THE SANDMAN (book one) - NEIL GAIMAN (artists, SAM KIETH, MIKE DRINGENBERG, MALCOLM JONES III, KELLEY JONES)

I got this for my wife since she’d never read the Sandman series. She likes Gaiman’s other stuff, I’ve read American Gods but I wouldn’t call myself a real Gaiman-head, and this seemed very up her alley. I remember reading these books maybe 20 years ago at this point, in the early 2000’s when I first started reading comics, especially “adult” comics, and this, along with the Alan Moore stuff, had all the buzz in the world among the comic-book guy demographic who were helping me find the good stuff. I read these originally in the trade paperback versions, this book seems to be a collection of the first three of those and seems connected to the Netflix series that is currently airing. I’m not sure the TV show could be very good, I haven’t seen it but the comics themselves are very vibes-based, it’s basically all about the world and milieu of the characters and the “plot” elements of the book are pretty slow and unimportant. For instance, dream visits hell early in the comic, the purpose of this isn’t really important (why does he need a special helmet to do his job?), what’s cool about it is seeing the depiction of hell with the Mick Jagger Lucifer and the crazy vistas and demons. Likewise with the chapters around the serial killer convention. Nothing all that important “happens” at this setting, the appeal of the comic is Gaiman’s imagination in rendering these scenarios and the incredible illustrations. Like the Alan Moore stuff that this series so clearly draws from (Dream is a real Dr. Manhattan-type) what’s so cool about this is how totally it utilizes comics as a form, doing things that wouldn’t really be possible in any other medium, from straight literature to cinema/TV. I was surprised at how much of this I remembered from my original reading over a decade ago. The serial killer convention, the part in hell, the opening arch about Dream being imprisoned by an occultist, the guy who lives forever that we meet every 100 years, the Shakespere thing. I’m wondering if that means I remember more than I think I do or that Gaiman’s most memorable episodes are all towards the beginning of this series. We’ll see. It’s been a nice break from the longer stuff I’ve been working through, I’ll have to wait to start volume 2 until my wife finishes it first, they are technically gifts for her.