That's pretty interesting and well-researched, rberman, but if people wish to cover the series in such detail maybe they would be better to do so in a dedicated thread.

Here's a gentle reminder of one of our house rules, for the benefit of everyone :

7. No hijacking other members' review threads. One of the forums most unique features is the wealth of well written and researched review threads that our members contribute. However, the majority of review threads are for one member alone to put down their thoughts on a particular series. While input from other posters is both welcomed and desired, there is a difference between commenting on the reviews, debating the points that the thread starter has made, posting interesting pieces of series-related info etc, and posting your own competing reviews within the thread. Lengthy replies to a review thread are fine, but if you're actually reviewing whole issues, with your own thoughts/ratings etc, then you will likely be stepping on the thread starter's toes, which violates rule number 1.


I'm sure no harm was meant, but let's leave our reviewers do their thing.

Thanks, all. 

A new start.

I really thought I was done with this thread. I was pretty bummed out by rberman's rather presumptuous hijacking of the thread with his own issue-by-issue commentary back in early December. I realise that it may not have been his intention to cause annoyance, but he certainly did. This wasn't helped when, instead of reigning back (having been warned about this behaviour by the moderators), he created his own competing Sandman review thread, complete with a thinly-veiled dig at the quality or comprehensiveness of my own reviews in the opening paragraph. At that point, I really just thought "F**k it! Why am I bothering with this?"

Now, to be clear, I don't think I have "dibs" on reviewing Sandman or anything. Of course, anybody else is free to review whatever the hell they want in the forum, irrespective of whether it has been reviewed before by another member. But let's just say that I found rberman's conduct to be disrespectful to the point where I lost heart in this thread and, momentarily, in the community as a whole. Again, maybe it wasn't rberman's intention to cause such offence, but intentional or not, that's how it felt to me.

But having taken some time to re-evaluate and ask myself exactly why I wanted to do this review thread in the first place, I have come to the conclusion that it was to help me organise my own thoughts around the series and to learn more about The Sandman from the other members of the CCF. The latter objective, in particular, has so far been achieved in spades. So, I thank you all for contributing your own comments and thoughts to this thread. Please continue to do so.

Anyway, long story short, I've decided to continue with this review thread. So, you can expect a review of Sandman volume 5, A Game of You to appear shortly. Thanks for being patient with me.

The Sandman: Volume 5 – A Game of You
Original publication: The Sandman #32–37 (November 1991 – May 1992)
Script: Neil Gaiman
Artwork: Shawn McManus (pencils & inks)/Colleen Doran (pencils)/Bryan Talbot (pencils)/George Pratt (inks)/Dick Giordano (inks)/Stan Woch (inks)





Publisher's synopsis: Take an apartment house, add in a drag queen, a lesbian couple, some talking animals, a talking severed head, a confused heroine and the deadly Cuckoo. Stir vigorously with a hurricane and Morpheus himself and you get this fifth installment of The Sandman series. This story stars Barbie, who first makes an appearance in The Doll's House and now finds herself a princess in a vivid dreamworld.


Holy s**t, this was good! Five volumes in and The Sandman just keeps getting better and better.

Before we get stuck into this TPB, I just want to note that this collection skips ahead slightly from the end of Season of Mists, missing out issues #29-31, which feature the three-part Distant Mirrors storyline. This omitted story is instead collected in volume 6, and I shall be reviewing those issues when I get there. With that little public service announcement out of the way, let's carry on.

Volume 5: A Game of You centres around a young, recently divorced woman named Barbie, who we first met in The Doll's House. She is now residing in a rundown apartment in New York City, and is no longer able to dream – thanks to having been caught up in the Dream Vortex from Sandman volume 2. As the story begins, Barbie is being summoned to her own childhood dreamland – in which she is a princess – by a group of anthropomorphic talking animals who are being menaced by the mysterious "Cuckoo"...




I guess that some people might find the addition of fairytale princesses and talking animals to a book as serious and "adult" as The Sandman strange or jolting. But to me, it feels like a pretty natural progression for the series and not entirely incongruous with what has come before. For one thing, we glimpsed Barbie's dreamland back in The Doll's House, and for another, the anthropomorphic animals aren't actually quite as "cutesy" as they might first appear. And anyway, is a talking monkey in a bell hop's costume any more inherently childish that, say, an old DC superhero like Element Girl (who appeared back in volume 3)? I think not. But your mileage may vary. In addition, A Game of You also has its fair share of gruesome horror, juxtaposed with the charming, fairytale-like ambience. But then, I guess all the best fairytales have elements of horror in them, don't they?

