The Sandman: What Dreams May Come

One reason that I find describing the actual plot of Sandman difficult is that it is very much a character study. There are many great character-based stories that I enjoy that can be easily summarized; Buffy is about a girl who has been chosen to combat vampires and demons, American Beauty is about a man's midlife crisis/reawakening, and LOST is about a group of people marooned on a tropical island. Granted, I am eliminating all of the nuance and why the plots are what they are, but it is possible to encapsulate those stories into a brief sentence. Gaiman describes the plot this way: The lord of dreams learns he must change or die, and makes his choice. Unlike the plot descriptions I listed, which can be divined from a brief trailer, one would not realize that Sandman's plot had anything to do with change until it was over.

Though each story arc has its own self-contained storyline, the whole doesn't come together until near the end. Y: The Last Man, another Vertigo series with a planned ending, had self-contained story arcs, but from the beginning, there was a clear goal for Yorick Brown to achieve. With The Sandman, Dream is not striving towards anything in general. He is going about his duties, and confronts various obstacles along the way. Dream has enemies, but he doesn't have an arch-villain like Lex Luthor. In fact, the beings that cause him the most trouble do not attack him for personal reasons. And, as I said in the last post, humans tend to drive the story more than Dream or any of the Endless.

The Sandman does have an overall plot, but, like a good dream, it is fragmented by various stories that only fully make sense once they are looked at as a whole. Most of the long story arcs take place in the present, while most of the one-shot stories take place in the past. Dream says things and meets with people in the present, and these things seem strange until we see a scene from the past that explains it. In the first storyline, there is a segment where Dream is in Hell to reclaim his sigil, and while there, he runs into a soul who begs for forgiveness. This is meaningless until we learn of his history with Dream. Speaking of Dream's time in Hell, the theme of that issue is Hope, and though the idea of hope is reiterated again in the series (Despair reminds us that dreams are hopes, and that she is jealous of her brother because she is a creature of nothing but despair), the illustration of the power of hopes and dreams in that issue is incredible. Going back to the past/present stories, there are also times when recurring characters in stories taking place in the past come back in the present to set off major events.

Like most of Gaiman's work, fantasy and reality are expertly integrated. In the waking world, there are immortals and gods who walk the Earth, but they are not nearly as powerful as we imagine them to be. Only in dreams do they have that kind of power. There are a few times when things get slightly more fantastic in reality than they otherwise would be, but that is partially because the series initially took place in the DC universe, then slowly shifted into its own once Vertigo stopped being a part of mainstream DC continuity. Plenty of "weird shit" (as one character refers to it) happens in the waking world, but not everyone who experiences the weird shit ends up believing that the weird shit actually happened. Sometimes, they convince themselves that it was just a dream. But, as Dream says early on, it is NEVER just a dream.

Up next: Legends...

The Sandman: The Heart of the Dreaming

Without mortal living beings, there would be no Endless. If there were no beings who could dream, or desire, or die, Dream, Desire, and Death would have no purpose. And so, many of the story arcs feature Dream as a co-protagonist, while humans in the waking world take on equally important roles.

One of the best examples is A Game of You, a story which takes place about halfway through the series. A young woman in New York realizes that the fairy tale land she dreamed of as a child is coming back to reclaim her. The world exists in the Dreaming (Dream's realm) because she imagined it, and it is being taken over by a malevolent nightmare creature. The beings that inhabit it, who were her imaginary friends when she was a little girl, send an envoy to the waking world in order to bring her back in an attempt to save it. Had she not imagined the Land (that is the name of her imaginary world), there would be no story.

That brings me to one aspect of the Dreaming that I enjoyed very much. In Dream's castle is a library that contains every book ever imagined. And by that, I mean every book EVER conceived, whether it got published, written, or never left the mind of the author (in the Dreaming, I am a published author). Dream has the power to create nightmares that never existed in the waking world, but the Dreaming is filled with things that reflect our imaginations. For example, the gates of the castle are guarded by mythological creatures that never really existed, but they are creatures we are familiar with because we imagined them.

Some humans are powerful enough to have drastic effects on the Dreaming itself. Two characters are introduced in the second story arc, The Doll's House, that each can have profound effects on Dream and the Dreaming (I don't want to go too far into who they are or what they can do in an effort to not spoil anything). We are the dreamers and we are the creators of myth and story.

Up next: A midsummer night's Dream...

