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SERIAL_LIVING
March 12, 2003
December 26, 2005
For me, one of the hallmarks of the
early 90s, one of the things that THERMIDOR
culturally dominated the era,
was the "Sandman" series. GAIMAN
MAKER
A lot of my spare mental energy
was going into teasing out where
Neil Gaiman was going with the
series, and tracing the various
literary references that he chose 12CEASARS
to drop. ORESTEIA
REVENGE
The experience of reading
the Sandman series, one issue
at a time, differs widely
from the experience of someone Unfortunately it may
reading the collected works differ due to lousy
some years after they were printing decisions:
finished. the latest editions
are on bright white
A single issue of a paper, and they look
comic book just doesn't an awful lot to me
take very long to read: like they're using
perhaps a half an hour brighter, more
on the extreme end. garrish ink colors.
They're nearly
Then there's another unrecognizable.
month's wait while You couldn't have
this installment of done a better job
the story echoes of sabotaging the
around in your head. project if you tried.
You might re-read it
once or twice. You
might re-read previous
issues. You might
discuss the story rec.arts.comics.misc was where
with people on-line. the action was in those days.
In the case of When they sub-divided that group
Gaiman's "Sandman" into "marvel" and "dc" factions
there's also the I gave up on the rec.arts.comics.*
option of tracing hierarchy, myself.
references,
reading other Even given a need to subdivide
related material a newsgroup because of "high
(Suetonius, John traffic", subdividing it on that
Webster, basis was just about the stupidest
Aeschylus, way of doing it I could imagine.
Shakespere...).
Not on the basis of, say, genre,
(There was a biographical or artist, or writer, not even
novel about Tom Paine on the titles of the comics, or
that I read around then, the name of a character, but on
too... by Howard Fast the basis of the publisher?
I think.)
("Hm... that's a
Da Vinci isn't it?"
In general, the story takes "Oh, but who manufactured
on much more weight because the canvas?")
of those enforced pauses.
When you have the entire work
in front of you, nothing
prevents you from plowing on
through to the finish, along
with the inevitable
dissapointments.
It's a rare story that fully lives
up to it's promise at the outset,
and I think it's fair to say that
the Sandman series certainly doesn't...
it sputters and fizzles it's way
through a fairly monotonous, obvious
finish; aiming for high tragedy and
achieving only a dull, lifelessness.
In retrospect, I think the Sandman
is a case (and there have been many)
of the material outstripping the
talents of the author. Gaiman was
on to something, he'd tapped into
a rich vein, the muses were speaking Yes: just like one of the
through him... characters in his stories.
But he was just in over his head,
he didn't really know what to do
with it all.
As "The Kindly Ones" dragged on,
he must have been afflicted with
a horrible depression... having
worked for years on what might
very well be the best thing he'll
ever do, there was nothing he could
do that wouldn't risk ruining the
entire project. Stick to the original
simple tragic finish he had in
mind, however boring it seemed?
Switch to some sort of trumped
up happy ending, copping out like
nearly every other writer of
commercial fiction?
And then, there are The Fans.
I'm really not given over to obsessiveness
about comic books -- or at least I haven't
been since I was 13 or so... but "The
Sandman" was strong enough to get me going,
imagine the effect it must have had on the
fanboy crowd, used to surving on much thinner
gruel.
Gaiman must've been perpetually harrassed by
his fan-base while he was writing. "What was
going on on page 8 of issue 45? Are you going
to bring back that character from issue 3?
How are you going to finish the series? What's
Death really like?"
And then he cracked, and let his
contempt (and frustration) show,
with the "Nybbas the spider"
incident.
If you're not familiar
with this, I'm not sure I
can describe it well
enough to get across the
my passionate rage at the
blantant cheat he pulled here.
In outline:
He inserted a few panels of what
appeared to be foreshadowing of
some sort: scenes of the future.
Dream dressed in white, instead of black.
Blood on the throne, "Matthew the Crow"
nearby.
A character that was supposed to
be dead was standing there, behind
the throne.
As the story progresses, this
character is ressurected by
Dream, so it appeared that
Gaiman was working toward the
foreshadowed scenes.
He must've been asked innumerable
questions about this "whose blood
is that on the throne?"
His eventual explaination?
He wrote in a new figure we've
never seen before "Nybbas the spider".
It crawls toward the crow,
someone squashes it, it leaves
a bloody stain.
See, easy! Right?
A lot of us felt
throughly betrayed Sometime later Gaiman attempted
at that point. a "retcon", which I take to be
If he's not going a form of apology: yes, Nybbas
to take this is an extraneous element inserted
seriously, why in the story, but that was
were we wasting *intentional*, because this is
our time on it? after all a story about stories
and storytellers: it's an element
But what was it inserted by the New Dream who is
that we *were* waiting in the wings.
taking seriously?
We're offended at Gaiman
abusing his position. A nice try, but I've
never forgiven him,
We regard him as some myself. I've
sort of custodian of avoided a lot of his
the fire. later projects, e.g
those bestselling
novels he
co-authored.
I guess I was willing
to go see "MirrorMask",
so maybe I've forgiven
him a bit.
The movie doesn't
do anything to
cure my impression
that he's shot his
bolt.
Nice visuals by
Dave McKean, though.
"The Sandman" was not the first
series that had this hold over
me, though it might have been
the last.
Other earlier examples,
Zelazny's works, serialized in
SF magazines during the 70s.
"The Sign of the Unicorn".
And the strangely powerful
(to me at least)
"Doorways in the Sand"
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