The situation within Barbie's dreamland is viewed by the series' central protagonist Dream (a.k.a. Morpheus) as nothing more than the routine death of an outlying skerry of dreamland ("skerry" being a Scottish word for a rocky island, apparently). Actually, it's interesting to note that Morpheus is absent from a lot of this book. However, the characters Neil Gaiman focuses on instead are all so brilliantly realised that I really didn't miss him much at all.

The main thrust of the plot concerns Barbie's quest to defeat the Cuckoo, with the help of her animal friends, while her human friends attempt to rescue her from her own crumbling dreamland. Early on, Martin Tenbones, a giant dog-like creature from Barbie's dreamscape, journeys to our world on a mission to give her the Porpentine – a magical amulet that can help her return to the land of her dreams. In a heartbreakingly tragic scene, which neatly underscores the vulnerability of dreams when they crash up against the brutal nature of reality, Martin Tenbones is shot dead by the New York City police department...





Aware of what she must now do, Barbie uses the Porpentine to return to the realm of her dreams (known simply as "the Land"), and reunites with her remaining animal friends. Together they set off on a quest to rid the Land of the Cuckoo's influence.

I think one of the best things about this book is how utterly three-dimensional and memorable the other residents of Barbie's apartment block are. For one thing, apart from George (who it turns out is working for the Cuckoo), the book's heroes are all female – which is, in itself, unusual for a comic book. They consist of Hazel and Foxglove, a lesbian couple; Wanda, a transgendered woman; Thessaly, a shy, bookish lady who turns out to be a witch; and the aforementioned Barbie.

In Barbie, Gaiman writes a very convincing female lead. She's strong, but vulnerable; wise, but endearingly kooky. In The Doll's House, what little we saw of Barbie implied that she was a two-dimensional airhead, appropriately enough married to the yuppie Ken (Ken and Barbie, geddit?). But in A Game of You, we find her divorced from Ken and attempting to rediscover who she really is...to the point where she paints a new identity onto her face with makeup everyday. Barbie is clearly a fan of fairytales and escapist fantasy (the books on her childhood bedside table include The Lord of the Rings, The Magician's Nephew, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), and in the course of this adventure, Gaiman offers up a savvy commentary on childhood innocence versus adult experience. The book also serves as a thought-provoking exploration of identity: in essence, how to play "a game of you".

As Barbie journeys through the Land to find and conquer the Cuckoo, Thessaly uses witchcraft to summon the moon. She asks advice from the moon goddess and, as a result, she, Hazel, and Foxglove all travel to the Land in order to help Barbie, leaving Wanda behind to watch over Barbie's unconscious body.

I found Wanda, a pre-operation transgender woman, to be the most interesting of Barbie's friends. Gaiman writes her very sympathetically – especially given that this is a 25 year old comic. Wanda is someone who has struggled to carve out a new identity as a woman, but who is still battling against her own insecurities, society at large, and her heavily religious family's disdainful view of her. This conflict between how Wanda feels and how the world perceives her is reinforced when Wanda is told that she cannot accompany Thessaly, Hazel, and Foxglove on the magical journey to Barbie's dreamland because the moon goddess doesn't recognize her as a female. Wanda has no menstrual cycle, after all. Unsurprisingly, this news angers Wanda considerably, resulting in this marvellous panel...




Of all the characters in this volume, it is arguably Wanda who has best mastered the aforementioned "game of you". I mean, sure, she might have been denied the identity that she wants by her family, the outside world, and even mother nature, but nevertheless, she also knows exactly who she is and will not back down from asserting that identity. Only in death is she robbed of it, when her sanctimonious and deeply unpleasant family buries her under her given name of Alvin Mann.




As for Hazel and Foxglove, Hazel is a somewhat stereotypical butch lesbian who nevertheless sleeps with a guy and falls pregnant, while Foxglove has taken that name in an attempt to erase the memory of an abusive relationship she suffered when she was known by her real name, Donna. We actually met this old, abusive girlfriend of Foxglove's in the story "24 Hours" from volume 2, The Doll's House, where she died horrifically. I love that Gaiman is so adept at picking up these little character threads from earlier in the series and reusing them. Spotting this kind of thing is one of the minor joys of reading The Sandman.

