Bookish Thoughts

Every time I try to analyze this collection of Sandman  shorts, I want it to be more coherent than it is. There's no underlying theme or message or motif in these stories. They were initially spread across the run much more than they appear to be in this collection. So some but not all of them are named for months, and some but not all concern themselves with names. Dream himself doesn't even appear in all of the stories (though the one he's absent from takes place most wholly in his kingdom). Given that, it only makes sense to tackle each story individually. Fear of Falling : This is an incredibly short story that is nonetheless one of the most remembered and quoted from the entire run. A director is scared of his new play failing and is planning to abandon it before that happens. His anxiety manifests as a dream in which he falls off the top of the cliff and sees only two options: die or wake up. But Dream appears to him and presents a third option in what is probably t...

Season of Mists  is the fourth volume of ten in the Sandman  series. We're nearly halfway through. And yet, this almost feels like the beginning. Maybe it's because of how much the world deepens here. We finally meet the rest of Dream's family (minus Destruction), and the mythology expands considerably. Maybe it's the huge jump in quality. The previous issues weren't bad, but this one pushes the series from good to great. Or maybe it's just my own nostalgia. This was my favorite story arc for a very long time. Whatever it is, it was a joy to get to this point and fall in love with the series all over again. The first time I read this, the story blew my mind. Lucifer quits! He locks up Hell and leaves! He forfeits his never-ending war with God in favor of sitting on a beach and watching the sunset. It was the first time I encountered God and Lucifer as characters in a story, rather than all-powerful deities. In my mind, it removed a lot of their power. Lucife...