2018; 236 pages. Volume 1 (out of 11) in the “Sandman – 30th Anniversary Edition”
series. Full Title: Sandman Volume One: Preludes & Nocturnes. New Author? :
No. Genres : Graphic Novel; Horror; Dark
Fantasy. Overall Rating: 9½*/10.
Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite contemporary
authors. I first became acquainted with his work 16 years ago via his
collaboration with Terry Pratchett in the fascinating novel, Good
Omens. Within a year-plus I’d
also read his solo efforts, American Gods
and Anansi Boys, both of which I consider to be masterpieces.
I’ve read most of his solo novels
since then, with only The Graveyard Book
still on my TBR shelf. But over the last
10 years he seems to have slowed down in his writing of full-length novels.
Then I heard about his series
called The Sandman. “Aha!”, thought I, “Neil Gaiman has turned to
putting out graphic novels! Awesome!”
Actually, the first volumes of
his Sandman comics came out slightly before his first novels.
What’s To Like...
According to Wikipedia, there were 75 issues
in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comic book series.
Preludes and Nocturnes is a 2018 re-release of the first eight comic book issues, comprised of
1.) Sleep
of the Just (loc. 11)
2.) Imperfect
Hosts (loc. 53)
3.) Dream
a Little Dream of Me (loc. 77)
4.) A
Hope in Hell (loc. 103)
5.) Passengers (loc. 128)
6.) 24
Hours (loc. 154)
7.) Sound
and Fury (loc. 180)
8.) The
Sound of Her Wings (loc. 205)
Our protagonist goes by
several names in the series, including Morpheus,
the King of Dreams, Dream, and the titular Sandman.
At one point he is caught and imprisoned by a mortal who mistakenly
thinks he’s captured the King of Death,
which confused the daylights out of me. The character "Death" does finally show up in the final book, and is an equally
interesting character.
Each of the eight books has
its own storyline. Needless to say, our
hero escapes his prison early on, but is in a weakened condition and without several
of his important artifacts: a pouch, a helm, and a ruby. The overall
storyline chronicles Dream’s efforts to retrieve those items. Along the way, Neil Gaiman weaves in
mythological references (such as the Hecateae),
Reality “Slam Contests”, and a couple cameo appearances by other comic book
stars.
I read the e-book version of Preludes
& Nocturnes, which is usually a clunky way to read a graphic
novel. But Kindle starts you out with a
couple of tips for navigating the images on each page, and once I got the hang
of things, I was amazed how smoothly things went. Scrolling is ultra-slick, and the artwork,
lettering, and storytelling are all incredible.
Since this is a compilation of
eight comic books, there is no discrete “ending”. Book 8 does stop at
a logical point in the saga, with a lot of
the plot threads being explained and cleared up, and the stage being set
for the next 67 installments in the series.
Ratings…
Amazon: 4.8*/5, based on 5,823
ratings and 368 reviews.
Goodreads: 4.24*/5,
based on 254,869 ratings and 8,898 reviews
Excerpts...
“Do you know what dreams are made of,
Rosemary Kelly?”
“Made of?
They’re just dreams.”
“No.
They aren’t. People think dreams
aren’t real because they aren’t made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images,
of memories and puns and lost hopes.
“The ruby seems to turn them into
matter. It forces them to translate
themselves into forms we can recognize in this world.
“It also controls dreams in their raw
state. Your dreams. Anybody’s dreams.” (loc. 144)
“You could have called me, you know.”
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
“I don’t believe it. Let me tell you something, Dream. And I’m only going to say this once, so you’d
better pay attention.
“You are utterly the stupidest, most
self-centered excuse for an anthropomorphic personification on this or any
other plane! An infantile, pathetic
specimen! Feeling all sorry for yourself
because your little game is over, and you haven’t got the—the balls to go and
find a new one!” (loc.
214)
“Mother? They took
my dreams away from me!” (loc.
62)
There’s nothing major to gripe
about in Preludes & Nocturnes. There is some cussing (10 instances in the first 25%), and a smidgen
of sex and nudity, albeit those are done in a non-pornographic way.
The Table of Contents either
doesn’t work or is non-existent. You
can’t highlight text, but that’s because the whole e-book is scanned
images of the pages from the comic books, and that's a small price to pay for the
marvelous artwork and lettering. And
like any e-book consisting solely of images, this was a memory-hog on my
Kindle. Amazon lists it as eating up
811,037 KB of space.
My biggest beef concerns the plethora
of reissues of this series. These
include trade paperbacks, deluxe editions, 30th Anniversary
editions, Absolute Editions, annotated editions, and an Omnibus edition, all of
which divide up those 75 issues in different proportions. So even though my “Kindle 30th
Volume 1” was Issues 1-8, my “Full-Sized Paperback Volumes 2 and 3” are Issues
21-37 and Issues 38-56. Do I hunt down
something containing Issues 9-20 for the sake of completeness, or just shine it
on and skip to the volumes/issues I already have?
These are all
quibbles. I’m not a big reader of
Graphic Novels, yet Preludes & Nocturnes was a real treat for me,
both from a storyline and an artistic angle.
Somehow, someway, Neil Gaiman is capable of adding a “Wow Factor” to any project he undertakes.
9½ Stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment