Because of the hubbub over the TV show and the upcoming (physical) next release of the audio drama I decided to re-read the original run of Sandman. The book was being published during a VERY transitional time in my adult life, and by the time the story completed I was in a very different part of my life. I don't want to say that I'd given up on it... but the book really didn't mean the same thing to me in 1996 that it did in 1989. Keep in mind that sleuthing/analysis/guessing of Sandman is what folks on the internet did between the Twin Peaks and Lost TV series, which is something I can only take so much of. My personal opinion is that by the conclusion of Sandman, a large fraction of people were simply invested in it rather than appreciating it.

I only wanted to drop this post to say that my opinions of the conclusion haven't really changed... I appreciate the last few years of the book but it has got areas that could have been done "better". I'd forgotten Marc Hempel had done (most of) the art for The Kindly Ones, an artist I really like. I'd also forgotten that the Kindly Ones tied up so many different character's stories... including ones I didn't think needed to be tied up. It also introduced a couple of story beats that move from the foreground into the deep background, which puts me at risk of dabbling back into that deep analysis that I find tempting and distasteful!


More pleasantly surprising was that I'd forgotten that the penultimate story is one about the "new" Dream. It's not a particularly original story, as it feels like a LOT of what had already been done in the series, so I can see why I had forgotten it.

Re-reading he final story did leave me with two thoughts:

• It was just a dull as I remember it being,
• It did provide answers to two "important questions" that I'd actually not even realized were (supposed to be) important. (spoilers for the second)

The first question is "Why the Tempest?" Obviously as the final Shakespeare play, one of the earliest "meta" pieces of fiction in the modern English canon it was an irresistible inclusion for this work by an English teller of stories about stories (about stories). I still find its use somewhat gratuitous... I mean, using the Midsummer's Nights Dream was clever and had some whimsical energy... but the final issue never comes close to anything except pathos... which doesn't really fit the theme of the play. The lack of story parallels also really weakens this comic and is what got in the way of the second "answer":

I wouldn't have known this was an important question if I hadn't heard an interview with Neil Gaiman 25 Years later. Obviously the author thinks it was an important question, but I'm not the densest block of wood in the shed an I'd missed it for decades. Maybe the new adaptations can do a better job of spelling this out?

I just started another re-read of Lucifer, Carey's spinoff. I like that book much better overall, but it certainly isn't as optimistic or open-ended.

I'm not being fair to Mike Carey, but by the time Sandman concluded, I had grown very disillusioned with the Vertigo brand... so much of the output was clearly too much focused on trying to leverage the goodwill of Sandman. I personally felt that Sandman took a turn for the worse with Worlds' End... for me, I strongly dislike stories about stories about telling stories about stories. There were some enjoyable bits (and I did enjoy The Kindly Ones) and I certainly don't hold a negative opinion of the series.

I'm much more cruel in my opinion of Garth Ennis' Hellblazer. Ultimately, my criticism of what he did in that book was that it was so immature, especially compared to what Jamie Delano had done. I never went back to that book, despite it being (at one point) the monthly DC comic with the highest number of consecutive issues! I did "come back" to Vertigo when Transmetropolitan was moved from the defunct Helix line. It was years later that I enjoyed Y: The Last Man and Fables.

To offer some explanation of how much I detested what I saw as the "Funko popification" of Vertigo, I have long considered Bill Willingham as one of my top 5 favorite American comic creators (certainly among those who aren't associated with a single property) and Mark Buckingham is in my top 5 favorite comic book artists (with no qualifications, as the man can do just about anything). Even with those guys, I couldn't bring myself to buy their monthly book published under the Vertigo imprint.

I'm pretty sure it was The Boys, but I remember a discussion between two kids talking about Vertigo characters. Stuff like Dream Goth, Reverend Swear, and Cursy Reporter. Something like that.

I like Ennis, a lot, but he's got his niche in a hard way. Sadly I haven't been able to read Ellis since it turned out he was a bit more of a bastard than I could tolerate. But Transmet, Black Summer, and Supergods are still on my shelves.

Willingham's another one that went sour for me. The concept of Fables is amazing, and I wanted to collect the whole series in trades. But I won't give him another dime.

I don't remember ever really buying a book for a label, though.

I actually like Ennis' The Boys quite a lot. It obviously has some juvenile elements that he simply cannot outgrow, but his singerring (sic, filter) grade-school playground tendencies are balanced by a little bit of maturity that redeems it.


Did Bill Willingham get red-pilled or something?

Boys is great, Preacher is great, his Punisher run is great until he starts showing off how much he hates 90% of Superheroes, but it's real funny then. I've read some of his Constantine but not enough to really form an opinion. I thought Dangerous Habits kicked ass though.

And yeah, Willingham went hard right.

I am still listening through Audible's act III... and I was surprised to hear "Cerebus the Aardvark" name-checked explicitly. The character isn't yet in the public domain, but there is that general license granted by Dave Sim, so I suppose that makes it ok. I had forgotten that Delerium created Cerebus at the end of Brief Lives (circa 1993) before letting him go... which explains a LOT. This would have been around the start of Cerebus' Mothers & Daughters arc, when Sim was parodying Sandman. I guess we know who to hold accountable for what came next!

Wasn't Sandman an Avenger ???