The Sandman: Endless Entertainment

How do I begin? As I said, The Sandman represents not only the work that made Neil Gaiman into Neil Gaiman, but it is also regarded as one of the best and most important comic book series of all time. For about seven years (is that somehow symbolic?), Gaiman told the story of Dream, the third sibling of the Endless, seven beings who had dominion over various states of being. Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair, and Delirium made up a wonderfully dysfunctional family that has been around since the universe was here. The are older than the oldest god and will be here until the last sentient being in the universe is gone. (**NOTE: Although I will not be discussing plot in this post, I will be talking about things that can be construed as spoilers, so be careful**) They rule over their dominions believing that they are in control of their aspects, when the very opposite may be true. They are extremely powerful, but like other higher powers in Gaiman's worlds, they exist to serve those they control.

This first post will focus on the Endless because I think that they are a wonderful concept. For one thing, I tend to agree with Gaiman on the nature of higher beings; gods are created by men, not the other way around. We needed ways to explain the unexplainable, so we created deities more powerful than ourselves and worshipped our ideas. Gods are at the height of their power when they are actively and widely worshipped, and they do not die until they are finally forgotten. But the time between being worshipped and being forgotten can last many years. However, things like desire, destruction, and (especially) death will never be forgotten. We may not worship the Endless, but we are obsessed with them because we cannot escape them. Death is an inevitability that nearly everyone fears and some wish to overcome. In fact, the series begins when a magician in the early 20th century tries to do just that (his mistaken result sets off the events of the series, but more on that in a later post). Dreams and delirium are the obsessions of psychiatrists who seek to understand the human mind. We all dream, and often wonder what the images and experiences mean. As for delirium, I believe that no one is ever completely sane, and while some people may be crazier than others, sanity is relative. As for desire and despair, I have to admit that Gaiman is a genius making them twins. These are both very powerful emotions that can often go together. Unfulfilled desires often lead to despair, and because desire is often not based on reality (intense crushes tend to cause the person who has them to view the object of their desire as more ideal than the person truly is). Destiny is a little trickier, but there are certainly people who believe that everything is fated. I think one of the reasons Destiny had to be included was because he is in many ways the anti-Dream; one is the lord of everything that was, is, and ever will be, while the other's dominion is what never was, isn't, and never will be. And destruction is inevitable; whether it is intended or not, nothing new can be created without the old being destroyed.

And that is as good a segway as any into the idea of the Endless as "lords of opposites", as Destruction says. The Endless states are so powerful that they literally define their opposites. As I said above, destruction often leads to creation. We define life by looking at death; we do what we can while we are here because we know it will end one day. Desire often leads to hatred and repulsion, especially when despair gets involved. And dreams can define reality. In the series, an early issue suggests that this is literally true; Dream tells a cat that if enough beings dream the same dream, reality will reflect those dreams. But in our reality, the truth isn't far off. Before anything can happen in the waking world, someone must have thought about it. Someone must have dreamed it. Martin Luther King had a dream. It may not have been fully realized yet, but we are certainly getting closer to seeing it become reality (just look at our next president!) because enough people believe in it.

But aside from how well-conceived the Endless are, I think I enjoy them so much because they are also well-written. Especially Death. Unlike most representations of Death, Gaiman's Death is perky, cheery, optimistic, and cute. No one in the entire series values life more than Death. She is arguably the most popular character from the series, and is certainly one of my favorites. For a while, she was definitely my favorite character from the series, but I have to admit that Delirium really grew on my in the final issues. Part of it has to do with the fact that I met someone who has become a very close friend, and Delirium reminds me of her a bit. This is nothing but a compliment; the best qualities of Delirium are at times reflected in this person (and there are other things as well), and it made me smile reading these final issues, seeing as how Delirium grows from a relatively weak and timid character into a competent one.

Still, I think that Death will forever be my favorite Endless, if for no other reason than she exemplifies the opposing nature of them so well. In what other story involving a personification of Death are you going to hear it discussing Disney's film version of Mary Poppins and trying to explain the meaning of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?! This panel made me laugh out loud when I saw it:

I know that this post made it sound like this book is about nothing more than the adventures of the Endless, but that is not true. In fact, the opposite is true. The Endless exist to serve humans, despite what a few of them wish to think. The Sandman is about life and storytelling, and the stories belong to humanity. Therefore, while the Endless generally and Dream in particular are the protagonists, the events would not happen nor would they have any importance if it weren't for the humans involved.

Up next: Dream a little dream of me...