Looking Ahead to Sandman #19

Another fun episode. I don't see, however, why Brent claimed it was not a Sandman story. Having Sandman stories in which another character is the protagonist is extremely common in the series. If I recall correctly, there are issues (in A Game of You , I think) where he doesn't appear at all. Sure, in this case, it's a John Constantine story too, and hence (I suppose) a Hellblazer comic. But it's a Sandman comic. I do think that Gaiman's self-assessment that he doesn't quite hit his stride until issue #8 is right, and this issue, while fine, is just fine. It's not one I'd hand to someone who's never read one and say, "read this". (Actually, I'd hand that person volume 2, The Doll's House .) A few good details you either didn't mention or didn't emphasize: - Mad Hettie's somehow knowing he's back, and Constantine's off-hand line "the funny thing is she is two-hundred and forty-seven years old". - The meta-textual call-out when Constantine remembers horror movies where people split up, and asks, "we're going to stick together, right?" - You mention his being caught by Dream, but not the fabulous streaking lines as if Dream had to rush down through the dream sky to catch him: he didn't just reach into the dream, he flew in it. - "It's never only a dream, John Constantine" — a recurring line (also: "of course it's a dream", a variant with (oddly) almost the same meaning), which occurs here, I think, for the first time in the series. - How well the artist does at removing any hint of sexuality or the male gaze from the naked Rachel - Dreams callousness: I don't think he's being robotic, as Glenn said: he's unfeeling, which is not quite the same thing. Remember he has lived for eons, and people live and die. It's just... normal for him. (Until and unless it isn't.) He never intervenes when most people suffer; and he (in a fashion) makes people suffer, with nightmares ("I am far more terrible than you, my sister" he'll say in issue #8). - But Constantine actually shouts: incredibly brave, now that he knows who Dream is, and something of his power; but Dream is, I think, in his debt, and thus does this (call it a "boon", perhaps) - And because of that dream not only gives her a dream. but covers her: part of the favor he does JC, treating her not only kindly, but with dignity - JC's reply to where Dream is going: "Aren't we all, mate?" Not realizing, I guess, that what Dream said was meant literally. - Still no Brent bio on the about page. The peasants are getting restless.

Fun episode! I thought that, in contrast to the first (where the second half of the issue was quite rushed) it was very balanced and a great discussion throughout. My favorite parts were the antiquity geekery, of course. I knew that the gates of horn & ivory were Greek, but didn't remember where they came from (although I've read the Odyssey). Fun stuff. Some other thoughts: • Brent (I believe it was) pointed out the purple & yellow coloring on the page when Dream is in bed in a rather crucifix-like pose, noting that they are Easter colors. In the color-corrected absolute, however, they don't look purple and yellow — they look a lot more natural. I don't know if they changed their mind or if they never meant it to be that way, but they changed it. Doesn't invalidate the reading in the version those colors were in, but worth noting. • I am curious how much Alan Moore's interpretation of Cain & Abel — which Gaiman draws on enormously, including the regular murders, etc — was in the previous "House of Mystery" (& Secrets) issues, never having seen the latter. (In general, early Sandman reads in a lot of ways as a spin-off of Swamp-Thing — Cain and Abel, John Constantine dropping in, cameos from the Justice League, etc. This will change over time, of course.) • Glenn mentioned his favorite panel on p. 11, but I admire above all the page as an artistic whole: what a marvelous layout, conveying the dream-journeying in such a vivid way, embodied in the very structure of the page. • You don't mention it, but the three-who-are-one switch places on two of the pages they are focused on. I seem to recall Gaiman describing this, in an interview, as each of them rotating to become the others in turn, i.e. transformation, not shifting places. Not clear from the art, but it's a cool idea. • In your mention of syncretism, Glenn describes the Furies, Fates, Graces, etc, as different names for the three-in-one. I think it goes beyond that: I think they are different aspects of them. That they are multi-faceted, and that different names capture different sides — different "points of view" (as Abel describes what died when Morpheus, but not Dream, dies, towards the end of the series). • You both said that Dream did badly in asking his questions. I disagree. He asked in an ordinary way, and they answered as slipperarily as they could each question. Each time he tried to learn, and phrased the next one differently; they continued to evade him. They weren't being all that helpful. • You said (IIRC) that the final two panels ended on a creepy or horrific note. I think it's heartbreaking. A person so broken down that the fact that they're bleeding is not so bad . I guess what I'm saying is, "I'm not bleeding, you're bleeding", or something. A very powerful pair of panels. Looking forward to #3!

