In fact, "comic" is too small a word. So is "graphic novel," which is most often used by adults who are trying not to feel silly about reading comics. Sandman is one of those rare comics that transcend the medium. This is no mere comic book.

This is fiction, with artwork. This is visual storytelling, a modern descendent of humanity's earliest art forms. Don't let the "comic book" label fool you. This is a full-fledged book.

The entire 10 volume Sandman series centers around Morpheus, the Dream King. One of The Endless, he is one of seven eternal beings who are the embodiments of abstracts. Dream's older sister Death makes an appearance in the final chapter in this volume.

Other reviewers have criticized this volume for not being very representative of the series on the whole, and that is true. But this volume is a supremely important one becuase it lays the groundwork for everything that follows.

Not only that, it's very entertaining in it's own right. Chapters like A Hope In Hell, The Sound of Her Wings, or 24 Hours are extraordinary examples of comics at their best. Any one of those stories makes this volume worth owning, but you get all three of them, plus five more chapters as well.

If you already read comics, then by all means buy this book (and the other nine volumes, too). But if you're just getting started in comics, you should seriously think about starting somewhere else.

Because once you've read Sandman, you're going to be spending a lot of time in a mostly fruitless search for more books that are as good as this series.

Seriously. It's that good. 10 out of 10


The Beginning of a Dream   June 25, 2001
 15 out of 15 found this review helpful

Gaiman's incredible Sandman series starts with this collection. While trying to capture the personification of Death (a tried and true fantasy convention) a magician captures instead the King of Dreams, who remains his prisoner for seven decades until he (Dream) is finally given an opportunity to escape. Comic book conventions come into play at the beginning with guest appearances by John Constantine and Etrigan as Dream pursues his lost tools of office. But when Dream finally confronts the man,(a minor DC villain,Dr. Destiny)who possesses the last of these tools the series enters a different realm far from the typical comic book. Taking his lead from Alan Moore's work on Swamp Thing, Gaiman creates an atmosphere of real horror as Dr. Destiny warps the lives of a few unlucky diner patrons, driving them to madness before he is finally stopped by Dream. It is in the scenes at the diner Gamain's talent really comes to the forefront and you realize that this is no typical comic book experience. By showing the gradual destruction of these characters Gaiman give the reader a peak at what becomes the theme of the entire series; the power of dreams in our lives.


Good series, slow start   June 6, 2004
 12 out of 14 found this review helpful

I'm a late-comer to the Sandman series, but it's become one of my favorites. I read these collections of the original comics out of order, as I encounter them, and started with some of the later collections.

That's why I found this Sandman such a surprise. I really didn't like it that much. I think it suffered from two big problems. First was a problem of the comics business: there's nearly no such thing as a new series. The big publishers, at least when Sandman first came out, felt the need to graft new characters onto old story lines, perhaps to spark initial sales. Sandman really didn't benefit from that surgery.

Second and more understandable is that a new series, esp. something so different from DC's usual, needs a little time to find itself. The good news is that, by the end of this collection, the Sandman story line really did seem to come into its own. The last piece in this book, 'The Sound of Her Wings,' is the Sandman I've come to enjoy. I'm just worried that new readers might be disappointed by this book and not come back to the later, better work.

This isn't bad by any means, it's just a fitful start to an exceptional series. After this, it just gets better.


The Standard for the Rest   May 27, 2000
 10 out of 14 found this review helpful

Only giving it 4 stars, because I will save 5 for future issues which get better...

I am not going to waste words trying to explain why Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" is the epitomy of modern stoytelling. Enough has been written already and if you are just being introduced to this series as I have been, then you have already heard all about the stories themselves. I will just say that "Preludes and Nocturnes" is a MUST to read first. It's important to know some of the things that will be explained and referred back to in later stories. Gaiman goes to Hell and back (literally) and covers a whole spectrum of things, from the whimsical to the horrifying.

Gaiman's storytelling is masterful and believe me as someone who has taught English before, his books will someday (if they are not already) be used within some college course to learn the great literature that was produced in the latter days of the 20th Century. The self-absorbed literary intelligensia in this country will probably dismiss it as "mere comic strips," not to be elevated up to the level of true literature...they are pompous windbags. Some might even dismiss these stories as pagan or even (gasp) satanic. That would be nothing new in the comic world. Those folks are limited in scope and little of brain.

Am I saying too much? Wait and see. Better yet. Pick up these books and find out for yourself. I doubt you will be disappointed. If you are intelligent and want to be able to put a book down and continue to think about it for another week because it was THAT GOOD, then these need to be in your collection of must reads.

You will read them again, so forget about about trying to borrow them from a friend.

Describing these as comics is a great understatement and mischaracterization. To say it's a graphic novel probably is too weak, but it will do until some future generation develops their own classification of this literature ("graphic-literature?" --has promise.) Enjoy.


This was a grind   January 14, 2007
 10 out of 17 found this review helpful

I'm among the few reviewers here who dislike this book. For readers with similar tastes, here's why.

The art is sloppy and, as another reviewer put it, hideous. The colors are garish, the faces are inconsistent, the perspective can be abysmal (ex. bottom panel, pg. 83), there is evidence of tracing or retouching of photographs (acceptable in some cases - p. 186, but incongruous in others). One might call this artistic licence, I call it simply bad. The narrative would take about twenty-five pages in text, but here we have a comic that goes on for 240 pages while offending the eye with ugly graphics.

The story has promise, but seems to try to blow harder than it can. (However, since the entire series has garnered high praise, maybe it really does ultimately deliver.) It is also humorless. Consequently, it was a slog to get through this first instalment in the Sandman series and I will desist from the rest until I can look into the books and see if the art improves.

For readers who, like me, have a more conventional appreciation of comic art, one modern series I am currently reading that I can recommend is Cerebus, whose art is somewhat poor in the first pages, but improves so fast and so much that it is masterful by the end of the first volume, while the storyline is rich and funny throughout. Now that's a combination for a modern comic (or graphic novel, if you prefer) that I can take!