The only male resident of Barbie's apartment block is George, a seemingly quiet, mild-mannered and utterly forgettable character. However, he is secretly in the service of the Cuckoo (it's always the quiet ones!), and some of A Game of You's most horror-centric scenes involve him. At one point George releases a flock of blackbirds from out of his rib cage that plant some truly horrific nightmares in the minds of the other residents. Then, in one of the most gloriously gruesome and darkly humorous scenes I've encountered in the series so far, Thessaly kills George, strips his face from his corpse, and nails it to the wall – eyeballs and all! – before reanimating it with necromancy to divine the exact nature of what the Cuckoo is up to...




I must just note that artist Shawn McManus drew all but one of the issues collected here, and he does an absolutely brilliant job of giving each character a unique face. When coupled with Gaimen's excellent writing, McManus' art really helps make these characters live and breath, and is a major component of why A Game of You is as good as it is. In particular, I find the lesbian and transgendered characters to be written and drawn like proper individuals, not just cookie-cutter clichés, as is so often the case in comics.

After a perilous and rather tragic journey through the Land with her three animal friends (Wilkinson the shrew, Prinado the monkey, and Luz the dodo), Barbie is captured and brought before the Cuckoo. Surprisingly, this mysterious adversary has the appearance of a rather ugly, brattish little girl, which appears to be Barbie herself as a child. However, I must admit to being a little confused as to the exact nature of the Cuckoo. I don't think it's actually meant to be Barbie, just a facet of her personality, although someone might want to correct me on that point.




Anyway, it seems that the Cuckoo became trapped in Barbie's dreamland, thus keeping her from becoming what she was supposed to be as an adult. The implication (as I see it) being that if children stubbornly cling to their fantasies they won't be able to become functioning adults. The fact that this message is packaged in a comic book for adults is ironic as hell, but I think that's wholly intentional and kind of Gaiman's point.

Ultimately, this is a tale about human psychology and how we use fantasy to endure the trials and tribulations of our lives. This is also a story which examines the psychology of being female; in one particularly memorable scene, the Cuckoo explains just how little girls' dreams differ from those of little boys:

"Little boys have fantasies in which they're faster, or smarter, or able to fly. Where they hide their faces in secret identities, and listen to the people who despise them admiring their remarkable deeds...

Little girls, on the other hand, have different fantasies, much less convoluted. Their parents are not their parents. Their lives are not their lives. They are princesses. Lost princesses from distant lands.

And one day the king and queen, their real parents, will take them back to their land, and then they’ll be happy for ever and ever. Little cuckoos."

As a man, the above quote sounds spot on to me and might be one of the most insightful things I've ever heard a man (Gaiman) say about the female psyche. However, I read it to my wife and she seemed dubious about its accuracy, suggesting that it was just another example of a man thinking that he knows what makes women or young girls tick and getting it wrong. You'll each have your own impressions and conclusions, I'm sure.

A Game of You concludes with Barbie being forced to destroy the Porpentine on a stone alter known as the Heirogram, which, in turn, summons Morpheus, who presides over the deconstruction and erasing of Barbie's little portion of the Dreaming. The Cuckoo flees to another dimension, despite Thessaly imploring Dream to kill her. Instead, the Lord of Dream returns Barbie and her friends safely to New York City, where they discover that a huge storm (caused by Thessaly's manipulation of the moon) has hit the city while they were away and Wanda has been killed.

I found the ending of the story to be somewhat downbeat, but nonetheless wholly satisfying. Like I said earlier, while it may, a first glance, seem to be childishly twee, A Game of You is in fact a haunting and tragic tale, with plenty of adult content – both visually and intellectually – for the reader to unpack. In fact, there's so much for the reader to unpack that this post would be of epic length if I really got into it all. Nevertheless, it never once feels like a dense read.

Summing up, this is an amazingly good graphic novel. It's simultaneously charming, tragic, funny, moving, gritty, and violent – quite an impressive mix of narrative plates that Gaiman keeps spinning at once. At times, it might also be the saddest story in series so far: the fate of Barbie's animal friends – especially the dog-like Martin Tenbones – is heartbreaking. But it's also one of the most human stories that Gaiman has served up in The Sandman, in spite of its fantasy-land setting.

For me, this was the most enjoyable volume of The Sandman so far and I can't wait to get stuck into volume 6.

