Preludes and Nocturnes
For years I claimed to hate horror. I can see now how absurd that statement is. When I was growing up, my favorite television show was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And while it's a bit trite to say that Sandman changed my life, it certainly awakened any number of nascent interests in me, from mythology to non-linear story-structures. Two of the most formative works from my teenage years, and both are classic examples of horror.
But for a long time I didn't know this. In my world, both of these series were classified as fantasy. Horror was Scream and it's various sequels and spin-offs. Saw and Halloween and Final Destination. All those movies were characters died in ever more gruesome fashions. It's a subset of horror that's been popular for a while now. So popular that I thought it was the whole of the genre.
It wasn't until I heard someone describe Sandman as horror that I began to open my eyes and understand how much I actually loved this genre. I like being subtly creeped out. I like being exposed to raw and messy emotions within the safety of fiction. I love the catharsis that comes with a really good horror story. That's what horror's really about after all. It's not just the trauma. It's coming to terms with the trauma and figuring out how to heal form it.
The genre is undergoing something of a renaissance right now. It's being wrested from the hands of old white men who mostly use it as a sort of porn. It's being reclaimed by women and minorities who are using it to explore and expose the terrors they face every day. Along with this I've been dipping my toe back in the spooky waters. Re-discovering the pleasure of being scared and the joy of defeating monster.
And as I explore and reaffirm my love for horror, I've found myself itching to revisit Sandman. There are other reasons, of course. Reasons I'll get into further along in my re-read (a big one is the current political climate and my shifting feelings about The Golden Boy and Dream of a Thousand Cats). But right now I'm going to talk about the horror side of it all.
The first volume of Sandman, Preludes and Nocturnes, is a somewhat shaky introduction to Morpheus. It begins with him being captured and held prisoner for over seventy years. His tools are stolen from him, and his kingdom falls into disarray without him. When he finally breaks free, he seeks revenge on his captors before tracking down the three items that were stolen from him. It's a classic quest, and it does a good job of introducing the main character and laying the groundwork for the series.
Gaiman uses each issue to explore a slightly different mode of horror, and the artists don't shy away from the grotesque and gruesome. Still, I never found these stories to be sensational for the sake of it (like I did with The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, which actually owes a lot to Sandman). Morpheus' quest manages to keep everything grounded. He's a larger-than-life character who is right at home in a larger-than-life story. And because of who he is, the metaphors are natural, almost necessary.
So in Dream a Little Dream of Me the nightmare that takes over Rachel's house becomes a natural extension of her addiction. The gates made of bodies in Hell are not necessarily more terrible than the forest of suicides, and the combination of the two speaks to the variety of torture the demons can inflict. Even John Dee's spree in 24 Hours was more of a slow burn than I remembered it being. Sure, it ends with everyone maimed and dead, but he exercises a surprising amount of restraint in the beginning. The escalating torture is a better commentary on his eternal boredom than I remember it being.
Still, these stories are imperfect. The team hasn't quite gelled yet. It's all a bit rote. Morpheus executes a terrifying revenge on Alex Burgess when he finally escapes, but it almost seems too easy. The quests to reclaim his tools are almost perfunctory. Each a little harder than the one before, but none of them truly beyond his abilities. It's almost embarrassing how close John Dee comes to besting him, before the script gets flipped.
Where the story really starts to soar, where Sandman reveals it's potential as a ground-breaking, genre-defining work, is in the epilogue. The Sound of Her Wings introduces Death, one of the most beloved characters from the whole series. And the self-important, always-serious Morpheus is brought down a notch by his older sister. What else are older sisters for?
The final issue is heartbreaking and poetic and just beautiful. At the end of it, Morpheus thanks his sister for reminding him who he is, but it's actually a lot more subtle than that. Gaiman has said that his one-sentence summary of Sandman is: "a man discovers that he must change or die and makes his choice". That begins here, though Morpheus is unaware of it yet. He can't go back to who he was before his imprisonment. That man (sorry, anthropomorphic personification) had ultimately made himself too weak. He poured his power into tools, he lived by rigid rules, and he was captured and held captive and very nearly killed. Something has to change. But it's going to take Morpheus a lot longer to reach that conclusion.
There are glimpses of genius throughout this first volume. I love Morpheus' use of hope to defeat Choronzon, and Bette's observation that the key to a happy story is knowing where to end it. I like the incorporation of the larger DC universe through characters like John Constantine and J'onn J'onzz (who I now recognize from Supergirl as well!). I like the hints at the storylines that I know are coming: Unity's baby, Lucifer's vendetta. Even Merv Pumpkinhead made an appearance! I'd forgotten he turned up so soon.
Still, this is only the introduction, and the story gets so much better, wider and more expansive, from here. There are so many characters I'm eager to revisit and plot lines and themes I'm ready to look at with new eyes. I said before that Sandman was formative for me, but the true genius of this work is that I can keep getting new things out of it no matter how many times I read it. The best stories grow with you, and that's definitely true of this one.
