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Sandman

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00:11 / 17.04.04

I took a look on the search engine, and saw there wasn't a thread on Sandman, and figured no comics forum was complete without at least one.

So, eight years after its conclusion, what do people think of the book and its meaning to the world of comics?

Personally, I think it's still one of the greatest reads, and second only to The Invisibles, in terms of being a great long form work. There's something special about the series, reading it in trade, it feels like a work that just emerged complete, and doesn't show the pains of serialization that Preacher and Transmetropolitan do. Cliffhangers in Preacher feel like Ennis is baiting the audience, while Sandman feels like it is constructed to tell the story in the best way possible. It's one of those works, like Star Wars and Watchmen, where you don't really question what Gaiman is doing, I may have liked certain storylines more than others, but I never felt like he was losing the direction. I'm sure there's a lot of inconsistencies you can point out, but the series was so good, that I didn't look for them, I just got caught up in the world of the book.

I think the art changes work quite well, and feel very natural, as opposed to some instances in The Invisibles where it takes you out of the story (The Invisible Kingdom storyline). Unlike a lot of readers, I liked the stories that focused on Morpheus himself most, particularly The Kindly Ones, which was a brilliant conclusion, and felt like it made good on all of the plot threads that had developed throughout the series.

I think Sandman was perhaps the most important comic since The Fantastic Four, in terms of revolutionizing the way people look at the medium. FF made people think of superheroes as real characters with real problems, which completely changed the way stories were told. Similarly, Gaiman's work made people realize that original, finite stories could be successful, not only within the industry, but also outside of comics. Without Sandman, I doubt we'd see DC publishing Preacher or The Invisibles. Gaiman raised the bar in terms of what the ongoing comics series could do, in a way that even Alan Moore's Swamp Thing didn't.

00:20 / 17.04.04

I never really got into the Sandman series. I tried. Lots of strange, desperate people tried to convince me it was fantastic, but... I thought it took itself far too seriously. I suppose it might appeal to you if you wear eyeliner and you're into getting hysterical over your nails, or something.

00:29 / 17.04.04

I think thats more a case of fanbase destroying your' perceptions of something (Like hardcore Christians and the Bible but that's for another board).

The Sandman can never be considered to be taking itself too seriously, theres great onrunning gags and gallows humour: The slapstick double team of Cain and Abel, Merv Pumpkinhead, The convention for serial killers, Merv Pumpkinhead.....

Sure the Sandman him/itself seems like the ultimate protogoth but don't let that cloud over the other characters from perky Death to.....well....Merv Pumpkinhead

01:31 / 17.04.04

Sandman was great and so is Gaiman. I think that Sandman is better than the Invisibles, although Invisibles is good too.

When you compare the two, it seems to me that Sandman is a much more feminine-brain work (the fact that so many women read it is another great comic acclompishment) that is written in more of an emotions-based fairy tale style.

Invisibles, and most of Grant Morrison's works, are more masculine-brain works that appeal more to that audience. The characters are always secondary to the plot and ideas.

And if you don't like Sandman than you don't like it. It may not be for everyone. (but its not just a goth thing)

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

01:38 / 17.04.04

Yeah, you can never let the more rabid sectors of its fanbase pollute its greatness.

I think its most significant achievement was really The Endless. Much in the way Astro City managed to create a new superhero universe that feels decades old, The Endless are all pitch perfect and feel like you'd imagine these weird nebulous things ought to feel. And nothing need be said about the perfection that is Death.

And just as a plain novel its incredibly cogent and successful. As a comic book it has so many moments that would never work anywhere else. The "So live" page probably being one of the most affecting pages ever built.

Although I love it and know how good it is, I kind of feel like I'll be reading 100 Bullets more once the dust settles. It's more creatively coherent (and thematically coherent, once the 100 issues are through) and less Spin-Off Bound as well (The Further Adventures Of Chucky And His Dice most likely not in the cards. Nor a Minutemen Tarot Deck.). It also deals with its own set of meaty issues, Morality, Redemption, et al. Forgive me. I'm in the midst of a reread.

