Let me preface this by saying that I am a big fan of Neil Gaiman as a novelist. I am not that much into comics but I always thought I was missing out not having read what many consider to be his magnum opus. I did read some of the first TPBs over ten years ago because they were available from the local library, but that did not give me the best impression as they stopped abruptly and I might have missed a few or read some out of order. So last year I decided to do it right and bought a complete edition.

It took me an absurd amount of time to get through the whole thing, roughly six months. Part of that is due to outside factors - I was hospitalized twice during that time - but the main reason was that I did not enjoy it very much. I enjoyed parts of it, I like the characters of Death and Delirium, I like the dreamlike quality of the storytelling (at least sometimes), I liked the conclusion and the epilogue. I did not like the long stretches that seemed to go nowhere, the overblown cast of characters that I found difficult to remember even over a few months - I wonder what that must have been like following the series when it first came out -, the fact that many things just don't make sense to me. Which, I guess, is part of the dreamlike quality; dreams often don't make sense, they jump from scene to scene and leave things unexplained. As reading material, though, I find that dissatisfying. And a big one: I did not like the art style for the most part.

What am I missing?
Currently I am listening to the audio version of Neil's View from the Cheap Seats, and several of the pieces in that collection have made me wonder if I maybe am not versed enough in comic book lore to fully appreciate Sandman. Could that be it? Or did I do my enjoyment of Sandman a disservice by building it up in my imagination and expecting a revelation? Or am I just a bit dense?

I am much the same way - I've still never read Sandman comics and don't have much desire to (although I'd totally read books about Wesley Dodds or Flint Marko).

I think a large part of it was probably also the time they were released and the lack of comic books in that vein back then, so they seemed like a revelation. It's easy to shrug off Dark Knight Returns these days as there are a million comics with that tone and level of grim and gritty, but when it came out, it was something new and amazing.

Basically.... maybe you just had to be there. ?

There is a very good dark take on Wesley Dodds called "Sandman Mystery Theatre" -- it is worth picking up.

Gaiman's Sandman is one of my all-time favorite comics. I think it did help to "be there:"
--It is a long-form comic with an actual arc and an actual ending, which at the time was rare. There were miniseries, but most ongoing series were supposed to last forever or just run out of steam.
--There is character development. Often, character development plants seeds for tragic collisions of fate.
--Parts are extremely inventive. Other parts are grim and horrific. In a comics world awash in superheroes, Sandman and its fellow Vertigo titles seemed to evoke that old EC spirit of ugly, daring and wonder.
--The concept of the Endless is cool. Comics generally do rather badly when they try to deal with Great Big Beings (Anti-Monitor and Beyonder, anyone? Most takes on Galactus?). The Endless and their conflicts are interesting, and they are powerful and childlike in ways that nod to mythology. (I think the early run of Nu52 Wonder Woman draws on the Endless in portraying the twisty Greek gods, and it pays off well.)
--There is just enough humor, compassion and positivity to keep the whole thing from being utterly Doursville. Delirium, Hob, and especially Death are crucial for this.


The series is not perfect, by any means. Some parts really drag. Other parts, as you say, meander. Often, those meanders reemerge late in the narrative in interesting ways, but it is a bit like keeping track of the character list in "War and Peace." Sadly, most of the moments where Sandman intersects with the larger DCU are among the weaker parts of the narrative. I agree that the art has not aged terribly well -- it looks a bit scratchy and muddy today.

On the whole, though, I think Gaiman takes a bunch of risks here, and most of them pay off.

If you are interested in short, top-notch DC Gaiman with incredible art, I highly recommend "The Books of Magic" mini-series.

Gaiman/McKean with a so-so story and fabulous art? "Black Orchid."

I was there. The only reason I picked up the first issue was that when I paged through it there was a panel with Wesley Dodd, and I love the Golden Age heroes.

I thought the first issue was great. One of the best I think. The first story line was also great, with Dream having to retrieve his stuff. After that I agree with the OP. There were some great issues through out the series, but generally the overall arcs weren't as awesom as many people say.

I also feel the same way about Starman.

Thanks for the replies. I feel better now about not being blown away by Sandman.

I've been meaning to read The Books of Magic for some time now, so I just ordered it. And although I have never heard about Black Orchid before, I ordered that as well while I was at it.

I got Black Orchid today and read it. It was pretty to look at and the story was okay, although the end was underwhelming.
Comics seem to me to not be a very cost effective form of entertainment, though. I could have bought a novel that would have kept me occupied for at least five times as long for less than half of what I paid for Black Orchid, and with a good novel there is a decent chance I will want to read it again, which I can't really see myself doing with a comic book.

I was a bit too young when the vertigo line started to pick it up at the comic shop, and while I appreciate some of the stories and art that I have come across, sometimes it is just too odd.

I have been exposed to the comics from the dollar bins being able to pick up a whole series for cheap. Word is that there is a Swamp Thing release through vertigo, where if it is true, I would love to read it.

What many others say in this thread is true. Vertigo was the first mature line of comics that was more for thought-provoking and stories and less for being smutty or raunchy.

Are you talking about Alan Moore's run? If that's the case, then it predates Sandman (and the entire Vertigo line) by several years. The Vertigo Swamp Thing (a relaunch that came nearly 20 years after Moore took over the title) was the story of Tefe Holland, the original Swamp Thing's daughter, and was written by Brian K. Vaughan. Vaughan's name alone is usually enough to make me pick up a title, but I haven't gotten around to that run.

I think this is one reason why comics have gone from mass media to basically niche media. In the journey from cheaply-printed magazines drawn and written hastily by barely-paid creators, to glossier, more complex, creator-driven products, comics have become quite expensive on a euro-per-entertainment-hour basis.

