Tag: Reviews

Book Review: Mortal Engines, Predator’s Gold, Infernal Devices

One of my new year’s resolutions is to read more literature, and then to blog about it. This post is more of a prologue to that, because the books it reviews don’t really count as literature.

So a month or two ago I was browsing TVTropes, and came upon this entry right here. A post-apocalyptic future with mobile cities that eat each other? This was way too intriguing to pass up. I decided to only order the first three books since the last, A Darkling Plain, is only out in hardback.

One of my new year’s resolutions is to read more literature, and then to blog about it. This post is more of a prologue to that, because the books it reviews don’t really count as literature.

So a month or two ago I was browsing TVTropes, and came upon this entry right here. A post-apocalyptic future with mobile cities that eat each other? This was way too intriguing to pass up. I decided to only order the first three books since the last, A Darkling Plain, is only out in hardback.

All in all, the series was pretty good. Not great, mind you, and I don’t think I would have given it all those awards, but a pleasant little adventure story. There are a lot of clever bits, including the basic premise of Traction Cities, and various shout outs. The plot and characters, though… they were less impressive. The author’s presence was too visible, I think, moving the players around on his board, and I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief. Likewise, Hester Shaw’s evolution from Action Girl to full-on murderous sociopath felt arbitrary and forced.

Incidentally, though the series does pretty consistently depict a savagely town-eat-town world, it falls prey to the Apocalypse Not trope. In Mortal Engines the Hunting Ground was in bad shape and getting worse, with slim pickings for London. Yet in Infernal Devices, we see many cities of varied sizes coexisting, with something of a common culture. Not to mention the lands of the Anti-Traction League.

Writing-wise, the first book needed some polish. The plot seemed even more forced (honestly, it was pretty clear this was Philip Reeve’s first stab at novel writing), and there were a couple of odd bits—like passages switching to the present tense for no clear reason—that should have been caught by an editor.

Still, I was entertained, and that’s what counts, right? I’ll be sure to pick up A Darkling Plain when it comes out in paperback.

Next up: Karen X. Tulchinksy’s The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky

Graphic Novel Review: Fun Home

I love Alison Bechdel’s Dykes To Watch Out For, and have from the day I came out and picked up my first GO-Info (strip # 140, “The Last Tango”, where Mo and Harriet have sex one last time before breaking up for good). Until it ended earlier this year, it was the first thing I read when picking up Xtra! West, and I could always count on it to make me laugh make me think, or both. I own all the collected books, including The Indelible Alison Bechdel.

But, there was one book of hers missing from my collection: a non-DTWOF book I didn’t even know existed until this summer, when I saw it as part of an exhibition on animation and comics at the Art Gallery. I read it all the way through in one sitting, absolutely captivated.

Fun Home Cover
Well you should see my story-reading baby
You should hear the things that she says
She says “Hon, drop dead, I’d rather go to bed
With Gabriel García Márquez
Cuddle up with William S. Burroughs
Leave on the light for bell hooks
I’ve been flirtin’ with Pierre Burton
‘Cause he’s so smart in his books”

—Moxy Früvous, “My Baby Loves A Bunch Of Authors”

I love Alison Bechdel’s Dykes To Watch Out For, and have from the day I came out and picked up my first GO-Info (strip # 140, “The Last Tango”, where Mo and Harriet have sex one last time before breaking up for good). Until it ended earlier this year, it was the first thing I read when picking up Xtra! West, and I could always count on it to make me laugh, make me think, or both. I own all the collected books, including The Indelible Alison Bechdel.

But, there was one book of hers missing from my collection: a non-DTWOF book I didn’t even know existed until this summer, when I saw it as part of an exhibition on animation and comics at the Art Gallery. I read it all the way through in one sitting, absolutely captivated. It’s poignant, disturbing in parts, brutally honest, yet at the same time masterfully intellectual and literate. A couple of weeks ago I bought it as a Christmas present to myself, and I’ve been compulsively rereading it over and over again. I guess this post is a way to get it out of my head.

In brief, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is the story of Bechdel’s growing up, and her complicated relationship with her father. A few weeks after coming out to her parents at age 19, she learned he was gay. A few months later he was dead, possibly having committed suicide. Fun Home is Bechdel’s attempt to work out the threads of his life, her own life, and how the two intersected.

But Fun Home is more than a memoir. It’s a story about stories: specifically, the books that Alison and her father both loved—and for the last couple of years of his life, the only way they related to each other. Fun Home is peppered with allusions and quotes from F. Scott Fitzgerald, Albert Camus, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Colette and Greek mythology, among many others, but they never (well, hardly ever) feel forced. Without bogging things down in tedious literary analysis, they provide just enough insight to not only enrich the story but get me excited about reading the originals as well.

Alison (I feel a bit awkward referring to her by her first name, but what can you do?) found her taste for The Classics in grade 12, but before that, her relationship with her father was mostly distant, even hostile at times. Bruce Bechdel, it seems, was not an easy man to live with. A remote, authoritarian father and husband, prone to bouts of rage, he spent much of his spare time reading or restoring his family’s 19th century home. He was obsessed with beauty, but it was a narrow, oppressive kind of beauty, shallow and fragile, with no room for other people’s needs or tastes. The home he recreated was an artfully arranged, jumbo-sized closet, as much a museum as a place to live.

Everything in Bruce Bechdel’s world had to be just so, and that included his only daughter Alison. They were polar opposites in many ways, butch girl and sissy man; him trying to dress her up into a perfect model of femininity, her resisting his efforts as best she could. His intent is ambiguous: it’s not clear if she was just another canvas on which to work his art, or if he was actually trying to quash her budding queerness.

Bulldyke Trucker

“Is that what you want to look like?” There are so many things wrong with that question. Is looking butch a worse sin than queerness? Would it have been better for her to look pretty, marry and have affairs with high school students on the sly?

Closeted father aside, there’s a lot I can relate to in Alison’s story. Both my parents are teachers as well (retired now) and have never been very demonstrative either. Like Alison, I realised I was gay before I had sex. And again like her, I bought a truckload of books upon coming out—biographies, histories, politics, humour, psychology, anything really, I wasn’t too choosy back then.

What A Little Bookworm!

And actually, that part was familiar. The Indelible Alison Bechdel reprinted her coming-out story; originally published in 1993, it focused on the immediate circumstances surrounding her revelation, making contact with the local gay community, and ending with her first time with another woman. But in the meantime bookish, intellectual Alison had plowed through many, many books in an attempt to find, and understand, her new community. The masturbation scene above was played for giggles in 1993 but turned into something more serious in 2006, almost transcendent, a necessary step in her journey. Only the “good for a wank” brought it down to earth a bit.

Bewitched

Okay, I promised myself I wouldn’t be doing any high-falutin’ literary analysis (“Marlow’s steamer? penis. The Congo? vagina” Hee) but there are a few details that jumped out at me. Consider the picture on her professor’s office wall. It so happens (thank you Wikipedia!) that “The Descent of Minerva to Ithaca” is one of a series of engravings John Flaxman did to illustrate the Odyssey. Guess which book was studied in this English class? That’s right: Joyce’s Ulysses.

There’s more, though. This meeting took place the exact same day Alison realised she was a lesbian. And in the 1993 version of her coming-out story, she compares her revelation to the birth of Athena. “You know the story. She springs, fully grown and in complete armor, from Zeus’s head.”

Was that picture really there in her professor’s office? I don’t think it matters much. In a few instances, Alison points out a stray detail and insists it was in fact real. This still leaves many unaccounted for, but that’s fine. In a memoir, factual accuracy may sometimes take a back seat. I’ll trust that the story is true enough, and move on.

So there you have it. Honestly, going through Fun Home again and again has left me exhausted, but in a good way. I grieve for a man who died before he ever had the chance to truly live, but celebrate the life of a woman who escaped his labyrinth and created something truly beautiful. And maybe, one of these days, I’ll feel brave enough to tackle Proust.

Movie Review: WALL•E

The trailers never really grabbed me, so I skipped Cars and Ratatouille. Still haven’t seen them on DVD. This movie, though? This movie had promise.

And boy, did it deliver.

The trailers never really grabbed me, so I skipped Cars and Ratatouille. Still haven’t seen them on DVD. This movie, though? This movie had promise.

And boy, did it deliver. First, it’s visually breathtaking, even more so than Finding Nemo. From the dingy, polluted Earth to the ultra-shiny Axiom full of bright primary colours and neon holograms, with marvelous starscapes in between, those incredible Pixar animators have surpassed themselves yet again. It bears repeating: this movie looks absolutely fracking awesome.

The story leans towards the kids’ end of the spectrum, I found: no bad guys with guns like The Incredibles has, or the nasty predators of Finding Nemo. Just some cute robots (and a couple of humans). There is a plot besides the (so cute) love story between WALL•E and EVE, and it’s an interesting one, but it doesn’t distract from the cuteness. There’s a Big Message, too, just like in other Pixar movies, which goes beyond “We have to take care of our planet.” I like it, and the delivery is a lot more subtle than Finding Nemo‘s borderline-sledgehammer approach.