This book, in particular, won Gaiman an award from GLAAD, for positive portrayal of gay, lesbian and transgendered characters in Sandman. In his acceptance speech, he made some remark about appropriateness, for an award from the organization to be given to a person with a name that is pronounced "Gay-man."

This is the one storyline that unnerved me the most. A lot of it is early on, as the characters speak of the unseen Cuckoo. Gaiman fills them with such terror and dread that it leaps from the page. I've always found the most effective horror is the unseen one that looms over everything and everyone that gives fuel to the terrors of your own mind. Stuff like the Wicker Man, where you know something sinister has and is happening, yet everything seems perfectly calm, if not "normal."

The Cuckoo, I think, is formless, until Barbie gives it a shape, via her view of her youthful self. It fits the idea of a cuckoo, a bird that stores its eggs in another birds nest, to be raised by it.

The death of Martin Tenbones is truly emotional, especially if you have ever watched a beloved pet die. When I was young, our cocker spaniel suffered what appeared to be a heart attack and died; but, it wasn't a quick process. She was 15, which was very old for a dog; but, it tears out your heart to see a beautiful animal in pain, while you are helpless. That scene reminds me of that event.

The storyline isn't perfect. Although Gaiman portrays his LGBT characters with sensitivity, he does play in stereotypes. Hazel and Foxglove are a butch and femme couple, to make them easily identifiable as a lesbian couple, yet that dynamic isn't necessarily that common in relationships. Like all relationships, gay couples come in all shapes and sizes and combinations. Also, Wanda/Alvin being involved in drag is an easier visual presentation than someone who isn't a performer, who presents in another gender than their biological. Again, it is a visual shorthand. I would hope, in retrospect, that if Gaiman were doing the same story today, he would have gone beyond the more obvious archetypes he uses here. However, at the time, it was revolutionary enough that you could forgive it, if you didn't have a personal stake in the portrayal. I have gay friends who are big Gaiman fans, but, felt there were cliches in some of his gay characters. Still, it was miles ahead of Northstar, though most forget that the Pied Piper had come out some time before, in the Flash.

If you notice the poster on the wall, when we see George's face nailed there, it is a poster of Barbie, based on actual marketing material for the doll (not sure if it is based on Mattel art or the Marvel comic).

The Bible passage on Alvin/Wanda's tombstone is a bit much. A family so in denial and repression regarding a gay or transgendered member is hardly likely to put more than name and dates on a tombstone. I have trouble seeing them leaping to a condemnation F-you via Biblical text.. For one thing, it costs more. In their minds, better to bury the whole issue with the body, rather than draw attention to it with such a passage carved for eternity. We had already hammered it home via the conversation between Barbie and the relative; the tombstone was a bit of showing off.

ps My favorites tend to be the shorter pieces; the single issue stories. They are usually nice, tight little tales of brilliance or fun. I find the same to be true of Gaiman's prose work; I far more enjoy his short stories than his novels.

The Sandman: Volume 6 – Fables & Reflections
Original publication: The Sandman #29–31 (August – October 1991) / The Sandman #38–40 (June 1992 – August 1992) / Vertigo Preview #1 (February 1993) / The Sandman #50 (June 1993)
Script: Neil Gaiman
Artwork: Kent Williams (pencils & inks)/Shawn McManus (pencils & inks)/Stan Woch (pencils & inks)/Dick Giordano (inks)/Duncan Eagleson (pencils)/Vince Locke (inks)/Bryan Talbot (pencils)/John Watkiss (pencils & inks)/Mark Buckingham (inks)/Jill Thompson (pencils)/P. Craig Russell (pencils & inks)





Publisher's synopsis: The critically acclaimed The Sandman: Fables and Reflections continues the fantastical epic of Morpheus, the King of Dreams, as he observes and interacts with an odd assortment of historical and fictional characters throughout time. Featuring tales of kings, explorers, spies and werewolves, this book of myth and imagination delves into the dark dreams of Augustus Caesar, Marco Polo, Cain and Abel, Norton I and Orpheus to illustrate the effects that these subconscious musings have had on the course of history and mankind.


So, I'm onto volume 6 of my read-through of The Sandman.

