Series Review: The Sandman

For the last year, I have been devouring Neil Gaiman's epic series, The Sandman.  Not only have I read all 10 of the collected editions of the series, but also 3 spin-off books, 1 collection of short stories, and The Sandman Companion by Hy Bender, which analyzes each book in the series through interviews with Mr. Gaiman himself.  The books revolve around an idea so big, that it encompasses near everything.  And I mean everything.  It's a story about stories.  So for lovers of fantasy, myth, history, and fairy tale, mixed with a fair bit of goth sensibility and family drama, strap in tight, because this is the series for you.

The premise of Sandman is as simple and complicated as a story can be: it centers around a most peculiar family, known as The Endless, who each embody and represent the 7 constants of sentient life.  They are: Dream, Death, Desire, Despair, Destiny, Delirium (previously Delight), and Destruction.  These brothers and sisters endure for eternity, across all of the universe and beyond, wherever living beings exist.

The Endless, starting (left to right) with Death (far left), Destiny, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Delirium, and Despair.  

We first meet Dream, the titular Sandman, as he is captured in an occult trap, meant to ensnare his older sister, Death.  For 70 years he endures, silent, cut off from his realm.  And then, one day, he escapes.  But is he the same Dream?

I'll be honest, this is such a long and complicated series that it would impossible for me to do a play-by-play of all that happens.  Because he is the King of Dreams, both literal and figurative, Dream's powers and life story are near immeasurable.  His brother's and sister's realms are all of comparable or even greater magnitude.  And because they are what they are, we rarely experience the story from their point of view; more often we see it as it effects others, be they humans, gods, devils, angels, ideas, symbols, what have you.  This world hinges on the idea that belief in something gives it life.  

When asked to summarize the story himself in 20 words or less, Gaiman said: "The Lord of Dreams learns that one must change or die, and makes his decision."  

This is true.  After escape, each volume of the Sandman story follows Dream, as he is and as he was, and shows how each new challenge leads him closer to that decision.  There are famous faces from myth and legend and life (Odin and Loki, Orpheus from Greek myth, and even William Shakespeare himself), and faces from DC comics, the realm in which Sandman takes place (Martian Manhunter, John Constantine from Hellblazer, and most notably Hippolyta Hall, wife of the original Sandman/Silver Scarab/Dr. Fate).  But more often than not, the people that Sandman and all the others meet along the way are completely normal, regular, every day people, all connected to the Endless through their humanity.  This is their story too.

As to the character of Dream?  Well, for being an immortal and near all-powerful being, he's more human than you'd think.  He's quiet, shy, morose, brooding, moody, but occasionally, very kind.  He can be very passionate, but rarely lets anyone see it.  He is very susceptible to falling in love, but unfortunately, is not very good with relationships.  He has a family who he both loves but often does not get along with.  He hurts people, sometimes on purpose, often without realizing it.  He takes his responsibilities as ruler of the domain of dreams very seriously.  For a "person" who can be so cold, and has such a hard time in connecting with others, you almost immediately begin to root for him, and by the end, well, in the end you are very sad that your time with him, as a reader, is over.   

I know that that is not a whole heck of a lot to go on.  "What even happens in this crazy story
?!" you may ask.  But you see, everything happens, and that's why it's so hard to explain.

And that is part of why the writing is so very impressive.  SO MUCH HAPPENS.  But Gaiman easily keeps it together, relating everything to, well, everything.   It's so intricate, and under the pen of someone of lesser talent, it would easily fall apart and turn into a big mess.  The scope and depth of his knowledge in subjects ranging from fiction, history, mythology, belief systems, philosophy, and how humans work in general is just breathtaking.  It spans from the beginning of time to the present, and from one end of the globe to the other, and then into the rest of the universe (and maybe some other universes as well).  It's so entirely clever, every bit of it.  Things are not always as they seem, especially the Endless themselves.  This is particularly true for Death, a small, cheerful girl who loves everyone, and Destruction, a gentle man who embraces life.  No one voice is the same, each character using different inflections, accents, and colloquialisms.  Some of the volumes are collections of interconnected stories, while others follow a more traditional format.  And then there is the art.

The art in Sandman is one of the very best things about the series, which is saying a lot since I consider it to be a nearly perfect comic so far as the writing goes.  Each volume uses a different artist, some use as many as six per book.  From reading The Sandman Companion, I know that Gaiman specifically chose the artists to match the tone of each story.  This strategy worked out beautifully.  Each story draws you in completely, and the art has a lot to do with that.  Even the lettering changes depending on what type of story it is.  Speaking of lettering, one of the very coolest things is that each of the main characters is assigned their own "voice", a font and speech bubble combination specific to them.  This was wonderfully informative as to the personality of the character.  Dream has a white-on-black bubble with dreary/dripping font, Desire has spiky and severe gothic lettering, and Delirium's speech takes place in free-form tie-dye bubbles with whimsical letters.  It's an utterly brilliant strategy for further characterization.  

The only constant to Sandman, besides Gaiman's writing, are the covers and design of Dave McKean, which are instantly recognizable as linked to the series.  His combination of darkly atmospheric painting/collage/photography/sculpture perfectly capture the mystery, magic, and magnificence of Sandman.  Gaiman and McKean are a match made in Destiny's book (you'll find out).

There is honestly not enough you can say about the skill Dave McKean possesses or the amount of hard work he put into this series.

This is a story about life, about how, no matter what happens, life goes on.  It's a story about how we are all connected.  It's a story about how even the biggest things in life, even ideas and gods and stories, have lives of their own.  It's a story about stories.  And people.  And dreams.

Sandman has forever changed the way I will think about storytelling, and especially about comics.  I already knew that comics could be so much more than what people generally attribute to them.  But even I never thought someone could take it this far.  I've never read another comic that comes close to this in terms of scope, power, or intricacy.  It will envelope your life.  

So yeah, I recommend it.  A+++