In short: two thumbs way up. WALL•E has it all: it’s sweet, funny, engaging, exciting, occasionally tear-jerking. I’ve seen it once, I’ll see it again at least a couple more times, and you can bet I’ll buy the DVD so I can watch it over and over.

Graphic Novel Review: Superman: Red Son

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!

Superman: strange visitor from another world! Who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands…

And who, as the champion of the common worker, fights a never-ending battle for Stalin, socialism and the international expansion of the Warsaw Pact.

What if?

What if Superman’s ship did not land in Kansas? What if, instead of the heartland of America, it landed in the heartland of… the Ukraine? What if this Superman was raised to fight for truth, justice, and the Soviet way?

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!

Superman: strange visitor from another world! Who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands…

And who, as the champion of the common worker, fights a never-ending battle for Stalin, socialism and the international expansion of the Warsaw Pact.

What if?

What if Superman’s ship did not land in Kansas? What if, instead of the heartland of America, it landed in the heartland of… the Ukraine? What if this Superman was raised to fight for truth, justice, and the Soviet way? This is the premise of Superman: Red Son, an 3-part DC Elseworlds miniseries published in 2003, and now conveniently collected in graphic novel form. I’d been hearing a lot of positive things about it for a while, but never got around to buying it until now.

In the interest of full disclosure, here’s another detail: Red Son was written by Mark Millar. Three years ago I wrote that he was the one who killed Northstar. Northstar got better, but I never forgot that first impression. A little later, I read the first storyline he did for The Authority (“The Nativity,” issues #13–16). You’ll have to wait for another post to get the full details, but let’s just say that I was not impressed. Bottom line, I came into this miniseries with a very low opinion of the author. So it’s possible this review is not 100% objective.

It’s the art that really grabbed me, not so much the story. Specifically, the colours. The first issue had a very limited and subdued palette: Supe’s costume is grey and dark red, with a black-and-red hammer-and-sickle where the bright yellow “S” should be. In fact, most of that issue is grey and red: the grey of clouds, concrete and black-and-white TV; the red of fire, blood and Soviet flags. I have to say, it made for a neat effect. The only breaks were the eerie green of Luthor’s lab, and Lois’ bright lavender dress upon her meeting with the Comrade of Steel. The second and third issues lightened up colour-wise, which I think is a shame since the story itself got darker and darker. But, there you go: different artists have different styles and I won’t quibble too much.

This being an Elseworlds there are plenty of references, both serious and sly, to established continuity. My favourite would be the full-page shot of Superman holding up the Daily Planet globe, a perfect call-back to the cover of Superman #1.

Superman: Red Son

Batman’s “Bat-signal” is a clever take on the original, being a deliberately rough graffiti to mar Supe’s pristine tyranny. Stalingrad in a bottle? Sure, why not. And I got a chuckle at the name of the famous American defector: Thaddeus Sivana (misspelled in this comic). Heh. At least we didn’t get Mr. Mind. On the downside, we didn’t get any insight into these alternate characters. Lois pines for Superman, despite only having seen him in the flesh for a moment. Lex Luthor is an astoundingly brilliant scientist, learning Urdu and playing six games of chess at once on his coffee breaks. Wonder Woman and Themyscira are… pretty unchanged. The Man of Steel himself is still an eternally compassionate boyscout, taking over the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death and turning it into an efficient totalitarian utopia because he wants to help people. Batman is still a ruthless vigilante, the only difference being that he’s head of a terrorist conspiracy against Superman’s rule.

But I didn’t see anything new or really insightful in these adaptations, even the twist of Lois being married to Lex. Frankly, I feel that kind of Elseworlds has been done to death, and Millar isn’t the first person to ask what would happen if Superman really tried to rule the world. (For one thing, he’d be wearing a Pope hat.)

All these nods and references (inspired or not) are perfectly acceptable in an alternate-universe story. But there was one line that made me go “Oh no he di-in’t!” Early in issue #1, Superman narrates:

I had made quite an impression in the fourteen weeks since I’d made my journey from the farm lands to Moscow.

Some still thought me a trick of the light or an urban myth, but each new day saw another super-feat or some death-defying rescue.

What’s so special about this line? It’s not original to Millar, nor does it come from the Superman œuvre as far as I know. It comes courtesy of Warren Ellis to describe John Cumberland, a.k.a. “The High,” the Wildstorm universe’s answer to Superman. From Stormwatch #48 (May 1997):

We call this man The High.

His first recorded activities were in the year 1938. He visited beatings upon corrupt landlords, nazi bunds, munitions tycoons; political acts. Quietly averted a few natural disasters. But there was never solid proof of his existence. He was dismissed as an urban myth.

And from Planetary #5 (September 1999):

John Cumberland, my God… There was brave man. Most people thought him a myth, or a trick of the light…

And Millar must know about Ellis’ work, since he took over The Authority from him. So… far be it from me to accuse anyone of plagiarism, but it definitely soured my reading of Red Son. Though if anyone can offer evidence that the “trick of the light” line is actually part of the Superman myth, I will stand corrected.

One other thing that turned me off is Millar’s lack of affection for the source material. Consider the opening quote of this post, part of a Communist propaganda film. That was actually taken pretty much word for word (except for the last part, obviously) from the awesome 1940’s Superman animated shorts and other classic sources. Which is cool. What’s less cool is Millar having Perry White commenting, “Aw, gimme a break. Who writes this stuff?” Look, we know Golden Age comics were cheesy and goofy as hell. That’s why we love them. There’s no need to make these little comments that I guess try for “ironic” but land on “obnoxious.” Also “hypocritical,” since he makes a living writing for the funny-books, though I guess it’s okay if he makes them all dark and bloody and junk.

And there were other parts that didn’t piss me off so much as… make me shake my head. Sloppy writing that should have been caught by an editor. When Superman leaves his own party, he finds the drunk and suicidal Pyotr two hundred miles away. But suddenly he hears people shouting for help in Moscow “two miles away”? Sivana’s name spelled with an extra “n”? The Moscow subway sign spelled in English but with a backward “S”? Then you’ve got Supe’s inner monologue, as he prevents Sputnik from crashing into Metropolis.

Sputnik Two weighed five thousand pounds. That mass multiplied by an acceleration factor of a hundred meters per second would have delivered a force powerful enough to level the entire city.

Okay, time for a refresher physics course: a hundred meters per second is a measure of speed, not acceleration. And energy (not force), is a function of mass multiplied by speed squared. Also, Sputnik-2 weighed a little over 500kg, or about 1,100 pounds. Seriously, Millar, two minutes with Google.

I won’t get into the various plot points that came out of nowhere, and especially not the ending, because that was just… weird, and came out of fucking left field. Krypton is future Earth? Meh, I dunno.

Bottom line: I did enjoy this graphic novel. True, it didn’t make me think much, and didn’t improve my opinion of Mark Millar. I don’t think it deserves the breathless praise everybody seems to be heaping on it, but hey: it was fun, occasionally clever, and had lots of nice visuals and cool fight scenes. Bring the popcorn, stay for the art.

Comic Book Review: Death: The High Cost of Living

I admit it. I love Death. Have from the first time she appeared in The Sandman. She’s beautiful, perky, compassionate, and not afraid to tell it like it is. If she’ll pardon my saying so, she’s the most human of all the Endless… and it seems there’s a good reason for that.

I admit it. I love Death. Have from the first time she appeared in The Sandman. She’s beautiful, perky, compassionate, and not afraid to tell it like it is. If she’ll pardon my saying so, she’s the most human of all the Endless… and it seems there’s a good reason for that. It is said that “One day in every century Death takes on mortal flesh, better to comprehend what the lives she takes must feel like, to taste the bitter tang of mortality: and this is the price she must pay for being the divider of the living from all that has gone before, all that must come after.” This quietly enchanting 3-part miniseries, written by Neil Gaiman and published in 1993 (during Sandman’s run, near the end of the “Brief Lives” storyline), follows Death as she spends twenty-four hours mortal in New York City, tasting life and making new friends.

We meet Sexton Furnival, a sullen and angsty teen vaguely planning suicide because he feels life is pointless. We catch up with Hazel and Foxglove, the lesbian couple last seen in Sandman’s “A Game of You” storyline. And we meet Didi, the incarnation of Death (whose name just has to start with a “D,” like all the Endless). It’s not clear exactly who or what she is: a temporary shell for Death? A real girl imbued with a bit of the Endless’ essence? Didi does seem to have a history and friends who remember her, but that might just be a bit of retroactive memory. What’s obvious is that she’s not just some delusional mortal girl: a few of her offhand remarks (“As my older brother would say, some destinations are inevitable.” “My sister has rats. She loves them deeply.”) indicate she knows way more about the Endless than any mortal should.

And all of these characters deal with death (small “d”) and life in different ways. Sexton contemplates suicide but eventually learns to appreciate life. Hazel is expecting a baby. Foxglove sings about her dead ex-girlfriend. Didi, as is her function, enjoys the hell out of every experience: breathing, eating, meeting people (even the creeps), the good and the bad, living her perfectly ordinary, perfectly special day.

