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 5
Given how complex the narrative of The Kindly Ones is revealing itself to be, I would be a fool to pretend to be able to come to any conclusions about it yet, or even to pretend to any knowledge of quite what is happening beyond the immediate events of each chapter. This is by far the most [...]
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 – The Kindly Ones: Prologue & Part 1
The prologue to The Kindly Ones contains an image that is pure pornography for someone like me: an endless library. A library of books not written, of books that authors and readers have only dreamed. We’ve seen it before in The Sandman, and come to recognize the librarian, Lucien, but it is here in Kevin Nowlan’s art 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.
SANDMAN MEDITATIONS – Worlds’ End: “Cerements”
The word necropolis etymologically means “city of the dead”, but its everyday definition is “cemetery” or “burial ground”. In the penultimate chapter of Worlds’ End, the necropolis of Litharge is more literal — a city built from the dead and devoted to the dead, a metropolis of morticians. It’s an evocative, strangely beautiful idea. Certainly, [...]
Sandman Meditations – Worlds’ End: The Golden Boy
The tale this time is a mystical Manichean parable of an alternate America, and it’s a story that uses severe simplification to highlight our governing myths. (Let me pause here first to say that an inn with a library full of many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore seems to me the perfect [...]
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, [...]
Sandman Meditations – Worlds’ End: Cluracan’s Tale
I have to admit, I was dreading this one. My reason for dread isn’t even a reason, not in any reasonable way — it’s nothing more than an irrational prejudice. I hate fairies. Everything about them. The glitter, the glamour, the glow. Most of all, I hate the word itself. Fairy. (Or, worse, faerie. Ugh, [...]
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 [...]
