverse of their present relationship. This is what the issue is all about, since it was a dream of men that reversed it, and subsequently the vision of the cat I mentioned earlier to cause another dream to reverse it again. Not only did man's dream reshape reality, but it caused the previous one to no longer exist at all, like it never happened. This I think is a pretty big idea on Gaiman's part. I wonder if he explores it more in Sandman. It's metaphysical and glorious. Yes, we have a hard enough time convincing people to believe the same things about science and religion. To through something like this in the mix? I guess that's what great fiction like this is all about.
The twentieth page, for the record, references Gaiman's directions to Jones about the cat rendering.
The end of the story is the main cat sleeping, and its owners wondering what it can possibly dream about. I should explain that the big development that causes the cat to go on its quest is having kittens and the humans cavalierly taking them away, like the cat can't possibly have any real concern about that (much like what Madoc does to Calliope when he gains possession of her in the previous issue). The cat I know is usually pretty discreet when she sleeps, hidden away from public consumption as it were. My sister's dog, however, regularly twitches in his sleep, so it's not hard to imagine that he's dreaming about something. In Gaiman's view it must be profound indeed...
Thursday, April 18, 2013
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Reading Comics #107 "The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 #16"
Stories originally collected in the first printed Sandman collection (secondly chronologically) The Doll's House come to an end in this latest installment in our look at The Annotated Sandman...
Dream takes center stage, which is a tad unusual really, as he confronts the vortex, Rose Walker. He's just informed her that he is going to have to eliminate her, which is to say murder her. She's not happy about it.
Much of the issue doesn't feature any notes from Leslie Klinger, mostly because it's very much a matter of resolving elements that have already been introduced and discussed by himself and Neil Gaiman, the author of this rich tragedy.
On the second page Rose tries to convince herself that because the subject matter is dreams she can't really be in any trouble. All she has to do is wake up. Well, normally. But she is in fact dealing with the king of dreams.
On the fourth page we catch back up with Fiddler's Green, who was pretending to be an ordinary human named Gilbert when we first meet him. He's talking to Matthew the raven, who was once a human (but not in this series). He confesses that prior to assuming the Gilbert identity (which did not, alas, grant him awesome fighting ability, like Jason Bourne), he wasn't a person but a place, within Dream's realm. It only makes sense. Gaiman patterned Gilbert after G.K. Chesterton, who as discussed in prior installments wrote about paradoxes of faith.
Dream rambles a bit about what a vortex of dreams is supposed to be, but it's never really clear, then Gilbert/Fiddler's Green (naturally he's still got the Gilbert form at this point) appears, offering to replace Rose. He's not an adequate substitute. Of course, then the story cuts to Rose's mother Miranda, who is holding vigil over Rose's grandmother Unity Kinkaid. Again, this is only fitting, but we'll explain that in a bit.
Gilbert says goodbye to Rose and becomes, once again, Fiddler's Green, sort of like a Sandman version of the Elysian Fields from Greek mythology. As far as I remember, Klinger never explained where Gaiman got the term from, but the somewhat inadequate Wikipedia page suggests that it came from 19th century America, sailors and soldiers.
On the eleventh page, Unity shows up and begins the argument that she's going to replace Rose as the sacrifice. She makes a solid argument. During the time she was sleeping, which is also during the time Dream was imprisoned, as depicted in the very first issue, she was prevented from becoming the vortex herself, and thus her fate was passed on to her granddaughter.
Anyway, on the fourteenth page Klinger gets to reference something nifty, an artistic allusion to Sandman #9, in which Dream pursued his one and only love interest, which may be the origin of the whole concept of the vortex, an unconscious desire on his part to reunite with Nada.
Once Rose is deposited, she picks up her life, and for the next few pages explains how she reclaims it. Klinger helpfully explains some of the books she begins to read, some of it recently published at the time of the issue's original release. There's Empire of the Senseless by Kathy Acker, Sleeping in Flame by Jonathan Carroll (which sounds fascinating, so I'll have to track it down at some point), and a few that the artist didn't depict: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (which directly reflects what Rose herself is like in the first six months following her adventure), Ghosts of an Antiquary by M.R. James (which was quoted in the previous issue), and A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman (which I've read, and you can read my thoughts here).
Klinger further explains that Carroll reassured Gaiman to write what became the A Game of You arc after he'd initially decided against it because it was so similar to Carroll's story. "Go for it, man. Ezra Pound said that every story has already been written. The purpose of a good writer is to write it new. I would very much like to see a Gaiman approach to that kind of story." That's exactly my philosophy, even directly retelling specific narratives.
Last issue there was a reference to the classic "It was a dark and stormy night" opening line. Rose concludes her story with "And then she woke up," how she makes that phrase her own. I wrote a story last year that evoked the "stormy night" line, and was reamed in part because I dared use it, because it was a trope those readers kind of automatically assumed must be the work of a hack. It's not the words but the intent. It's the emotion but the act.
Anyway, Dream ends the issue talking about or rather with Desire, part of his family in the Endless. He's not so happy because he's realized that it was meddling from within the family that caused all of his recent troubles. Part of this is picked up in a later issue. This one, however, ends on a meditation of the nature of dolls. It may be a little on the nose, but then there's probably a good deal of depth that has already sailed over a lot of heads in the preceding pages. The whole intent of the arc was Gaiman's exploration of being manipulated and not having any real control or say, often associated with the plight of women. If this is to be reduced to the concept of playing with toys (and it's curious that none of the issues featured toys, or perhaps he left it to Bill Watterson, beloved cartoonist behind Calvin & Hobbes) then perhaps it's better to be shocked worse than Sid in Toy Story, the way we casually manipulate those in our own lives, which is something you can't do without reversing the metaphor.
Dream takes center stage, which is a tad unusual really, as he confronts the vortex, Rose Walker. He's just informed her that he is going to have to eliminate her, which is to say murder her. She's not happy about it.
Much of the issue doesn't feature any notes from Leslie Klinger, mostly because it's very much a matter of resolving elements that have already been introduced and discussed by himself and Neil Gaiman, the author of this rich tragedy.
On the second page Rose tries to convince herself that because the subject matter is dreams she can't really be in any trouble. All she has to do is wake up. Well, normally. But she is in fact dealing with the king of dreams.
On the fourth page we catch back up with Fiddler's Green, who was pretending to be an ordinary human named Gilbert when we first meet him. He's talking to Matthew the raven, who was once a human (but not in this series). He confesses that prior to assuming the Gilbert identity (which did not, alas, grant him awesome fighting ability, like Jason Bourne), he wasn't a person but a place, within Dream's realm. It only makes sense. Gaiman patterned Gilbert after G.K. Chesterton, who as discussed in prior installments wrote about paradoxes of faith.
Dream rambles a bit about what a vortex of dreams is supposed to be, but it's never really clear, then Gilbert/Fiddler's Green (naturally he's still got the Gilbert form at this point) appears, offering to replace Rose. He's not an adequate substitute. Of course, then the story cuts to Rose's mother Miranda, who is holding vigil over Rose's grandmother Unity Kinkaid. Again, this is only fitting, but we'll explain that in a bit.
Gilbert says goodbye to Rose and becomes, once again, Fiddler's Green, sort of like a Sandman version of the Elysian Fields from Greek mythology. As far as I remember, Klinger never explained where Gaiman got the term from, but the somewhat inadequate Wikipedia page suggests that it came from 19th century America, sailors and soldiers.
On the eleventh page, Unity shows up and begins the argument that she's going to replace Rose as the sacrifice. She makes a solid argument. During the time she was sleeping, which is also during the time Dream was imprisoned, as depicted in the very first issue, she was prevented from becoming the vortex herself, and thus her fate was passed on to her granddaughter.
Anyway, on the fourteenth page Klinger gets to reference something nifty, an artistic allusion to Sandman #9, in which Dream pursued his one and only love interest, which may be the origin of the whole concept of the vortex, an unconscious desire on his part to reunite with Nada.
Once Rose is deposited, she picks up her life, and for the next few pages explains how she reclaims it. Klinger helpfully explains some of the books she begins to read, some of it recently published at the time of the issue's original release. There's Empire of the Senseless by Kathy Acker, Sleeping in Flame by Jonathan Carroll (which sounds fascinating, so I'll have to track it down at some point), and a few that the artist didn't depict: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (which directly reflects what Rose herself is like in the first six months following her adventure), Ghosts of an Antiquary by M.R. James (which was quoted in the previous issue), and A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman (which I've read, and you can read my thoughts here).
Klinger further explains that Carroll reassured Gaiman to write what became the A Game of You arc after he'd initially decided against it because it was so similar to Carroll's story. "Go for it, man. Ezra Pound said that every story has already been written. The purpose of a good writer is to write it new. I would very much like to see a Gaiman approach to that kind of story." That's exactly my philosophy, even directly retelling specific narratives.
Last issue there was a reference to the classic "It was a dark and stormy night" opening line. Rose concludes her story with "And then she woke up," how she makes that phrase her own. I wrote a story last year that evoked the "stormy night" line, and was reamed in part because I dared use it, because it was a trope those readers kind of automatically assumed must be the work of a hack. It's not the words but the intent. It's the emotion but the act.
Anyway, Dream ends the issue talking about or rather with Desire, part of his family in the Endless. He's not so happy because he's realized that it was meddling from within the family that caused all of his recent troubles. Part of this is picked up in a later issue. This one, however, ends on a meditation of the nature of dolls. It may be a little on the nose, but then there's probably a good deal of depth that has already sailed over a lot of heads in the preceding pages. The whole intent of the arc was Gaiman's exploration of being manipulated and not having any real control or say, often associated with the plight of women. If this is to be reduced to the concept of playing with toys (and it's curious that none of the issues featured toys, or perhaps he left it to Bill Watterson, beloved cartoonist behind Calvin & Hobbes) then perhaps it's better to be shocked worse than Sid in Toy Story, the way we casually manipulate those in our own lives, which is something you can't do without reversing the metaphor.
Monday, April 15, 2013
Reading Comics #106 "The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 #15"
Continuing our series on The Annotated Sandman...
Sandman #15 is a little odd. Not unusually odd, because Neil Gaiman specialized in odd for this series, but odd in the sense that it's really only our second look at the residents in the place where Rose Walker has been staying while she tracks down her lost brother Jed. It's odd because the issue is an exploration of these characters and their psyches. Technically speaking, this is as much the first time we meet any of them. Gaiman hadn't really bothered doing much more than introducing them previously. So everything here is like doing that all over again. It's worth noting that he already indicated that each of them was strange enough in their waking lives.
So they only seem weirder now.
Leslie S. Klinger includes a confession Gaiman made in his script that he had begun finding it difficult to sustain a continuing arc. Not to worry, Neil. Most of this one could very easily be read individually. He then goes into detail about the nature of the dreams we'll be experiencing. Whether the reader, then or now, chooses to adhere to his interpretations is still very much open.
