pages from Sandman #56 by Neil Gaiman and Gary Amaro

My super slow re-read of Sandman sped up considerably in the last few days, during which I devoured the entirety of the second and third absolute editions (those cover the storylines Season of Mists, A Game of You, Brief Lives, and World’s End, as well as several one shots previously collected as Fables and Reflections). I had forgotten about this sequence from the final chapter of World’s End, a storyline I had remembered as fairly insignificant within the primary narrative of the series (it’s a Canterbury Tales styled short story collection), in which Dream’s eventual fate in The Kindly Ones is presaged. It’s interesting to see how much more planned and structured The Sandman seems on each revisit. This is my fourth time through the series (once in 2003, once a couple years later, and once as the absolute editions came out from 2006-2008), and stories I never particularly loved are now some of my favorites (A Game of You) and and my previous favorites are revealing even more depth (Season of Mists, Brief Lives).

I enjoy most of Neil Gaiman’s novels, but I’d kill to see him return to an ongoing, monthly comic book series. He is truly one of the masters of the form, and his short dabblings in superheroes over the last ten years (Marvel 1602, Eternals, Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?), while fun, aren’t nearly as satisfying.