(There are a couple of plots, but they’re not terribly important. Mad Hettie, an immortal homeless woman previously seen in Sandman, is looking for her heart and demands Didi’s help. A blind wizard called The Eremite plans to steal Didi’s ankh and thus gain power over Death… to stop people from dying, maybe. That’s the problem with being Death, I guess: too few people appreciate your work. There are always sorcerers and whatnot trying to control you for the “good” of humanity. Roderick Burgess did it way back in Sandman #1, and he probably wasn’t the first.)

The art, by Chris Bachalo and Mark Buckingham, is phenomenal, and in my opinion consitutes the best representation of Death. They perfectly captured her sweetness, innocence (maybe not the best term when talking about the second oldest being in the universe, but there you go), serene wisdom, and, well, lovability. Some of the visuals were quite striking: I especially loved the scene of Didi helping Sexton to his feet, in the garbage dump where she found him. It worked on an additional level, since Death usually takes the recently departed by the hand as she leads them to what lies beyond. (And I could go on about Didi pushing the fridge off Sexton’s legs being deep and complex symbolism for Death releasing us from the burdens of life, but I think I won’t go there. Sometimes a fridge is just a fridge.) And the panel of Didi by the fountain, silently embracing the world moments before her death, still gets to me, even ten years later.

Death: The High Cost of Living is conveniently collected in a trade paperback, which offers a nifty little bonus: Death Talks About Life, a six page insert in which Death discusses safer sex, assisted by John Constantine and a banana. It’s as awesome as it sounds.

Comic Book Review: The Sandman

The year was 1994. Up until that time the only comics I read were mainstream superheroics (mostly Marvel, with just a little bit of DC), and pretty infrequently at that. I never committed to any series (with a few exceptions), just reading a few issues here and there as the mood took me. In hindsight I wonder if it’s because the mostly tedious and formulaic stories these comics contained paled in comparison with the sci-fi and fantasy I had been avidly reading for years and years. But that summer, something very special happened:

The year was 1994. Up until that time the only comics I read were mainstream superheroics (mostly Marvel, with just a little bit of DC), and pretty infrequently at that. I never committed to any series (with a few exceptions), just reading a few issues here and there as the mood took me. In hindsight I wonder if it’s because the mostly tedious and formulaic stories these comics contained paled in comparison with the sci-fi and fantasy I had been avidly reading for years and years. But that summer, something very special happened: I watched an episode of Prisoners of Gravity discussing a strange comic I’d never heard of, written by some British guy I’d never heard of either. It was dark fantasy, with mature and intelligent writing, seemed nicely illustrated, and unlike any comic I’d ever seen.

Hey, I thought, this needs checking out.

The series had by then been running for five years, but most of the old issues were collected in trade paperbacks, so I had no trouble completing my collection. The Sandman‘s run ended in early 1996 with a total of 75 issues, plus a few one-shot specials; it was a wonderful series, with smart, powerful storytelling and art that varied between good and breathtaking. I will always remember it as the first (but certainly not the last) alternative comic book I ever picked up, and I will be eternally grateful to the now-defunct Prisoners of Gravity for showing me there was something out there in comics besides standard cape-and-tights superheroics.

The title character is the mythical Sandman, the Lord of Dreams. More than a god, he is one of the Endless, seven beings that incarnate different principles of the universe. This one is the personification of dreams and nightmares, as well as imagination, stories and myth. Usually addressed as “Dream” or “Morpheus”—rarely as “Sandman”—he generally appears as a tall, thin man with dark clothes, black hair and pure white skin, and starry voids where his eyes should be. Though he is the title character, he doesn’t always take centre stage: as often as not, the tales focus on the interesting web of friends, associates, acquaintances or enemies he has gathered around himself, with Dream only acting as a witness or catalyst to their stories.

The Beginning

The first issue begins in 1916, when a powerful wizard named Roderick Burgess hatches a plan to summon and bind Death. He fails, but quite by accident manages to capture Death’s younger brother, Dream. Morpheus remains trapped for over seventy years in Burgess’ house, cut off from his realm and power, during which time the Dreaming suffered various disruptions: some people slept nonstop for decades, others couldn’t sleep or dream at all. Upon escaping in 1988, Dream takes revenge on his captor’s son Alex—Roderick having already passed away- -by trapping him in “eternal waking,” an extremely nasty curse that has the victim jumping from nightmare from nightmare, appearing to wake up but then realizing they’re still asleep.

This is only the beginning. Morpheus is weak, hungry, missing his tools of office: a pouch of sand, a ruby, and a helm (a bizarre contraption shaped like a cross between a skull and a gas mask). His realm is in shambles, some of its population of dreams having either died, mutated in unexpected ways, or escaped into the waking world. Morpheus first has to retrieve his tools, a quest which takes up the next 6 issues. For the pouch he must team up with John Constantine to go through an army of rebel dreams powered by a madwoman. For the helm he must face down Lucifer and the hordes of Hell. For the ruby he must battle an insane villain who managed to tap the power of the jewel.

The first seven issues were overall pretty enjoyable and showed serious potential. Dream’s character, in particular, was already well defined: his cold formality, his meticulous attention to his duties, his harsh and vengeful pride. But in other respects the series was still feeling its way. The art was a bit uneven, and the story itself (the second half, especially) is somewhat… questionable: Dream has to actually fight, to act like a hero against a villain, which I don’t feel is appropriate for a being of his nature. Although I have to say his mystical duel with the demon Choronzon in issue #3 was nothing short of brilliant.

These first issues contained appearances by many established DC Comics characters; most fit the dark and mystical theme of the series very well. For instance, our first look at the Dreaming in issue #2 includes Cain and Abel, former hosts of two horror comics series (The House of Mystery and The House of Secrets, respectively) back in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. In this universe they are very special dreams, charged with the safekeeping of old stories. The pair of them became recurring characters, reenacting their mythical roles of murderer and victim—for you see, they also happen to be the Biblical characters. In that same issue we get to see the Three Witches, former hosts of The Witching Hour, yet another old-time DC horror series. There they were just, well, witches, in the traditional trinity of Maiden, Mother and Crone. In the Sandman universe the Witches are an aspect of the Triple Goddess, an entity equal to—perhaps greater than—the Endless. (All these homages went right over my head ten years ago, but since then I’ve gathered a little collection of old-time horror titles.)

Also fitting the theme: John Constantine, who had been roaming the DC occult world for a while, as had the demon Etrigan, whom Dream encounters in Hell in issue #4. And, briefly seen in issue #1 is the Golden Age Sandman, Wesley Dodds. In an intriguing bit of retconning, we learn that Wesley Dodds was driven to go out crime-fighting by recurring dreams of Morpheus (then in captivity). The gas mask he wore, besides its purely functional value, was reminiscent of Dream’s own helm.

What didn’t fit so well were appearances by characters from DC’s mainstream superhero world: John Dee, a.k.a. Doctor Destiny, the villain who had taken control of Dream’s ruby, is a recurring enemy of the Justice League; the Scarecrow is from Batman’s rogue gallery; the Martian Manhunter is one of the League’s founding members; Scott Free, a.k.a. Mister Miracle is another hero with ties to the League. To be fair, the Manhunter and Miracle only made brief appearances, and Scarecrow was portrayed as a silly professor absentmindedly cataloguing all the different types of fears, but I still wish we could have done without the references to costumed superheroes, and without Dream having to be a hero himself.

But all is forgiven thanks to issue #8, entitled “The Sound of her Wings.” Depressed and tired after his ordeals, Dream is visited by his sweet, upbeat and beautiful older sister Death. By taking him with her on her rounds, she shows Dream how to find happiness in the simple routines of everyday life. “The Sound of her Wings” is a beautiful and touching story, refreshingly quiet and low-key after the excitement of the last few issues. It remains one of my favourites of the entire series, partly because the Death it introduces is so… untraditional. I mean, you never saw Bergman’s Grim Reaper quoting from Mary Poppins, did you? (Although this Reaper just might do it.)

The Doll’s House

Issue #9 kicked off a new storyline, “The Doll’s House.” As would become a regular occurrence, this issue contains a story told by the characters—so, a story within a story. Many thousands of years ago, it is said, Dream fell in love with a mortal queen named Nada; and she fell in love with him. But she knew mortals and Endless were not meant to be together, so she refused to come to his realm and be his wife. His pride hurt, Dream sentenced Nada to Hell. This is in fact a true story: we do see Nada briefly in issue #4, when Dream visits Hell to recover his helm. She still loves him, and he loves her. But he hasn’t forgiven her.

“The Doll’s House” introduces two more Endless: Despair—a short, dumpy, ugly woman with fangs and a hooked ring with which she gouges her own flesh from time to time, and Desire—a scheming, self-centered creature of no gender (or all genders), who seems to spend a lot of time meddling in Dream’s life out of malice. The two siblings seem to have a close relationship though they apparently have very little in common. From some of Desire’s comments at the beginning of issue #10 it seems s/he was partly responsible for the affair between Dream and Nada. As we learn later, the Endless can manipulate one another so it is possible that Desire could have made Dream fall in love.