On the second page Klinger references a famous Christian poem that Gaiman references, but doesn't really go into detail as to what that poem is. It's another of his odd oversights. Anyway: a man is walking along a beach and talking to Jesus, who explains that the extra set of footprints that the man observes belonged to him, and when the man notices one particular period, which was a dark one for him, only features one set he asks why he was abandoned in his hour of greatest need. Jesus replies that during that time he was carrying the man.
The dreams commence on the fourth page. Ken, as in the couple who are named Ken & Barbie and are meant to represent exactly the archetype embodied by their namesake dolls, apparently dreams of having great power, while Barbie has a fantasy dreamland very reminiscent of the fantasy movies of the 1980s (The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth). Apparently Gaiman found the concept so fascinating that he based an entire later arc around it, though it cannot be found, alas, in this volume.
The so-called Spider Women, one of them evokes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, while the other looks far more conventionally feminine (although in their waking lives both sport veils, so it's hard to judge them on that score), and as described by Gaiman is having a relationship with a sentence (whatever that means). I assume it's about trying to make a connection, the way some people only find solace in literature about people whose lives reflect their own.
Klinger, thanks to Gaiman's script, also gets to reference Gothic literature like The Castle of Otranto, which I only learned existed thanks to a free book listing in an e-reader I hawked for a bookseller.
On the eight page, Klinger also misses a chance (perhaps because it also didn't occur to Gaiman) that there's another reference to the Hecate, the trilogy of women who've been appearing throughout the series, mostly because he's busy identifying the faces as being derived from the Judy Garland Wizard of Oz.
Rose is a vortex. She intersects dreams. That's as much as why there's been a whole arc about her, and why this particular story is about dreams. That's how Dream himself appears, because he's finally getting around to addressing the matter. Yet it's Matthew the raven, and Gilbert, Rose's protector who also happens to be Fiddler's Green, escaped from Dream's realm, who inform the ending of the story. Apparently there was a whole alternate conversation between the two compared to the one they share in the issue. I know this because of Klinger. I appreciated seeing that one, but the one in the issue is probably better.
Klinger's other notes for the twenty-third page are more compelling. He explains where exactly Matthew came from. As with a lot of what Gaiman was doing with the series, he came from what others had been doing, and this time once again from the adventures of Swamp Thing, the character Alan Moore helped shape into the formative Vertigo aesthetic. Moore is known for a lot of things these days, but by the time Sandman and Vertigo came around he'd moved on from that kind of storytelling. A lot of his later stories are far more evocative of incredibly traditional superhero storytelling, ironically enough.
I'll conclude my discussion of this issue with a reference to G. Willow Wilson's Air. I twice named it the top comic in my annual QB50 list, and the first year it was in publication at the bottom only because I'd only just become acquainted with it. In a lot of ways it's a series that's very familiar to Gaiman's dream work in Sandman, with a main character who often had to wonder if what was happening to her was real or an allusion (which has also been a theme in Paul Cornell's Saucer Country, and even Mike Carey's The Unwritten), only to learn that there was great significance indeed to what was happening to her. I still have no idea why I seem to have been in an extreme minority appreciating it. If there was ever to be a new Sandman at Vertigo, that would have been it.
Sandman #15 is a little odd. Not unusually odd, because Neil Gaiman specialized in odd for this series, but odd in the sense that it's really only our second look at the residents in the place where Rose Walker has been staying while she tracks down her lost brother Jed. It's odd because the issue is an exploration of these characters and their psyches. Technically speaking, this is as much the first time we meet any of them. Gaiman hadn't really bothered doing much more than introducing them previously. So everything here is like doing that all over again. It's worth noting that he already indicated that each of them was strange enough in their waking lives.
So they only seem weirder now.
Leslie S. Klinger includes a confession Gaiman made in his script that he had begun finding it difficult to sustain a continuing arc. Not to worry, Neil. Most of this one could very easily be read individually. He then goes into detail about the nature of the dreams we'll be experiencing. Whether the reader, then or now, chooses to adhere to his interpretations is still very much open.
On the second page Klinger references a famous Christian poem that Gaiman references, but doesn't really go into detail as to what that poem is. It's another of his odd oversights. Anyway: a man is walking along a beach and talking to Jesus, who explains that the extra set of footprints that the man observes belonged to him, and when the man notices one particular period, which was a dark one for him, only features one set he asks why he was abandoned in his hour of greatest need. Jesus replies that during that time he was carrying the man.
The dreams commence on the fourth page. Ken, as in the couple who are named Ken & Barbie and are meant to represent exactly the archetype embodied by their namesake dolls, apparently dreams of having great power, while Barbie has a fantasy dreamland very reminiscent of the fantasy movies of the 1980s (The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth). Apparently Gaiman found the concept so fascinating that he based an entire later arc around it, though it cannot be found, alas, in this volume.
The so-called Spider Women, one of them evokes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, while the other looks far more conventionally feminine (although in their waking lives both sport veils, so it's hard to judge them on that score), and as described by Gaiman is having a relationship with a sentence (whatever that means). I assume it's about trying to make a connection, the way some people only find solace in literature about people whose lives reflect their own.
Klinger, thanks to Gaiman's script, also gets to reference Gothic literature like The Castle of Otranto, which I only learned existed thanks to a free book listing in an e-reader I hawked for a bookseller.
On the eight page, Klinger also misses a chance (perhaps because it also didn't occur to Gaiman) that there's another reference to the Hecate, the trilogy of women who've been appearing throughout the series, mostly because he's busy identifying the faces as being derived from the Judy Garland Wizard of Oz.
Rose is a vortex. She intersects dreams. That's as much as why there's been a whole arc about her, and why this particular story is about dreams. That's how Dream himself appears, because he's finally getting around to addressing the matter. Yet it's Matthew the raven, and Gilbert, Rose's protector who also happens to be Fiddler's Green, escaped from Dream's realm, who inform the ending of the story. Apparently there was a whole alternate conversation between the two compared to the one they share in the issue. I know this because of Klinger. I appreciated seeing that one, but the one in the issue is probably better.
Klinger's other notes for the twenty-third page are more compelling. He explains where exactly Matthew came from. As with a lot of what Gaiman was doing with the series, he came from what others had been doing, and this time once again from the adventures of Swamp Thing, the character Alan Moore helped shape into the formative Vertigo aesthetic. Moore is known for a lot of things these days, but by the time Sandman and Vertigo came around he'd moved on from that kind of storytelling. A lot of his later stories are far more evocative of incredibly traditional superhero storytelling, ironically enough.
I'll conclude my discussion of this issue with a reference to G. Willow Wilson's Air. I twice named it the top comic in my annual QB50 list, and the first year it was in publication at the bottom only because I'd only just become acquainted with it. In a lot of ways it's a series that's very familiar to Gaiman's dream work in Sandman, with a main character who often had to wonder if what was happening to her was real or an allusion (which has also been a theme in Paul Cornell's Saucer Country, and even Mike Carey's The Unwritten), only to learn that there was great significance indeed to what was happening to her. I still have no idea why I seem to have been in an extreme minority appreciating it. If there was ever to be a new Sandman at Vertigo, that would have been it.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Reading Comics #105 "The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 #14"
We continue our series on The Annotated Sandman!
Sandman #14 is thirty-eight pages long. That's how I'm going to start this reading post. This is not usual, for an extended issue to appear in a series for a fairly random reason. That would be an indication of the growing significance of the series at that time for DC (it wasn't until 1993 that the Vertigo imprint existed), and Neil Gaiman's growing ability to do exactly what he wanted.
For instance, this issue is all about serial killers. The "Cereal Convention" mentioned previously is held. We know about it because Rose Walker and Gilbert have stumbled into the middle of it, which ends up being something of a problem during the issue. Part of the reason the issue happens at all is because Gaiman noted even in 1990 (or I guess 1989 when he would have written it) that serial killers were becoming a fairly uniquely American phenomenon. Sure, Jack the Ripper was British, but that was a hundred years in the past. Well before the rest of us really started to appreciate it, Gaiman was writing about it in an issue of Sandman.
These days, every other TV show is dedicated to crime and some of them serial killers, including Criminal Minds, which is fascinating but also follows the formula of solving the crime and capturing the killer by the end of each episode. A lot of people also seem to be fascinated by Dexter, subject of a TV show and series of books. There's also Hannibal Lecter, the most famous serial killer in American fiction and the screen, now in his first TV show. Clearly serial killers fascinate us, their unique psychology.
The creepiest thing about the issue is that it doesn't judge serial killers, at least not outright. You could read most of it and not even realize that you're reading about serial killers. They're referred to as "collectors" more than serial killers throughout the story. They're odd personalities with quirky interests and opinions. They, uh, also kill people.
Leslie S. Klinger's notes, as always, provide insight into Gaiman's mindset, right from the first page, transcribing from the script. Gaiman appears to be one of those writers who analyzes his own story as he explains to the artist what's supposed to be happening. He also explains how the issue delves into a certain horror type, the way a few select other issues have, including the Doctor Dee diner episode in the sixth issue, which is the first instance where Gaiman is creating his own horror genre, including this one. Sandman is sometimes very easily defined as horror, but not in the Stephen King way, or even Edgar Allen Poe. It's very much existentialism, which I guess is why it became so easily associated with the emerging Goth culture, because Goths like to think they're existentialists. But the South Park episode pretty much exposed that for what it really was, a lot of posers just looking for an alternative social group. Sandman is the real deal.
It's funny that Klinger keeps identifying a singing serial killer as not intending irony in his song selections, because it's really only Klinger who can make that distinction. It doesn't read one way or the other on the page. Maybe Gaiman said something about it in the script? Or we're just supposed to assume that serial killers really don't connect with even a basic level of reality as most of us know it? In notes on another page, he muses on the nature of psychopaths, which is a type that exists outside of the serial killer framework. Psychopaths, I might add, who are not as awesome as the ones featured in the movie Seven Psychopaths. I'm talking the controlling kind who dominate every bureaucratic structure. But we're here to talk about Sandman.
On the third page we have our first reference to the absence of a particular serial killer, the Family Man (unrelated to an underrated Nicolas Cage film, although Nic might be considered an entirely different kind of psychopath). The Family Man is absent, as Klinger notes, because he was dispatched in an extended storyline from Hellblazer, the series that featured John Constantine. We also meet convention organizer Nimrod for the first time. Klinger never explains the significance behind Nimrod's name, but it comes from the Bible. He was a great-grandson of Noah who was known as a mighty hunter. There are ironies there.
There's also a character who refers to Nimrod as "bub" on the fourth page. Klinger doesn't make a note about that, either, but clearly in comics that's a reference to Wolverine, another version of the classic psychopath archetype.
Rose, the girl who's unwittingly here because she's looking for her brother, who was being held by humans of other despicable characteristics, makes her first appearance in the issue on the fifth page. It's funny that her companion, Gilbert (whom Gaiman modeled on G.K. Chesterton, remember), is casually referenced by Klinger on a later page as Fiddler's Green, the final monster Dream will have to recover, even though as far as I know this hasn't been revealed yet in the comic, even by the end of the issue. The others include Brute and Glob, dispatched last issue and the ones who were holding Jed, Rose's brother, and of course the Corinthian, who becomes the showcase of this issue.
