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flowrs4opheliaIt seems that the colossal task of my Senior portfolio is a lot more fun if I just write about what I like talking about the most: art. Therefore I've been writing as many reviews as I can without it seeming like the content of my portfolio is too unvaried. I started a review for Sin City but I think I've found I write much better reviews for written work. Which figures, I suppose.
Which brings me to this, a slightly long review for the timeless awesomeness that is Neil Gaiman's series of comics The Sandman. I don't think I make a good reviewer in general because I go easy on everything and am easily impressed. But I think this is a pretty decent review if I may say so myself.
The Sandman: Not Your Average Comic Book
If you felt like reading some epic literature with memorable heroes, intelligent themes, and many references to mythology and other works of fiction for a sophisticated reader to recognize, you probably would never think to pick up a comic book. But Neil Gaiman’s series of graphic novels, The Sandman, entirely shatters the common misconception that comics are nothing but super hero stories with colorful pictures that eight-year-old boys read. The Sandman, in fact, is the complete opposite of what most people expect from comic books; it is no story for children, and in fact it often has content that could be offensive to many adults. But for those who can appreciate this series the way it should be, it is an extremely rewarding and unforgettable fantasy.
Gaiman’s original idea for The Sandman was to revive Sandman, the super hero from a classic comic, for a more modern story. When he ran this idea by an editor she told him to create a completely new character instead. And that was how Gaiman created Dream, a tall, rake-thin, pale-skinned, messy-haired being, always dressed in black and with dark, hollow eyes in which stars glitter. The only feature about Dream that resembles the super hero he originated from is his helmet of office he wears, which just slightly resembles the old Sandman’s mask.
I like to call The Sandman “the story to tell all stories.” It is the perfect setting for any kind of tale for several reasons. In a way it is literally about everything, because the concepts that can apply to any story are all characters in this series, collectively known as the Endless: Dream (the Sandman himself, known by many other names besides), Death, Destiny, Desire, Delirium (formerly Delight), Despair, and Destruction. Any story you know of in which a character dies can be rewritten as a Sandman story because Dream’s older sister Death was there. Gaiman also stretches boundaries in his series by creating a universe in which any legend or myth can exist, so that after reading a couple volumes you get used to characters saying things like, “I heard from Batman that Saint Maria and Ares are getting a divorce.” Gaiman takes full advantage of being able to borrow known people from mythology and history and rewrite their stories in his own way. Among many of the famous people we meet throughout the series are Calliope the Greek muse of poetry (who was married to Dream for a while), Marco Polo (who while crossing the Gobi desert came across a dreamplace separate from time and reality), the Egyptian cat goddess Bast (who tries to make a deal with Dream for the key to Hell), and William Shakespeare (whose writing was crap before he made a deal with the Sandman to be given his talent). And we mustn’t forget this is a tale about dreams (and anything can happen in dreams) and about the lord of dreams and stories, which is why Neil Gaiman is able to cleverly create stories within stories and actually become the Sandman.
As one reads the pages of this series he is constantly reminded not to take it too lightly. Of course none of it is true, but after you've stepped into this world in which Dream so often says a wise but not preachy statement of infallible truth such as "Sometimes we have a choice, sometimes our choices are made for us, and sometimes we have no choice at all", it becomes difficult to just call it "lies" or merely "fiction." In the one-issue story “A Midsummer Night's Dream”, the Sandman has a play written about his friends Titania and Auberon for them and all of the fairies to be remembered by. When the fairy people see a performance of it they say, "But this isn't true." Dream responds, "Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.” This issue single-handedly stated the value of fiction, forced many to momentarily take fantasy seriously, and even threw off its back the marginalization of comics as an art medium when it won the Best Short Story award at the 13th Annual World Fantasy Convention, though this outraged so many people that the rules were changed so that from then on no comic could again be nominated for the award, much less, as Harlan Ellison said in his introduction to volume 4, "have an opportunity to kick serious artistic butt."
Disregarding its profound messages, what really makes The Sandman special and emotionally effective is how much you can find yourself relating to the characters. Dream can hardly be called a character; he is an incarnation of a concept and force who knows far more than you can imagine and is more powerful than a god. Yet he as well as his brothers and sisters are far from perfect and can be surprisingly human. They make mistakes, fall in and out of love, and have arguments with their sons. Dream is very proud and once sent his lover to Hell because she wouldn't become immortal for him. Delirium is a young, lonely soul who changed from Delight once she realized that things change and could no longer be innocent. The Endless as a family are quite a dysfunctional one because they fell apart when Destruction, the good-humored youngest brother who always convinced his siblings to get along, abandoned his responsibilities and disappeared. The way these characters are flawed actually comes to play in the inevitable ending to the series. Some of these heroes are tragic heroes, but I won’t give anything away.
Peter Straub wrote of these rich and densely-layered volumes, “If this isn’t literature, nothing is.” Nothing more true could be said about The Sandman. This series is quickly becoming a classic of graphic novel story-telling. We can expect it to be around for a very long time, still on bookshelves decades from now to tell new generations and remind old ones that tales can be much more than just fiction and that it is never “just a dream."
