GRAPHIC NOVEL REPORT: The Sandman by Neil Gaiman

I have a secret.

The twenty-eight books that I've read  this year are not the only things I've read.  I was sneaking in some other material.   "GASP!", you say.  "What could you be reading to keep it secret from the six people who follow your blog?"

I was cheating on my "word-books" with some comic books.  That's right, I read graphic novels.    I read the entire Sandman Series by Neil Gaiman.  You might remember Neil from such book reports as The Graveyard Book and Good Omens with Terry Pratchett. He is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors.

Neil's written hundreds of comics throughout the years, but his most famous comic series was The Sandman. It was a serial comic which ran monthly from 1988 to 1996 totaling seventy-five issues.

The Sandman series revolves around Morpheus, the King of Dreams.  Morpheus rules over everyone's dreams and is one of the seven 'Endless'.  They are not gods, they are older than them. The Endless are Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Despair, Desire, and Delirium (who used to be Delight) 

Morpheus the Dream Lord

The series is broken up into ten graphic novels (over 2000 total pages!).    A couple of the graphic novels are a collection of one-off stories, but most of them are dedicated to one story-arc in the series.

• Preludes and Nocturnes 
• The Doll's House 
• Dream Country 
• Season of Mists 
• A Game of You 
• Fables and Reflections 
• Brief Lives 
• Worlds' End   <my personal favorite >
• The Kindly Ones 
• The Wake 

There is also bonus novel which came out in 2003 which dedicates one story to each of the Endless.

• Endless Nights

The series starts off when a rich eccentric recluse who doesn't want to die finds a way to summon the Endless and capture them.  Trying to live forever he summons Death, but gets Dream instead.  After eighty years, Dream finally escapes to find that he is weakened and his kingdom is crumbling.

After Dream gets his kingdom back in working order, the story line evolves away from Morpheus as the main character.  Instead, he takes a back seat to other characters and stories.  These comics show how much influence Dream has in our waking world.  Dream has been around from the beginning, behind only Destiny and Death and he has seen it all.  Love, hate, power and greed all start with a Dream.

I really enjoyed these comics.  There is an element of horror in the series (especially in the beginning), but each comic was infused with mythology and folklore. Some story lines were better than others obviously; there will be natural up's and down's to a series this long, but  Neil Gaiman is such a great story teller that the realm of Dreams really comes alive.  

The Sandman is proof that comics have evolved away from the standard super-hero/villain template from our childhood. These are deep stories with real character development.  After I finished this series, I started researching the genre a bit more.  There is a whole world out there of  well regarded, non-superman/batman comics out there that piqued my interest and I will definitely be adding them into my rotation.