As Klinger notes without spoilerage on the sixth page, Chesterton was known for theological paradoxes. Apparently he was known for indicating that a paradox is the truth getting attention by standing on its head. That's true of all the best fiction. If you stare at a Christopher Nolan movie long enough, you realize that this is exactly what he does with all of them.
Anyway, Rose doesn't want a paradox. She wants a story. Gilbert obliges her with an original version of Little Red Riding Hood. Before the Brothers Grimm there was Charles Perrault, who restated classic morality tales a century before them. If you know anything about the Brothers Grimm, you'll know that the stories you know from them are very much Disneyfied, and Perrault is even more grim than Grimm. The seventh and eighth pages are grim indeed, though recognizable enough. The dirty details are hid in words, like the rest of the issue.
We've already met the character whose presence will match this story, by the way, signified by a shirt with a wolf on it. His name is Funland. He appears again on the eighth page. The Corinthian, meanwhile, finally arrives on the tenth page. The shades he's wearing kind of look similar to the ones Jack Knight sports throughout James Robinson's Starman (to bring that up again), or can also be found in the underrated indy comic The Victorian. Like most of the characters in the issue, then, he looks like anything but a serial killer, or maybe exactly like a serial killer.
Nimrod, in case you were wondering, is definitely a serial killer himself, as the twelfth page makes clear. He just seems like he isn't. But again, that's how they all are. He tells a bad joke. On the thirteenth page he continues the opening address of the convention by making it clear that the assembly will not pursue its shared activities during the convention. It would risk drawing attention, which these guys probably shouldn't do when they're all gathered together like this. Naturally, I don't mind spoiling, killings are eventually done.
For movie fans, Klinger provides explanations for the film festival mentioned on the fourteenth page. Thankfully, I'm not familiar with most of the films that appeal to this crowd. Although one of them, Compulsion, stars Orson Welles. Manhunter, the original film version of Red Dragon, the first appearance of Hannibal Lecter, is among them.
The page also includes the first appearance of the Bogeyman. Klinger soft-spoils that his fate in the issue reflects the fact that he's a fake in a collection of very real psychopaths. Unlike other conventions, this one's definitely not for fans.
Rose's experiences at the convention begin on the sixteenth page. Gilbert is careful that he isn't identified by the Corinthian. He becomes skittish enough as a result to abandon Rose, which is not a good thing.
The eighteenth through twentieth pages are the only ones besides a sequence that follows them to feature the serial killers engaging in their natural behavior. If you believe serial killing can somehow be considered natural. It's the fake Bogeyman getting his due from his idols. The real Bogeyman was dispatched in an issue of Swamp Thing some five years earlier.
Funland enters the spotlight as it were on the twenty-first and -second pages when he runs into Rose. Klinger notes that Gaiman originally scripted him as Disneyland. It's just as well that the name had to be changed, because otherwise it would have made the character very stupid rather than simply very disturbed, because he explains that he has a very special secret place where he "collects," that would just have been obvious to anyone if he went around calling himself Disneyland.
Klinger explains the insanity defense on the twenty-sixth page. This and the following page are Gaiman's only real attempt to explore the psychology of his subjects for the issue.
On the twenty-eighth page, Funland's real name is revealed to be Nathan Diskin. Now, I know I could extrapolate from that name. Klinger is either discreet or doesn't see its significance. He does, however, realize that Funland is finally acting out the story of Little Red Riding Hood.
For mainstream comic book fans, a version of Little Red Riding Hood might be said to exist in the Red Hood persona, in some versions the original criminal identity of the Joker and in recent comics the current heroic identity of Jason Todd, the second Robin and the one murdered by Joker in the classic "Death in the Family" story arc. I don't think anyone's explored the psychology of this, or the connection to Little Red Riding Hood. Consider this some food for thought, as it were.
Gilbert at least left Rose with a calling card, the name Morpheus, which of course is one of the ones Dream uses. The title character makes his appearance in the issue by rescuing Rose and disarming Funland, which as detailed on the thirty-first page and as explained by Klinger involves an allusion to an Oscar Wilde story.
The Corinthian, who has replaced the absent Family Man as the keynote speaker of the convention, has his real moment following this, but when he sees Dream, who has stuck around, he knows as well as we do that this particular nightmare is finally coming to an end (in more ways than one, as the length of the issue that I previously indicated would have been something readers even then would have found remarkable).
The conclusion makes Dream into very much a deus ex machina, who magically undoes the horror of the lives of all those serial killers. Klinger lets us in on Gaiman's direction for the faces of these maniacs as they realize what's happened on the thirty-sixth page, though the artist didn't really pull it off. For whatever reason, when Klinger explains what Gaiman's script was supposed to indicate, the artist rarely pulls it off.
This page also sees Gilbert return, with the body of Jed. Jed is not dead, by the way. But the issue is finally done soon enough.
Very entertaining in a very Sandman way, though.
Sandman #14 is thirty-eight pages long. That's how I'm going to start this reading post. This is not usual, for an extended issue to appear in a series for a fairly random reason. That would be an indication of the growing significance of the series at that time for DC (it wasn't until 1993 that the Vertigo imprint existed), and Neil Gaiman's growing ability to do exactly what he wanted.
For instance, this issue is all about serial killers. The "Cereal Convention" mentioned previously is held. We know about it because Rose Walker and Gilbert have stumbled into the middle of it, which ends up being something of a problem during the issue. Part of the reason the issue happens at all is because Gaiman noted even in 1990 (or I guess 1989 when he would have written it) that serial killers were becoming a fairly uniquely American phenomenon. Sure, Jack the Ripper was British, but that was a hundred years in the past. Well before the rest of us really started to appreciate it, Gaiman was writing about it in an issue of Sandman.
These days, every other TV show is dedicated to crime and some of them serial killers, including Criminal Minds, which is fascinating but also follows the formula of solving the crime and capturing the killer by the end of each episode. A lot of people also seem to be fascinated by Dexter, subject of a TV show and series of books. There's also Hannibal Lecter, the most famous serial killer in American fiction and the screen, now in his first TV show. Clearly serial killers fascinate us, their unique psychology.
The creepiest thing about the issue is that it doesn't judge serial killers, at least not outright. You could read most of it and not even realize that you're reading about serial killers. They're referred to as "collectors" more than serial killers throughout the story. They're odd personalities with quirky interests and opinions. They, uh, also kill people.
Leslie S. Klinger's notes, as always, provide insight into Gaiman's mindset, right from the first page, transcribing from the script. Gaiman appears to be one of those writers who analyzes his own story as he explains to the artist what's supposed to be happening. He also explains how the issue delves into a certain horror type, the way a few select other issues have, including the Doctor Dee diner episode in the sixth issue, which is the first instance where Gaiman is creating his own horror genre, including this one. Sandman is sometimes very easily defined as horror, but not in the Stephen King way, or even Edgar Allen Poe. It's very much existentialism, which I guess is why it became so easily associated with the emerging Goth culture, because Goths like to think they're existentialists. But the South Park episode pretty much exposed that for what it really was, a lot of posers just looking for an alternative social group. Sandman is the real deal.
It's funny that Klinger keeps identifying a singing serial killer as not intending irony in his song selections, because it's really only Klinger who can make that distinction. It doesn't read one way or the other on the page. Maybe Gaiman said something about it in the script? Or we're just supposed to assume that serial killers really don't connect with even a basic level of reality as most of us know it? In notes on another page, he muses on the nature of psychopaths, which is a type that exists outside of the serial killer framework. Psychopaths, I might add, who are not as awesome as the ones featured in the movie Seven Psychopaths. I'm talking the controlling kind who dominate every bureaucratic structure. But we're here to talk about Sandman.
On the third page we have our first reference to the absence of a particular serial killer, the Family Man (unrelated to an underrated Nicolas Cage film, although Nic might be considered an entirely different kind of psychopath). The Family Man is absent, as Klinger notes, because he was dispatched in an extended storyline from Hellblazer, the series that featured John Constantine. We also meet convention organizer Nimrod for the first time. Klinger never explains the significance behind Nimrod's name, but it comes from the Bible. He was a great-grandson of Noah who was known as a mighty hunter. There are ironies there.
There's also a character who refers to Nimrod as "bub" on the fourth page. Klinger doesn't make a note about that, either, but clearly in comics that's a reference to Wolverine, another version of the classic psychopath archetype.
Rose, the girl who's unwittingly here because she's looking for her brother, who was being held by humans of other despicable characteristics, makes her first appearance in the issue on the fifth page. It's funny that her companion, Gilbert (whom Gaiman modeled on G.K. Chesterton, remember), is casually referenced by Klinger on a later page as Fiddler's Green, the final monster Dream will have to recover, even though as far as I know this hasn't been revealed yet in the comic, even by the end of the issue. The others include Brute and Glob, dispatched last issue and the ones who were holding Jed, Rose's brother, and of course the Corinthian, who becomes the showcase of this issue.
As Klinger notes without spoilerage on the sixth page, Chesterton was known for theological paradoxes. Apparently he was known for indicating that a paradox is the truth getting attention by standing on its head. That's true of all the best fiction. If you stare at a Christopher Nolan movie long enough, you realize that this is exactly what he does with all of them.
Anyway, Rose doesn't want a paradox. She wants a story. Gilbert obliges her with an original version of Little Red Riding Hood. Before the Brothers Grimm there was Charles Perrault, who restated classic morality tales a century before them. If you know anything about the Brothers Grimm, you'll know that the stories you know from them are very much Disneyfied, and Perrault is even more grim than Grimm. The seventh and eighth pages are grim indeed, though recognizable enough. The dirty details are hid in words, like the rest of the issue.
We've already met the character whose presence will match this story, by the way, signified by a shirt with a wolf on it. His name is Funland. He appears again on the eighth page. The Corinthian, meanwhile, finally arrives on the tenth page. The shades he's wearing kind of look similar to the ones Jack Knight sports throughout James Robinson's Starman (to bring that up again), or can also be found in the underrated indy comic The Victorian. Like most of the characters in the issue, then, he looks like anything but a serial killer, or maybe exactly like a serial killer.
Nimrod, in case you were wondering, is definitely a serial killer himself, as the twelfth page makes clear. He just seems like he isn't. But again, that's how they all are. He tells a bad joke. On the thirteenth page he continues the opening address of the convention by making it clear that the assembly will not pursue its shared activities during the convention. It would risk drawing attention, which these guys probably shouldn't do when they're all gathered together like this. Naturally, I don't mind spoiling, killings are eventually done.
For movie fans, Klinger provides explanations for the film festival mentioned on the fourteenth page. Thankfully, I'm not familiar with most of the films that appeal to this crowd. Although one of them, Compulsion, stars Orson Welles. Manhunter, the original film version of Red Dragon, the first appearance of Hannibal Lecter, is among them.
