Neil Gaiman's Sandman

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:35:16 GMT

Liv and I got each other jointly the full collection of Absolute Sandman. That's the giant hardback reprints of Sandman in four volumes, with enlarged and recoloured art. I was a little nervous because I'd enough about Sandman I was sure I would like it, but I'd read some mostly-standalone books from the middle of the series and not really got into them, but I was sufficiently certain to go ahead and read it from the beginning.

And it really is outstanding. We've only just started, having read the first half of the first hardback (approximately the first of ten of the original collected editions), and I'm assured it picks up pace even more, but I can already see how rich it is. The art is great, the characters are incredibly evocative, invoking great depths from even comparatively simple events. With as yet little detail on the background of the Endless, the protagonist is amazingly interesting, and creepy, and likeable.

I think it was really worth getting the hardbacks. The art is really worth it. It's interesting how it uses all the normal tricks of comic book presentation (and even features cross-over characters from Batman etc occasionally) but making it seem totally serious and real rather than campy.

( Minor spoilers for the background, if you've not heard of sandman at all )

I always had a feeling reading Gaiman novels that they were quite good, but none seemed to contain all the quintissentially best bits of his style together, whereas Sandman does.

comments

jack

Neil Gaiman's Sandman