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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 also
reading the collected works differ due to some nasty
some years after they were printing decisions: the latest
finished. bound volumes are on bright
white paper, apparently using
A single issue of a brighter, more garrish ink
comic book just doesn't colors. The effect is nothing
take very long to read: like what was originally intended.
perhaps a half an hour It's like trying to watch a
at most. colorized movie.
Then there's another You couldn't have
month's wait while done a better job
this installment of of sabotaging the
the story echoes project if you tried.
around in your head.
You might re-read it CLEAN_AND_BRIGHT
once or twice. You
might re-read previous
issues. You might
discuss the story In those days, the action was
with people. in rec.arts.comics.misc.
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 the need to subdivide
related material a newsgroup because of "high
(Suetonius, John traffic", doing it that way was
Webster, unbelievably stupid.
Aeschylus,
Shakespere...). Not on the basis of genre,
or artist, or writer but on
(There was a biographical the publisher?
novel about Tom Paine
that I read around then, "Isn't that a Da Vinci?"
too... by Howard Fast
I think.) "Oh, who cares. What I
want to know is who
manufactured the canvas."
In general, the story takes
on much more weight because It might seem an
of those enforced pauses. odd reason to reject
a discussion group...
DEATH_OF_THE_ALBUM
I think for me it
When you have the entire work rubbed my nose in
in front of you, nothing how stupid most
prevents you from plowing on of the comics fans
through to the finish. really were.
Instead of hesitating in a land of I was hiding
glowing promise, you plunge into the from this by
inevitable dissapointments of the just reading
end... and the return to "reality". the posts by
the Sandman
It's a rare story that fully lives fans.
up to it's initial promise, and I
think it's fair to say that the (And around that
Sandman series certainly doesn't... time Gaiman was
it sputters and fizzles it's way hitting the wall
through a fairly monotonous, obvious in any case...
finish; aiming for high tragedy and there was little
achieving only a dull lifelessness. reason to keep
thinking about
In retrospect, I think the Sandman his work.)
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 indeed
speaking through him...
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 a teenager-- 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.
I gather that Gaiman was being 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
the 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 (one of Morpheus's dream
figures "the Corinthian").
Many issues later, this
character is re-created:
it appeared that Gaiman
was working toward that
foreshadowed scene.
He must've been asked innumerable
questions about this "whose blood
is that on the throne?"
His eventual explanation?
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?
A nice try, but I've
We're offended at Gaiman never forgiven him,
abusing his position. myself.
I sold my copy
We regarded him as some I've avoided a of "Angels and
sort of custodian of lot of his later Visitations"
the fire. projects, e.g cheap at a used
those bestselling bookstore.
novels he
co-authored. So there.
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
"Doorways in the Sand"
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