Like the earlier volume "Dream Country", this is a collection of done-in-one stories and other odds and ends in which Neil Gaiman takes us on a sort of hodgepodge journey through history and folklore. Four of the tales ("Thermidor", "Three Septembers and a January", "August", and "Ramadan") are about prominent historical figures from different eras and different parts of the world, who all apparently led lives that were influenced by dreams. The other stories focus on folklore, Greek mythology, fear of creative failure, and the physical act of storytelling. Actually, storytelling is one of the repeating motifs in this collection, though that's not really a new thing for this series.

The issues of The Sandman included here are gathered together out of sequence from their original chronological publishing order, and, like the earlier "Dream Country", many of them don't actually feature the title's central protagonist Dream (a.k.a. Morpheus) in much more than a supporting role. However, whereas that earlier collection of one-shots was of such high quality that the lack of Morpheus didn't really matter too much, "Fables & Reflections" isn't quite as satisfying on the whole.

Anyway, let's focus in on each of the stories included in this volume...


Fear of Falling
This short story appeared in Vertigo Preview #1, which I think was a publication intended to officially launch DC's Vertigo line of comics. The comic featured a number of exclusive stories from DC's then-current crop of "for mature readers" titles, including, of course, The Sandman.

"Fear of Falling" provides Fables & Reflections with a really strong start: by page 2, I was already thinking, "Holy s**t, this is good!" But like any fiction, so much of what makes it work or not work for a reader boils down to what they themselves bring to it, in terms of their personality, emotional state, life experiences, and general world-view. Like the earlier "Calliope", this is a story that deals with the insecurities and nagging doubts that gnaw at creative people, and I can definitely relate to that.

In this case, the creative in question is a young playwright who is about to debut his newest play. As rehearsals continue and the opening night draws nearer, he begins to become anxious about the possibility of his play being badly received by audiences and critics. His fear of failure (the metaphorical fear of falling referenced in the title) becomes so overwhelming that he makes the decision to stop rehearsals and abandon his play altogether. However, after falling asleep in front of his TV watching Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (I see what you did there Gaiman ), he encounters Dream, who offers some sage advice about the possible futures that are open to a person who is falling in their dreams: sometimes they wake, sometimes they die, and sometimes...just sometimes...they fly! The young playwright's resulting epiphany gives him the courage to press on with rehearsals.

Interestingly, we never actually see the play premièred or find out whether or not it was a success, but those concerns are really beside the point. The message here is that in order to achieve anything of worth we have to have the courage to attempt to fly, even if there's the possibility that we will fall. There is, however, a secondary point being made: as well as the fear of failure, there's also the fear of success and the additional pressures and insecurities that it brings. After all, the higher you climb, the further you have to fall, right?

"Fear of Falling" is a short and simplistic tale, but it's a well written one. Kent Williams' artwork isn't really to my tastes – it's too scratchy and scribbly – but it serves the brief narrative well enough. Really though, it's the dialogue that sells the story for me. Gaiman's scripting is very naturalistic, conjuring entirely relatable characters in just a few panels, which is no mean feat.


Three Septembers and a January
The next story concerns one Joshua Norton of San Francisco, who, in 1859, proclaimed himself Emperor of the United States of America. Norton actually existed and I believe that I'd heard about him before (something in my distant memory was jogged when I read this story). I read up on him online after finishing this issue and the particulars of his life are fascinating. Norton was once a wealthy businessman, but he lost his fortune after investing in Peruvian rice. He then fell into depression and obscurity, resurfacing in 1859 to declare himself Emperor. Though he wielded no political power at all, and was widely viewed as mentally deranged or at least wildly eccentric by the people of San Franscisco, they nonetheless took him to their bosom. He was treated as a celebrity and something of a beloved curiosity around the city.

The story opens with the dejected and miserable Norton, his business now in tatters, contemplating suicide, while Dream's sister Despair looks on. She issues Dream with a challenge to try and save him from her clutches using his dream powers. Reluctantly Dream agrees and plants the notion of becoming the first Emperor of the U.S. in the depressed businessman's mind while he sleeps. The next day, Norton, with renewed purpose in his life, writes a letter to a local newspaper announcing his proclamation to the world. The paper runs the letter as a joke, but the story catches the public's imagination and the rest is history!

I think Gaiman's message here is all about the powerful role that imagination plays in forming our identities, and how the way in which we present ourselves to the world at large crystallises that identity for ourselves and those around us. The point being that, if you proclaim yourself as something forcefully enough, other people will eventually come to view you in that way and treat you as that thing, regardless of whether it's a true representation of you or not. This is shown in the story by the way in which Norton more or less lives the reality of being an Emperor simply because the people around him play along with the conceit. They fete him as a king, give him free food and drink, and accept his fake currency as legal tender. His home town of San Francisco even touts him as a tourist attraction. Superficially, at least, he is the Emperor of the United States by sheer force of will alone.