Sigh. Y'all weren't taking up enough of my reading & listening time with Wolfe? Needed to snatch some more? I kid, I kid. I saw this forthcoming on your patreon feed (while not being a sufficiently munificent donor to get the early access to it) and am delighted to get to hear it. It's a lot of fun! I love Gaiman, although I don't think he is quite in a class with Wolfe — certainly not in the infinite depth of his stories. But I do love this series & am delighted to read along. Brent mentions briefly that this was a horror comic, and you both mention that this is a horror story, but I think you undersold the degree to which this was promoted as a horror comic. (One of the earliest posters for it had as its tagline a bit from T. S. Eliot, "I will show you fear in a handful of dust", with (IMS) a picture of Dream holding sand on it.) One of the meta-stories of Sandman is how it began as a horror comic and then morphed; you can't quite capture that, and how startling it was (thus magnifying the effect it had on comics more broadly) without pointing out that beginning. Incidentally, in his afterwards to Prelude and Nocturnes , Gaiman talks about the first issues as a deliberate tour of the horror story: There was a definite effort on my part, in the stories in this volume, to explore the genres available: "The Sleep of the Just" was intended to be a classical English horror story; "Imperfect Hosts" plays with some of the conventions of the old DC and E.C. horror comics (and the hosts thereof); "Dream a Little Dream of Me" is a slightly more contemporary British horror story; "A Hope in Hell" harks back to the kind of dark fantasy found in Unknown in the 1940s; "Passengers" was my (perhaps misguided) attempt to try to mix superheroes into the SANDMAN world; "24 Hours" is an essay on stories and authors, and also one of the very few genuinely horrific tales I've written; "Sound and Fury" wrapped up the storyline, and "The Sound of Her Wings" was the epilogue and the first story in the sequence I felt was truly mine, and in which I knew I was beginning to find my own voice. So Gaiman was clearly quite self-conscious about its being a horror comic — with issue 8 being, in many ways, the first serious step away from that. Overall, I liked the episode a lot, but I thought it seemed unevenly paced — extra slow at the beginning and then rushing past cool details at the end. Here are some neat things you left out that I thought I'd just touch on: • The bottom of page 24, where Alex just reads one page — that with the picture of Dream — over and over; • the art on that same page in the middle panel of the third tier, where we see Alex only as a silhouette, and from the interior POV of the slashed painting; • The top tier of p. 25, where we see, in the art, the visibly aging Alex, with the visibly aging henchmen behind him, including one ending up in a wheelchair, and the implication of the continuing monologue (great dialogue there), with him getting angrier & more threatening as he gets older; • The hilarious silly henchmen reading the paper, talking about page 3, dreaming of a vacation; • Dream's hand reaching into the frame from the bottom of the page on p. 27; • More comedy: the dialogue in the dream that Dream raids for food, "that's the first time a naked man ever turned up to raid the buffet"; • The art on p. 33, with three zooms, one away from Ellie, the other two both in. • The amazing dream sequence on the bottom of page 34, where Gaiman really caputres the feel of dreams, and you see Alex as he follows the cat through a weird, dream-logic version of his mansion, de-aging in reverse of the aging (from p. 25, above, and from the story in general), until he is the boy we first met; • "Cat got your tongue?" • The stars in the hole in the wall (on p. 37), mirroring Dream's eyes, particularly as described several times in the issue; • The extraordinary familiarity and horror of the nightmare on pp. 38-39, and the way that each page reproduces for the reader the experience of Alex: you think that each page is the "real world", only to find it isn't. Great stuff in this issue. And this is before it really gets good! A few miscellaneous thoughts: • I hope you'll talk, at some point, about the switches in artists: which begin as unintentional swapping around (Sam Keith felt like "Jimi Hendrix in the Beatles" and left after issue 3), but then eventually starts to match the artist to the story & storyline in really interesting ways, making conscious use of the changes in story styles. • You didn't say which edition you are using, but while listening I opened up both my old paperback of Preludes and Noctures and my copy of The Absolute Sandman, Volume 1 , and boy is the latter different. It's recolored (I don't know that this is true in the other Absolutes, but it was a selling point for volume 1), and you can really, really tell. For the most part, I think it looks a lot better. (Compare, for instance, p. 19 — very different.) If you haven't seen it, and get a chance, check it out. • You may be technically right that the title of the series is The Sandman — it's on at least some of the covers — but boy it sounds weird. Most people seem to refer to it as just "Sandman". [/Jack Black in High Fidelity impression] • Given your other podcast, you can't skip Gene Wolfe's introduction to the trade volume Fables and Reflections ; it's great. • Brent Helt needs to be added to your 'about' page! The masses demand a bio!!