Sam KiethReviews

I love Batman but stay away from this one. One of the worst Batman stories out there and the artwork is too Tim burton and Salvador Dali inspired.

reread Jan. 2021. The Ghosts story is actually more intriguing than I remembered it. I enjoyed the supernatural aspect but the storyline wasn't really fleshed out well. It's still not wonderful in terms of how women and folks with disabilities are treated. The artwork is also not to my taste. But I felt that the storyline had some interesting things to say about the nature of pain and memory, so I'm giving it a pass.

Oh but that Batman/Lobo story is horrific. A real piece of trash writing.

Apparently I don't like graphic novels. I have nothing to compare this to, and I found the plot kind of hard to follow, since it had the dialogue all over the page; nor was it particularly scary to me. Give me a good old Hannibal Lecter any day.

I think I appreciated this more the second time around (or more, if you count the standard issue graphic novels) - the beauty, the dark, the hope, the horror; all of it hit me harder with this re-read. I cannot WAIT for the TV show.

Found it at the CADL!

The Maxx is The Maxx again, the world is ending, and Sarah is now an Isz. Sort of. Not quite. But, yeah. The strangeness dial keeps getting turned up, and it makes me sad that there's only one more compilation left. It ends with a possible ending, but... it's not done. Smooth read, despite the trademark disjointedness. Art is great once again.

Another sequence of mind-poking artwork and twisty storylines. I don't remember this much being revealed so early in the animated version, so I'm definitely looking forward to reading the other volumes. Once again, I have to thank the Capital Area District Library for shelving an amazing selection of graphic novels. I'm biting my nails to read Volume 3.

Little did I know that my innocent trip to the Capital Area District Library with the kids and wife would yield such dastardly results. A graphic novel of the Maxx series that I had only ever seen on MTV! Not only that, but it's the first of a series! My glee may have fueled part of my rating, but I am an admitted Maxx fan. The story was spot on, the font used for Mr. Gone was just right, and the artwork was delicious. I'll be looking for the next one when we head back to the library.

More about Mickey and Dude, and a whole new story in the "Friends of the Maxx" issues. I'm glad that they left the end of Volume 5 as the actual end. Good read, great art, as always. Twisted goodness, as always. :)

This is so far beyond what went on in the animated series. Every time an answer is revealed, it's a clue to another layer of answers and backstory and vile, twistedness hidden within each of the characters.

Dug this book. Going to the CADL tomorrow to snag the next one.

Two Maxxes? For serious? I love the origin of his mask, of him, and of the Outback. You feel like you're getting answers, even though the answers just bring more questions. And, of course, when is Gone ever really gone?

I own and love my copy of the Sandman series, and since I'm not a need-to-own-every-variant type of fan, the books with extras are a definite library pick-up. Thank goodness. I'm reviewing only the "Annotated" part of The Annotated Sandman when I say that I was disappointed--Gaiman's story itself is as excellent as ever.

In hindsight, I think I went in with expectations too high, in part because I didn't do my research. The other annotated books I've seen are The Annotated Wizard of Oz and The Annotated Peter Pan, both published by W. W. Norton. I don't have them on hand, but I remember annotations on almost every page, introductions so long that even I almost (almost) gave up on them, and full-color photos and illustrations galore. It's probably immensely helpful that the books in question, and probably a lot of the supplementary materials, are in the public domain.

In contrast, The Annotated Sandman is in black and white, a few issues have almost no notes in them, and there are very few photos or additional illustrations. I just looked up The Absolute Sandman, which is apparently chock-full of the kind of supplementary material I was hoping to find; I suspect that D.C. Comics was stringently avoiding cross-pollination. Unfortunately, The Annotated Sandman is the poorer for it. Imagine my frustration when I hit this note in Gaiman's World Fantasy Award-winning Midsummer Night's Dream issue: "The 'Letters in the Sand' feature of Issue #19 contains a summary of Shakespeare's play, entitled 'Classics Eviscerated,' which is omitted here." Gee, thanks for letting us know what we're not getting. Every single note telling us where there had been an ad page stung a bit too, because it reminded me that the original flow of the story was no longer in tact.