In addition, I think this is also Gaiman's riff on the "madness-as-sanity" trope that claims that you have to be crazy in order to stay sane in this world. At one point in the story, Dream's sister Delirium looks in on Norton and astutely sums up his eccentric behaviour by telling her brother,"His madness keeps him sane." To which Dream cryptically responds...




The artwork by Shawn McManus is pretty nice here and well suited to the time period. Overall, I found this to be a somewhat lightweight tale, albeit one that is also rather enchanting and whimsical.


Thermidor
Set during the French Revolution, "Thermidor" is a savvy look at the nature of absolute power and how it corrupts absolutely. The story's title immediately made me think of the dish Lobster Thermidor, but it actually refers a summer month in the calendar that was created during the French Revolution (Wikipedia tells me that the month of Thermidor ran from 19th July to 17th August of our modern-day Gregorian calendar).

This tale centres on Johanna Constantine, who previously appeared in volume 2, The Doll's House, during the "Men of Good Fortune" interlude. I'm not sure if Johanna Constantine has anything to do with the character John Constantine of DC's Swamp-Thing and Hellblazer comics (an ancestor of his perhaps?), but I'm betting that she does. No doubt others in the forum will be able to tell me.

"Thermidor" gives us our first glimpse of Orpheus, who is the son of Dream and Calliope. If I remember my Greek mythology correctly, I believe that Orpheus' father was actually Apollo, but Gaiman says otherwise here. Anyway, Johanna is in possession of Orpheus' severed – but still very much alive – head. Within the world of The Sandman, the head of Orpheus is a powerful supernatural artefact, which is being sought by the real life historical figure and architect of the French Revolution's "Reign of Terror", Maximilien Robespierre. Robespierre captures Johanna and forces her to reveal where she has hidden the head, which results in a scene that is both extremely creepy and very memorable, in which Orpheus' disembodied head leads a choir of other heads that have been severed by Madame Guillotine in song...




This is, of course, the fabled "song of Orpheus", which is so ghastly/beautifully that it entrances Robespierre, allowing Johanna to escape with Orpheus' head.

"Thermidor" really wasn't one of my favourite stories in Fables & Reflections. I guess that it's important, in that it introduces Morpheus' son for the first time, and it also ties-in with the story "The Song of Orpheus", which is found later on in this volume. But I can't say that this issue really gripped me.


The Hunt
This is a werewolf folk tale told by a Russian immigrant Grandfather to his disinterested Granddaughter. The scenes between Grandfather and Granddaughter are set in the then-modern era of the early 1990s, but the folk tale itself occurred decades earlier in the depths of the Russian forests.

The story follows the journey of a young male lycanthrope named Vassily, whose people live in the forest and have little contact with outside civilisation. He falls in love with the image of a duke's daughter and journeys far away from his people to find her. He hasn't gone very far when he encounters a female lycanthrope who takes him back to her forest people's encampment for rest and food. Here we get a cool cameo appearance by the witch Baba Yaga of Russian folklore, complete with her flying mortar and pestle.

Finally, upon reaching the duke's castle, Vassily manages to come face to face with his beautiful daughter (with a little help from Morpheus), but instead of wooing her, he elects to return to his people, despite the duke's daughter being everything he had dreamed of. He reunites with the young werewolf girl that he met earlier and they become lovers. "The Hunt" ends with a good twist, but I won't spoil it for you.

I have to be honest and say that I'm not entirely sure what point Gaiman is trying to make with "The Hunt". Or even if he is trying to make one! This might just be a nice story, with a good twist at the end. That said, it could maybe be seen as a parable which prompts us to consider how realistic our dreams and desires are, and whether or not they are worth pursuing. Alternatively, this could be a commentary on whether or not what we desire is always what we need. And then again, maybe this is a story about the importance of traditions and the benefits of staying with your own kind – which seems like a bit of an insular and xenophobic moral to me, to be honest.

Anyway, regardless of any underlying message, I found "The Hunt" to be a mildly diverting, but fairly lightweight tale overall.