The page also includes the first appearance of the Bogeyman. Klinger soft-spoils that his fate in the issue reflects the fact that he's a fake in a collection of very real psychopaths. Unlike other conventions, this one's definitely not for fans.
Rose's experiences at the convention begin on the sixteenth page. Gilbert is careful that he isn't identified by the Corinthian. He becomes skittish enough as a result to abandon Rose, which is not a good thing.
The eighteenth through twentieth pages are the only ones besides a sequence that follows them to feature the serial killers engaging in their natural behavior. If you believe serial killing can somehow be considered natural. It's the fake Bogeyman getting his due from his idols. The real Bogeyman was dispatched in an issue of Swamp Thing some five years earlier.
Funland enters the spotlight as it were on the twenty-first and -second pages when he runs into Rose. Klinger notes that Gaiman originally scripted him as Disneyland. It's just as well that the name had to be changed, because otherwise it would have made the character very stupid rather than simply very disturbed, because he explains that he has a very special secret place where he "collects," that would just have been obvious to anyone if he went around calling himself Disneyland.
Klinger explains the insanity defense on the twenty-sixth page. This and the following page are Gaiman's only real attempt to explore the psychology of his subjects for the issue.
On the twenty-eighth page, Funland's real name is revealed to be Nathan Diskin. Now, I know I could extrapolate from that name. Klinger is either discreet or doesn't see its significance. He does, however, realize that Funland is finally acting out the story of Little Red Riding Hood.
For mainstream comic book fans, a version of Little Red Riding Hood might be said to exist in the Red Hood persona, in some versions the original criminal identity of the Joker and in recent comics the current heroic identity of Jason Todd, the second Robin and the one murdered by Joker in the classic "Death in the Family" story arc. I don't think anyone's explored the psychology of this, or the connection to Little Red Riding Hood. Consider this some food for thought, as it were.
Gilbert at least left Rose with a calling card, the name Morpheus, which of course is one of the ones Dream uses. The title character makes his appearance in the issue by rescuing Rose and disarming Funland, which as detailed on the thirty-first page and as explained by Klinger involves an allusion to an Oscar Wilde story.
The Corinthian, who has replaced the absent Family Man as the keynote speaker of the convention, has his real moment following this, but when he sees Dream, who has stuck around, he knows as well as we do that this particular nightmare is finally coming to an end (in more ways than one, as the length of the issue that I previously indicated would have been something readers even then would have found remarkable).
The conclusion makes Dream into very much a deus ex machina, who magically undoes the horror of the lives of all those serial killers. Klinger lets us in on Gaiman's direction for the faces of these maniacs as they realize what's happened on the thirty-sixth page, though the artist didn't really pull it off. For whatever reason, when Klinger explains what Gaiman's script was supposed to indicate, the artist rarely pulls it off.
This page also sees Gilbert return, with the body of Jed. Jed is not dead, by the way. But the issue is finally done soon enough.
Very entertaining in a very Sandman way, though.
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Reading Comics #104 "The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 #13"
My series exploring The Annotated Sandman continues!
Before we get into the actual issue, Sandman #13, to be discussed today, let me just drop some of my own emerging thoughts.
Neil Gaiman's Sandman is very close to a modern Canterbury Tales, or 1001 Arabian Nights if you will. It's a story about stories. As long as there are readers, there will always be an audience for this kind of material.
It also strikes me for the first time that The Shade, the mini-series concluded last year by James Robinson from his own Starman, is very similar to Gaiman's Sandman, almost a twelve issue condensation of the series. I've been wondering why more people didn't care as much about The Shade as I did. I loved it, and I started loving it even more. I haven't read the complete Starman. I've gotten a comment here at Comics Reader before when I talked about The Shade that reiterated the emerging opinion that Robinson may after all be more miss than hit. (Although Earth 2 seems like another hit.) It's a shame, really, because when he's on, Robinson is undoubtedly among the best writers in comics, and The Shade as with Starman was very much Robinson at his best. Maybe it's a testament to the fact that Starman was not only not at all relevant to the New 52 that had just launched when The Shade debuted, and that Starman was in nearly a decade in the past at that point. Comics fans typically have a long memory, but they can also be a little "what have you done for me lately" as a crowd. But time will be more kind.
I mention all this because Sandman #13 is all about time. It concerns Dream's visits with Hob Gadling every hundred years, starting in 1389. It has nothing to do with the arc that's been going on the last few issues except maybe a metaphorical connection.
Leslie S. Klinger's notes are at their most extensive in the issue as they explain what was going on circa 1389, Black Death and such.
Hob is conversing with Geoffrey Chaucer when we first meet him. Not the Chaucer of A Knight's Tale, in which the brilliant Paul Bettany portrays him as a lively individual who frequently ends up nude, but the guy getting ready to write, well, The Canterbury Tales. Hob is less concerned with the flux that's about to take place in the general spread of reading than with his notion that people only die because it's what they expect to happen. He argues that if he refutes that concept, he won't. Dream decides on a lark to allow him to do just that, stating simply that he'll see him in a hundred years.
Gaiman associates the result with the Wandering Jew, a figure of legend who denied Christ and was thus condemned to wander the earth until the Second Coming.
Some of the story is a commentary on how the old adage, "the more things change the more they stay the same." Still, things are different with each visit. The 1489 visit is mostly about the cosmetic differences. The 1589 is Gaiman's chance to talk about Shakespeare. In fact, Shakespeare himself appears prominently in this sequence. It's curious that Gaiman suggests Dream is somehow responsible for the great works that follow this early period in Shakespeare's career. We all know it was really Gwyneth Paltrow and her "bibbies."
By the way, Dream looks awesome in this sequence. The issue is a little like the Sandman version of Blackadder, the great Rowan Atkinson sitcom not called Mr. Bean.
It's also worth noting that it's very possible for a greater artist to be inspired by great art. Critics in the Shakespeare Identity debate don't seem to take that into consideration. Christopher Marlowe wrote The Tragicall History of Doctor Faustus. Putting aside whether or not he might have done something better had he not met an untimely end, it's still fairly obvious and not just because the culture has since gravitated toward Shakespeare that his best doesn't compare to Hamlet.
Klinger cleverly notes on the twelfth page that Gaiman references the famous summary of Fred Astaire from early in the Hollywood icon's career: "Can't act. Slightly bald. Also dances."
In 1689, Hob has fallen in fortune.
In 1789, Hob and Dream have been identified as the Wandering Jew and the Devil by locals who've caught on to the fact that they meet each century. It's Lady Johanna Constantine who dares to call them out. Apparently she comes back, but not in this volume.
She's also one of several oblique references to John Constantine, who himself previously appeared in Sandman. Also referenced is Jason Blood, human counterpart to Etrigan the Demon, who has also himself appeared in the series. Blood is one of several DC characters who don't age. Vandal Savage is another famous example. A slightly less orthodox version of this type is Resurrection Man. He's had a few chances in the past twenty years to have an ongoing series.
In 1889, the obligatory Jack the Ripper reference is made. Klinger has remarkable restraint concerning this. He instead speaks at some length about a famous whore.
Hob at this point has assumed the real point of these encounters is that Dream is in fact lonely. In 1989, he doesn't exactly refute the idea.
Before we get into the actual issue, Sandman #13, to be discussed today, let me just drop some of my own emerging thoughts.
Neil Gaiman's Sandman is very close to a modern Canterbury Tales, or 1001 Arabian Nights if you will. It's a story about stories. As long as there are readers, there will always be an audience for this kind of material.
It also strikes me for the first time that The Shade, the mini-series concluded last year by James Robinson from his own Starman, is very similar to Gaiman's Sandman, almost a twelve issue condensation of the series. I've been wondering why more people didn't care as much about The Shade as I did. I loved it, and I started loving it even more. I haven't read the complete Starman. I've gotten a comment here at Comics Reader before when I talked about The Shade that reiterated the emerging opinion that Robinson may after all be more miss than hit. (Although Earth 2 seems like another hit.) It's a shame, really, because when he's on, Robinson is undoubtedly among the best writers in comics, and The Shade as with Starman was very much Robinson at his best. Maybe it's a testament to the fact that Starman was not only not at all relevant to the New 52 that had just launched when The Shade debuted, and that Starman was in nearly a decade in the past at that point. Comics fans typically have a long memory, but they can also be a little "what have you done for me lately" as a crowd. But time will be more kind.
I mention all this because Sandman #13 is all about time. It concerns Dream's visits with Hob Gadling every hundred years, starting in 1389. It has nothing to do with the arc that's been going on the last few issues except maybe a metaphorical connection.
Leslie S. Klinger's notes are at their most extensive in the issue as they explain what was going on circa 1389, Black Death and such.
Hob is conversing with Geoffrey Chaucer when we first meet him. Not the Chaucer of A Knight's Tale, in which the brilliant Paul Bettany portrays him as a lively individual who frequently ends up nude, but the guy getting ready to write, well, The Canterbury Tales. Hob is less concerned with the flux that's about to take place in the general spread of reading than with his notion that people only die because it's what they expect to happen. He argues that if he refutes that concept, he won't. Dream decides on a lark to allow him to do just that, stating simply that he'll see him in a hundred years.
Gaiman associates the result with the Wandering Jew, a figure of legend who denied Christ and was thus condemned to wander the earth until the Second Coming.
Some of the story is a commentary on how the old adage, "the more things change the more they stay the same." Still, things are different with each visit. The 1489 visit is mostly about the cosmetic differences. The 1589 is Gaiman's chance to talk about Shakespeare. In fact, Shakespeare himself appears prominently in this sequence. It's curious that Gaiman suggests Dream is somehow responsible for the great works that follow this early period in Shakespeare's career. We all know it was really Gwyneth Paltrow and her "bibbies."
By the way, Dream looks awesome in this sequence. The issue is a little like the Sandman version of Blackadder, the great Rowan Atkinson sitcom not called Mr. Bean.
It's also worth noting that it's very possible for a greater artist to be inspired by great art. Critics in the Shakespeare Identity debate don't seem to take that into consideration. Christopher Marlowe wrote The Tragicall History of Doctor Faustus. Putting aside whether or not he might have done something better had he not met an untimely end, it's still fairly obvious and not just because the culture has since gravitated toward Shakespeare that his best doesn't compare to Hamlet.
Klinger cleverly notes on the twelfth page that Gaiman references the famous summary of Fred Astaire from early in the Hollywood icon's career: "Can't act. Slightly bald. Also dances."
In 1689, Hob has fallen in fortune.
In 1789, Hob and Dream have been identified as the Wandering Jew and the Devil by locals who've caught on to the fact that they meet each century. It's Lady Johanna Constantine who dares to call them out. Apparently she comes back, but not in this volume.
She's also one of several oblique references to John Constantine, who himself previously appeared in Sandman. Also referenced is Jason Blood, human counterpart to Etrigan the Demon, who has also himself appeared in the series. Blood is one of several DC characters who don't age. Vandal Savage is another famous example. A slightly less orthodox version of this type is Resurrection Man. He's had a few chances in the past twenty years to have an ongoing series.
