Sandman Meditations – The Kindly Ones Part 6
We have reached a sort of middle: the sixth part of The Kindly One’s thirteen parts. Thirteen, of course, being an odd number does not split evenly in two. Fans of Part 7 might find it more comfortably middle-ish, being for all intents and purposes the beginning of the second half, while fans of Part 6 might [...]
Sandman Meditations – The Kindly Ones Part Four
When Carla comes to visit Rose in the fourth chapter of The Kindly Ones, Rose is getting ready to videotape an episode of the sitcom Roseanne. She tells Carla that she is hoping to write something about three sitcoms in particular: Roseanne, The Addams Family, and Bewitched. This information comes as she and Carla discuss, among other things, the difficulties and [...]
Sandman Meditations – The Kindly Ones Part 3
The sadness of Hob Gadling is, for me, among the most poignant recurring elements of The Sandman. In the third part of The Kindly Ones, Hob’s sadness stands in counterpoint to Lyta’s growing anxiety and, then, horror and hatred. Previously, we have learned that all lives are brief, but what we learn now is that the pain [...]
Sandman Meditations – The Kindly Ones: Part 2
The second chapter of The Kindly Ones develops two stories: the story of Lyta, who has now called the police because of her missing son, and the story of Cluracan and Nuala, who have gained Dream’s permission for Nuala to leave the Dreaming and return to Faerie. But I’m not going to write about any of that.
Sandman Meditations – Worlds’ End: “WORLDS’ END”
Worlds’ end and words’ ends; end as conclusion and end as purpose. We’ve reached the finishing line of this story arc, and the stories within stories reveal by the last page what seems to be their outer shell.
Top Five Off-beat Zombies!
Halloween, and the shambling undead are getting into the damndest places. Yes, from AMC’s The Walking Dead to the big budget adaptation of World War Z, zombies are everywhere. But are all zombies created equal? Nope! Oh, sure, some get the big-time press, but what of those condemned to languish in the shallow grave of [...]
Charlie Adlard: Portrait of the Artist as a Walking Dead Man Part Two
And now, without further ado, the exciting conclusion of my rollicking chat with Walking Dead artist Charlie Adlard… Stefan: Did you wind up watching more zombie movies after you got involved in the book? Charlie: I’ve seen all the obvious ones. The only others I’ve watched, since I was involved with them artistically to a degree, were [...]
SANDMAN MEDITATIONS – Worlds’ End: Hob’s Leviathan
Stories within stories within … how many withins are there in this story? There’s the story Jim tells, which is the primary one in the Sandman story called “Hob’s Leviathan” — as with all the Worlds’ End tales, at least up through this one, it is a story-within-the-story. But there is also the stowaway’s story, [...]
Ludwig II… Stripp’d
0. The Challenge of Escapism Like Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption (1994), we live our lives obsessed by thoughts of escape. Escape from our jobs, escape from our relationships, escape from our friends and escape from a life dominated by work, travel and a raging torrent of TV dinners and talent shows that carries [...]
Charlie Adlard: Portrait of the Artist as a Walking Dead Man, Pt 1
Back in the nineties, I had the pleasure of working with Charlie Adlard on Topp’s The X-Files comic. Ages later, the man who draws The Walking Dead was kind enough to spend some time catching up on Skype. And it all went something like this…
Sandman Meditations – Worlds’ End: Sequences at the Inn & A Tale of Two Cities
Worlds’ End begins with a prelude illustrated by Bryan Talbot and Mark Buckingham in which two people get in a car crash during a mysterious June snowstorm and find their way to a magical inn, the Worlds’ End. That plural apostrophe is easy to overlook, but the plurality of worlds at the inn is immediately [...]
Sandman Meditations – Brief Lives: Chapter 9
All lives are brief. That is what we learned early in Brief Lives, and now, in the last chapter, the lesson is offered again in various guises. Stories have conclusions, even stories of the Endless. They are Endless, but not Immutable. Death is feared by all, even those, like Orpheus, who yearn for it for [...]
