TITLE: The Sandman
SUB-TITLE: Worlds' End
PUBLISHER: DC Comics Vertigo
WHAT IT IS: A
trade paperback compilation of issues 51-56 of The
Sandman,, each of which is mostly a stand alone story. Reprinted
recently
as volume 8 of the Sandman Library.
GENRE: Fantasy (stories with panmythic goth gods)
WRITTEN BY: Neil
Gaiman.
ILLUSTRATED BY: Various with covers by Dave McKean.
PAGE COUNT: 168. Color illustrations and
text.
DATE OF PUBLICATION: Originally published 1994.
Reprinted with different cover 1999.
CONTENT:
Reprints issues 51-56 of The Sandman
NOTES/SPECIAL FEATURES: Introduction by Stephen King.
Also available
in hard cover. Cover by Dave McKean.
REVIEWED BY: T.M. Doyle
WHAT I THINK:
This
collection is more uneven than the similar Fables and Reflections.
Still, some of these issues are great short stories
for any medium. They
will continue with you long after you've forgotten the movie you saw last
weekend.
The
frame story is that a group of travelers from various worlds find
themselves stranded in a "reality storm" at an
inn between the worlds.
There, they tell each other stories while they wait out the storm.
The
first story told at the inn is "A Tale of Two Cities," is about a man who
finds himself lost in the dreamlife of
a city, not its residents, but the city
itself. Though artistically interesting, the story is flat and not at all
as
chilling as the author apparently intended it to be.
The second story, "Cluracan's Tale,"
is told by a recurring character of
the Vertigo universe, Cluracan of Faerie. Unfortunately, his false modest
assessment
of his own story is largely true, that his "tale is a dry and
unexciting one, chiefly dealing with local politics
and city history."
The third story, "Hob's Leviathan," had more charm. Told by a young
sailor
name Jim, there are several tales interwoven within it, including the
continuing story of the immortal Hob who we
first met in "The Doll's
House." This artful interweaving is well suited to a tale about what lies
hidden
beneath surfaces both human and natural.
The fourth and most moving story in the compilation, "The
Golden Boy,"
has an unlikely source. Gaiman resurrects the old comic book character
of Prez Rickard,
the youngest president in American history, to tell a
parable about an alternative world made better by the efforts
of one
visionary. The compilation would be worth purchasing on the merits of
that story alone.
But
wait, there's more. A citizen of the a city devoted to funeral rites gives
us another Chinese box of stories within
his tale, "Cerements," the fifth
story in the compilation. Some of these stories are simply excellent tales in
folk
style, while others give us further, foreshadowing glimpses of Endless
mythos. To say these stories are heartwarmingly
creepy is not, for them, a
contradiction in terms.
The most devastating part of this compilation
is the finale, with its all to
clear foreshadowing of the end of The Sandman series. Despite
Gaiman's
previous proclamations, fans had been in denial that the end
would come, but "Worlds' End" made it clear that doom
was nigh. That
doom seemed to resonate with the implosion of the comic book market
from which the industry
has not yet recovered. Comic book readers had
plenty of reasons to be gloomy upon finishing "Worlds' End."
Gaiman
is the master of juxtaposing different mythologies and of bridging
traditional story telling with modern realism
and psychology. The stories
move from a modern city to an imagined necropolis, from a ruler of ancient
India
to the President of the United States. He is a great storyteller for
any medium, and we are fortunate that he found
his way to comics.
And the Dave McKean covers are fine art in any context, comic book or
otherwise.
The covers alone always make The Sandman a good display
piece ("You want to see the comics I read? Take a look
at this."). As for
the story illustrators, by this time, the finest artists in the business were
vying
to illustrate Sandman stories. But, let's face it, other than the
covers, people seldom buy Sandman for the art,
though they'll buy
Sandman art for its associations.
At this late stage in the series,
Gaiman had managed to make his endings
seem less pat, putting some of the best bits within the stories instead of
the
end. Gaiman still appears at times to be attempting to cram ten
pounds of erudition into one pound sack.. But
stories of The Sandman
remain the outstanding effort in the medium, the like of which we have not
seen
for a while and may not see again soon.
MY JUDGEMENT: Permanent collection.
WHY: You've
got to own the entire Sandman, even the uneven bits.
IF YOU DIG THIS, CHECK OUT: Any other Sandman
trade paperback.