In 1889, the obligatory Jack the Ripper reference is made. Klinger has remarkable restraint concerning this. He instead speaks at some length about a famous whore.
Hob at this point has assumed the real point of these encounters is that Dream is in fact lonely. In 1989, he doesn't exactly refute the idea.
Friday, April 5, 2013
Reading Comics #103 "The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 #12"
My scholarly look at The Annotated Sandman continues!
The twelfth issue of Neil Gaiman's Sandman is all about the woman's burden, following Lyta, short for Hippolyta, not the version of the character who later emerged as Wonder Woman's mother-who-looks-so-much-like-her-that-she-replaced-her-for-a-while, but tied up in previous continuity that involved what was at one point considered Wonder Woman's daughter.
Yeah, so continuity is a peculiarly comic book problem.
Anyway, Lyta is tied up in the concept of lineage no matter where she falls. This version was married to Hector Hall, the son of Carter Hall, better known as Hawkman in any continuity. Lyta and Hector were part of the original Infinity Inc., which was composed of the offspring of the original Justice Society of America. (Later, Geoff Johns absorbed that concept into the Society itself.)
Leslie S. Klinger transcribes a lot of Gaiman's notes about Lyta and her role, and how women tend to be sidelined, even when they aren't pregnant. Lyta's been pregnant in the story context for three years.
The Sandman Hector Hall became is a merry idiot, referenced at one point in the notes as Gaiman's pastiche on Adam West's Batman. For the record, I'd love to read the original Jack Kirby Sandman comics. Then again, I'd love to read all the old Jack Kirby comics. The man was a genius.
The issue has a more direct focus on Jed, the hapless brother of Rose Walker who's been held captive by "benefactors" for the past half decade or so. The sixth page is particularly grim about how this arrangement "works" for everyone involved.
I should note for the record that the art for this issue is from Chris Bachalo. Bachalo actually made his name on Sandman (specifically on two mini-series featuring Death, The High Cost of Living and The Time of Your Life), but by the time I was old enough to appreciate the names of comic book creators, I knew him best in association with the X-Men. His best-known work in that regard was Generation X with Scott Lobdell, which he helped create. Sandman #12 was actually Bachalo's first professional comics work. It's the best-looking issue of the series so far.
The eleventh page has a humorous explanation from Klinger on one of the visual elements of the story, an apparently throwaway gag about a Cereal Convention that's actually geared toward serial killers. There's a partial transcription of the guest list visible. Klinger provides the rest of it.
The twelfth page includes a reference to Watchmen that's harder for readers of a black and white edition to decipher, so I'm glad there's a note about it.
The Corinthian's eye mouths eat someone's fingers who's trying to attack him.
When Dream refers to the Kirby Sandman as "Little Ghost," I can't help but think of the White Stripes song. I love the song anyway, and so chances were equally good that I would have been thinking about it anyway, but it's nice to see a connection in the ether.
The whole idea of Brute and Glob being so easily caught is a little disappointing, but it gets Kirby Sandman a story in Gaiman's Sandman, so I won't complain too much. Although yes, he comes off as ridiculous, a little odd, because of all the traditional heroes Gaiman could have chosen to use, this was one he could have very easily taken seriously. Still, it's not offensively dismissive like Garth Ennis, so again, I won't complain too much. It's an interesting counterpoint to Doctor Destiny.
It's interesting how Lyta's story ends, however. Her dream life, which was something of a nightmare, is removed, but her real life may actually be more nightmarish.
And another issue ends with the Corinthian. This time with added Jed!
The twelfth issue of Neil Gaiman's Sandman is all about the woman's burden, following Lyta, short for Hippolyta, not the version of the character who later emerged as Wonder Woman's mother-who-looks-so-much-like-her-that-she-replaced-her-for-a-while, but tied up in previous continuity that involved what was at one point considered Wonder Woman's daughter.
Yeah, so continuity is a peculiarly comic book problem.
Anyway, Lyta is tied up in the concept of lineage no matter where she falls. This version was married to Hector Hall, the son of Carter Hall, better known as Hawkman in any continuity. Lyta and Hector were part of the original Infinity Inc., which was composed of the offspring of the original Justice Society of America. (Later, Geoff Johns absorbed that concept into the Society itself.)
Leslie S. Klinger transcribes a lot of Gaiman's notes about Lyta and her role, and how women tend to be sidelined, even when they aren't pregnant. Lyta's been pregnant in the story context for three years.
The Sandman Hector Hall became is a merry idiot, referenced at one point in the notes as Gaiman's pastiche on Adam West's Batman. For the record, I'd love to read the original Jack Kirby Sandman comics. Then again, I'd love to read all the old Jack Kirby comics. The man was a genius.
The issue has a more direct focus on Jed, the hapless brother of Rose Walker who's been held captive by "benefactors" for the past half decade or so. The sixth page is particularly grim about how this arrangement "works" for everyone involved.
I should note for the record that the art for this issue is from Chris Bachalo. Bachalo actually made his name on Sandman (specifically on two mini-series featuring Death, The High Cost of Living and The Time of Your Life), but by the time I was old enough to appreciate the names of comic book creators, I knew him best in association with the X-Men. His best-known work in that regard was Generation X with Scott Lobdell, which he helped create. Sandman #12 was actually Bachalo's first professional comics work. It's the best-looking issue of the series so far.
The eleventh page has a humorous explanation from Klinger on one of the visual elements of the story, an apparently throwaway gag about a Cereal Convention that's actually geared toward serial killers. There's a partial transcription of the guest list visible. Klinger provides the rest of it.
The twelfth page includes a reference to Watchmen that's harder for readers of a black and white edition to decipher, so I'm glad there's a note about it.
The Corinthian's eye mouths eat someone's fingers who's trying to attack him.
When Dream refers to the Kirby Sandman as "Little Ghost," I can't help but think of the White Stripes song. I love the song anyway, and so chances were equally good that I would have been thinking about it anyway, but it's nice to see a connection in the ether.
The whole idea of Brute and Glob being so easily caught is a little disappointing, but it gets Kirby Sandman a story in Gaiman's Sandman, so I won't complain too much. Although yes, he comes off as ridiculous, a little odd, because of all the traditional heroes Gaiman could have chosen to use, this was one he could have very easily taken seriously. Still, it's not offensively dismissive like Garth Ennis, so again, I won't complain too much. It's an interesting counterpoint to Doctor Destiny.
It's interesting how Lyta's story ends, however. Her dream life, which was something of a nightmare, is removed, but her real life may actually be more nightmarish.
And another issue ends with the Corinthian. This time with added Jed!
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?
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?
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Reading Comics #101 "The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 #10"
Before we get into the pages, let's do another title-of-the-post ditty. I would not be upset if you misread that as Reading Comics 101, like I'm teaching a class. Because that's what this whole blog be about, yo!
Ego deflated once again, of course the real topic is The Sandman #10 as presented in Leslie S. Klinger's The Annotated Sandman Volume 1. This issue marks the start of "The Doll's House," the eponymous arc from the original second collection from Neil Gaiman's fantasy classic.
On the very first page, Klinger explains a little of the background for the title of the arc for anyone particularly interested, which eventually concludes with a rumination on the origins of Superman's Fortress of Solitude. Hey, Sandman may not be a traditional superhero comic, but it's still a comic book, and what else is prominently known about comics than all things Superman?
Technically the page also introduces Desire, another of the Endless, Dream's family, each member of which has a name starting with the letter "d."
Anyway, the issue calls to mind some of those pesky details from the earliest issues of the series, before Gaiman felt he had a good handle on what he was doing, returning to one of the victims of the sleeping sickness as depicted in the very first issue, when Dream's kidnapping led to all sorts of irregularities.
Unity Kinkaid gave birth while she slept for decades. Kind of creepy, yeah (especially when you know she wasn't pregnant before she fell asleep). Well, that's just life. A lot of this issue is a way of humanizing the story, which until this point tends to have sensationalized, well, everything.
Of course, before you get any funny ideas, much of the issue also sets about establishing some of the more mundane aspects of Dream's reality, revealing the talismans of the entire Endless. Klinger explains all of them in his notes for the third page. More of the mythology is explained on the fifth page.
By the sixth page, we catch up with the humans who will occupy most of the issue, Rose Walker (already seen briefly previously) and her mother Miranda. Gaiman's script apparently went to great lengths in describing Rose's intended appearance to the artist. Klinger also notes that another bit of intrigue about Rose, other than her grandmother Unity, is her brother Jed, who was actually introduced by the late great Jack Kirby in a previous incarnation of Sandman.
The seventh page is pretty amusing, because it features the very much American Rose and Miranda attempting to understand the differences in the English culture they'll be experiencing as they visit Unity. Gaiman, of course, is English, but he tends to write American characters, so if you for some reason had no idea (he was in fact part of a vast British exporting of comic book talent in the 1980s that included Alan Moore and Grant Morrison) there you go.
I like layers like that!
The art turns sideways for a few pages, possibly because Rose has fallen asleep and in fact Dream appears in a dream (she's lying across the backseat of a car at the time) as we catch up with some of his housekeeping.
The eleventh and twelfth pages feature a spread that is more or less Gaiman's gift to his emerging Sandman fanatics. Yes, only ten issues in and they not only exist but he's able to write for them in a script.
Anyway, a bunch of monsters, including the pivotal Corinthian, are introduced on the thirteenth page. The Corinthian is notable for having tiny mouths where his eyes are supposed to be. These monsters slipped away while Dream was gone, and so like the first arc this second one will feature cleanup duties.
Gaiman by way of Klinger explains Unity's curious appearance on the sixteenth page, how she's very old but doesn't look very old because for most of her life she didn't exercise any facial muscles, and her fashion sense is affected by what she remembers from her youth. Although most old people I know are similarly in a perpetual fashion time warp.
It's fun that Klinger gets to explain the '45 Rebellion Unity references on the seventeenth page, since it's not 1945 but rather 1745. A country like English would have people talk like that, while Americans tend to only think about wars in its past, or patterns of settlement and migration. This is a fine instance of Klinger helping readers to do some migrating of their own, from what's probably an American mindset to another entirely, which is basically what Gaiman does with Sandman as a whole.
The Hecate, the trilogy of women seen in previous issues, speak with Rose, guiding her and the reader into the dawning awareness that her story is far from over.
By the end of the issue, it's the Corinthian who drives the story forward, however, and Klinger guides the reader again to something particularly clever in the comic. Well, first, he also has to explain something that's lost in a black-and-white reproduction, an effect involving the Corinthian's shades. Then he points out how a couple of word bubbles in the last panel in fact come from the separate mouths from the eye sockets, which is a fine way to remind readers that this dude has at least a visual gag working for him...
Ego deflated once again, of course the real topic is The Sandman #10 as presented in Leslie S. Klinger's The Annotated Sandman Volume 1. This issue marks the start of "The Doll's House," the eponymous arc from the original second collection from Neil Gaiman's fantasy classic.