I also haven't really felt any of the attendant Gaiman Sandman follow-ups either. It kind of takes away from the power of the novel whenever its diluted with more "Oh, and also the Green Lantern" type stories.

But its still a graceful, McKean-tacular achievement. And while 100 Bullets has style and meaty goodness, there's hardly another Comic Book Novel with more heart than Sandman. I mean, really, who among us can read Matthew's Eulogy for Dream with a dry eye?

03:13 / 17.04.04

Sandman was a beautiful, beautiful series. I really don't know what else to say. It was so influential, had so many great quotes, created so many strong characters.

The best thing to come from Sandman, besides the growth of Vertigo and more mature comics, is Lucifer. If you've read Sandman and haven't picked up any Lucifer comics, be ashamed and go get some. It's not Sandman, but in style and scope it's close enough. And, while you're at it, pick up The Endless hardcover that came out last year.

One last thing, hopefully you can help me with it. There is one comic in which a woman is visiting someone at a hospital (or retirement home of sorts?). She goes into a living room kind of area and sits down with three old women. These women tell her a story, a fairy tale, about a kid (or two?) that was/were stolen away and killed by huge birds. I must have searched through every one of the Sandman comics I have for this issue, but I couldn't find it. I must've missed it, or am crazy. Anyone remember this issue or story arc?

03:30 / 17.04.04

Xenoss, that story you're looking for is in the middle of The Kindly Ones storyline, when Rose is in England.

05:45 / 17.04.04

There was a fantastic Sandamn short story that Dave McKean illustrated in the Dust Covers book. The rest of that book is just a collection of all the sandman covers with commentary, but the book is worth it for the short story alone. It's Gaiman crossing that fiction/reality in a very invisibles way, talking about meeting characters from his book. Highly recommended.

miss wonderstarr

08:13 / 17.04.04

I also feel put off by Sandman because of the people who read it. Sure, it got a new audience reading comics -- but they were all annoying chicks into magic-realism-lite who started wearing ankhs and chatting about which artist drew Morpheus cuter.

That, I think (and of course I am stereotyping to an offensive extent) explains the stupid spinoffs from Sandman: statues, figurines, massive glossy Covers from Sandman, The Quotable Sandman, Neil Gaiman's Further Droodles About Sandman, Friends of Neil Sketch Sandman &c.

These weren't the usual comic book spin-offs: they were more expensive and cynical consumer tat. What did something like Doom Patrol spin off into? A single issue of Doom Force? One or two trade paperbacks? Sandman became a whole dumb industry of Christmas coffee-table books about fuck all except reprinting the splash pages and having McKean do his fancy writing and montage-a-photograph routine over the top -- a routine he's been living off since 1985!

I'm afraid I would have liked Sandman a lot better if it had remained a small-scale phenomenon. I also feel its crossover success made it too big for its boots -- early issues were having intelligent fun with Martian Manhunter and Scott Free, like Moore did with DCU characters in Swamp Thing, but once Gaiman got onto all his fancy-nancy Thessalian/Corinthian mythos, he pretended Sandman existed totally outside the DCU. It would have been more of an achievement to keep Morpheus interlocked with that universe.

08:42 / 17.04.04

Korvacs - so you like it better when the sandman was like this band no-one had ever heard off and now everyone is listening to them they have just become too 'commercialized' spoiling it for you?

I don't know... True the sandman does seem to have spawned 10001 sequals, prequals and tie-in products but its success has also underwritten the vertigo imprint to a certain extent (financially and thematically). Without the success of the sandman would we have had the invisibles or 100 bullets? I don't think so... Sandman also set out the goal of a unified longform work by a single author in mainstream. It also set new standards for creator ownership - while I think I am right in believing that DC owns the sandman, it is was an unwritten agreement between them and Gaiman that the sandman ended where it did.

