BooksOfTheMoon

This graphic novel collects six of Neil Gaiman’s early comics work for DC. Of the six stories in the collection, there are three that are from different aspects of Swamp Thing, one Hellblazer, one Sandman and a little framing story for another collection.

I’m not hugely familiar with Swamp Thing so I perhaps didn’t get as much out of those stories as someone more familiar with the mythos. The first, Jack in the Green shows a Swamp Thing somewhere in England when the Black Death is sweeping the land as he tends to a dying friend. Even without knowing much about about the character or history, you can relate to that. The second Brothers is an odd little story that does rely more on DC/Swamp Thing continuity, telling the story of a living puppet who falls to earth from a satellite. Even without knowing the history though, there’s enough human stories – with hippy Chester and his damaged partner Liz; and with bitter government agent Gideon Endor – to hold interest. Shaggy God Stories on the other hand, seems to be an interlude between two big stories and I don’t think I got an awful lot out of it.

Moving away from Swamp Thing, the next story in the collection Hold Me which is a touching Hellblazer story, where John Constantine encounters a dead man who just wants someone to, well, hold him. The penultimate story, Sandman Midnight Theatre sees the single meeting between Dream of the Endless and Wesley Dodds, another character to bear the name ‘Sandman’. Set on the eve of WW2, Wesley Dodds is drawn to England after the suicide of an old friend, and finds himself investigating the Order of Ancient Mysteries, who still hold Morpheus in a glass box. The collection is finished off with a little framing story for a horror anthology called Welcome Back to the House of Mystery featuring the Cain and Abel who live in the Dreaming. Very much more cartoony in tone than the rest of the book, it’s an odd choice to finish the volume, but not necessarily an inappropriate one.

The art throughout is lovely, Gaiman can always find good artists to work with him; the painted, appropriately dreamlike, art for Sandman Midnight Theatre especially drew my eye. A lot of this is fairly early work by Gaiman so it isn’t always the most polished, but it all has heart and the storytelling confidence that marks his work. Even if you’re not familiar with the characters within, the stories are (mostly) able to hold their own.

With volume two, Gaiman starts to hit his stride with Sandman. The general plot of this book concerns a vortex forming within the Dreaming, something which could destroy it, and what Morpheus has to do to stop it. But it’s also about desire (or should that be Desire?) and what it can make you do. About twisted dreams and lost loves and what makes a friendship. Lots of elements, all interwoven.

First time round, the Hob Gadling story seemed oddly out of place in the middle of the rest, but reading it again, and knowing the rest of the story, it seems to fit much better. It must have been a really odd thing to encounter if you were reading it month by month when it was originally published though.

It’s been a while since I’ve read the Sandman books, but I’ve just finished The Sandman: Overture and that made me want to reread these again. So much of my memory contains the series as a whole that you forget that the story started off relatively small-scale. The lord of dreams was captured in 1916 and held for 70-odd years before he managed to get free, went about taking revenge and recovering the tools that had been taken from him.

Coming straight out of Sandman Overture the art, while definitely attractive, feels a bit scratchy (although they had much more time for Overture, with a 6-issue series taking two years, rather than a strict monthly schedule like the original series), although Dave McKean’s covers were as gorgeous then as they are now.

I said the story was small scale earlier. That’s not entirely true, as Dream does go to Hell at one point, to recover his stolen helm and we have our first encounter with Lucifer Morningstar, who would go on to star in his own series. At this stage, Gaiman didn’t have his own clear vision for the series, so we see ties to the wider DC universe as John Constantine, the Martian Manhunter and other elements from the wider superhero universe show up. These don’t really recur once the series hits its stride but do serve to remind the reader that the Dream and the Endless are part of a shared universe.

The third-last chapter, 24 Hours, is a difficult one to read. It’s pure horror as customers in a diner are made into puppets to be the plaything of John Dee, who had stolen Dream’s jewel, the last, and most powerful, of his tools. Dream himself doesn’t appear in this chapter until the very end and we’re left seeing people being made to do terrible things to each other as the madman watches. Like I say, it’s a difficult one to read, even if you suspect that he’s not going to win – that’s no consolation for the people who’s lives are destroyed or who are killed before Dee is stopped.

The final chapter introduces us to one of the most popular (with good reason) characters in the Sandman canon: Dream’s older sister, Death. This isn’t the dark-robed scythe-wielder of popular myth but a cute goth girl who always has good advice and is always there for her younger brother. Bizarrely, she always brightens up the page when she appears and her presence and advice make for a great epilogue to this first volume.

In this prelude to Gaiman’s masterpiece, we learn why Dream was so weak that Roderick Burgess was able to capture him at the beginning of Preludes and Nocturnes. A star has gone mad, the result of something that Morpheus left undone a long time ago, and now he must repair the damage and stop the madness spreading and destroying the universe.

The art in the book is really lovely. The book is a stunning artwork in its own right and it has the feel of the dreamtime about it. It puts you in the right mood for the story. The story itself is suitably epic in scale and mythic in tone. The idea of sentient stars put me in mind of Stapledon’s Star Maker and the meeting of the different aspects of Dream (across a stunning four-page spread) is a wonderful scene.

I would say that this is a book to definitely come back and read after having read the story proper. There are spoilers for Sandman, and lots of references that can’t be appreciated unless you’re familiar with the main story, as well as cameos from some of Dream’s family and other characters from the Dreaming and beyond. So although you could read it before the main story, you’ll get the most out of it if you read it afterwards.

One thing I thought worked less well was the introduction of yet another layer of mythic entities. The First Circle seems unnecessary, except as a way to provide exposition and the idea of the Endless having parents also seemed unnecessary, especially as they didn’t really do very much.

So very pretty, enjoyable but not exactly essential. It has made me want to go back and re-read Sandman though.