Which brings me to this, a slightly long review for the timeless awesomeness that is Neil Gaiman's series of comics The Sandman. I don't think I make a good reviewer in general because I go easy on everything and am easily impressed. But I think this is a pretty decent review if I may say so myself.
The Sandman: Not Your Average Comic Book
If you felt like reading some epic literature with memorable heroes, intelligent themes, and many references to mythology and other works of fiction for a sophisticated reader to recognize, you probably would never think to pick up a comic book. But Neil Gaiman’s series of graphic novels, The Sandman, entirely shatters the common misconception that comics are nothing but super hero stories with colorful pictures that eight-year-old boys read. The Sandman, in fact, is the complete opposite of what most people expect from comic books; it is no story for children, and in fact it often has content that could be offensive to many adults. But for those who can appreciate this series the way it should be, it is an extremely rewarding and unforgettable fantasy.
Gaiman’s original idea for The Sandman was to revive Sandman, the super hero from a classic comic, for a more modern story. When he ran this idea by an editor she told him to create a completely new character instead. And that was how Gaiman created Dream, a tall, rake-thin, pale-skinned, messy-haired being, always dressed in black and with dark, hollow eyes in which stars glitter. The only feature about Dream that resembles the super hero he originated from is his helmet of office he wears, which just slightly resembles the old Sandman’s mask.
I like to call The Sandman “the story to tell all stories.” It is the perfect setting for any kind of tale for several reasons. In a way it is literally about everything, because the concepts that can apply to any story are all characters in this series, collectively known as the Endless: Dream (the Sandman himself, known by many other names besides), Death, Destiny, Desire, Delirium (formerly Delight), Despair, and Destruction. Any story you know of in which a character dies can be rewritten as a Sandman story because Dream’s older sister Death was there. Gaiman also stretches boundaries in his series by creating a universe in which any legend or myth can exist, so that after reading a couple volumes you get used to characters saying things like, “I heard from Batman that Saint Maria and Ares are getting a divorce.” Gaiman takes full advantage of being able to borrow known people from mythology and history and rewrite their stories in his own way. Among many of the famous people we meet throughout the series are Calliope the Greek muse of poetry (who was married to Dream for a while), Marco Polo (who while crossing the Gobi desert came across a dreamplace separate from time and reality), the Egyptian cat goddess Bast (who tries to make a deal with Dream for the key to Hell), and William Shakespeare (whose writing was crap before he made a deal with the Sandman to be given his talent). And we mustn’t forget this is a tale about dreams (and anything can happen in dreams) and about the lord of dreams and stories, which is why Neil Gaiman is able to cleverly create stories within stories and actually become the Sandman.
As one reads the pages of this series he is constantly reminded not to take it too lightly. Of course none of it is true, but after you've stepped into this world in which Dream so often says a wise but not preachy statement of infallible truth such as "Sometimes we have a choice, sometimes our choices are made for us, and sometimes we have no choice at all", it becomes difficult to just call it "lies" or merely "fiction." In the one-issue story “A Midsummer Night's Dream”, the Sandman has a play written about his friends Titania and Auberon for them and all of the fairies to be remembered by. When the fairy people see a performance of it they say, "But this isn't true." Dream responds, "Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.” This issue single-handedly stated the value of fiction, forced many to momentarily take fantasy seriously, and even threw off its back the marginalization of comics as an art medium when it won the Best Short Story award at the 13th Annual World Fantasy Convention, though this outraged so many people that the rules were changed so that from then on no comic could again be nominated for the award, much less, as Harlan Ellison said in his introduction to volume 4, "have an opportunity to kick serious artistic butt."
Disregarding its profound messages, what really makes The Sandman special and emotionally effective is how much you can find yourself relating to the characters. Dream can hardly be called a character; he is an incarnation of a concept and force who knows far more than you can imagine and is more powerful than a god. Yet he as well as his brothers and sisters are far from perfect and can be surprisingly human. They make mistakes, fall in and out of love, and have arguments with their sons. Dream is very proud and once sent his lover to Hell because she wouldn't become immortal for him. Delirium is a young, lonely soul who changed from Delight once she realized that things change and could no longer be innocent. The Endless as a family are quite a dysfunctional one because they fell apart when Destruction, the good-humored youngest brother who always convinced his siblings to get along, abandoned his responsibilities and disappeared. The way these characters are flawed actually comes to play in the inevitable ending to the series. Some of these heroes are tragic heroes, but I won’t give anything away.
Peter Straub wrote of these rich and densely-layered volumes, “If this isn’t literature, nothing is.” Nothing more true could be said about The Sandman. This series is quickly becoming a classic of graphic novel story-telling. We can expect it to be around for a very long time, still on bookshelves decades from now to tell new generations and remind old ones that tales can be much more than just fiction and that it is never “just a dream."