The main plot concerns a girl named Rose Walker, granddaughter of Unity Kincaid, one of the people who went to sleep when Dream was captured and woke up only when he escaped. Rose is a “vortex,” a mortal who—involuntarily, by her very nature—can cause great damage to the Dreaming. It is part of Dream’s duties to identify and destroy such people before the damage becomes irreparable. In the end Dream finds he doesn’t have to kill her. It turns out Unity was impregnated by Desire and gave birth to Rose’s mother, as part of a plan to make Dream spill family blood. It was Unity who should have been the vortex, but she had been locked in a dreamless sleep for decades and her power (whatever it was) passed down her bloodline to Rose. Rose was able to pass her power back to Unity who then died, thus sparing the Dreaming. This matter of “vortices” was never referenced again, and I suspect it was mostly a way to introduce the taboo against a Endless spilling family blood; as we later learn, such an act would bring the Furies down on the murderer’s head.

A parallel plotline involves Rose’s search for her brother Jed, separated from her and placed in a foster home some years ago. The boy is not only being abused by his foster parents, but also taken over by two powerful dreams by the name of Brute and Glob who had escaped while Morpheus was imprisoned. Their plan is to create a new Dream King out of a delusional ghost named Hector Hall. They brought Hall and his pregnant wife Hippolyta into a pocket Dreaming inside Jed’s head, put him into a gaudy superhero costume and made him continually fight silly monsters. This is an homage (or parody, since the original is almost as loopy) to the 1970’s Sandman.

When Morpheus defeats Brute and Glob he sends Hector into the beyond, and lays claim to Hippolyta’s child, still unborn after two years in the Dreaming.

The storyline has an interesting interlude in issue #13, entitled “Men of Good Fortune,” which introduces one of the most fascinating of Sandman‘s recurring characters: Hob Gadling. In the year 1389, Death and Dream went for a walk in the mortal world, and ended up in a tavern in Britain where they listened to Hob pontificating about death being “a mug’s game;” in his (drunken) opinion, it was something that people did just because they believed they had to, and he wanted no part in it. Death smiled a quirky, enigmatic smile and Dream addressed Hob, proposing to meet him for a drink a century later in the same tavern. Hob, not really believing he was immortal but trying to save face in front of his friends, agreed. And so Dream and Hob kept meeting for drinks, once every hundred years. Dream explained that Hob (who by 1589 changed his name to the more refined “Robert”) really was immortal: Death would not take him unless he truly desired to end his life. In 1889, Hob opined that Dream kept meeting him not because he was mildly curious about human nature, but because he was lonely and considered Hob a friend. Dream angrily protested that a being like him didn’t need any lowly friends, and left in a huff. Nevertheless he was on time for their 1989 meeting, and this time actually called Hob a friend. What happened? Well, Dream did spend most of the intervening century trapped in Burgess’ crystal box. That changes a guy, even an Endless.

Dream Country

Four more-or-less standalone stories followed “The Doll’s House.” In issue #17, the muse Calliope is enslaved by a writer whose well has run dry, and subsequently freed by Dream. Here we learn the startling fact that Calliope and Dream were in a relationship some thousands of years ago, and had a son together. And again, we see evidence that Dream has been somewhat changed by his long imprisonment. He can now empathize with Calliope’s situation, whereas before—she claims—he would have left her to rot. In issue #18, “A Dream Of A Thousand Cats,” a community of cats discover they can change their reality through dreaming. It also gives readers their first sight of a non-human Dream (because of course, he rules the dreams of all creatures, not just humans). This was a creepy little tale, which will ensure you’ll never look at a sleeping cat the same way again. In issue #19, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” William Shakespeare’s troupe gives a once-in-a-lifetime performance to the Court of Faerie. This is a sequel of sorts to issue #13, in which we saw Morpheus meeting Shakespeare (who happened to be in the same tavern as Hob and him in 1589). In exchange for a lifetime of inspiration, Dream commissioned two special plays. A Midsummer Night’s Dream was the first, intended as a gift to the King and Queen of Faerie so that they would never be forgotten by humans. In issue #20, “Façade,” Death shows she is always perky and sympathetic as she gives an indestructible, but miserable, superheroine (Element Girl, a relatively minor DC character) a way to end her existence. This is also the first of a handful of issues in which Dream does not appear.

Season of Mists

The next major storyline, “Season of Mists,” (issues #21–28) begins with an Endless family reunion! In addition to Dream, Death, Desire and Despair, readers get to meet Destiny (the oldest, glimpsed once in issue #7), and Delirium (the youngest, only mentioned). Still missing is the unnamed “prodigal,” vaguely mentioned once in issue #10; this Endless apparently left the family of his own free will some time ago and wishes no contact with the remaining Endless. He is missed by at least Death and Despair, and emphatically not missed by Desire. This family meeting kicks off the plot: following Desire’s mean-spirited (but very accurate) jabs at his poor romantic history, Dream decides to visit Hell to finally forgive Nada. But since he humiliated Lucifer in front of all demonkind on his last visit, he doesn’t quite know what kind of welcome to expect. He certainly doesn’t expect Lucifer to step down and give him the key to Hell…

As a result of owning what Death calls “the most desirable plot of psychic real estate in the whole order of created things,” Dream becomes extremely popular. A number of gods and powers petition him to give them the key, with a wide variety of bribes or threats. In the end Dream gives the key to a couple of angels who (acting in the Name of their Lord) will keep Hell active as a place of redemptive torment. And Dream does formally apologize to Nada for being such a dick ten thousand years ago (though he starts in such an insensitive, self-absorbed way! I mean, really. “I think I might have acted wrongly”? “I think perhaps I should apologize”?).

“Seasons of Mists” was a hell of a lot of fun. It was a big story, dealing with conflict between powers far beyond mortal ken. It does raise a few questions about how the Judeo-Christian God fits into this whole mythology, though. It seems there are some entities more powerful than the Endless: possibly the Three Ladies; definitely Lucifer (by Dream’s admission). If so, then Jehovah must be as well. But it’s still not clear who created who, and I suppose it never will be. Oh well.

I have to admit the Endless family reunion—incomplete though it was—made me squeal like a little geek. But who is this missing Endless? What is his domain? why did he leave the family? Where is he now? The Egyptian goddess Bast apparently knows something of his present whereabouts—she was prepared to give this information to Morpheus in exchange for her pantheon getting control of Hell. And we get a few more interesting hints about Endless nature: when Morpheus discussed his upcoming visit to Hell with his staff, he said, “If I am destroyed, another aspect of Dream will fill my shoes. I trust you all will make my re-assumption of the role an easy one.” So it seems the Endless can die… sort of, and only temporarily. And what we see of Morpheus is only a small fraction of the totality that is Dream of the Endless.

Distant Mirrors

There follow a few more standalone issues, collectively known as “Distant Mirrors” since they show Dream in historical settings. My favourite is “Three Septembers and a January” (issue #31), which tells the story of Joshua Norton, the man who declared himself Emperor of the United States in 1859. It is a fascinating story of the power of dreams over despair, madness, and base desires, as Norton’s Morpheus-inspired reign showed the King of Dreams to be stronger than the three youngest Endless.

A one-shot special entitled “The Song of Orpheus” was published between issues #31 and #32. It is a retelling of the Greek legend of Orpheus, the mythical bard who travelled to Hades in a failed attempt to retrieve his dead bride Eurydice and was later killed by the Maenads. In this version of the story (as in some others) Orpheus did not die then, and his head floated down to the sea, ending up on the isle of Lesbos. Here, Orpheus is the son of the Muse Calliope and Dream himself. And for the first time we see the seventh Endless: a big robust man with flaming red hair wearing ornate plate armor. Orpheus introduces him as “my uncle Olethros” (which is Greek for “Destruction”). After Eurydice’s death, Dream opposed Orpheus’ trip to Hades’ underworld, counseling him instead to accept his wife’s death, grieve, and move on; but Orpheus, romantic fool that he was, spat out “I am no longer your son” and stormed off. Afterwards Dream refused to grant Orpheus a final death—in fact, refused to ever speak to him again. Orpheus—still quite alive, having lost none of his singing talent in spite of having no body—stayed on Lesbos, cared for by the local priests. His head was stolen once in the mid-18th century, ending up in Paris in 1794, to finally be recovered by Joanna Constantine (an ancestor of John Constantine) as told in issue #29, “Thermidor.” It looks like Dream still cared for his son, but as usual his stubborn pride got in the way of an easy resolution, and he had to use a human agent to keep his word of never seeing Orpheus again.