And outside of the impact Sandman had on the comics industry it is also quite a fun read - anyone fancy a comic book club type thing with the sandman - we can take it an issie at a time or storyline by storyline - what do you guys think?

miss wonderstarr

08:58 / 17.04.04

Yes, Sleazenation, that's exactly right -- being new I'm afraid I haven't encountered a quote previous post function, but I mean your first point. I'm aware of how transparent and silly it is, but I do like things better when I can feel they're my little cult object, or at least that I share them with people I can consider kindred spirits. If they fall into the hands of people I can't respect, then I automatically start questioning the text itself.

I like the Psychedelic Furs, for instance. Nobody else much likes or even listens to them, so if I meet someone who shares this fandom, I feel a warm bond and commonality, as if we have a little select taste. If I heard loads of Justin Timberlake fans were getting into the Furs, I'd not just go off the band but I'd probably start finding flaws all through their albums and argue against them on discussion board threads.

If Sandman had remained an excellent dark-fantasy (the pre-Vertigo title for Vertigo!) DCU comic, I would be championing it to the hilt. But then, it wouldn't have spawned such a coffee-table industry if it had stayed on that level. Even Watchmen only spun off into a watch and some action figures.

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:33 / 17.04.04

No offence, Kovacs, but the Psychedelic Furs are a John Hughes band. They mainstream.

That, I think (and of course I am stereotyping to an offensive extent) explains the stupid spinoffs from Sandman: statues, figurines, massive glossy Covers from Sandman, The Quotable Sandman, Neil Gaiman's Further Droodles About Sandman, Friends of Neil Sketch Sandman &c

I think you're confusing two audiences here; the Sandman certainly got an audience of youngish goth girls that many other comics didn't manage, but I don't think that the Death statues, watches etc. were aimed at them, youngish goth girls not generally having the disposable income or the will to get a $200 statuette of Merv Pumpkinhead.

No - the reason these accessories were put on sale is probably partly to do with the time - Morrison's run on doom patrol lasted 44 issues or so - but also because along with the audience of young women Sandman garnered, it also accumulated an audience of comic book readers. Transmetropolitan glasses, Spider Jerusalem action figures, Super Friends playsets... these are sold to collectors, who are primarily I believe male and in their twenties or older, and I imagine that the Sandman statuettes you are complaining about were primarily aimed at the overlap in the audience with Batman rather than the overlap in the audience with Just Seventeen... likewise the books, the hardcovers, the spin-offs written by minor authors - these are taking advantage of a ravening desire to consume that, comic books being a mercantile enterprise, the market attempts to satisfy...

miss wonderstarr

10:40 / 17.04.04

OK, but the Psychedelic Furs are not a "John Hughes band" just because they had one single featured in one of his films. I doubt many viewers of Pretty in Pink own any Psychedelic Furs apart from that one track on the soundtrack album.

also it is a really good film! in a way.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:47 / 17.04.04

I loved the Sandman, but thought it started going rapidly downhill at about the same time Gaiman started believing his own press, and became a lot more self-consciously literary, as opposed to just literary.

11:21 / 17.04.04

Where abouts would you place the shift from literary to self-consciously literary stoatie? I figured there was a recurring anxiety throughout the sandman that the literary references remain overt enough to be noticable even to those who may not otherwise have recognised them as such...

12:45 / 17.04.04

I would definitely be up for a Book Club style reading / discussion of Sandman.

I've read some of it (Fables & Reflections, The Kindly Ones, Season of Mists, Brief Lives and the Endless Nights HC). I got into it after reading the Lucifer series.

I enjoyed the stories which focused on the Endless themselves. (BL is my fave, cos it highlights Del and Dream).

Probably should read more, but I'm a bit put off by the commitment of a 10 trade series, that's a US$200 price tag right there!

So the bookclub thing may give me reason to buy another :-)

Speaking of spin-offs - Vertigo have a new Hunter series out, plotted by Gaiman, Interesting to see Gaiman return like this...

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

17:28 / 17.04.04

I bought Sandman when it came out as a comic, and didn't switch to trades until it was pretty clear that I could get decent money for my comics...and traded the whole batch for a bunch of trades (including the Sandman trades).