On the very first page, Klinger explains a little of the background for the title of the arc for anyone particularly interested, which eventually concludes with a rumination on the origins of Superman's Fortress of Solitude. Hey, Sandman may not be a traditional superhero comic, but it's still a comic book, and what else is prominently known about comics than all things Superman?
Technically the page also introduces Desire, another of the Endless, Dream's family, each member of which has a name starting with the letter "d."
Anyway, the issue calls to mind some of those pesky details from the earliest issues of the series, before Gaiman felt he had a good handle on what he was doing, returning to one of the victims of the sleeping sickness as depicted in the very first issue, when Dream's kidnapping led to all sorts of irregularities.
Unity Kinkaid gave birth while she slept for decades. Kind of creepy, yeah (especially when you know she wasn't pregnant before she fell asleep). Well, that's just life. A lot of this issue is a way of humanizing the story, which until this point tends to have sensationalized, well, everything.
Of course, before you get any funny ideas, much of the issue also sets about establishing some of the more mundane aspects of Dream's reality, revealing the talismans of the entire Endless. Klinger explains all of them in his notes for the third page. More of the mythology is explained on the fifth page.
By the sixth page, we catch up with the humans who will occupy most of the issue, Rose Walker (already seen briefly previously) and her mother Miranda. Gaiman's script apparently went to great lengths in describing Rose's intended appearance to the artist. Klinger also notes that another bit of intrigue about Rose, other than her grandmother Unity, is her brother Jed, who was actually introduced by the late great Jack Kirby in a previous incarnation of Sandman.
The seventh page is pretty amusing, because it features the very much American Rose and Miranda attempting to understand the differences in the English culture they'll be experiencing as they visit Unity. Gaiman, of course, is English, but he tends to write American characters, so if you for some reason had no idea (he was in fact part of a vast British exporting of comic book talent in the 1980s that included Alan Moore and Grant Morrison) there you go.
I like layers like that!
The art turns sideways for a few pages, possibly because Rose has fallen asleep and in fact Dream appears in a dream (she's lying across the backseat of a car at the time) as we catch up with some of his housekeeping.
The eleventh and twelfth pages feature a spread that is more or less Gaiman's gift to his emerging Sandman fanatics. Yes, only ten issues in and they not only exist but he's able to write for them in a script.
Anyway, a bunch of monsters, including the pivotal Corinthian, are introduced on the thirteenth page. The Corinthian is notable for having tiny mouths where his eyes are supposed to be. These monsters slipped away while Dream was gone, and so like the first arc this second one will feature cleanup duties.
Gaiman by way of Klinger explains Unity's curious appearance on the sixteenth page, how she's very old but doesn't look very old because for most of her life she didn't exercise any facial muscles, and her fashion sense is affected by what she remembers from her youth. Although most old people I know are similarly in a perpetual fashion time warp.
It's fun that Klinger gets to explain the '45 Rebellion Unity references on the seventeenth page, since it's not 1945 but rather 1745. A country like English would have people talk like that, while Americans tend to only think about wars in its past, or patterns of settlement and migration. This is a fine instance of Klinger helping readers to do some migrating of their own, from what's probably an American mindset to another entirely, which is basically what Gaiman does with Sandman as a whole.
The Hecate, the trilogy of women seen in previous issues, speak with Rose, guiding her and the reader into the dawning awareness that her story is far from over.
By the end of the issue, it's the Corinthian who drives the story forward, however, and Klinger guides the reader again to something particularly clever in the comic. Well, first, he also has to explain something that's lost in a black-and-white reproduction, an effect involving the Corinthian's shades. Then he points out how a couple of word bubbles in the last panel in fact come from the separate mouths from the eye sockets, which is a fine way to remind readers that this dude has at least a visual gag working for him...
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Reading Comics #100 "The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 #9"
Just a note before we get on with the festivities:
As the title of this post indicates, this is the 100th edition of this particular regular feature here at Comics Reader. As the label suggests, it started out as an eponymous tag for the blog itself, and the material that's been covered (which is archived here) has been at times very scattershot. This latest series under what was finally settled as Reading Comics under consistent numbering months ago has been fun to do and has helped streamline and refine my approach to the entire blog, which will become more and more evident.
Now to have some fun!
Finally past material previously collected in Preludes & Nocturnes, the only Sandman I've had any prior working experience with, the ninth issue begins what might also be found in The Doll's House. It's also a standalone issue, but resonates with what came before and what will follow, story time in a very Sandman fashion and also familiar to what might be found in a typical Neil Gaiman story regardless of where it's found.
We begin in Africa, deep in the tribal tradition, and in fact a rite of passage that can be found in many cultures, not in this specific form but as a general focus for entering adult life. Leslie S. Klinger is pretty chatty in the notes, at least early on, before the story simply takes on its own fascination.
On the second page Klinger talks about Nelson Mandela's experiences with such a rite, although not so much the story aspect, which to Gaiman's version is key, and the only way Dream himself appears in the issue. Perhaps it's entirely fitting that Morpheus is a supporting character after all. Most of the time when you're dreaming you're not really aware of that fact. The act of dreaming is always a guide.
The tale the young man hears from his own guide is about an African city of the past, whose queen falls in love with a mysterious visitor who turns out to be Dream. She goes on a quest to discover who it was, and it's the queen herself, Nada (Klinger explains all about this name and its various cultural interpretations), who rejects Dream as a mate, convinced that the match could never work.
At this point I'm going to be learning quite a bit about what happens next, so the end of this story really is a mystery. Gaiman ends the issue with the suggestion that Nada's story may not be finished, that Dream's potential love match may not be lost. Or perhaps it is and this ends up defining him a great deal. A writer like Gaiman can fold a lot of story into a single narrative, and Sandman is his masterpiece in this regard, and in fact a lot of my writing is done in the method I gleamed from everything I'd come to know about Sandman (in particular a currently unpublished novel entitled Modern Ark).
To my mind, an issue like this one is brilliant in and of itself. It speaks as much to my memories of American Gods and Anansi Boys as what I've already read of Sandman and what I expect in the future. I can see why some people would say Preludes & Nocturnes might be skippable, although it really isn't, that The Doll's House may be the true beginning of the story, because this prelude is undeniably what you'd expect from the series if you'd never read any of it before (the first issue itself is like that, too) and only read about it.
As the title of this post indicates, this is the 100th edition of this particular regular feature here at Comics Reader. As the label suggests, it started out as an eponymous tag for the blog itself, and the material that's been covered (which is archived here) has been at times very scattershot. This latest series under what was finally settled as Reading Comics under consistent numbering months ago has been fun to do and has helped streamline and refine my approach to the entire blog, which will become more and more evident.
Now to have some fun!
Finally past material previously collected in Preludes & Nocturnes, the only Sandman I've had any prior working experience with, the ninth issue begins what might also be found in The Doll's House. It's also a standalone issue, but resonates with what came before and what will follow, story time in a very Sandman fashion and also familiar to what might be found in a typical Neil Gaiman story regardless of where it's found.
We begin in Africa, deep in the tribal tradition, and in fact a rite of passage that can be found in many cultures, not in this specific form but as a general focus for entering adult life. Leslie S. Klinger is pretty chatty in the notes, at least early on, before the story simply takes on its own fascination.
On the second page Klinger talks about Nelson Mandela's experiences with such a rite, although not so much the story aspect, which to Gaiman's version is key, and the only way Dream himself appears in the issue. Perhaps it's entirely fitting that Morpheus is a supporting character after all. Most of the time when you're dreaming you're not really aware of that fact. The act of dreaming is always a guide.
The tale the young man hears from his own guide is about an African city of the past, whose queen falls in love with a mysterious visitor who turns out to be Dream. She goes on a quest to discover who it was, and it's the queen herself, Nada (Klinger explains all about this name and its various cultural interpretations), who rejects Dream as a mate, convinced that the match could never work.
At this point I'm going to be learning quite a bit about what happens next, so the end of this story really is a mystery. Gaiman ends the issue with the suggestion that Nada's story may not be finished, that Dream's potential love match may not be lost. Or perhaps it is and this ends up defining him a great deal. A writer like Gaiman can fold a lot of story into a single narrative, and Sandman is his masterpiece in this regard, and in fact a lot of my writing is done in the method I gleamed from everything I'd come to know about Sandman (in particular a currently unpublished novel entitled Modern Ark).
To my mind, an issue like this one is brilliant in and of itself. It speaks as much to my memories of American Gods and Anansi Boys as what I've already read of Sandman and what I expect in the future. I can see why some people would say Preludes & Nocturnes might be skippable, although it really isn't, that The Doll's House may be the true beginning of the story, because this prelude is undeniably what you'd expect from the series if you'd never read any of it before (the first issue itself is like that, too) and only read about it.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Reading Comics #99 "The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 #8"
Sandman #8 is the last issue included in the original collection Preludes & Nocturnes, and as such is the last issue I've previously read of the series on any kind of relevant basis (there was another odd issue, but for all intents and purposes, Preludes is the only real experience I have with the series to this point).
By the way, it's also the introduction of Death, the original Goth Chick.
The first notes Leslie S. Klinger provides reference blurbs that ran in the original comic, which curiously he doesn't provide for new readers, which is something that might have been expected. He's provided lengthy extracts of similar material for previous issues.
Death, for the record, may look like a Goth Chick, but doesn't act like a Goth Chick. She's much more lively! The notes for the third page include a fairly spooky artistic coincidence concerning Neil Gaiman's encounter with a waitress who looked exactly like Death.
Keeping up the pattern established in other issues, Death is more prominent than Dream in the issue, though the star of the comic does end up doing some considerable reflecting based on this reunion with his sister.
If you want to know how lively Death really is, she apparently loves the movie Mary Poppins, which Klinger duly explains as different from the original book material, in such key points as the absence of "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" from the text (although that shouldn't be much of a surprise).
Klinger also explains all about the Egyptian talisman Death sports, the ankh, which ironically is all about life.
For Dream, this is a completely reflective issue, actually, as he remembers everything that he's experienced since the start of the series. It's Death, however, who basically says what Gaiman's about to do with the rest of the series, starting a whole new story. In a way, it's more appropriate than anyone seems to have considered for Gaiman to have done his version of a traditional superhero story to start things off, because that's not what anything else will be like.
As the issue progresses, Gaiman revisits some of the stuff he's already done in a different way, the little vignettes of lives that have populated the series so far. This is turning out to be reliable material.
Klinger explains what you might to expect if you're intrigued by Death and want to know what else she does, by far at this point the most interesting example of this impulse in the notes, since Death is the most famous example so far. If you ever wondered what Gaiman does in Death: The High Cost of Living, for example, Klinger lets you know. It's a little surprising that Gaiman hasn't devoted more time to Death.
Though, of course, by the end of the issue it's Dream who's ready to move on, appropriate for any visit from Death...
By the way, it's also the introduction of Death, the original Goth Chick.
