The Sandman:


To read the Sandman is odd, because you, well I at any rate, are continually amused and bemused by the fact that it manages to be so good while usually being about such mundane matters. Mundane?I hear readers of Sandman ask. It's about a book about the Lord of Dreams, an anthromorphic personification, Death's kid brother, for crying out loud! How can it be mundane? Well, because the stories contained within it's pages are usually mundane in scope. There's very few battles or universe-saving heroics in it. There's stories about how Dream makes a wager with his sibling Despair, or when he and his sister Death feeds the pigeons in the park, or we learn what happens when you make a deal with the Kindly Ones, or how Delirium got her dog, and why Destruction quit.
It's also odd, because the concept in itself is repeated in about 33.33% of all fantastic fiction, so it's nothing new. There's bascially (very basically) three scenarios for these sorts of stories*, you can either take extraordinary people and put them in an ordinary environment, or take ordinary people and put them in extraordinary situations, and see what happens, or you can mix the two and take ordinary people in ordinary environs, or the other way round. You get the picture.
The Sandman manages to combine all three possibillites rather nicely, because it has a wide variety of stories and characters, but that's nothing new either. Now, the characters themselves as characters doesn't particulary stand out in the realm of amazing fiction. Some are about as extraordinary as you can get, while others are quite ordinary, at least by this little mudballs standards, but that's nothing unique in itself. The main character is Morpheus, Sandman, the Lord of Dreams, who in himself does not lend himself to natural storytelling. If you have never read the comic and someone mentions the sandman, you probably think about this little fairytale goblin that runs around like a nocturnal Santa and pours sand into kids eyes to make them go to sleep. (Now that has to be one of the strangest pieces of mythology we tell our kids. Except possibly for the tooth-fairy.) Not a very inspiring fellow, huh? I mean, you can write good comics about Santa Claus (Santa Claus conquers the Martians!) but about the sandman?
Of course Gaiman has made some changes in the character, but he's still no brooding Dark Avenger of the Night to lend himself to natural storytelling and mythology. (Okey, so maybe he broods a bit.) He doesn't swing himself from house to house using his Dreamshooters, and he spends a lot less time leaping from rooftops than the average comic-book hero. He's not proactive, he's reactive. If he had been swinging between houses he probably would not have stopped for muggers, littering and other crimes-in-progress. He spends the majority of time not wandering about looking for trouble, but reacting to it instead. He's basically just doing his job and chatting with his clients (which is everyone) for most of the stories. Interacting with people verbally instead with his fists or heat-vision. Nothing new there either, only not very common in comics. Even Preacher which was in some circles touted as the "new Sandman" when it first appeared, uses his fists (or the Voice) to inflict extreme coporeal punishment on wrongdoers. That it deals with metaphysical and philosophical issues almost as often as Sandman has little bearing on the subject. Jesse still punches, shoots and Voices people to their bloody end a few times per issue. Morpheus doesn't. He talks instead. It sounds pretty boring, doesn't it?
In the hands of a less skilled writer that Gaiman it almost certainly would have been boring as hell, but not here. You care what happens to Morpheus and to the other characters in the series. So storywise and characteristacally speaking Morpheus and the others are nothing to get exited about. I mean, it's all so stereotypical when you think about it;
-"There's this guy, right, and he's this mystical magical spooky character, really pale and always wears black...."
-"So he's a magician like Dr. Strange, right?"
-"...No, no he's not a magician, and as I was saying, he always wears black and lives in this castle in another dimension..."
-"Like Batman, only in another dimension. Does he have a butler named Alfred, too?"
-"The butler's called Matthew, only he's not a butler, he's a raven, and as I said, he's this magical guy, the Lord of Dreams, right, and he sends people to sleep...."
-"Huh, like the Shadow, then; 'the power to cloud men's minds.' That's not new."
-"Not like that, he like sends everyone to sleep."
-"Everyone? But doesn't that make him a villain? I think Dr. Doom did that once....."
-"No, It's what he does, he's the Sandman, he's the Lord of Dreams, he's an antromorphic personification, right?"
-"......?"
-"Like Death, right, only he's Dream, instead. He rules the dimension of Dreams."
-"Oh, I get it. Cool."
-"Now, since he's Dream, he's got responsibillities...."
-"With great power comes great responsibillities!"
-"Um.....yeah. Anyway, he's in charge of the whole of this other dimension, the Dreaming, and he has to do his job, which is being what he is, the lord of Dreams. So he does his job."
-"Which is?"
-"Making sure people dream."
-"Okey, but who's stronger, him or Superman?"

The above example was a parody(?) of an imaginary conversation(!) that I wrote to illustrate my main point, (finally!) that The Sandman is not a comicbook whose story is driven by the cirumstances surrounding it's characters, but driven by the characters themselves, who reacts in certain manners to certain events, because they are who they are. This, I think, is what makes reading about the Endless, and Morpheus in particular, so fascinating.

Sandman was cancelled with issue #75, in march 1996, but numerous reprints and tradepaperbacks exists of all the issues.
*)Someone somewhere claimed it was 17, but I digress.



Go back to my home page


The Sandman and all associated characters are TM and Copyright DC Comics and Neil Gaiman. I am making no profit from these pages nor are any copyright infringement intended. So there!