Manga sales continue to increase in the US. Although they read quickly, in the black-and-white novel format, manga volumes often run 1/3 the cost of a full-color graphic novel. This puts them at a better price point to attract new and younger fans, I imagine.

I usually get novels from the public library, but graphic novels compete with boardgames (and Clix!) in my entertainment budget. Three-quarters of my family likes boardgames, and no one but me likes comics. Play a $40 boardgame a couple times with three people and you've gotten a really good return on your entertainment investment. Plus, the game is there on the shelf, waiting to be pulled down again in a few months. (I do get a lot of joy from re-reading comics, though. "Longbow Hunters!" "Strontium Dog!" And yes, "Sandman" and "Starman!")

I was there when it first came out; I'll try to give some insight into what it was like at the time.

When the Gaiman Sandman was started, this era of DC comics was a particularly strong one. It was a few years after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, when there was some very strong titles in the DCU. There was an effort to try to have all the comics be part of the same "universe", but many individual creative teams had a lot of freedom. This is why those earliest issues of Sandman have some pretty strong DCU tie-ins. During this time, it felt like any book you picked up was exploring a new corner of the new DCU.

This series also started right before the Tim Burton Batman movie became the hottest comic movie ever, which brought a lot of people to comic book stores... and Sandman was pushed hard as the comic book for folks that didn't want to read other comics. The other similar contemporary DC books had other reasons for not getting the push at this time. Swamp Thing had been a long-running series with even stronger DCU tie-ins, but Alan Moore was off the book and Veitch never really offered a jumping-on point. Delano's Hellblazer was great, but it was considered a spin-off of Swamp Thing and those first 40 issues was a genius-level narrative that was hard to crack. Nobody knew what Morrison's Animal Man was going to do.

After the first arc, the narrative of Sandman did some very smart things: in particular it dropped references, hints and mysteries that got the Usenet groups abuzz with guessing at what was going on. This started as an echo of the then-current WKLP ("Who Killed Laura Palmer?") zeitgeist, and when Twin Peaks finished the Sandman speculation was really the only pop culture game on the internet for a while. If you think today's Westworld speculation is intense, you have no idea what it was like when Sandman was being published monthly.

One of the other smart things Neil Gaiman did was to explicitly craft comic-book narratives around women. This was very unusual for mainstream comics of the era, and it got him a lot of positive press. The reaction to his take on Death cracked a lot of minds, and he doubled-down again and again on female heroism.

Sidebar weird vibe (of my own): NG comes across as decent guy, but at the time I always got a tiny whiff of creepiness about the heavy dose of manic-pixie-dream girl in Sandman and the female creators he associated with during the Sandman run. Ironically, MPDG wasn't created as a formal term until long after Sandman finished its run, but his book literally includes mania, pixies, and dream girls within it. But I digress.

His writing is very strong, but like many comics of that era there will be what we now refer to as "walls of text", which is not common in the comics of this era. He also tripled-down on the trope of stories-within-stories-within-stories (sometimes within a story), which is clever but easy to overuse. If that sort of thing is off-putting, you will be easily put off by long stretches of Sandman.


I enjoyed Sandman quite a bit. I liked the horror of the early issues. I liked the mythological elements, both those from human mythology and DC comics mythology. The D-family drama was a little bit too much like the Nine Princes in Amber, but it was well written. I was introduced to some pieces of world history and literature I would have otherwise not know about. For example, I think I was reading Gene Wolfe's New Sun books at the same time as Gaiman echoed them, but I can't be certain any more.

I've held off on re-reading Sandman for over 20 years because I'm uncertain as to how I'll view it. When I think back on the series there are many moments I remember fondly, but I definitely felt like by the end of the book it was not about what most people think it was about. I'm not trying to take anything away from it, or knock it down, but I can understand why a modern reader visiting it for the first time may be non-plussed.

I enjoy Neil Gaiman's novels and short stories much more than most of his comics, especially those that are adapted by external collaborators. There is something about the extra hands being involved that tighten up his impulses. YMMV but I found his TV episodes (Doctor Who, Babylon 5) to be very weak outings. I love his work on Miracleman: The Golden Age, but I have to give 50% of the credit there to Mark Buckingham.

I know this may come as surprise but Sandman plays "tour guide" in Dark Knight: Metal as he informs a couple of characters that stories which should never be told are missing from a certain library

RE: Comics as value medium, I would say there are comics I do and will re-read. But those really started for me with Starman and around the Vertigo era when I started paying a lot more attention to the writers and keeping only a passing interest in art (good artists tend to be paired with good writers, so I rarely have to look at something awful).

For re-readable work I would check out books by Simone, Brubaker, Fraction, and Hickman. Oh, and BKV tends to keep some depth to his work as well. I've been out of comics for a while, so I'm sure there's more out there that will have some staying power. I love me some Dan Slott writing on Spidey and Surfer, but I haven't reached the point where a re-read is due. We'll see.

I do think there are works that stand arm to arm with the great novels. But I also don't know your tastes. Catch-22 remains my favorite novel, and I know that's not everyone's cup o' tea.

In the case of Black Orchid I was wondering why the author got top billing over the illustrator; McKean must have spent a lot more time on it than Gaiman.


Thank you, that was helpful.


One comic I am temped to re-read is From Hell, but I remember that I absolutely hated the art.

Well, I started reading that a year and a half ago but did not get very far and have not picked it up again in over a year, so I am going to guess that our tastes differ.

Thank goodness neither of us is a taste-maker!

Sandman should just go back to fighting Spider-Man and leave well enough alone.