But even the robust annotations that we did get weren't always great, either. Gaiman mentions in his foreword that Burgess's house in Wych Cross was inspired by a real building, but editor/annotator Leslie S. Klinger doesn't discuss this in the notes. Instead, he rambles about bad roads and which trains require transfers and whether the car Hathaway is in is a private car or a taxi and how all of this might have contributed to whether or not he could fall asleep in the car, all just to stoke a *fascinating* (sarcasm) discussion of whether the "Royal Museum" is in London or Edinburgh. But there's no comment about most of Burgess's summoning spell, and I'd been really interested in where Gaiman might have gotten inspiration for some of the words and symbols. Additionally, in the notes for Issue #1, it isn't always clear from the writing whether Klinger is talking about Gaiman's notes for a character, something that happens in another comic, or a real person on which the character is based. Both Hathaway and Burgess are described as if they are real people, and I had to Google them both to discover that they actually aren't. Burgess, in particular, would have benefited from notes that compare and contrast him with the real Aleister Crowley, or a bio flagged with, "According to NG's notes" or the like.

A few other missing things, as they caught my eye:

> In Issue #2, Cain names Goldie the gargoyle for "a friend who went away." Is there a story here?

> In Issue #6, Klinger notes that Dee doesn't recognize what AIDS is...but he doesn't explain the cultural significance of AIDS at the time the comic was published. That's not something you can count on people born after, say, the year 2000 to understand.

> In Issue #7, Dee sings "I think I'm gonna like it here." If this reference to Annie goes unremarked, what other cultural references did Klinger miss?

> Issue #9 and Issue #16 have nearly-identical panels with hands exchanging a heart-shaped piece of glass; from an ancient city in the first and a heart/vortex in the latter. This isn't noted in Issue #9, only in Issue #16 with, "The significance is unclear--is the presence of vortices the price of Morpheus's love for Nada?" (Probably not--see next my note.) It seems odd that this note only appears in the one place. I was also surprised that Klinger doesn't note that a similar image (though in a much smaller-sized panel) appears in Issue #38, where the heart-shaped shard of glass/jewel is the emerald heart of Koschei the Deathless. The black-and-white print in The Annotated Sandman rendered impossible any comment on the coloring, something that has interested me for a long time: my first copy of The Doll's House (Sandman Vol. 2) was an older one in which the glass heart in Issue #9 was green, which made me wonder if there was a connection between it and Koschei the Deathless's heart; in the recolored version (which I bought later to match the other 9 volumes I owned) the glass is blue/clear, which seems to make more sense with the story. I wonder which version Gaiman prefers...

> Though I didn't keep track of them all, there are places where it's obvious that Gaiman hadn't yet published The Sandman: Overture when The Annotated Sandman was published. Huge shame there, because Overture contains so many callouts to previously published issues. It also addresses Klinger's speculation, described in my note above, with a very likely "No." Morpheus met Nada on earth--so long, long after he first encountered a vortex.

> On an editorial/production side, there were a few places where notes did not appear on the correct page to correspond with where their subject appears in the comic. The particular one I flagged has the added problem of appearing twice: correctly on page 447, noting that the image in panel 6, page 18, Issue # 16, is of G. K. Chesterton; and incorrectly on the following page, 448, where it says that panel 6 on page 19 is a photo of G. K. Chesterton--though there is no photo on that page at all.

Finally...Klinger doesn't ever discuss what the Sandman is in history. He discusses Dream's connections to the earlier D.C. character, but not the cultural figure that inspired that one in the first place. Kind of a big omission.

Okay, so I've done a lot of grousing here, but the book is far from a total wash. For me, Klinger more than succeeded in his goal of helping folks unfamiliar with the larger historical D.C. universe understand the connections between Sandman and its contemporaries and predecessors. I know enough about John Constantine now to be intrigued by Hellblazer (though probably not enough to seek them out). The notes on the Midsummer Night's Dream issue were excellent even for someone familiar with Shakespeare's work, revealing just how much research Gaiman did on for this one issue. My favorite parts, as you can probably guess from my early paragraphs about what I felt The Annotated Sandman was lacking, were quotes from Gaiman's scripts in which he described the images he wanted. They were particularly fascinating for how often the final illustrations varied from the descriptions, and I would have also loved to get the artists' views on what worked, what didn't, and why they opted to take images in different directions (when not simply because of the limits of the printing process). Perhaps some of this appears in The Absolute Sandman.

TLDR: A bit lackluster for this reader who had ridiculously high expectations, not absolutely necessary to appreciate the depth and nuance of the broader Sandman series, but still recommended for anyone on the nerdier side, the kind like me who's willing to buy the originals for multiple readings.

Wow. That was creepy.

I actually bought this bagged up from a comic store but it was in their "rpg" section so I thought it was an rpg illustrated by Sam Keith (the Maxx), so I jumped on it. But it was still fun and funny. Basically making fun of Zeus and his promiscuousness and also poking at philosophers.½

I love Kieth's crazy, unique art style. I've read a bunch of The Maxx and this is really VERY similar. It makes me wonder if all his stuff follows the same formula. This dark in parts and fun in others (and dark and fun in others). I didn't realize this was the 2nd graphic novel, but I probably won't read the 1st one, especially since I know how the story ends.½

Wow. That was creepy.