But for a long time I didn't know this. In my world, both of these series were classified as fantasy. Horror was Scream and it's various sequels and spin-offs. Saw and Halloween and Final Destination. All those movies were characters died in ever more gruesome fashions. It's a subset of horror that's been popular for a while now. So popular that I thought it was the whole of the genre.
It wasn't until I heard someone describe Sandman as horror that I began to open my eyes and understand how much I actually loved this genre. I like being subtly creeped out. I like being exposed to raw and messy emotions within the safety of fiction. I love the catharsis that comes with a really good horror story. That's what horror's really about after all. It's not just the trauma. It's coming to terms with the trauma and figuring out how to heal form it.
The genre is undergoing something of a renaissance right now. It's being wrested from the hands of old white men who mostly use it as a sort of porn. It's being reclaimed by women and minorities who are using it to explore and expose the terrors they face every day. Along with this I've been dipping my toe back in the spooky waters. Re-discovering the pleasure of being scared and the joy of defeating monster.
And as I explore and reaffirm my love for horror, I've found myself itching to revisit Sandman. There are other reasons, of course. Reasons I'll get into further along in my re-read (a big one is the current political climate and my shifting feelings about The Golden Boy and Dream of a Thousand Cats). But right now I'm going to talk about the horror side of it all.
The first volume of Sandman, Preludes and Nocturnes, is a somewhat shaky introduction to Morpheus. It begins with him being captured and held prisoner for over seventy years. His tools are stolen from him, and his kingdom falls into disarray without him. When he finally breaks free, he seeks revenge on his captors before tracking down the three items that were stolen from him. It's a classic quest, and it does a good job of introducing the main character and laying the groundwork for the series.
Gaiman uses each issue to explore a slightly different mode of horror, and the artists don't shy away from the grotesque and gruesome. Still, I never found these stories to be sensational for the sake of it (like I did with The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, which actually owes a lot to Sandman). Morpheus' quest manages to keep everything grounded. He's a larger-than-life character who is right at home in a larger-than-life story. And because of who he is, the metaphors are natural, almost necessary.
So in Dream a Little Dream of Me the nightmare that takes over Rachel's house becomes a natural extension of her addiction. The gates made of bodies in Hell are not necessarily more terrible than the forest of suicides, and the combination of the two speaks to the variety of torture the demons can inflict. Even John Dee's spree in 24 Hours was more of a slow burn than I remembered it being. Sure, it ends with everyone maimed and dead, but he exercises a surprising amount of restraint in the beginning. The escalating torture is a better commentary on his eternal boredom than I remember it being.
Still, these stories are imperfect. The team hasn't quite gelled yet. It's all a bit rote. Morpheus executes a terrifying revenge on Alex Burgess when he finally escapes, but it almost seems too easy. The quests to reclaim his tools are almost perfunctory. Each a little harder than the one before, but none of them truly beyond his abilities. It's almost embarrassing how close John Dee comes to besting him, before the script gets flipped.
Where the story really starts to soar, where Sandman reveals it's potential as a ground-breaking, genre-defining work, is in the epilogue. The Sound of Her Wings introduces Death, one of the most beloved characters from the whole series. And the self-important, always-serious Morpheus is brought down a notch by his older sister. What else are older sisters for?
The final issue is heartbreaking and poetic and just beautiful. At the end of it, Morpheus thanks his sister for reminding him who he is, but it's actually a lot more subtle than that. Gaiman has said that his one-sentence summary of Sandman is: "a man discovers that he must change or die and makes his choice". That begins here, though Morpheus is unaware of it yet. He can't go back to who he was before his imprisonment. That man (sorry, anthropomorphic personification) had ultimately made himself too weak. He poured his power into tools, he lived by rigid rules, and he was captured and held captive and very nearly killed. Something has to change. But it's going to take Morpheus a lot longer to reach that conclusion.
There are glimpses of genius throughout this first volume. I love Morpheus' use of hope to defeat Choronzon, and Bette's observation that the key to a happy story is knowing where to end it. I like the incorporation of the larger DC universe through characters like John Constantine and J'onn J'onzz (who I now recognize from Supergirl as well!). I like the hints at the storylines that I know are coming: Unity's baby, Lucifer's vendetta. Even Merv Pumpkinhead made an appearance! I'd forgotten he turned up so soon.
Still, this is only the introduction, and the story gets so much better, wider and more expansive, from here. There are so many characters I'm eager to revisit and plot lines and themes I'm ready to look at with new eyes. I said before that Sandman was formative for me, but the true genius of this work is that I can keep getting new things out of it no matter how many times I read it. The best stories grow with you, and that's definitely true of this one.
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