Outside of a Dog: Gaiman, Neil: (112) Sandman: Endless Nights

Jean

Jean wrote on February 12, 2004 at 12:28 PM:

The funny thing is that everyone agrees it's a mixed bag; what we don't agree about is what's good and what's bad about it! Personally, I suspect that one of the best things about it (it's just such a big beautiful production) is one of the things that's letting it in for some heavy criticism - the contents don't live up to the presentation.

I'm a McKean fan - I don't always get what he's doing, but when it works for me, it really does: and rather to my surprise, I loved what he'd done with the Barron Storey pictures, and suspect that Despair is probably the best thing in the book - the most powerful, certainly.

My other favourite was Dream's story: slighter, but rather sweet (oh, all right, I admit it, like 1602 it appeals to the fanboy in me).

The Desire story made a neat point, that Desire is about wanting, not about getting - but it didn't engage my emotions, or anything else (believe me, I've seen Manara I would not read in a public place, and this wasn't it: a little nudity, a severed head, by Manara's standards this is getting off lightly). The women were all uniformly beautiful, which means only that I had trouble telling them apart...

Any trouble telling apart the two young women in Delirium's story is entirely intentional, so that's OK: and I did enjoy this one, again partly for the sheer pleasure of how it looked. I thought it was a bit hard on Sienkiewicz that it was published right next to Despair, which rather emphasised its "Barron Storey Lite" aspect -

- which leads me off into all sorts of speculation about what I would have done differently if I'd been editing the book. Mostly, I'd have swapped round Glenn Fabry and Frank Quitely: imagine Destiny as a set of paintings, and Destruction in Quitely's rather quirky narrative. It wouldn't have made either of them a really strong story, but I think it would have gone some way to hide their weakness...

But I've ranted for long enough. Thank you for indulging me (if you have, of course!)

Kate

Kate wrote on February 16, 2004 at 9:10 PM:

Oh good, I'm not the only person who initially had that confusion in the Delirium story.

Destiny as a set of paintings might have been better too.

Thanks for stopping by and ranting!

Lynn

Lynn wrote on November 14, 2004 at 2:47 PM:

Interesting. I actually got hooked on Sandman as a result of this book. I'd previously been a Gaiman novel fan, but unsure of graphic novels. Neither the Death, Destruction, Destiny or Dream stories did much for me without knowledge of the series. Prado's artwork was gorgeous, but Dream's story was a series of in-jokes. So my first reading of it was of a tepid affair at a boring conference with a lot of unintelligeable dialogue. Unfortunately, I did happen to be on a commuter train when I first flipped to the Desire story. Despair's story, once I was in a mood to deal with it, I liked for the stories. The artwork didn't reallly make an impression on me. Delerium's was far and away my favorite. I loved the way the text and artwork interacted, and both were stunning. The way the portraits (of the girls especially) change based on how they are perceived by themselves and others was just awesome. It made me very disappointed that she didn't have any stand-alone books like her older sister.

Kate Nepveu

Kate Nepveu wrote on November 14, 2004 at 9:32 PM:

Re: Sandman: Endless Nights: it's interesting that so few of the stories really grabbed you, but it still hooked you on Sandman. Was the Delirium story so strong? There is a teeny tiny Delirium book, by Jill Thompson, called _The Little Endless Storybook_ (images). It's very slight and cute.

Lynn

Lynn wrote on November 15, 2004 at 12:06 PM:

While the plots of Endless Nights weren't complex, being one-shot portrait stories, it gave me a sense of the characters much more clearly than volume one of the actual series did. So I guess it gave me the motivation to slog past the production quality and really grotesque situations that happen in the first book. As far asthe Delerium story...I guess I was just really impressed at how the art and the story really worked together to convey things that neither one could have as well on their own. Like I mentioned above...the style in generally McKean-ish, but way the transition between left-brain monochrome lineart to beautifully rendered watercolor as the girl's mental health improves just seemed so effective.