The Absolute Sandman Volume One

I think my first issue of Sandman was Dream Of A Thousand Cats, if not Calliope. A friend of mine brought it back from the States for me and when I read it that was it, I was a Sandman reader and a Neil Gaiman fan for life. The stories of Dream Country were each like a bomb going off in my callow young head, explosions that propelled me simultaneously deep into the world of the comic and out into the more abstract realms of the possibilities of imagination, genre and form. In short order I'd picked up collections of A Doll's House and Preludes And Nocturnes, and was counting the weeks and days each month, waiting for the next issue to arrive.

Sandman opens with the imprisonment of Morpheus, Lord Of Dreams, by an English occult society show more in 1916. They were hoping to trap death but got her younger brother instead. It doesn't work out terrible well for anyone, least of all the occult society, but also the unfortunates who fall victim to a sleeping sickness that steals most of their lives, or for Morpheus himself, not to mention the vague efforts the universe makes to replace him with pale imitation superheroes. In 1988 he escapes, takes revenge, returns to his crumbling kingdom, and, with some difficulty, recovers his stolen tools.

It's all in there, in these early issues, but it's such a mess. Sam Keith's art is great, but not really in keeping with the book. Gaiman seeds all sorts of themes and elements that will be built on and expanded later, but issues go from genre to genre, until the book truly finds its voice in issue eight, the legendary Sound of Her Wings, which introduces Death, in a story about how everyone hates her and loves Dream, even though she's lovely and he's not. The multi-layered little story shattered comics into a million pieces, captured a million hearts and is the emotional and conceptual foundation stone of the whole epic. It's in stories like that, the stand-alones, that Sandman deepened and enriched its world and its mythology, even as the longer arcs drove the plot, often extremely obliquely, forward.

The Dolls House is a fantasy/horror masterpiece, building to the chilling and mischievous Collectors, which is itself about fear, and mythologising and demythologising it, self-mythologising and self-aggrandisement, and murder. Lots and lots of murder,

The Absolute Sandman Volume One is a big, beautiful object. The stories printed on larger pages of high-quality paper, recoloured, retouched. It includes back matter such as Gaiman's original proposal, all the afterwords to original collections, and the script of the astonishing Midsummer Night's Dream issue. So many of these stories were so astonishing. I'd forgotten just how astonishing they were.

Sandman was groundbreaking and earthshaking, and it blew my tiny mind, and this gorgeous edition is blowing it all over again. show less

While I've been aware of the Sandman series for over a decade now it never really grabbed me to read it until this year.

I'm very glad it did finally sink it's claws into me. The writing is superb, I've cringed, had my heart pounding, and laughed while reading this volume.

The art is dark, atmospheric, and sets each page/scene perfectly. I really enjoy the dynamic between Sandman and Death and absolutely love Sandman's dry wit.

Easily the best thing I have read by Gaiman. The artwork is beautiful and the layout is very creative. But the stories. Ahh, the stories are wonderfully dark and troubling, yet enlightening and uplifting all at the same time. They all carry a common thread; how the waking world might just be less real than the dream-worlds where The Endless reside. I can't wait for volume 2 to become available at the library.

How good was Sandman, really? I asked myself. After all I was in my late teens and it was a long time ago. Should I take a risk on those gigantic anthologies, The Absolute Sandman or a lesser commitment on the comparatively tiddly first paperback collection, Preludes and Nocturnes? How much of it did I actually read back then? There was Death and a Cereal Convention and a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream but there was definitely much more I had not read.

OK - let's play with house money and get The Absolute Sandman, Vol. 1 for my birthday.

Good choice! Because this book is utterly gorgeous simply as a physical object and the art is scaled up from the 8 issue paperback collections. (Also re-coloured, whatever that means for quality show more - ask a person who knows about comics.) There's also a pile of ancillary material collected at the back, some of which isn't available elsewhere. It's also, for the most part, even better than I remembered!

Both Gaiman and who-ever wrote the introduction feel that these comics really found their proper voice with the first appearance of the character Death in issue 8. I agree. This marks the end of the first story arc, involving many aspects of and characters from the wider DC universe and the start of a more isolated but deeper exploration of Gaiman's vision of The Endless and how they relate to life across the universe and time as well as humanity specifically. The Endless are seven "anthropomorphic personifications" that don't seem to always be anthropomorphic at all, since they exist for all types of life - as evidenced by fairies, aliens and cats. They are: Dream, Death, Delerium, Desire, Destiny, Despair...and the other one that I never remember but presumably has a name beginning with "D" in English. They're an interesting bunch.

These stories already show Gaiman's in-depth knowledge of world mythology and penchant for literary references, only the most obvious of which did I get back in the day. I noticed many more this time round. Makes me wonder if there are more I still missed...