A Game of You

“A Game of You,” a six-part storyline running in issues #32–37, brought the series down to a more human scale. Barbie (one of Rose Walker’s housemates in Florida, last seen in “The Doll’s House”) used to regularly dream of a wonderful fantasy world in which she was “Princess Barbara,” fighting to save her land from an evil known as “The Cuckoo.” After being caught in Rose’s brief manifestation of vortex power she moved to New York and hooked up with some quite interesting housemates: Hazel and Foxglove, a lesbian couple (one of whom is the ex of Judy, one of the people killed by Dee in issue #6 when he experimented with Dream’s ruby); Wanda, a pre-op MTF transsexual; and Thessaly, a plain-looking but extremely powerful and virtually immortal witch. But now Barbie’s dreams become a terrifying reality as she is drawn back into the dreamworld and her friends must protect her in both the waking and dreaming realms.

I guess there has to be one: “A Game of You” was the least enjoyable storyline for me. There were parts of it I liked: the “small world” feeling of the Sandman universe, and the attention to continuity within the series. What used to be a minor character was given depth and a personality, and supporting characters of her own. The themes of fantasies and identities were interesting ones, and explored in different ways through Barbie and Wanda: Barbie’s dreams of being a heroic princess were just an escape from her dreary, ordinary life, whereas Wanda moved to a new place, changed her name, was even changing her body to become who she wanted to be. Thessaly was another fascinating character: always perfectly cool and composed, but completely self-centered and breathtakingly arrogant and reckless—her spell to draw down the moon without regard to how it would fuck up the local weather was bad enough, but her actually making demands of Morpheus after she, Hazel, Foxglove and Barbie witnessed the Land’s end and insisting she could get them all home safely even when she clearly had no power left? Well, that really takes brass ones.

Which leads me to the main reason I was unhappy with “A Game of You.” The resolution was horribly depressing. The Cuckoo won, after all. I realize she wasn’t evil as such, but she was a nasty little piece of work who destroyed the Land, and still got to fly free. And poor Wanda died—not heroically, though she lived her life with courage and distinction. To add insult to injury her whole identity, her name, everything that made her her was erased by her small-minded hick family. All they knew (or wanted to know) was their son Alvin and that’s the name that went on her tombstone; Wanda lived on only in her friends’ memories—and the tacky pink lipstick with which Barbie wrote her real name on her grave. I guess it was the family’s redneck homophobia/transphobia that yanked me out of the fantasy. I already know people like that exist. I’ve met them, and I don’t need to see them in my fantasy comics. But maybe that’s the moral of the story: Outside of Barbie’s pretty dreams, there are no pure-hearted heroes battling irredeemable villains. And who we think of as the good guys don’t always win.

Convergence

A few more standalone stories followed, collectively called “Convergence” because they blur the line between storyteller and story. The highlight is issue #40, “A Parliament of Rooks.” It stars Daniel Hall, Lyta’s son, now a toddler. The boy gestated in dreams for a couple of years and was named by Morpheus himself, and here we see he has a special connection to the Dreaming, enabling him to interact with the entities there on their own level. The issue shows him visiting Abel’s House of Secrets and attending a little storytelling party with Cain, Abel and Eve. After Cain’s chilling mystery of rooks (which gives the issue its title), we’re treated to Abel and Eve’s retelling of their respective mythologies. We learn of Adam’s two wives before Eve, and how Cain and Abel were “recruited” by Dream after their death. The two brothers definitely predate not just the Bible, but humanity as a whole. They were mortal, though, and one killed the other pretty much as is told in Genesis. But instead of letting Death take Abel, Dream offered him the chance to live on in dreams, as a keeper of secret stories. Later when Cain died Dream made him a similar offer and the two brothers were reunited, both storytellers and archetypes, part of an eternal double act: secrets and mysteries, victim and victor.

Brief Lives

Then came what was in my opinion the high point of the series: the “Brief Lives” storyline, running in issues #41–49. Delirium, youngest of the Endless, decides to look for their missing brother Destruction and persuades Dream to join her. Dream however, is more interested in taking his mind off a relationship that went south; he neither expects nor wants to find Destruction. But when people around them keep mysteriously dying or disappearing, Morpheus realizes there is more here than meets the eye, and becomes committed to Delirium’s quest. The siblings finally find their lost brother, who is quite happy on his own and does not intend to rejoin the family. And Dream finds destruction in another sense: to learn of his brother’s whereabouts, Dream had to consult his son Orpheus and in return give him the death he craved for millennia. Thus Dream has spilled family blood, opening himself to retaliation by the Furies.

Destruction. Now there’s an interesting guy. Readers saw a little bit of him in “The Song of Orpheus.” They see a little bit more in a flashback in issue #41 as he and Despair supervise the London Plague in 1665. He was so friendly and cheerful, with a laugh as big as the world, not at all who you’d expect to rule over Destruction. But then Death isn’t your traditional Grim Reaper either. And what’s Destruction doing when we see him for the first time in the present? A bit of painting. Not very good painting, but it looks like he’s doing it just for fun. Later on, we see him composing a little poem. Again, surprisingly amateurish for a being who’s had billions of years to perfect his craft… but maybe he only started after leaving the Family. Anyway, the message is clear:

Basilisk and Cockatrice: A Moral Poem

I dreamed I saw a basilisk
That basked upon a rocky shore
I looked upon the basilisk…
With eyes of stone I looked no more.
I dreamed I saw a cockatrice
A-chewing on a piece of bone
I gazed upon the cockatrice…
One cannot gaze with eyes of stone.

To look upon a basilisk
Is really never worth the risk
To gaze upon a cockatrice
Is permanent and never nice
For it can never be denied
Life isn’t pleasant, petrified.

And there you have it, the theme of this storyline: Life is change. Nothing lasts forever. Humans grow old and die; stars go nova; gods lose worshippers and must move on or find other ways to survive. Even the Endless are not nearly as endless as they’d like to believe. The seven of them (except possibly Death) will only last as long as the universe. Delirium used to be known as Delight long ago. Despair has died once—how we don’t know. And Dream himself has changed somewhat, as readers have seen many times over the course of the series, and as he has repeatedly denied. All this is Destruction’s domain: change, whether for good or ill, constructive or destructive. You can’t have one without the other. Nothing new can come into being without displacing something else.

But none of these messages ever come across as pretentious or boring. I found it fascinating to see how the Endless actually live out their functions. Destiny seems to have no free will: he knows what will happen to everyone and everything, including himself, and even his walks through his garden are predetermined. Dream is a self-absorbed romantic fool, surrounding himself with stories and servants he created himself, and who—though he won’t admit it—sometimes doesn’t think much about the real-world consequences of his actions. Delirium is as nutty as a dozen fruitcakes, though occasionally prone to bouts of frightening lucidity. Despair is sad and full of self-doubt, constantly mutilating herself with her hooked ring. Desire is a selfish and cruel bitch who doesn’t know the meaning of self-control. Destruction is good at shaking up the status quo and painting mediocre landscapes. Death is… well, Death is herself. We know that she’s there for us when we’re born as well as when we die, which makes her the only Endless apart from Destruction to embody opposite principles. Which may be why those two are so hard to pin down.

Ramadan

The fiftieth issue, entitled “Ramadan” takes us to medieval Baghdad, under the reign of the legendary Caliph Haroun al-Raschid. It is an age of magic and miracles, witches and djinni and flying glass horses, where heroes and adventurers abound and everyone has an exciting story to tell. But the Caliph, knows that this golden age will not last forever. He summons the King of Dreams and asks him to take the city into the Dreaming, thus ensuring that it would at least live on in myth. Gorgeously illustrated and exquisitely written, it’s easily one of the best Sandman issues ever.

World’s End

The “Worlds’ End” storyline follows—actually, less a storyline than six loosely related issues. Trapped by a reality storm, a motley collection of travelers find refuge in the Inn at Worlds’ End, a free house between realms. There they pass the time by telling stories: of a man trapped in the dreams of a sleeping city (“A Tale Of Two Cities,” issue #51); rousing swashbuckling adventure with a dash of political intrigue (“Cluracan’s Tale,” issue #52); a voyage at sea with Hob Gadling the immortal, a cross-dressing girl and a sea serpent (“Hob’s Leviathan,” issue #53); a retelling of the legend of Prez (“The Golden Boy,” issue #54); simple slices-of-life in a city of morticians (“Cerements,” issue #55). In several cases, these stories have many layers, of stories-within-stories. For example, “Cerements” features Petrefax (in the Inn) relating the story of an air burial, where Scroyle tells of Destruction wandering through the Necropolis, who tells him of the burial of the first Despair.

The arc concludes with the refugees’ vision of a funeral procession, in which many of the series’ main characters (most of the Endless, several major gods and dreams) participate. We don’t know who it’s for… But reality storms are caused by momentous, cosmos-changing events such as, perhaps, the death of an Endless. And we know Dream spilled family blood…

The Kindly Ones

“The Kindly Ones,” the last and longest major storyline, began in issue #57 and lasted until issue #69. Believing Dream to have kidnapped and killed her son Daniel, Hippolyta Hall undertakes a vision quest to find the Furies, that aspect of the Triple Goddess that avenges blood crimes. The Furies attack the Dreaming, ruthlessly killing its inhabitants one by one. Still grieving over his son Orpheus and frustrated by the constraints of his duties but unwilling to abandon them, Dream decides to stop the Furies’ rampage… by ending his own existence. Death takes Morpheus away. The Furies stop their attacks. And Daniel Hall becomes the new Dream of the Endless.

