Anyone who has ever looked down upon comics as an art form I direct towards the Sandman series, I tell them the bookshop
is at the bottom of the shark tank at Sea World, and the manager offers a 25% discount for customers dressed up as wounded, helpless
dolphins, and they might have to wave a bit to get his attention (sharks hate dolphins right? They’re like anti-sharks). Comic haters make me growly, and pieces like Sandman are why.
Imagine 50 or so self-contained stories, each filled with insights, intrigues and surreal charms. Yet they come together, like the almighty zoids of the Power Rangers, to form a fabulous crystal mosaic, incomprehensible even until the final pieces are slotted into place. The masterpiece in its totality tells the epic tale of Dream of The Endless, his changing mindset and chessboard machinations.
Characters are detailed and varied, drawn from myth and folklore and every aspect of the human experience. Worlds are created and rediscovered, abstract concepts made flesh walk through the landscapes, toy with the hearts and souls of men not for good or for evil, but simply to prove a point. Yet the concerns of beings greater even than gods are not given priority over the affairs of men, the story of a king need not be any more profound or relevant than the story of a grasshopper, or bacteria. And Sandman is above all a story about stories, dreams and mysteries and ideas brought to life. It’s story that makes the world go round, rather than a chunk of rock bleakly rotate in space, it gives us cause and effect, meaning behind strings of seemingly random events, context. An event stripped of its narrative is a mere coincidence, story turns it into
destiny, destiny gives us magic and magic gives us God. Everything that matters begins with a story.
And the Sandman series is the best one that I know.