Dreams are nothing more than wishes

Ok, so since Watchmen and Maus have made appearances here, it's time to break out Sandman, whose tenth and final volume I just finished. (I know, I know, there are other books that have come out, but for the main narrative cycle, this is it.)

I always feel a little funny discussing graphic novels, mostly because I'm not steeped in the traditions and conventions of the form -- I read a big Batman treasury from the 50s when I was a kid and found it at the library, along with a massive Buck Rogers collection from the 30s, but by and large, I didn't grow up reading comics. So when I talk about how great Alan Moore's books are, how Sandman blew me away, how interesting Frank Miller's stuff is, I do so coming from a place of near-total ignorance of how they've changed and influenced the medium. But, you know, I know what I like, and I loved me some Sandman.

Josh told me early on that while comics knowledge is going to deepen and enrich the experience of reading, say, Watchmen, Sandman leans a lot more on mythic and classical lore. It's true -- anyone with a profound love of Norse mythology is going to love seeing Loki the Trickster God in all his glory, and the series draws on a plethora of myths and deity structures, all couched in the universe of the Endless. And as Gaiman unfolds who Morpheus (Dream) is and slowly introduces us to his family (Desire, Despair, Delerium, Death, Destruction and Destiny), the piece becomes a really beautiful meditation on change (for reasons not worth going into here). What's really beautiful, though, is Gaiman's penchant for winding his way through historical events and eras, insinuating Dream and his siblings in human events while painting those events as something like sideshows to the deeper, more profound drama taking place among the Endless, the subordinate gods, and a handful of mortals lucky enough to live hundreds upon hundreds of years.

It's a fully realized universe, and tremendously wonderful to explore it. I'll be rereading it -- this, by nature of its length, has a sprawl and a scope to it that Watchmen lacks (it, in turn, lacks some of Watchmen's sheer formal brilliance) and suggests a richness that's there for the rereading. Next up: manga? A comic about a mail order ninja?