August
The next story in Fables & Reflections takes us to ancient Rome where we meet Emperor Augustus, who is Julius Caesar's nephew. For one day every year, Augustus disguises himself as a sore-riddled beggar and goes down to wander among the ordinary people of Rome and think. He does this because Morpheus once told him in a dream that, as a beggar on the streets, he would be below the gods' notice and would be able to plot and plan without them being privy to his thoughts. On this particular occasion, Augustus is accompanied by a dwarf named Lycius who sits beside him on the steps of a city temple, with their begging-bowls pushed out in front of them.

The pair talk of many things, which gives Gaiman the opportunity to explore past events in Augustus' life – in particular, a shocking revelation about the relationship between Augustus and his uncle Julius Caesar. I'm probably giving too much away if I say that this appears to be Gaiman examining the nature of homosexuality in ancient Roman society and how it differs from late 20th century social norms.

It's interesting because to the modern-day reader, this looks like a sexual assault...and, in fact, it is. But I'm not sure that it would've been viewed as such in ancient Rome. Sexuality back then wasn't divided along hetro/homo/bi-sexual lines, like ours is today: back then, sexuality was organised along the lines of whether you were someone who was being penetrated or someone who was the penetrator. It was perfectly acceptable for an adult male to penetrate a young boy (and, in fact, it carried more social kudos than penetrating a woman because women were deemed inferior). But for an adult male to penetrate another adult male was deemed to be a perversion in Roman society, much like it has been for a lot of our recent history. So, for an adult to come into the bedroom of a young boy and sodomise him – even against his will – may not have been terribly unusual behaviour in ancient Rome, though it is clearly very traumatic for Augustus.

Anyway, overall this was definitely one of the better stories in the book. I'm not sure how historically accurate Gaiman's depiction of Augustus is, or whether there's any evidence for what happens between him and Julius Caesar, but that doesn't really matter because he definitely "feels" real. That is to say that the reader "feels" as if he gets a sense of the man. I've also got no idea whether Lycius the dwarf is a real historical figure or not, but again, this is kind of beside the point because Lycius "feels" real, even if he's not.

The icing on the cake in this chapter is the excellent Bryan Talbot artwork, which really brings the bustling streets of Rome to life...




Soft Places
This story is set in the mid-13th century and follows a young Marco Polo, who, as our story opens, is lost in a desert sandstorm, having become separated from his father's caravan. The "Soft Places" of this issue's title are those places in the world where the barriers between dreams, time, and reality are at their thinnest. The desert spot where Polo now finds himself is one of these shifting places and, as a result, he is soon meeting with a stranger who knows Marco as an old man. He also meets Morpheus and the region of the Dreaming known as Fiddler's Green (in his human form). We met Fiddler's Green previously in volume 2, The Doll's House, where he played a prominent role. Morpheus speaks of having recently escaped imprisonment, which is a reference to events in volume 1, Preludes & Nocturnes, so clearly this is not the Morpheus of the 13th century.

Unfortunately, this story really didn't do much for me and was probably my least favourite in the book. Unlike Emperor Augustus, Polo isn't terribly well fleshed out as a character and, as a consequence, the great explorer never quite feels like a real person. To be honest, I actually found this story quite boring, which is a rarity for me with The Sandman.


The Song of Orpheus
In this chapter, Gaiman recounts the tragic tale of the legendary musician Orpheus and his journey into the underworld in search of his dead wife Eurydice. As far as I can remember my Greek mythology, this seems to be a fairly accurate re-telling of the myth, except, as I mentioned earlier, that Orpheus is Dream's son and not Apollo's. Oh, and I should probably mention that this issue wasn't released as part of the regular series, but instead appeared in The Sandman Special: The Song of Orpheus in 1991.

The entire Endless family are present at Orpheus and Eurydice's wedding, along with Aristaeus, the satyr-like god of shepherds and bee-keeping, who, in trying to rape Eurydice, inadvertently causes her death from a viper bite. Interestingly, we finally get to meet the Endless' missing brother Destruction at the wedding. Destruction is a burly, jovial warrior clad in armour, who seems to like a joke.

I liked this story a lot, which is in no small part due to Bryan Talbot's pencils and Mark Buckingham's inks. The art brings the wedding, the boatman on the shores of the river Styx, the assembled hordes of the underworld, King Hades and Queen Persephone, and Orpheus' death at the hands of the frenzied Bacchante vividly to life. In particular, I think Talbot really captures the oppressive grandeur of the caverns leading down to the underworld...