While most people look at Vertigo as "The House That Alan Moore Built", I think that without the business model that worked on Sandman (sure, it doesn't sell well, but the trades sell to people who don't go to comic shops), there wouldn't have been a Vertigo, or most of the post 1994 Vertigo comics. Sandman was nearly cancelled a couple of times early in its run, and without the trade sales, it probably would not have gone much past issue #50.

That being said, it did set the tone for the current "trade paperback" mentality which both helps and hinders comics.

And I not only like the Psych Furs, I went to see Pretty In Pink BECAUSE they were on the soundtrack, thinking that any movie that would have them doing the title song had to be pretty damn good. I was wrong.

17:50 / 17.04.04

Yeah, I think the business model that was largely pioneered by the sandman has had an effect of the trade paperback market for the whole of the Mainstream US comic market...

As far as the view that 'waiting for the trade is killing comics' I'm not sure how far that arguement holds true - certainly its having a massive impact on the market for pre-serialized comics, but its also forcing a gradual shift away from preserialization towards larger formats (as in larger page counts) and OGNs. Comics would seem to be following the same path as novels and albums.

18:33 / 17.04.04

I think the wait for the trade mentality is helping comics more than anything. If Sandman didn't come out in trades, it wouldn't have even of a quarter of an audience that it does now. For most people, reading a series in the monthly format is a big commitment, and if you're not a huge comics fan, it takes a lot to get to the shop every month, and pick up the book before it sells out. Especially in the pre-internet era, when it was tougher to get back issues. Trades make the books basically immortal, rather than being a transient item. In that way, I think it's the best thing that could happen to comics, and is to comics what video was to film in the 80's, or more recently, what DVD is to TV shows now.

20:08 / 17.04.04

I have to agree about trade paperbacks. I live about 400 kms from a comic book shop so I can't buy comics but I do have A few trade paperbacks of the Sandman and each one is an entire unique story on its own.The first one I got was the Kindly Ones by accedent but it didn't even ruin the rest of the books I got later and only made The Kindly Ones a better read each time I learned more backstory. Sandman is more about life lessons than action but will always be up there as a great epic.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

23:50 / 17.04.04

sleaze- soon after A Dream Of You... I'll be more precise when I'm less drunk and have the comics in front of me.

I dunno... it was never shit, but it did after a while seem to suffer from Will Self-like "hey! I'm clever! See how clever I am!"-ness.

Maybe it's just me. I like my savants to be idiots.

(OK, I know my views on both Morrison and Moore totally contradict this, but... AAAARGH!!! I'l come back to this when, or if, I'm less drunk.)

16:33 / 18.04.04

I dunno... it was never shit, but it did after a while seem to suffer from Will Self-like "hey! I'm clever! See how clever I am!"-ness.

I think the later storylines are actually less based around this than previous stuff. Think of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," this story basically requires that you know an entire Shakespeare play to get it, that seems to be saying I'm clever. And, of all the storylines, I think Seasons of Mist is the most name dropping, clever of them all. Brief Lives and The Kindly Ones are, IMO, a lot less about showing off literary references, and a lot more about just a really strong story.

I'm not saying this is true for you, but I think for a lot of people who read it as it was coming out, it might have been too easy to say that Gaiman bought into the hype, and that the early stuff, back when no one was reading it, was better.

19:09 / 18.04.04

I think a Barbelith book-club around the Sandman books would be a very good idea indeed. Many of us at the time bought all the books and gradually got a little tired of the hype and - on occasion - of Gaiman's voice. I think particularly it got a bit difficult to stay focused during The Kindly Ones, which seemed to be coming out monthly for most of my twenties. But now it's been over for a few years, it could be the perfect time to take stock of the series and see how much of it lasts. Unlike The Invisibles, which was - I think - something you had to really live through, I suspect it'll hold up better in the long-term.

23:13 / 19.04.04

My favourite part? of the dandman saga was the the a) story about the Emporer of San Fransico and the b) Ceasar story, because they presented to me what the whole series was about, interpretation of ideas and stories.

