After months of delay I finally read Neil Gaiman's Sandman Volume 1 (of 11 I think). I couldn't put it down and now I am most of the way through volume 2. This is the third graphic novel I've read, following Maus and then the Watchmen. More than the other two, each of which were epitomes of the graphic novel medium for different reasons, this one completely embodied fantasy. And while the Watchmen definitely investigates the fantasy genre, The Sandman is something more. (Admittedly I can imagine the sandman as a regular novel whereas I don't think the watchmen or maus could have been one at all).

Anyways, I'll try to avoid spoilers. You can probably guess from the title that the graphic novel has something to do with that old nighttime story of the sandman who sprinkles dream dust into the eyes of children to put them to sleep. He has been fictionalized as benevolent and malicious before and in this one Neil Gaiman makes him both and neither. He just is and has always been, he is not a God but he and some others are called the Endless and are powerful beings in their own right. The Sandman, also known in the novel as simply Dream, is the personification of Dreams. He rules over the non-material world where all of our dreams occur, that includes the nightmares.

That's all I need to disclose to you for this discussion because isn't a dream the best conceptualization for the art of fantasy there is? Our dreams are pure imagination and isn't that a great way to think of the fantasy genre? I fell in love with this graphic novel because of the tribute it pays to the human imagination. There is no one single fantasy world that the graphic novel occurs in. It's like nothing I've ever read before in the way it layers on different fantasy worlds that we've all encountered. Part of this is because the novel comes out of the Marvel Franchise who have their own Marvel universe. Thus in this novel we run into a couple Justice League characters as well as John constatine, all franchise characters. But even beyond that the novel flows in and out of the reality you and I are aware of as well as the others. In his dream kingdom there live all the archetypes. Cain and Abel live in a mansion next to the Sandman's. It's a bit of a tense household. The book also dives into the pits of hell and introduces Lucifer and Beelzabub as characters.

The whole time Gaiman never forgets us, his audience, and on the pages he always returns to us in reality. As far as the fantasy genre I can think of very few that pay such a tribute to the stories that made them. In writing the Sandman Gaiman admits he is merely a dreamer alongside a history of others. And he is continuing those stories and shaping them for a future generation. That the book is also a graphic novel is significant in that fantasy has always been a medium based on strong imagery. And the drawings are pretty fantastic. Dream is personified as a very pale man with wild darkblueish hair. He doesn't smile much.

Has anyone read it? My stamp of approval