In retrospect, this was Dream’s only way out of his dilemma. He was too attentive to his duties to simply take off as Destruction did, especially since he’d already seen what would happen to his realm in his absence. But he couldn’t stay who he was, where he was. The solution was to become someone else, someone who had not killed his son. It’s not clear exactly when Dream decided to end his existence: Orpheus’ final death had a lot to do with it, certainly. But did Destruction get through Morpheus’ thick skull and get him to accept he had a choice, to stay or go or change? Maybe. Maybe it started when Destruction left the family in the late 17th century. Or maybe it really started with Orpheus’ first death at the hands of the Maenads—Death does say that he’s been preparing for this time subconsciously “for ages.”

To be honest, I thought the storyline dragged a lot. There were a number of subplots that didn’t really go anywhere (Nuala’s love for Morpheus, Delirium looking for her dog), though it was nice to see some familiar faces. Especially Lucifer, who’s been happily managing an upscale nightclub in LA and doesn’t miss Hell one little bit. So, I’m not complaining too much. The Three Ladies said it best at the end: there are always a few loose ends to the tapestry.

The Wake

A three-part storyline entitled “The Wake” follows. As the new aspect of Dream settles into his new role, the rest of the Family gathers to mourn their fallen brother. This beautifully illustrated arc, full of quiet and reflective dialogue, serves as a veritable who’s who of the Sandman universe, allowing readers to say goodbye to them all.

Ending

The final three issues are each more or less self-contained. In issue #73, entitled “Sunday Mourning,” Hob Gadling goes to a Renaissance Festival. What’s funny, of course, is that Hob actually lived through the Renaissance, and he knows for a fact that these events have nothing to do with history.

“You know what’s wrong with this place?”

“Uh…”

“Well, the first thing that’s wrong is there’s no shit. I mean, that’s the thing about the past people forget. All the shit. Animal shit. People shit. Cow shit. Horse shit. You waded through this stuff… You should spray ‘em all with shit as they come through the gates. No lice. No nits. No rotting face cancers. When was the last time you saw someone with a bloody great tumor hanging off their face?”

“Uh…”

“Exactly.”

Later on, he runs into Death, who’d dropped by to chat a bit and find out if he was ready to call it a day. They talk about Dream’s funeral and Hob’s theories on death (small “d”).

“I don’t know… Death’s a funny thing. I used to think it was a big, sudden thing, like a huge owl that would swoop down out of the night and carry you off.

“I don’t anymore.

“I think it’s a slow thing. Like a thief who comes to your house day after day, taking a little thing here and a little thing there, and one day you walk round your house and there’s nothing there to keep you, nothing to make you want to stay.

“And then you lie down and shut up forever. Lots of little deaths until the last big one.”

Death, of course, doesn’t give him any information about what’s on the other side. She just… smiles. A quirky, enigmatic smile I’d seen before, but never made the connection until I reread the whole series in one shot. The last time I saw Death smile like that was in issue #13, as she listened to 14th-century Hob ramble on about death. I’d always thought she was just amused, and decided to give this silly human immortality on a whim. But now I’m not so sure. The key is something Destruction said to Dream and Delirium in issue #48, after they finally tracked him down. He related a conversation he once had with Death:

“It was a long time ago, a long way from here. There were rather more stars in the sky. And we met, under the jewelled waterfalls. And we walked. And I told her how small I felt, how I wished I… knew more, I suppose.

“We were looking up at the constellations—the Diamond Girl, the Wreath of Bright Stars, the Crucible… It didn’t matter that, in some sense, I was everywhere; nor that I was more powerful than… well, practically anything. I still felt tiny. I felt insignificant. And she looked at me. You know her look. And she sighed.

“Then she told me everyone can know everything Destiny knows. And more than that. She said we all not only could know everything. We do. We just tell ourselves we don’t to make it all bearable.”

Delirium agreed (“She is. Um. Right. Kind of. Not knowing everything is all that makes it okay, sometimes.”) So here’s my theory: Death didn’t give Hob immortality back in 1389. He gave it to himself. Death and Delirium are right: there are paths not in Destiny’s garden, and secrets not in Destiny’s book. The reason Death smiled back then is because Hob was finally starting to accept one of the big secrets that we all tell ourselves we don’t know. And here at the Ren Faire, she’s smiling again because he’s figuring yet more stuff out.

Hob isn’t ready to go with Death yet, though I personally wonder how long he’ll last. He’s outlived too many lovers, friends, acquaintances, buildings and places. Most of his thoughts are about the past and everyone he’s lost. His once-a-century meeting with Morpheus was one of the few real constants in his life, and now that that’s been taken away… what does he have to live for?

Issue #74, “Exiles,” tells the story of an old Chinese prefect sent into exile in a far province, many hundreds of years ago. His caravan must travel through one of the “Soft Places” that exist at the edge of the Dreaming, where past and future, reality and fantasy, meet. He gets lost and meets first with Morpheus, then the new Dream. This is a quiet, poetic issue, beautifully illustrated by Jon J Muth with elegant brushwork and minimal colour. Interesting bit of trivia: when it first came out, the publisher gathered all ads in the middle six pages, making them easy to remove. This allowed readers to keep the flow of the story unbroken without losing any content.

The final issue is entitled “The Tempest.” Back in issue #18 we learned that Morpheus had commissioned two plays from William Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night’s Dream was the first, as a present to the Court of Faerie. The Tempest is the second, written for Morpheus himself, and the last major play written by Shakespeare. Morpheus wanted a story of endings, of a magician who lays down his tools and leaves his island. It was something which, he believed then, he could never do. Was he already planning his exit? Or maybe Prospero is supposed to represent Neil Gaiman, leaving the Sandman universe and moving on to other projects?

After the End

But Sandman didn’t end there. Gaiman has written a few one-shot graphic novels since: The Dream Hunters (1999) is a saga of dreams, animal spirits, evil wizards, love and loss in medieval Japan. Endless Nights (2003) is a collection of seven stories, each focusing on one of the Endless. Other writers have tackled the Sandman universe in two spinoff series (The Dreaming, published between 1996 and 2001, and Lucifer, beginning in 1999 and ending earlier this year), at least one graphic novel (The Little Endless Storybook, in 2001), a few miniseries (such as Destiny: A Chronicle of Deaths Foretold) and one short story collection (Sandman: Book of Dreams), not to mention Sandman characters guest starring in other titles (such as Dream’s appearance in JLA).

The Sandman‘s run has ended, but Gaiman’s legacy will live on forever, in our dreams.

Around The World In Eight Minutes

I just finished reading Jules Verne’s 1886 novel Robur-le-Conquérant. Quite an enjoyable little book, though not really Verne’s best. I did appreciate all his exploration of the science behind the Albatross, Robur’s wondrous flying craft—Verne’s work is meant to educate as well as entertain, and I’m a sucker for a good science history lesson.

I just finished reading Jules Verne’s 1886 novel Robur-le-Conquérant. Quite an enjoyable little book, though not really Verne’s best. I did appreciate all his exploration of the science behind the Albatross, Robur’s wondrous flying craft—Verne’s work is meant to educate as well as entertain, and I’m a sucker for a good science history lesson. And I’m no engineer, so I can’t say how far-fetched it really is, with the seventy-four counter-rotating propellors to provide lift and the two large propellors at fore and aft for horizontal movement, but it’s clear Verne’s done his homework: he spends a couple of pages describing in great detail past research into heavier-than-air flight. There wasn’t any practical success by 1886 (and wouldn’t be for quite a few years), though certainly not for lack of trying.

I won’t nitpick the Albatross’ fantastically sturdy materials, nigh-indestructible parts and impossibly efficient batteries; that’s just hand-waved away by reason of Robur being a brilliant engineer. Which is okay: this was a time when scientific knowledge and engineering moxie were basically super-powers in their own right. Likewise, I’ll just sigh and try to ignore Verne’s chauvinism and racism: non-Europeans are almost all depicted as savage brutes or, at best, ignorant bumpkins: Prudent’s Black servant, Frycollins, is a stereotypical Coon character, contributing nothing to the story except a bit of tiresome comic relief. Again, sign of the times. I guess that stuff was funnier a hundred years ago.

The plot is nothing to write home about, and has a few gaping holes. We never find out what makes Robur (you know, the title character) tick, or why on Earth he’d kidnap Prudent and Evans—revenge? pride? to increase the numbers on his island hideaway?—and take them on a trip around the world. But whatever the reason we’re glad he did, because we the readers get to go along for the ride.

