Graphic Novel Review Neil Gaiman THE Sandman One Preludes AND Nocturns

GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW NEIL GAIMAN THE SANDMAN #1 PRELUDES AND NOCTURNS 1991 DC

This is the first of the series of graphic novels that would change comic book history, and it remains one of the greatest works of literature in print – this is a book for anyone who thinks comics means batman and Superman and not much else.

The artwork, by Sam Keith, Mike Dringenberg, and others, is just that, art. The story is complex and powerful, weaving fantasy, reality, and nightmare together seamlessly.

A group of mages in London have come up with a plan to capture and imprison Death, but as such plans inevitably fail, the scheme goes horribly wrong – it is not Death they ensnare, but her brother, Dream, or Morpheus, The Sandman. He bides his time with great patience. His captors dare not release him or he could escape, so he watches while they age and die off, eating nothing, and many people in the World collapse into dreamless comas.

Finally, the ageing last captor is trapped in an endless waking dream, and The Sandman breaks free. He discovers that some artefacts he carried have been stolen and the main body of the book is his pursuit and recovery of them.

The first is a bag of sand grains, the dust of sleep, which he finds in the possession of the girlfriend of English demon hunter, Constantine (subject of many graphic adventures of his own, and a dire Keanu Reeves movie). The consequences, even for Constantine, are very sad.

The second artefact is a dark fly-like war mask for the most serious of dream making, and for this Morpheus has to enter Hell itself, to wage nightmare war with a demon, singled out with Lucifer’s own permission.

The final artefact, an amulet of power containing part of Morpheus’s own power, is in the hands of a madman who escaped from Gotham City’s Arkham Asylum, where he had been sent by Batman and the Justice League (Batman only appears in one panel.

The Gollum like madman captures a 24 hour diner full of people, obliging on them never to leave (in the style of Buenel’s Exterminating Angel) and then drives them to kill one another off. Face to face with Morpheus, he is drawn into the dream-lord’s own realm and the amulet is destroyed. The power release gives Morpheus back his true sense of power. What he does then is surprisingly merciful.

A post-script chapter has Dream meet with his sister, Death, as she goes about her duties, and she teaches him the value of making better use of his own powers and having more adventures in the realms beyond his own, as she does. 

Such adventures run through the rest of the Sandman series, and we will later meet the other members of the family known as The Endless, Delirium, Desire, etc. Reading this book will leave the reader in a rush to get hold of the other volumes and if you were not a fan of comic books before, you sure as hell will be after reading this.

Arthur Chappell.