The return of Dream

Last week, I held in my hands the first new issue of a Sandman comic since 1996 (or 2003, if you count the bestselling hardcover Endless Nights). This was a big deal for me, as you could tell from my enthusiastic Instagramming of the event.

I was 18 when I first read an issue of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, which may or may not be the perfect age for that particular experience. It was an odd issue of the now-classic fantasy/horror comic book, even taking into account that all the issues were odd in one way or another. It was smack dab in the middle of what I would later learn was probably the least popular storyline in the entire 75-issue run, “A Game of You.” It featured a lost princess, a deadly enchanted forest, a feathered traitor, and (my favorite) a talking rat in a trench coat. Also a face nailed to a wall that somehow retained the power of speech. I was enthralled.

When I finally met Neil Gaiman himself on one of his visits here, during a pleasant lunch where the waiter forgot to bring him his order of calamansi juice, I was able to tell him that his comics saved my life. It was not an exaggeration; at one point, it really seemed to me that all I had to look forward to were new chapters of this unfolding story (I was not what one might call a shiny happy person with what one might call a whirlwind social life). I have since found many other things to live for, but those stories still have a hold on me, they still retain their power to horrify and delight and astonish, and I am still grateful to the author and his collaborators, who rank as some of the best artists in the field of comics: Shawn McManus, Jill Thompson, P. Craig Russell, Charles Vess, and everyone else — always, of course, with covers by mysterious, shadowy Dave McKean.

Sandman, once only available locally in specialty comics shops, is all over the bookstores now, in collected and not inexpensive volumes. I don’t even have my original copies any more; I lent them to a girl who lost them to the floods of Ondoy, and subsequently moved to Singapore (there may or may not be a causal relationship between those two occurrences). Now that I am an adult with an adult salary, it’s really only a matter of time before I reacquire the run. There’s no rush, though, as I read and reread those stories so much that they still reside in my mind with greater clarity than anything I was actually supposed to learn, from the Poincaré conjecture to the geography of the planet. Also, they keep coming out with new formats — Absolute Editions! The Annotated Sandman! The Sandman Omnibus! — each one a new way to dominate your shelf and devastate your wallet.

And speaking of new ways to spend money: now we have The Sandman Overture #1 — the first installment of the first new Sandman series in years. It is a prequel to the very first Sandman issue, where the titular character, also known as Morpheus, also known as Dream, was captured by a cabal of early 20th-century English magicians. To say that the art is gorgeous is to say nothing surprising, but it has to be said that in J.H. Williams III, Gaiman has found one of his most impressive collaborators ever — the pages are so beautifully designed and illustrated that they practically sing. (No spoilers, but at the end, there is a four-page gatefold scene that is a wonder to behold.)

Familiar characters from the original series abound; Dream’s older sister Death is here, looking lovelier than ever, as is dour Destiny, and the fearsome Corinthian, and the incorrigible Mervyn Pumpkinhead. What really made Sandman part of our lives, though, is the array of all-too-human characters that defined each storyline: the sad, the lonely, the broken, the hopeful, the defiant, the occasionally triumphant. With five issues to go in this series, one wonders if a more down-to-earth human aspect will be brought into play. In any case, the more cosmic scale of this new story has an appeal of its own, and yes, even though it’s a prequel, there are one or two major surprises in store.