And what a ride it is. Here we have a flying machine that can go up to 200 km/h, more than twice as fast as the fastest trains of the day and, as Verne notes, fast enough to go around the world in just eight days, cross oceans and wilderness with the greatest of ease, and carry a small crew in perfect comfort. It’s hard to imagine now just how mind-blowing that must have been: back then there were no flying machines except balloons, which weren’t much good for long-distance transportation. Trains were pretty fast but not always terribly safe, and of course were limited by rails.

I think this is what science-fiction is all about: to see how technology and science can make possible whole new kinds of stories. Forget the plot: stories like this helped make the world a lot smaller to Victorian readers. And it’s hard to imagine just how big the world was back then. In those days it would have taken me days instead of hours to travel from, let’s say, Vancouver to Ottawa, and that’s if I could afford a train ticket. To communicate with my family in Ottawa I could have sent a telegram, or used one of those newfangled telephone machines—assuming the infrastructure reached to the West Coast, which is doubtful. If I was curious about some faraway place, I could go to the library or bookstore (or, if I were rich enough, my own books). If I were really lucky, there’d be photographs. Nowadays I have at my fingertips a vast information network undreamed of by even the most delirious futurologists of the 19th century. I can easily look up any information on the places the Albatross visits and follow its path on Google Earth™.

The journey begins in Philadelphia. On to Quebec City (which Verne calls «la capitale du Canada»—though that was only true for a few years), then Montreal with the Victoria Bridge, and Ottawa with its Parliament. Next is Niagara Falls, then Chicago and Omaha, Nebraska—just a few decades old then, and rightly called “The Gateway to the West,” being the point of origin of the developing railway system linking the eastern States with California.

We see Yellowstone Park, whose mountains, lakes, wildlife and famous geysers Verne describes in loving detail—despite never having seen them. He also notes (remember, educate as well as entertain!) that it was the first U.S. national park. On to Salt Lake City with the brand-new Mormon Tabernacle. We then cut straight across Nevada and northern California into the Pacific.

At this point Robur takes us straight north to Alaska (with a bit of gruesome and gratuitous whale-hunting in the North Pacific), across to Kamchatka in far eastern Siberia, south to Tokyo—formerly called “Edo”—followed by a quick hop over Korea and the Yellow Sea to Beijing. Then, southwest over the Himalayas, passing by Srinagar before heading west into «Caboulistan»—probably referring to Afghanistan, whose capital is Kabul. Herat (now an Afghan province, but then an independent kingdom) is also mentioned. Verne calls it «la clef de l’Asie centrale,» and alludes to the struggles between Great Britain and Russia for control of the region. I thought it was an interesting look at long-ago politics, until I remembered that region is still being fought over. The USSR invaded in 1979, then the US in 2001. Plus ça change…

Tehran comes and goes, followed by a jaunt north across the length of the Caspian Sea, passing by Astrakhan, then north to Moscow and St-Petersburg. We cut straight across the Baltic Sea and Scandinavia in a line joining Stockholm and Oslo (then called “Christiania” after its founder King Christian IV). South to Paris, further south to Provence, Rome and Naples, and then we leave Europe.

Tunisia (a French protectorate at the time) is the first stop on the North African coast. We travel west to Philippeville (founded in 1838 and probably named after the reigning French monarch of the time, Louis-Philippe; it’s now called “Skikda” since Algeria gained its independence in 1962). Algiers follows, then Oran.

Southeast into the Sahara, with notable milestones the towns of Laghouat and Ouargla, and south to Timbuktu. The novel mentions «le Soudan;» this doesn’t refer to present-day Sudan, but to a French colony which formed present-day Mali in 1960. Our exploration of the African continent ends in Dahomey where Robur and his crew kill a lot of evil Africans. That part reminded me of the scene in Verne’s earlier novel Five Weeks in a Balloon, where Dr. Fergusson’s team witness a battle between two cannibal tribes. One of the explorers, revolted by the goriness of the fight and the gratuitous snacking on still-warm flesh, shoots one of the cannibals dead before the balloon flies out of range. Both of these scenes, in two novels a quarter-century apart, similarly exaggerate the evilness of “Darkest Africa” and implicitly assert the rights of Westerners to swoop in (literally, in both cases) and act as judge, jury and executioner to people or kingdoms they don’t like. Plus ça change…

After leaving Africa, the Albatross heads straight to Tierra del Fuego, passing between the islands of St-Helena (where Napoleon I died in exile) and Ascension; it flies along the Strait of Magellan to Puerto Hambre (French: «Port-Famine») in Chile, then briefly turns south towards Antarctica, which was then mostly unexplored. Verne repeats various hypotheses about what’s really at the South Pole: is it a continent, an archipelago, or a sea of ice like the Arctic? Nobody knew, back then. Since it’s July and therefore winter in the southern hemisphere, the Albatross turns back up the coast of Chile until the Chonos Archipelago. They are then driven south again by a hurricane, pass over the south magnetic pole near the 78th parallel, almost get killed by an erupting Mount Erebus, but eventually regain control and end up in the Chatham Islands where the kidnappees manage to blow up the airship. And then they go home, assuming Robur to be dead.

There. Wasn’t that fun? Personally, I had a hell of a time looking up all these interesting factoids—and finding out Verne may have been wrong or out of date in a couple of spots: Ottawa, not Quebec City, was Canada’s capital in 1886—but maybe Verne was being patriotic, since Québec is French and Ottawa isn’t. Edo was renamed Tokyo in 1868—but maybe he used its old name to heighten the drama. I do suspect he made up the location of the south magnetic pole. As far as I know it was never measured directly in his lifetime, though the north magnetic pole was pinpointed in 1831 (around 70º N 97º W). Then again, I don’t know what theories were floating about regarding Earth’s poles and their movement. And to be fair, most of his other facts, calculations and trivia are very precise and up to date. Even if Verne didn’t add to the store of human knowledge, at least he fed the fires of imagination in many hearts and minds. Though I take the internet and rapid travel for granted, and have flown back and forth across Canada many times, there’s still so much of the world I haven’t seen.

Robur may have given me a few ideas.

Comic Book Review: Shadows Fall

Seventeen years ago when he was a teenager, Warren Gale made a choice that cost him his soul. Never noticing its absence, Gale went on to have a perfectly safe, dull and predictable life, while his soul—a lonely, hungry shadow—drove hundreds of people to suicide. But now his soul wants to rejoin with him… and for the first time in a long while Warren’s life is about to become very interesting.

Seventeen years ago when he was a teenager, Warren Gale made a choice that cost him his soul. Never noticing its absence, Gale went on to have a perfectly safe, dull and predictable life, while his soul—a lonely, hungry shadow—drove hundreds of people to suicide. But now his soul wants to rejoin with him… and for the first time in a long while Warren’s life is about to become very interesting.

Shadows Fall is one comic that’s lost none of its awesome magic. In my original review I called it “one of the best comic books I’ve ever read,” and I feel it’s only gotten better in the intervening years. This 6-part Vertigo miniseries (published September ’94–February ’95) doesn’t try to deliver any Big Message, or get bogged down in pseudo-profound mysticism: only sweet, distilled horror that gives me chills to this day. Contributing to the unsettling atmosphere are John Ney Rieber’s writing, alternating between perfectly mundane, beautifully lyrical, and unspeakably creepy—especially the dialog for Gale’s soul, semi-structured jumbles of words that feel like blank verse—and John Van Fleet‘s harsh, grainy art, perfect for the run-down and depressing cityscapes.

The first character we meet is the soul’s latest victim: Renee, a homeless schizophrenic woman who believes she is a beloved queen, adored by all her subjects but also beset by unknown enemies, waiting for her “Prince Randy” to come and rescue her. A sort of humanoid shadow touches her… and without a word, she walks blankly onto the freeway to get killed. Cut to Warren Gale, a pretty nondescript man, in colourless nondescript clothes, neither ugly nor especially attractive, holding down a boring job, with a staggeringly dull routine, no strong emotions, no friends, no life… and no shadow. As we see that night, his soul occasionally visits him in his dreams to share the more interesting lives it has taken. He never remembers these dreams in the morning, and is in fact completely unaware of his serial killer shadow.

Here we learn the true horror of how the shadow kills. It doesn’t slash or bite or hurt its victims physically. All it does is tell them the truth: to rip apart the illusions and the lies, to make them see how small and pathetic their lives are, so they have no choice but to kill themselves. In Warren’s dream we see the world through Renee’s eyes, and it really was a beautiful world. The colours were richer, the people were prettier—Renee herself looking a bit like a younger Elizabeth II. She was happy, full of hope for the future and love for her subjects. But the truth was, few people in her “kingdom” even noticed her, and fewer cared. There was no Prince to come and make the world right; Randy was just some guy who knocked her up thirty years ago, then married another girl (who he’d also gotten pregnant, and with whom he’s still married) after Renee had an abortion. He moved on but it seems Renee never did; in the end she had nothing but her dreams and lies to sustain her—sweet, harmless lies that Gale’s shadow gleefully ripped away.

The shadow seems to mostly prey on people whose sense of self is weak, or are repressing a core of darkness. Yet the beauty of it is, they aren’t faceless victims. We get to know and empathize with them even as the shadow is dissecting their lives. As pitiful or evil as the victims are, they’re still human. And nobody deserves to die like that.

