The Sandman

Blogger's note: While I normally write only on the full length prose books that I read, I am taking an exception to write about comic series in this post and the next one then we will back to regularly scheduled programming (until I read another thing that isn't a full length book that I really like).

The Sandman is considered by a lot of people to be the best comic series of all time.  I am not sure that I am willing to endorse it that heavily (Y: The Last Man and Lucifer beat it in my mind) but it is certainly good and contains some awesome concepts.  The series ran for 75 issues from 1989 to 1996 and spawned numerous spin offs including a miniseries, Overture, which is still running today.  I got a collection of short stories set in the universe which piqued my interest and, after ruminating on it for a while, I splurged and bought a nice two volume hard cover collection.

This picture can't really do them justice but each of these books is more than 1000 full color pages of comics.  I have never had a comic book this large before and when you don't have to stop for issue breaks it really helps get the feeling that is one contiguous story... or that would be the case if it was one contiguous story. 

The series is about the seven "Endless," Dream (the titular main character), Destiny, Desire, Despair, Destruction, Delirium, and Death (the last two were my favorites), who are slightly less than gods and represent the concepts that they are named after.  The series is a collection of short stories that range from one to twelve issues long involving Dream and other Endless but a lot of the time some normal person will be a main character and it is about how the Endless interact with them.

Most of the stories tie together into later stories in the series and as such they build the world in a subtle and gradual way, which is nice.  I just feel like they didn't do enough with the concept and the characters (which I guess just shows why spinoffs are still going).  Several of the Endless, especially Death and Delirium, really resonated with me and I wish I could have seen more of those characters and with a quick google search you can see that Death resonated with a lot more people than just me.

Death is a vaguely gothic looking girl who is almost always smiling.  She doesn't smile sadistically but in a friendly, companionable way.  I can't describe why I like her better than one of the characters from the series does: "It would be really neat if Death was somebody and not just nothing, or pain, or blackness.  And it would be really good if Death could be be somebody like [her].  Somebody funny, and friendly, and nice,  And maybe just a tiny bit crazy."  So often Death is intimidating, it is refreshing and nice to have a kind Death for once.

Overall, I would give this series a 94%.

P.S.: If this post makes you curious about the series, I recommend you pick up Sandman: Endless Nights.  That is what I started on and if you like that you will like the rest of the series.

P.P.S.: While some people disagree with me, I am of the impression that the last issue of the series is out of place and takes away some of the impact from the end.  If you are reading the series I recommend that you read issue #75 in between issues 56 and 57 and end the series on 74.  While there are some aspects of 75 that make it a suitable ending, there are a lot more that are not.