The first notes Leslie S. Klinger provides reference blurbs that ran in the original comic, which curiously he doesn't provide for new readers, which is something that might have been expected. He's provided lengthy extracts of similar material for previous issues.
Death, for the record, may look like a Goth Chick, but doesn't act like a Goth Chick. She's much more lively! The notes for the third page include a fairly spooky artistic coincidence concerning Neil Gaiman's encounter with a waitress who looked exactly like Death.
Keeping up the pattern established in other issues, Death is more prominent than Dream in the issue, though the star of the comic does end up doing some considerable reflecting based on this reunion with his sister.
If you want to know how lively Death really is, she apparently loves the movie Mary Poppins, which Klinger duly explains as different from the original book material, in such key points as the absence of "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" from the text (although that shouldn't be much of a surprise).
Klinger also explains all about the Egyptian talisman Death sports, the ankh, which ironically is all about life.
For Dream, this is a completely reflective issue, actually, as he remembers everything that he's experienced since the start of the series. It's Death, however, who basically says what Gaiman's about to do with the rest of the series, starting a whole new story. In a way, it's more appropriate than anyone seems to have considered for Gaiman to have done his version of a traditional superhero story to start things off, because that's not what anything else will be like.
As the issue progresses, Gaiman revisits some of the stuff he's already done in a different way, the little vignettes of lives that have populated the series so far. This is turning out to be reliable material.
Klinger explains what you might to expect if you're intrigued by Death and want to know what else she does, by far at this point the most interesting example of this impulse in the notes, since Death is the most famous example so far. If you ever wondered what Gaiman does in Death: The High Cost of Living, for example, Klinger lets you know. It's a little surprising that Gaiman hasn't devoted more time to Death.
Though, of course, by the end of the issue it's Dream who's ready to move on, appropriate for any visit from Death...
Friday, March 15, 2013
Reading Comics #98 "The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 #7"
The conclusion of the Doctor Destiny arc finally comes to pass in this latest issue from The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 from Neil Gaiman and Leslie S. Klinger.
Since the start of the series six issues ago, Dream has been attempting to reclaim his lost totems of power from a period where he was held captive for seventy years. The last totem is a gem that manipulated by classic Justice League villain Doctor Destiny, who escaped from Arkham Asylum by the time we caught up with him.
When Dream gets his hands on the gem, he discovers that Doctor Destiny's manipulation has completely warped it. Thus a confrontation in this issue that would be akin to a true superhero experience, if Gaiman were writing any other series.
Instead we get something very similar to what he's done previously, suggesting the lives being influenced by Dream's experiences, this time by way of Doctor Destiny's nightmares. Rather than some knock-down drag-out fight, Dream does a lot of talking, trying to figure out his foe verbally rather than physically.
One of Klinger's first notes is about matters that aren't particularly relevant to a black-and-white reprint, while there are some others that make it clear how the original presentation of the issue has been altered over the years in the various collected editions. (It may be worth noting that in addition to these Annotated volumes, DC is also releasing giant omnibus editions at present.)
The notes for page 10 are particularly relevant, as they explain Gaiman's references to Shakespeare, including the one particularly relevant to today's date, the Ides of March, 3/15. Just for the record!
The next page also talks about Bride of Frankenstein, which may still be one of the most fascinating developments of the early Hollywood horror era. Has anyone ever written a book with this character?
It should be noted that within the story itself Dream wears his helm, one of the totems that he's reclaimed, which makes him look like the original superhero Sandman, which probably won't happen too many more times in the series. Or I could be wrong. I've read very little of Sandman, so that's why I hope I can continue with the rest of the Annotated volumes. I don't know about you, but I enjoy this process.
Destiny, the non-Doctor Destiny version of Destiny, makes his first appearance in the series on the sixteenth page.
It's just interesting that so much of this issue, if it were illustrated differently, could just as easily be an event issue from a typical superhero comic, the way the pages are laid out and the big climax is reached.
By the end, Doctor Destiny is brought back to Arkham, where he is greeted by Scarecrow, Jonathan Crane, who saw him off, while Klinger notes how Gaiman cleverly guided the artist to reference The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in the last panel.
Page 24 does make a strong case for an even weirder look at DC lore, Arkham as seen by the inmates as they live there, which Gaiman suggests probably is not very pretty.
I guess most people don't really consider the Doctor Destiny arc part of the true Sandman experience, but to me it certainly feels like an essential way to present what it will be all about, how it will be different from what you may have read before. The Vertigo line can sometimes be a little deliberate and singular in the way it's presented, almost embarrassed to be associated with the rest of DC. This is one example that this really doesn't have to be the case. You can be different yet strangely familiar at the same time.
Since the start of the series six issues ago, Dream has been attempting to reclaim his lost totems of power from a period where he was held captive for seventy years. The last totem is a gem that manipulated by classic Justice League villain Doctor Destiny, who escaped from Arkham Asylum by the time we caught up with him.
When Dream gets his hands on the gem, he discovers that Doctor Destiny's manipulation has completely warped it. Thus a confrontation in this issue that would be akin to a true superhero experience, if Gaiman were writing any other series.
Instead we get something very similar to what he's done previously, suggesting the lives being influenced by Dream's experiences, this time by way of Doctor Destiny's nightmares. Rather than some knock-down drag-out fight, Dream does a lot of talking, trying to figure out his foe verbally rather than physically.
One of Klinger's first notes is about matters that aren't particularly relevant to a black-and-white reprint, while there are some others that make it clear how the original presentation of the issue has been altered over the years in the various collected editions. (It may be worth noting that in addition to these Annotated volumes, DC is also releasing giant omnibus editions at present.)
The notes for page 10 are particularly relevant, as they explain Gaiman's references to Shakespeare, including the one particularly relevant to today's date, the Ides of March, 3/15. Just for the record!
The next page also talks about Bride of Frankenstein, which may still be one of the most fascinating developments of the early Hollywood horror era. Has anyone ever written a book with this character?
It should be noted that within the story itself Dream wears his helm, one of the totems that he's reclaimed, which makes him look like the original superhero Sandman, which probably won't happen too many more times in the series. Or I could be wrong. I've read very little of Sandman, so that's why I hope I can continue with the rest of the Annotated volumes. I don't know about you, but I enjoy this process.
Destiny, the non-Doctor Destiny version of Destiny, makes his first appearance in the series on the sixteenth page.
It's just interesting that so much of this issue, if it were illustrated differently, could just as easily be an event issue from a typical superhero comic, the way the pages are laid out and the big climax is reached.
By the end, Doctor Destiny is brought back to Arkham, where he is greeted by Scarecrow, Jonathan Crane, who saw him off, while Klinger notes how Gaiman cleverly guided the artist to reference The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in the last panel.
Page 24 does make a strong case for an even weirder look at DC lore, Arkham as seen by the inmates as they live there, which Gaiman suggests probably is not very pretty.
I guess most people don't really consider the Doctor Destiny arc part of the true Sandman experience, but to me it certainly feels like an essential way to present what it will be all about, how it will be different from what you may have read before. The Vertigo line can sometimes be a little deliberate and singular in the way it's presented, almost embarrassed to be associated with the rest of DC. This is one example that this really doesn't have to be the case. You can be different yet strangely familiar at the same time.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
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.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Reading Comics #96 "The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 #5"
(via vertigocomics.com)
The Sandman #5 is a lot more of Neil Gaiman's take on mainstream DC lore, heavily featuring Doctor Destiny as well as Mister Miracle and Martian Manhunter. Morpheus, alias Dream alias Sandman, is once again a supporting player in his own book.
Interestingly, based on the way Gaiman writes, Leslie Klinger's first notes for the issue actually reference Alfred Hitchcock, from his TV shows. Hitchcock has resurfaced in pop culture recently, from the clear visual cues of Despicable Me to a few movies based on the director himself, one starring Anthony Hopkins. Chances are in generations hence readers will still know who he is.
Doctor Destiny has so far played a surprisingly large role in Sandman, a bogeyman who came into possession of the last totem on Dream's list, a ruby that allows him to manipulate reality. By "him" I refer to John Dee, the last best representation of the corrupting human appropriations of Dream's responsibilities for the last seventy years, an arc begun in the first issue. Artist Sam Keith, Gaiman's main collaborator in this opening arc, has perhaps his signature visual in Doctor Destiny's warped and horrific visage, very much a nightmare itself, although in a twist of dark humor the woman he steals a ride from upon breaking free from Arkham Asylum seems to take everything about him in stride. It may be Gaiman's way of saying that we can rationalize just about anything.
Before his escape, Dee runs into Jonathan Crane, the Scarecrow, a more traditional superhero villain and known inmate of Arkham (Doctor Destiny is by comparison pretty obscure). Dee's mother has just died, and that's his main motivation. Gaiman takes the opportunity to reflect on the true patterns of villain behavior, as well as the conversation Dee has with the woman in the car. A note to deconstructionist writers out there: this is your cue as to a better approach, your target being the villain rather than the hero.
Mister Miracle makes an appearance mostly because he's at this point a member of the Justice League. His dreams are disturbed by his origins, a child of New Genesis swapped with a child of Apokolips, the good and evil homes of Jack Kirby's New Gods in the Fourth World. Too often writers who depict characters from this setting don't have a clue what to do with them. Sometimes it's enough to meditate on the setup, because that alone resonates like the myths Kirby always meant to reflect. Mister Miracle, alias Scott Free, is an escape artist, but his dreams lock him back into his worst memories. Gaiman later did The Eternals for Marvel, based on a similar concept created by Kirby, although I would much prefer his New Gods. It's worth noting again that he did write the brilliant American Gods, as well as Good Omens. The dude does the macabre, but he's also clearly fascinated by thoughts of divinity.
The odd thing is that Mister Miracle can't help Morpheus, but he can redirect him to Martian Manhunter, one of the most fascinating, underutilized characters in comics. And yet that sequence is brief in comparison.
By the way, if you're struggling to keep track of everyone's multiple names in this post, just know that this is something Klinger certainly appreciates. It's a constant refrain in his notes, as it is a theme for Gaiman, and perhaps the true relevance of Doctor Destiny, John Dee, who at one point this issue says "D" could stand for anything. The entire family of The Endless, of which Dream is a part, is named with that letter. The next most famous member of this family is Death, who's even more quintessentially goth than Dream. Though they make a good match.
If there's any surprise in Klinger's notes for this issue, it's that he takes the task of cataloging the contents of the Justice League storage unit lightly. Or Gaiman and Keith generalized most of its contents. When Morpheus finally reclaims his ruby, it's the end of the issue. Dee has tampered with it, and thus marks the first cliffhanger of the series.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Reading Comics #95 "The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 #4"
(via vertigocomics.com)
Well, you gave it your best shot, Neil, but as of The Sandman #4 it all goes to hell.
Ha! Well, have to try and be funny every now again. In all seriousness, Morpheus does in fact go to Hell so he can reclaim his helm, the visual link between this incarnation of Sandman and the original Golden Age superhero (the one with the gas mask). You might think the issue is Etrigan-heavy, but Jack Kirby's Demon is only featured for a few pages. Otherwise this may be the biggest indication in the series so far that it's not going to be just another horror or DC comic.
