J. H. Williams, III

It took me a week to slog through this crap as one chapter at a shot was all I could endure.

Bad enough this opening book in the series is an overlong and tedious chase scene with unbearably busy art with multiple clashing styles on each page, but the whole thing is presented in one of the most awkward and annoying formats for a book: a wobbly panoramic spread that opens up to be only seven inches tall but nearly two feet wide. Reading it anywhere but firmly on a flat surface is an annoying show more and clumsy chore. It's the sort of book that if dropped once while open, the bound pages are sure to start splitting from the cover.

Really, it's more a Where's Waldo? picture book than a story as it is purely Easter eggs. Hey, that guy looks like he was drawn by Jack Kirby! Hey, that guy from Chicago looks like Flattop from Dick Tracy! Hey, Dracs and Steins look like Universal movie monsters! Hey, pirates! Hey, Japanese robots! Hey, zombies!

Just to really drive home how self-indulgent this project is, the end matter has over two dozen pages listing all the music J. H. Williams III listened to while working on the art. Mostly vinyl, of course! And he specifies the color of vinyl! And which ones were picked by his wife! OMG!

And this is just Book One? No. Never again. show less

It was with a certain dull dour melancholy that I anticipated reading this. I'm not sure if I was thinking that this would be the sad end of my Sandman reread or that this would be a dull echo of Sandman at its height, a sincere but pale, as it were, imitation. Holy guacamole. That didn't even last a single page.

To be clear, Gaiman does not let the reader down. This isn't a retread of Sandman at all, this is a whole different type and style of Sandman story. Morpheus is proactive, for a show more start, in a way he generally isn't in the long run of the series, and we get some sense of why that is. This is an epic, action-packed space opera, a huge conflict that Dream must fight with Dream's own weapons and tactics, and he does and it's a giddy delight. It's a prelude, but it draws back in a score of threads laid out in the main series and refines them into a fast-paced eye-popping wide-screen thrill ride.

Not just that, but the mythical world of the Endless is deepened and expanded - we meet Mum and Dad! We meet versions of Dream from all over the universe! We hear the story of Aliana (but weren't there three gods? Oh Gaiman, you minx!) There's a giant talking Dream cat! A western! A city of stars!

But galloping gondolas it's JH Williams who takes all the prizes, who elevates the whole thing to a level that surpasses almost everything that went before, except that's not fair because it's like none of the other stories that went before. The art flows and pops and bends time and space on the page. It stretches and bends and still manages to tell a completely coherent story. Literally the only problem with the storytelling using this amazingly complex and vivid art is that once or twice the glossy paper stuck and I skipped two pages by accident.

No dour melancholy or doubt can survive contact with these pages, from the giddy delight of long-laid plot seeds effortlessly flowering and clicking into place like some sort of clockwork mechanical growing flower things to the sweeping action and the mind-bending profusion of ideas and the brilliant colours and the teeming inventions of landscape and alien lives and impossible incomprehensible realms and Destiny saying 'what?'

This is an exciting, exhilarating, comic, an utterly new execution of utterly familiar characters and ideas that enriches what has gone before by prefiguring what is to come. Gaiman and Williams have completely outdone themselves, as have the colourists and the letterer and presumably the vast processing intelligences that fill solar systems with their whirring, god-like, editing brains. It's a fantastic high note to end the reread and I'm already anticipating a future return to the story with the Overture at the start to see how it reshapes and alters the story. show less

I had really high expectations for this book considering that the original Sandman series completely changed my life as a comics devouring teen. Overture is exactly what I wanted from a visit back to the world of Dream - a huge intergalactic, metaphysical, allegorical, apocalyptic story, jaw dropping artwork, multiple ah-ha moments that fill in the tiny narrative gaps in the original series, cats and Dream being...well...Dream. This is a book that requires multiple readings and I already show more can't wait to read it again. show less

This book wraps up the storyline introduced and expanded upon in the first two volumes. This time, Batwoman gets some help from Wonder Woman to get to the bottom of the mystery of Gotham's missing children and the Medusa organization that's behind the kidnappings for unknown reasons. As I've mentioned many times before, I'm not a huge fan of crossovers in comics, but unfortunately that's just the way it is. In this case, there was a bit of logic to introducing Wonder Woman as this volume show more concerns itself a lot with mythology and mythological creatures; also, for lack of a better of term, it was cute to see Batwoman and Wonder Woman internally size each other, with Batwoman feeling like an imposter next to Wonder Woman and Wonder Woman being in awe of Batwoman's courage and bravery.

In addition to a lot of action sequences, this book has an interlude section where Kate Kane recalls her background before becoming Batwoman and reflects on her tense relationship with her father. Her other relationships are also explored to a lesser, but still important, extent. And while this book concludes one ongoing plot, its final pages reveal a shocker to keep the reader hooked for the next volume.

As usual, J.H. Williams III's illustrations are simply amazing, seemingly three-dimensional and full of detail. He continues to do interesting experimentation with the panels, including making a bird-shaped frame for page spreads dealing with Kate Kane's cousin Flamebird/Hawk Fire; another frame that starts out as bat ears for Batwoman and fluidly morphs into a star for Wonder Woman; and a couple of circular illustrations.

This is another great addition to the Batwoman storyline, and I look forward to reading Volume 4! show less