Anyway, to sum up...book gorgeous. Art gorgeous. Stories great. And addictive. Bring me Vol. 2. show less

Neil Gaiman is such a generous writer and this story, with its ever expanding narrative corners, is a perfect expression of his writerly attitude of abundance. Though this story starts out like any comic book affair, what Gaiman does with his characters, and central questions, as soon as the first arc completes is what makes it special. I highly recommend this to anyone, particularly anyone who hasn't had the opportunity to take comics seriously in the past.

The protagonist of The Sandman is Dream of the Endless, a personification of the abstract concept of "dream"-- the other Endless, who are all siblings, also personify abstract concepts that begin with "D" in English (odd, that). He can enter into people's dreams, and acquire whatever he needs from them. Despite his enormous power, he's imprisoned by a human sorcerer, but the series begins with him finally making his escape after almost a century. Now, he must return to the world and re-establish his kingdom. All of my problems with this series can be traced to Dream himself, I think. How does he feel about being locked up and powerless for such a long period of time? No one knows, since Gaiman never gives us much insight into his show more interiority. Dream embarks on a series of quests upon his escape in an attempt to track down and recover artifacts stolen from him during his imprisonment, but it's hard to root for a protagonist whose powers are so all-encompassing and ill-defined. There's not really any circumstance where he won't triumph; even his journey into Hell is anti-climactic; he turns out to have a power that Lucifer's demons don't.

Where this volume succeeds much more is with its depiction of the small characters, human or otherwise, caught in the wake of Dream's machinations. The snippets of those affected by Dream's imprisonment in the opening issues are the first sign of this, but it gets better with those who are subject to the evil machinations of Doctor Destiny (who just happens to escape imprisonment and steal Dream's magic ruby at the exact moment Dream comes looking for it), and even Doctor Destiny himself. Even better, however, is the substory called The Doll's House where a "dream vortex" begins to form. No one, not even Dream or Neil Gaiman, seem to know what a dream vortex actually is, but the exploration of its effects on the tenants in a Florida house is well done, as we see the snippets of all these people's dreams, and thus the snippets of themselves. Rose Walker is a good character, well drawn as a teenager struggling to come to terms with all the enormous things suddenly happening in her life. I even liked the appearance of poor Hector Hall, one of the substitute Sandmen who filled in for Dream during his imprisonment. He's a buffoon, but a well-meaning, manipulated one. The ending of the story, with Rose Walker and the heroic Gilbert at a serial killer's convention, is great. Even if Gaiman continuously tops himself in the gross-out stakes with the serial killer stuff.

Perhaps the best part of the entire volume are the side stories that show other aspects of the Dreaming. "The Sound of Her Wings," Dream's first meeting with his sister Death after his imprisonment, and "Dream of a Thousand Cats," the story of the secret dream of cats, were both good, but my favorite was "Men of Good Fortune," which is about an ordinary English granted immortality that Dream meets with every century-- the closest thing Dream has to a friend, and a rare insight into Dream's character. Curiously, the award-winning "A Midsummer Night's Dream," where Dream hires Shakespeare to write the titular play for him, left me cold. Clever, but uninvolving.

Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Next in sequence » show less

Every fan of the graphic novel format chooses for themselves the moment at which the medium "broke out." Watchmen. Miracle Man. Dark Knight Returns. The Contract With God Trilogy. While there can be no right answer to this question, for me it lies with Sandman, Neil Gaiman's brilliant, literate, and highly entertaining romp through areas as diverse as pop culture, Kaballah, Freudian analysis, serial killers, Shakespeare, death, and other areas too many to number. The story follows one of the endless, creatures that exist as personifications of certain eternal forces, Despair, Destiny, Delusion, Desire, etc, in this case Dream.

The story begins with Dream's capture by mystics in Britain between the world wars and takes off at his release show more in modern times, following his struggle to rebuild his realm, shattered and abandoned for his absence. While the first few issues touch at the edges of the traditional comic universe, Gaiman quickly departs this and enters his own deep textual musings. While a thread binds all the tales here together, a passion play of rise, fall, and self realization, what one finds here most pleasurable are the stories. Dream is the keeper of tales and many are to be found here. Shakespeare's troop performing a Midsummer Night's Dream for the real King Oberon, a man gifted with eternal life, another of a writer who captures and holds bound a muse for her stories, yet another of the trials of ruling hell, and many others.

Nor does this volume stand along on its prose, for the art too may be some of the most lovely in any modern graphic novel, rich and varied. While the book comes pricey, fans will love the oversized format and those beginning the collection will quickly notice that the price is only nominally higher then buying the individual soft back volumes. Of one thing I am certain, no one will likely regret taking this fine work home. show less