Neil Gaiman and the Sandman

As an avid reader of Neil Gaiman's work, this comic was right up my alley.  Gaiman's work always has a great sense fantasy and really good character development.  His stories are always really nice to read because they are something different and they have a really good central story.  I've read The Graveyard Book, Anasai Boys, and seen a bunch of Neverworld episodes.  The narration in particular in the beginning and the end involving the Sandman was absolutely lovely to read and had a very old storybook quality to it.

That being said, I think the most engaging panels were the ones with the Sandman in it.  As a character he was really appealing and intriguing.  I was kind of bored with the usual heroine character who lost her memories.  I really wanted more of that character and I'm sure the other comics are different and include him more.  It seemed more interesting if we were to follow more of his side of the story because there isn't a lot of writing that follows an outsider character.  I did really enjoy the bit about the Cuckoo and the creepy neighbor who opened his chest and birds came out.  That idea was really original and it was illustrated really well with the panels showing the birds flying out and making people's dreams turn into nightmares.

It wasn't the best drawn comic.  In one of the pages where Barbie was lying on the sofa she just disappeared out of one of the panels and I got really confused. I was like WHERE DID SHE GO. And some of it was horrific like when the girl stabbed that guy's skin to the wall and took out his tongue and it was just hanging there on the wall.

This really reminded me of two things: Alice in Wonderland as well as a comic I read earl
ier in the semester called Princess Amethyst.  Both involve a naive girl entering a sort of magical 'dream' world where they have been before but have lost and/or forgotten their exploits.  In order to fix their problems they must come to terms with what they have lost and meet their final boss battle.

The main cast of the comic was particularly mind boggling.  We have a drag queen, two lesbians, a creepy neighbor, a shady Jesus-praying neighbor lady, and our heroine who doesn't dream anymore.  In the beginning I actually thought everyone was a lesbian and I was really confused about why all the men were gone.  But I digress, it was a very feminist friendly comic.   If anything it was actually sidestepping men in general when the women were going to find "Barbie" and the drag queen had to stay in the real world while all the women went galavanting in the Dreamworld.  By the way her name being Barbie really drove me insane--she even looked like the Barbie doll with her platinum blonde hair and huge-- I don't even want to get into it.