The Absolute Sandman Volume Three

The third massive collection of Sandman graphic novels is a very even volume, with almost every chapter telling an interesting story, many of them weaving together fabulously. The two main plot threads in this one are the tale of Orpheus, who was fathered by Dream, and of a number of travelers, stranded at the World's End Inn, telling stories to pass the time away. Dark and compelling. ( )

Again, there's little I can say about the greatness of Sandman. The contrast between the whimsy of Dream and Delirium's search for Destruction and its deadly consequences is great. I will confess that knowing the outcome of the entire Sandman story makes the stories told in the World's End feel a little bit like filler material, which is a shame, since, despite serving primarily as a setup to the story of Dream's death, those tales are some of the highlights of the series. "A Tale of Two Cities", in particular, stands out as one of my favorite moments. ( )

Covers issues 40 to 56 of the Sandman series as well as The Song of Orpheus special. Featured in this volume are two main story arcs, Brief Lives and World's End as well as a couple of other single-shot stories. The Song of Orpheus is a prequel of sorts to Brief Lives and we learn how the son of the Lord of Dreams ends up in the state he was in when featured in the last volume and of the estrangement he has with his father. Brief Lives has Delirium enlisting Dream's help in searching for their missing brother. Having being turned down first by Desire and then Despair, Delirium turns to Dream expecting the same rebuttal but is surprised when he agrees to assist. Dream, of course, has reasons of his own for going on the quest. World's End has many a tale to tell when travellers find themselves sheltering in an inn of that name to avoid the worst from a very strange storm. The other stories are The Parliament of Rooks which features Cain and Abel and Eve telling tales to a human child and Ramadan which is Gaiman's homage to the Arabian Nights.

Extras: There are a couple of galleries which feature different representations of the Endless by other artists, a short story of Desire, a feature on other products available from the Sandman range, a couple of pages on hoe the Little Endless became a fan hit, the script and thumbnails for Ramadan and a feature on the subsequent products created from that story. An afterword from Neil Gaiman and the biographies of those who worked on these issues round everything off.

Loved pretty much everything in this collection and it moves into my favourite of the 3 editions I've read so far. ( )

As I'd mentioned earlier, I was somewhat lukewarm towards the earlier volumes of The Absolute Sandman. There was certainly an amazing mythology at work, but I found it hard to be interested in Dream as a character; often, I was more invested in the random people who got caught up in his adventures. (Curiously, all of these substitute protagonists seem to usually be women. I wonder if there's anything in that.) But the substory Brief Lives, collected here, changed all that. This story features Dream and his sister Delirium searching for their lost brother Destruction-- and in the process of that, Dream finally has to come to terms with his relationship with his son. It's half a road-trip comedy, half a meditation on knowing when to move on, and half a very dark fairy tale. It's definitely the funniest of the Sandman storylines... but it's also the most touching. I enjoyed every aspect of this one a lot, from Delirium's inane attempts to try to drive a mortal car, to Dream and Destruction's conversation on reuniting, from the first appearance of Merv, the pumpkinheaded janitor of the Dreaming, to the moment where Dream finally goes and sees Orpheus. Most of all, it's great to finally get a sense of Dream as a person. (Inasmuch as an anthropomorphic personification of an abstract universal concept can be one, I suppose.)

What struck me as I was reading it is that The Sandman really is a literary comic book. I mean, there have been plenty of literary graphic novels produced-- non-superhero fare that is done in one sitting. But The Sandman unlike most "highbrow" sequential art pieces, is completely and utterly a comic book: an ongoing, indefinite story. In total, the series comprises some 75 issues, and stories and characters and ideas weave in and out of these issues the same way they might in a Superman or Spider-Man ongoing. Gaiman really utilizes the potential of the comic ongoing to its maximum here, and that is the reason I like The Sandman as much as I do. It might have taken until Brief Lives for me to like The Sandman, but Brief Lives would never have worked without all the preceding issues to lead up to it. Gaiman has utterly mastered one of my favorite aspects of the medium here, and I find that delightful.

A brief word about the other storyline collected in this volume, Worlds' End. This is a collection of one-issue stories set in the world of The Sandman, but unlike many of the other ones, they're connected with a frame narrative. They're also the weakest; most of these did nothing at all for me. Strangely dull for Gaiman.

Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence »

AWESOME. The larger format and better paper quality takes an already fantastic series of comics and makes it even better. The colors practically glow on the page, and there are several two-page spreads that are nothing short of breathtaking. One of the real treats is the famous "Ramadan" story, featuring P. Craig Russel's amazing artwork. When I got this collection, I wasn't sure if it was "necessary" since the color and overall print quality of the original comics was already much better than those earlier in the series. I don't know if it's "necessary" or not, but oh, it's a fantastic thing to have. ( )