06:47 / 20.04.04

First, I'm most interested in a Sandman book club.
OK, having got that out of the way, I think I'm with most here in saying that Sandman WASN'T the greatest comic I've ever read(gotta give that to "Watchmen"- Morissonm sucks!

) However, it was the best LONG series I've ever read. It fits together remarkably well, and is simply the most successful long narrative I've seen in comics.
My fave arc was the Key of Hell. Yeah, there was alot of name dropping, but it was a real romp. The BEST constructed book, though, was probablt either "The Kindly Ones", or "Brief Lives", though they are each among my least favorite.
BTW, does anyone else get the feeling that Gaiman might be a better traditional writer than a comic writer?

Best,
Liam

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:02 / 20.04.04

BTW, does anyone else get the feeling that Gaiman might be a better traditional writer than a comic writer?

No. At least, his faults as a writer are more pronounced in novels than comics, and his virtues less useful.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:03 / 20.04.04

I agree with Haus here... Gaiman may often have a way with words, but he seems best at blocks of text plus dialogue, plus telling someone what to make stuff look like. Actually stringing this stuff together into straight prose never seems to work quite as well for him. (Strangely enough for a semi-Gaiman-basher such as myself, this isn't actually meant as a diss- just that I think he's more suited to comics. In the same way that I'm guessing that if Tarantino tried recording an album, it would suck, despite his love of music and imho skill as a filmmaker.)

lonely as a cloud...

11:58 / 20.04.04

Slightly off topic here, but I like Gaiman's prose... I enjoyed Smoke And Mirrors a lot, and Good Omens is probably one of the best books Terry Pratchett's ever been involved in.
Also, was reading some 1602's the other day...very decent read.
Also also, I love Lucifer, it's almost like Sandman for people with short attention spans. Nah, I just love all the angels and demons and mythological stuff.

20:38 / 20.04.04

Hmm, I suppose I'm in the minority here.
The reason I beleive him to be a better novel writer is that he seems more at home with very long story arcs, and those work most naturally, and I argue easily, in straight book form. Consider that his (adult)novels have seemed to get progressively longer, and increasingly baroque. It seems, in a way, to reflect his work in comics which began with "Black Orchid" and, so far, ended with "Sandman".
Despite some opinions to the contrary I happen to think that Gaiman is a fine wordsmith. I understand it is something of a reflex to think that a comic writer would be a somewhat weak novelist, and that any faults would be greatly exaggerated over 200 plus pages, but his books(at least the ones I've read- "Neverwhere", "Smoke and Mirrors", and "American Gods") just don't seem to bear this out, IMHO.
The best comic writers, IMO, are those with strong ideas(something that Gaiman has never had, I think) and a great sense of pacing. I suppose this is why I think Morrison and Moore are two of the best comic writers I ever read.

Liam

BrianFitzgerald

12:51 / 08.09.04

Why did Delight become Delirium?

13:11 / 08.09.04

um...she got sick and the world became too much for her? To show us that delight & happiness never lasts long, Gaiman you negative brooding motherfucker!??!

I read the whole series and I honestly don't remember them ever saying much about why she went nutso. The characters just spoke about it in hushed, embarrassed, pitying tones, like the way uptight people might talk about their friend's nervous breakdown.

16:12 / 08.09.04

didn't it happen when despair "died"? which was never explained either. delight saw something that she couldn't handle knows more that destiny and went insane to deal with it sometime around despairs death. None of the D's actually give a straight answer about it. but Lucifer recently had delirium in it so maybe..

20:36 / 08.09.04

Hmm. I've never read Sandman, though I want to start picking up the trades someday. I'd written the series off recently, as I couldn't manage to get through American Gods, and wasn't interested in 1602 to read past the first issue. Would/Should I still like Sandman? Hmm.

20:40 / 08.09.04

Nice! which issues was she in?

22:05 / 08.09.04

BillR, Sandman is in some repsects extremely different from American Gods, and in others quite similar. The biggest similarity is having gods manifest as people. If you didn't like that, odds are Sandman isn't for you. But, the main character of Sandman is very different from Shadow, and the structure is different as well. I think it's definitely worth checking out at least the first trade.

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