Leslie S. Klinger makes a lot of his opportunity to annotate the issue by drawing from Gaiman's original script, giving his readers a chance to read the original scripting thoughts on what Hell should look like, which as it turns our are not always exactly followed. There are some pretty seedy things going through Gaiman's head as he envisions territory previously explored by Dante (and Bill & Ted).
There are three rulers of this Hell, the first of them Lucifer (who would later receive a spin-off series, believe it or not), and the others Beelzebub (who is also Lord of the Flies, and as such is depicted as a fly) and Azazel. No Neron (featured in DC's 1995 event Underworld Unleashed), then. Lucifer is the star of the triumvirate, though, while Klinger also makes reference to the greater significance and later appearances of Nada, glimpsed on page seven. As explained by Klinger, Gaiman also includes a classic riddle challenge for Morpheus to handle, which may be familiar to anyone who's enjoyed Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, in which Gollum exhibits an entirely new way to captivate audiences (which of course was also in the book).
Curiously, the issue is followed by the same note included in Klinger's introduction, Gaiman's explanation of the series' origins that was originally printed in the letters column of Sandman #4.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Reading Comics #94 "The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 #3"
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The third issue of Sandman as annotated by Leslie S. Klinger is probably my biggest exposure to John Constantine to date. The erstwhile star of the long-running Vertigo series Hellblazer (final issue being released on 2/20 ahead of a DC relaunch as Constantine) is something of a legend, if not simply a cult favorite, originally found in the pages of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and recently brought back to the mainstream thanks to Brightest Day and Justice League Dark. He was the subject of his own movie in 2005 (also named Constantine) starring Keanu Reeves (physically and nationally the opposite of the part).
Morpheus, also known as Dream and of course Sandman, is trying to reacquire certain totems that contain the bulk of his power. He was previously informed that Constantine was in possession of the pouch of sand, or at least was the last-known possessor. The whole issue is basically a Constantine comic guest-starring Morpheus, with a minor in pop music (I'll explain that in a moment).
I've tried reading Hellblazer in the past, but it seems most of the writers in the title's history were less interested in making it accessible than telling bizarre tales. The series, in fact, seemed the main depository of everything Vertigo was supposed to be, short of establishing its own distinct identity. Constantine was basically the host of his own series, the main character but mostly a guide to whatever the writer wanted to explore. It happens. I could also be wrong. Like I said, I don't have any real experience with the series or character, part of the lore of the medium that's always just eluded me.
Yet in Sandman #3, Constantine ends up being pretty engaging. Neil Gaiman is a writer who understands character pretty well, so it's not so surprising that he's able to make Constantine pop. Klinger has a number of notes about his life and career, context that I find lacking whenever I try to read Hellblazer. To me, Gaiman's approach is the only way to do a character like this. I read Mike Carey's Devil May Care, the first in a series of novels about a similar character, and that was comparable (Carey is another notable Vertigo writer, I might add), as is Gaiman's own Shadow from American Gods and Anansi Boys. I guess what I'm saying is that Constantine is prosaic.
Gaiman's Constantine is concerned with one particular relationship, which also explains what happened to the pouch of sand, and its nasty effects. While we follow Constantine around, the story ends with Morpheus being a pretty good guy for the first time in the series, giving Rachel a last moment of peace after years of the pouch ravaging her. There's not so much to know about Rachel other than Constantine's relationship with her, but that's enough.
Throughout the issue Gaiman takes the opportunity to invoke the pop music that references the topic of dreams, some obvious ("Mr. Sandman"), some I wasn't as familiar with ("In Dreams" from Roy Orbison). I've already mentioned that Klinger is doing a service for readers of the future as much as those of the present. We sometimes believe that pop music will live forever, and in some ways it will, now that we keep recordings of everything, but the music that was popular today, much less yesterday, will not maintain its popularity forever. What you may take for granted as being ubiquitous today may very well be obscure tomorrow. Short of providing a soundtrack with the collection, Klinger's notes will help to keep Gaiman's references relevant.
One thing I learned in the notes was that Constantine is one of the few characters (the Psycho Pirate is the most famous example) who are aware of Crisis on Infinite Earths. To most of DC's characters, the exact details of the Crisis became immediately fuzzy. If you yourself don't know much about this seminal event, it was the original attempt to rectify the continuity of the multiverse, basically by collapsing it into a single universe. While various Elseworlds tales allowed DC to keep alternate versions of characters around, it wasn't until 52 that the multiverse returned.
For the fledgling Sandman, Gaiman does the same for Morpheus that he accomplishes with Constantine, grounding him in a little more concrete context.
Friday, February 8, 2013
Reading Comics #93 "The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 #2"
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My reading of Leslie S. Klinger's Annotated Sandman continues:
In the second issue of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, the reader gets a better idea of the comic book origins of the series, as well as its precedents, specifically in the appearances of Cain and Abel, who at one time served as hosts for House of Mystery and House of Secrets, respectively. Klinger, as with the first issue and no doubt in many to come, is good to provide the exact details. Somewhat curiously he also provides the complete biblical text for the famous siblings, possibly to catch any reader unfamiliar with them up to speed. It is odd to think that so overtly religious figures would appear in comics that were otherwise not particularly religious, but this was also a time when Hollywood was routinely basing many of its high profile films on incidents from the Bible.
One way or another, it's a nice twist not just for the story at hand but on the relationship between the two. You may recall that Cain slew Abel, the first murder. They're the embodiment of the issue's title, "Imperfect Hosts" (that's something I neglected to mention with the first entry), which Klinger also explains in one of his notes. The naming of individual issues in a series can often be a thankless art, but that's another thing that doesn't go overlooked in this project.
Recently liberated from nefarious clutches that kept him a prisoner for seventy years, Morpheus is trying to reclaim his life, and he needs figures like Cain and Abel to do it, to give him back some of the power that has basically been stolen from him. A little like the Horcruxes in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter saga, tokens that Voldemort used to impart a portion of himself for safekeeping, Dream specifically has three items to retrieve: a pouch of sand, a helmet, and a ruby moonstone.
What's interesting about the early Sandman is its more direct ties to DC lore. At the start, of course, there was no Vertigo, and so Sandman was more or less merely a quirky DC title. It was a new vision of a character who'd existed since the Golden Age, Wesley Dodds, who was subsequently featured in the Vertigo series Sandman Mystery Theatre as well as in Mark Waid's Kingdom Come.
In this issue, one of the more obvious links to the mainstream is the appearance of Doctor Destiny, an old Justice League villain who also appears in Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum from the same period. We in fact visit him at Arkham in the issue, but he's not a very imposing figure at the moment.
Morpheus next visits another old DC host, Lucien, who was once Mr. Raven, and current custodian of Dream's home, which has suffered much in his time away. He moves on to the Hecatae, Gaiman's embodiment of the Greek Fates (with apparently an abundance of other incarnations), who give him clues as to the current locations of the items he seeks.
Perhaps none of this is what you'd expect from a series that has been lauded long and loud, and yet it's exactly what it needs at this point. As with many Gaiman stories, it's something of a travel narrative, a journey the main character takes in preparation of something greater.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Reading Comics #92 "The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 #1"
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If any mainstream comic book besides Watchmen will ever be acknowledged as a literary classic, it'll be Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Perhaps one of the first signs is the existence of Leslie S. Klinger's The Annotated Sandman, which is now the version of the series that I hope to read in its completeness. As the title suggests, this is Gaiman's comic book, reprinted in its entirety, with annotations from Klinger, who is an old friend of Gaiman's. It is reprinted in black and white, but Sandman is a series that is more than capable of selling itself with or without color.
My previous experience reading the series is wholly incomplete. I've read the first regular collected volume, Preludes and Nocturnes, as well as the first issue itself, and barely anything beyond that. It's another series that I kick myself for not reading when I originally had the chance, because it was still in regular ongoing print when I was reading comics for the first time in the 1990s. Still, this is a malady that can be corrected these days.
This series of posts will feature my thoughts as I read through at least the first volume of The Annotated Sandman, with thoughts both on Gaiman as well as Klinger. (The second volume was released last November and the third is scheduled for January next year.)
It strikes me, first off, that Klinger provides something of a historical archive with the note on the cover of the first issue, since I would probably have never known without seeing the issues themselves that Sandman was originally subtitled Master of Dreams. Few comic book readers ever think about life after the single issues (although famously, The Dark Knight Returns was originally just The Dark Knight, with different subtitles for individual issues), although of course the collection culture has grown over the last decade. What we'll have in a few decades more, especially as it becomes more and more standard to have and to keep collections in publication, is a disconnect between the readers of the original series and the story as it emerges in history. (Which means that the sometimes bitching I do about DC's lack of a letters column really doesn't matter all that much. I find even myself not really caring about that feature as much as I once did.)
Another key feature of Annotated Sandman that I want to put on record before I forget is that each page is numbered, and more than that, each page of each issue is also recorded. It's a continuing pet peeve of mine that this is less and less standard, whether in a single issue or a collection. So that's something that this work absolutely gets right.
I also want to detail the approach I will be taking as I read the collection. This is not my first time reading an annotated work. Whether it's history books or Susanna Clarke's excellent Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, a work of fiction that cleverly incorporates notes into the narrative process, I've done plenty of trying to read a main text and the extras meant to further illuminate it. The trouble is that editors don't usually know how to present the notes. Sometimes they crop up at the bottom and sometimes they're stuck in the back (which is incredibly laborious unless you develop a method). Here, though, the notes are presented alongside the pages they reference. (This is a hugely oversize volume width-wise.)
I intend to read the page and then read the notes, which reference the exact panel in question. So far it seems to work, and keeps me at a measured pace, not to mention putting a greater emphasis on just what Gaiman accomplishes page to page.
A lot of Klinger's notes are historical in nature, at least in this first issue, explaining what Gaiman might have taken for granted as far as the knowledge of his readers is concerned. Some of it also points readers in the direction of where characters are headed, where they pop up again. Some of it simply explains the arcana incorporated into the narrative, the particular tapestry the characters who trap Morpheus, otherwise known as Dream of the Endless Ones, rely on in order to believe they have an understanding of things.
As far as the story of the issue itself goes, Dream is trapped for seventy years, drastically affecting his ability to regulate that human activity, with a particular effect on several subjects who end up suffering from the "sleepy sickness" that you might know from the excellent Robert De Niro/Robin Williams film Awakenings (which is duly noted by Klinger). This will be at least my third time reading the opening chapter of the saga, so at this point I'm developing a familiarity with it, almost a fondness, the dopey stupidity of the men who think they have any bargaining space with Morpheus, who finally frees himself when a guard finally falls asleep in his presence.
In an odd sort of way, Klinger's notes will force me to read the collection in much the way it was originally presented, issue by issue. This first one is forty pages, but subsequent ones are the more tradition twenty-four.
This should be fun!
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