And his towering depictions of King Hades and Queen Persephone really took my breath away...






The Parliament of Rooks
This story is more or less just a throwaway piece, in which we follow the toddler son of Hector Hall (the '70s superhero Sandman) and his wife Lyta. Daniel, as Morpheus named the infant, has the ability to travel from our world to the Dreaming at will, having been conceived there. He is found by Eve who carries him to the House of Mystery, where Cain and Abel, the hosts of DC's old horror comic The House of Mystery, dwell. The group all take tea together and tell stories.

Cain's story explains how a parliament of rooks works, while Abel tells a story about the Endless when they were younger, which is drawn in an almost excruciatingly cutesy way by artist Jill Thompson...




The art in this section looks decidedly manga inspired to me. I'm sure that some folks must've loved the cuteness of it all, it doesn't do much for me, I'm afraid.

The most interesting story for me was Eve's, in which she tells the tale of the first two wives of Adam, the first man. The first is named Lilith and the second is has no name. The only folkloric Lilith I know of is a sexually wanton demon from Jewish mythology, and I had certainly never heard of Adam having any wives prior to Eve. I mean, I'm fairly well read on the modern Bible, even though I'm not a Christian, but plumbing the deeper depths of Judeo-Christian theological study is not something that I've ever had the time or inclination to do. So, I've no idea if there is actually any theological basis to this, but I assume that Gaiman, who is clearly an intelligent and well read individual, has done his research.

Anyway, as I say, I found this to be a pretty lightweight issue overall. It didn't really seem to go anywhere and the continued appearances of the two hosts of DC's The House of Mystery is perhaps my least favourite aspect of The Sandman. Still, something that this story gives us which is pretty interesting, is a hint that Morpheus is in a relationship with someone. I assume that this isn't a reference to his old lover Nada, as her story seems to be done and finished. So, I'm thinking that this is something that will be explored in greater detail in later instalments perhaps?


Ramadan
The final story in the book is called "Ramadan", which is, of course, a month of fasting, prayer, and community gatherings in the Islamic calendar. Set in the 10th century, during the Golden Age of Islam, "Ramadan" follows Harun al-Rashid, the Caliph of Baghdad, as he takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the city. Al-Rashid, who was a real person, tours the spectacular architecture of Baghdad, with its bejewelled mosques and minarets, takes in the centres of high art and advanced learning, visits the teeming marketplaces, with their exquisite foods and flying carpets, and also shows us the earthly pleasures that the city has to offer. This then, is a glimpse of Baghdad at its moment of cultural apex; the greatest city that Allah ever created in the greatest age of mankind.

Unfortunately, despite all his wealth and power, al-Rashid is troubled by the thought that his perfect kingdom cannot last forever and will one day be no more. In desperation, he summons Morpheus, the Lord of Dream, and asks him if he will buy the city from him so that it may live forever in the dreams of men. Dream agrees and, as the bargain is completed, flying carpets fall from the sky, the perfect buildings of the city suddenly look much more decrepit, and the marketplaces become places full of the wretched poor. On the final page, we flash forward to the Baghdad of the early 1990s, which is a war-torn, bombed out shell of a city.

The first thing to note about "Ramadan", aside from it clearly being influenced by the Arabian Nights, is that it is beautifully drawn by P. Craig Russell. This may well be the artistic highlight for the series so far. Russell's drawings of Baghdad's gleaming cityscapes – all multicoloured towers, mosques, and minarets – and exotic palaces have a slightly European, bandes dessinée flavour to them to my eyes. But the art and colouring job still manage to sucessfully conjure up the arabesque majesty found in Islamic art perfectly. It really is a breathtakingly beautiful comic...















Summing up, I don't think this was one of the better volumes of The Sandman. It has its moments, for sure, and a handful of these tales are really very good. But I found others to be much less satisfying. There's frequently a fairly overt narrating voice found in these stories, which I'd not noticed before in The Sandman, and the collection features so many different art styles and subject matters that it has a haphazard, scattershot feel. It should also be noted that these stories don't really seem to add much to the over-arching narrative of the series, although it may turn out that Gaiman is planting seeds here for future instalments.

Ultimately, this was a solid, but not amazing volume. I think it also suffers by coming on the heels of Season of Mists and A Game of You, which were both truly excellent. This might be the first volume of The Sandman that I've read which I would consider calling "inessential."