As morning comes the shadow leaves, with a promise.

So sweet brother
I wonder as I go
As you go about your day Gale
Do you ever miss your soul?
One day Gale
We will be one again

And as the shadow leaves, readers get their first look at Shen, a magician who knows more than he reveals (but less than he’d like to believe), and is dedicated to bringing down Gale’s soul by whatever means necessary. He abducts Gale and forcibly reveals the truth and cause of his fractured existence: a stupid choice that cost an innocent her life. As a teenager Gale held up a convenience store just as a cop happened to be outside. As he ran from the scene of the crime, the cop shot at him and hit Alice, a neighbourhood child. At that exact moment, Warren’s shadow was covering her hand. He kept running, but Alice held on to the shadow somehow. (The exact mechanics of this soulectomy are never explained, and that’s fine. It’s magic; I don’t need any more explanation than that. Alice was just some kid; she didn’t have any special powers, except for being Warren’s only real friend. So: guilt on one side, innocent friendship on the other, a violent death and a wild stroke of luck, all add up to a severed shadow? Works for me.)

Confused, disoriented and, for the first time, feeling guilt over Alice’s death, Warren goes to visit his old neighbourhood. Surprised at this unprecedented break in his routine, the shadow follows him and they separately reminisce about their childhood. Him, vaguely nostalgic, the memories distant and dusty: a toy store long gone, its window filled with all kinds of wonderful stuff; music playing the night of his holdup. The shadow, deeply bitter, remembering the bullying and parental beatings and fear that made the teenage Warren into what he was: a cocky, violent little punk who got off on hurting and dominating others, hating his family and neighbourhood and dreaming only of leaving them. All this was what the shadow became, and still is. Separate, both halves of Warren became unable to grow and change: the body is little more than an automaton going through the motions of having a life, while the soul runs only on hunger and cruelty, powerless to know anything else no matter how much it hates its existence.

You’d shed a tear if you could wouldn’t you Gale?
How maudlin of you to whimper sighs when all I’ve done is all you wished you could have
Your wish was my command and my command was Die
You’ve forgotten how you cursed the scum when we were someone they could spit on
Yesterday when we had no choice but to bear the brunt of their spite
Hollis isn’t about to call the cops because he smelled your reefer smoke
Or caught you on the fire escape watching his wife undress
Hollis is toast now
Sarah Lang will never laugh at you because you’ve asked her out
That bitch had her last laugh where nobody could hear
Danny Kirk won’t be threatening to grind you into the street
When Graden Chemical gave him the sack I gave him a hand with his resume
They’ve vacated the premises yes
But not much else has changed this is still home
I remember for both of us
There was no place like home

The shadow takes this opportunity to speak to Warren in the waking world, asking him to take it back, to let them both be real again. But Warren can’t hear it, and is still not ready to accept what’s happening to him, so he runs. The shadow wanders off to kill again and runs into Shen, who attacks but only manages to wound it. Terrified, it flees and goes on a brief killing spree, then catches up to Warren again. This time it’s much bolder and actually touches its “brother,” allowing him to hear its voice. But Warren, experiencing another new emotion—anger—categorically refuses to join with it. Desperate, the shadow possesses a nearby homeless man and makes him cut his own throat, threatening to keep killing like this until Warren takes it back. But the plan backfires as Warren, trying to help the dying man, gets accidentally stabbed in the gut, and passes out.

Unconscious in the hospital, Warren encounters his old friend Alice (a ghost? a memory? who knows?) and together they get to the truth about his childhood. It wasn’t all that great, but neither was it as bad as he remembered. Yes, his father did beat him—until his grandfather made him stop. Yes, things were hard for his family—partly through Warren’s own regular sabotaging of his father’s business. And there was beauty, and joy, and possibilities, which as a teenager he made himself forget.

Warren wakes up able to feel the full range of human emotions. The truth did not kill him; it gave him life, made him real again even without his soul. Intuitively sensing that the shadow needs to stay close, Warren decides to leave the city, hole up somewhere out of the way, and let the shadow starve. He knows there’s no coming back for him, either; but on the bright side, his rebirth gave him the ability to make choices and take control of his life, and face death with dignity. Settling in at an abandoned amusement park, Warren turns the tables on his shadow and somehow brings it inside himself, sharing his newly-recovered memories, making it remember the good things about their childhood and see how much of its hate was based on lies. And so the shadow also begins to experience positive emotions, and taste its old dreams again.

I won’t try to recap the final confrontation between Warren and his shadow, because there’s no way I could do it justice. Suffice to say they merge… and become something greater than the sum of its parts. Something which could only exist after they began to truly live apart from each other. Something totally new, just starting out in life, as full of dreams and possibilities as Warren used to be. And so this grim, dark story, full of death and destruction, ends on a note of hope.

Comic Book Review: Seekers Into The Mystery

They say confession’s good for the soul, so here goes:

I’ve read The Celestine Prophecy.

Yes, that’s right. Me, the hard-nosed skeptic. Well, that wasn’t always the case. There was a time when I was a bit more interested in the woo-woo side of things. And in my defense, I didn’t really know what the book was about until I actually read it.

They say confession’s good for the soul, so here goes:

I’ve read The Celestine Prophecy.

Yes, that’s right. Me, the hard-nosed skeptic. Well, that wasn’t always the case. There was a time when I was a bit more interested in the woo-woo side of things. And in my defense, I didn’t really know what the book was about until I actually read it. See, sometime in 1995 I’d heard about this new Vertigo series called Seekers Into The Mystery, to be written by J.M. DeMatteis (who’d also written Moonshadow, which at the time I loved); it was described as “X-Files meets The Celestine Prophecy.” Well, that was enough to pique my interest. I really liked X-Files, I liked J.M. DeMatteis so to get the proper feel, I also decided to read Celestine. Continue reading “Comic Book Review: Seekers Into The Mystery“

Juggernaut is not a mutant!

Now that I’ve got that off my chest… Spoiler warning.

I finally went to see X-Men: The Last Stand last weekend. It was pretty good as an action flick, and a standalone X-Men movie. But as a sequel? Ehhh.

Now that I’ve got that off my chest… Spoiler warning.

I finally went to see X-Men: The Last Stand last weekend. It was pretty good as an action flick, and a standalone X-Men movie. But as a sequel? Ehhh. The biggest disappointment was Evil Jean. Sorry, I mean “Phoenix.” Wait, I totally don’t, because this was not Phoenix. The closing scenes in X2 suggested a beautiful creature of light and fire, still in touch with her humanity, her love for Cyclops and her duty to the X-Men. What we got instead was a moderately scary Jean who boffed Wolverine, disintegrated people on a whim, and turned grey and veiny whenever her evil personality surfaced. What is this, season 6 Buffy? Sheesh.

Storm had a much bigger role, which I’m kind of ambivalent about. On the one hand, she kicked a lot of ass, and Halle Berry didn’t suck as much as the previous movies (but really, nothing could top the “Do you know what happens to a Toad that get struck by lightning?” line). On the other, she still can’t deliver the grandeur and majesty I’ve come to associate with Storm, thanks to the 90’s animated series. And apparently Berry herself pushed for a bigger role. Girl, Storm is all kinds of awesome but you’re not that good, so please get over yourself.

Oh, speaking of bigger roles, what was up with Cyclops? All he did was act like the world’s biggest whining pussy, blast Alkali Lake with his eyebeams, then get horribly killed by Jean. Yeah, I know, James Marsden was filming Superman Returns at the same time, but did he have to be killed like that? And then forgotten for the rest of the movie? Granted I was never a fan of his, but this was completely disrespectful.

Story-wise, I think they tried to cram too much into this movie. A mutant cure, Dark Phoenix, the Sentinels (not really, but almost), yet more mutants and supporting characters—Beast, who was terrific; Kitty Pryde, who kicked a surprising amount of ass; Angel, who… had no plot; and Moira McTaggert—as well as a lot of random info about the X-universe, like that business of levels of mutant powers, and listing the given names (or should I say “slave names?”) of as many mutants as they could. Seems kind of pointlessly nerdy.

Some random thoughts:

  • Squee! Sentinels! Yeah, it was just the Danger Room, but my inner geek was bouncing.
  • How thoughtful of Jean to leave Wolverine’s pants on in that last scene where she was telekinetically flaying him alive. Oh, wait, I mean, bad! BOO FOR PANTS ON HUGH JACKMAN! While I’m at it, boo for non-shirtless Colossus! But yay for pretty shirtless Angel!
  • Magneto, enough with the hand gestures when you use your powers! God, was I the only one who found it incredibly annoying? He was never that bad in the first two movies, was he?
  • So, this cure serum is only partial or temporary. If there is a fourth movie, I really hope Magneto and Mystique aren’t in it. Don’t get me wrong, those two are made of pure distilled awesomeness and could conquer the world in a weekend if they put their minds to it, but three movies is enough.