First, what I need to say upfront: this is one of those books about peripheral characters in a series. It is the kind of story that you may or not like, and it is often a book just made to milk a franchise. With that out of the way, overall, it is a fairly good book, even though it does start very slow at first. However, once the pace picks up, it does hold on to you until the very end. In addition, the author does provide a pretty nice afterword with a dedication that is a bit of a twist. Worth a look for that.

The real strength in this book is the art. That is why I tagged it for my "art and photography" shelf as well as for my "graphic novels and comics shelf." Sure, there is a story in here: the story of one of the nurses working at Arkham Asylum, but you know the real interesting stuff are the inmates, and we do get a pretty good look at some of them. The nurse's story is kind of so-so. Now, the Joker as always steals the show and delivers a few twists and turns. However, as I said, the strength is really in the art and images of the book. The book is a pleasure to just look at and linger over. Definitely worth reading just for that.

Holy crap, this isn't your grandfather's Maxx! First of all the actual Maxx doesn't make an appearance in his superhero guise. There is a new Maxx who looks kinda different. The story is less surreal and more comprehensible.

This comes with a "Suggested for Mature Readers" on the back in small letters, but really it should say "TRIGGER WARNING - FOR PREVIOUSLY MOLESTED READERS". I was never molested, but I can see this getting REALLY FREAKING HEAVY and not fun for someone who was. Or it might help them, who knows, but at least a warning that the topic is dealt with EXTENSIVELY along with references to rape. Don't get me wrong, I didn't get the feeling that Mr. Kieth was glorifying any of this or writing it to sell more comics, it was just soooooo dark and realistic that it made me uncomfortable while keeping me captivated.

Finally this ends with a cliffhanger and I don't own volume 5, so that's not fun either.

All of Neil Gaiman's various DC works in one collection (book). An eclectic mix of works, including the origin story to Poison Ivy (well, "A ORIGIN STORY"), one for the Riddler, one for Penquin, as well as an ending to Batman, and some humorous "Metamorpho" comics in the middle. Some really good pieces of work, some interesting/odd stories (par of the course for Neil Gaiman) and very beautiful artwork.

As with all the Maxx comics so far, I LOVE the art, but the story doesn't really blow me away. I do like it's originality and the idea of it, but it just doesn't really grab me.

2/2.5
The art style inconsistency took me out of the story SO hard, and while this was a “day in the life of xyz at the asylum,” type of read it did not go ANYWHERE. There was no strong conclusion for the inmates or the people employed at Arkham, and the only things I found enjoyable were the bits about the Joker’s obsession with the Antique’s Road Show and his own antiques/way of using them. Sabine was very unlikeable/annoying to me, the story was hard to follow at times as well. Horror/superhero/villain/day in the life stories are usually a hit for me so this was a disappointing one! And I am aware that the artist was intentionally using different mediums, I just don’t believe it worked.

This is a black-and-white first volume of the first 20 issues of "The Sandman", an epic series written by Neil Gaiman.

Leslie S. Klinger has annotated this volume, and will annotate the rest as well. The annotations range from historical - e.g. information on William Shakespeare's name and the versions of it - to clerical, the arcane but foremost the explanative, i.e. sorting out everything that surrounds The Sandman canon, i.e. the characters, the places and places.

My first edition actually contained some misshapes, e.g. blackened annotations and huge smudges, but apart from that the binding is sublime. The fact that this book is in black-and-white - the original versions being in colour - just brings the annotations more to the front, in my eye.

Although Klinger's "annotated Sherlock Holmes" is much more interesting to me personally, especially considering its extreme depth, breadth and plethora, this book is definitely worth its money and I'm eagerly looking forward to the second volume.

This collection of DC stories wasn't bad, I enjoyed some more than others.

The combination of Batman and Alice in Wonderland go together...pretty terribly, actually. The story is so boring and the artwork looks like American McGee's paintings melting in the sun, that I just didn't care to finish. No Batman Wonderland for me, thanks.

A collection of origin or 'what if' (and one final) stories for Poison Ivy, Green Lantern and Batman.

Even if there were no words on the page it would still be worth it to look through the Maxx comics. The story is strange, dark and surreal and for someone my age, very nostalgic. Not sure I would be as enthused about the story if I had been born in 1980 instead of 1970.