Absolute Sandman, Vol. 1 (DC Vertigo) [collects #1-20]
w. Neil Gaiman; a. Various
| Writing |  | New reader? |  |
| Art | | Non-comics reader? | |
This is an absolutely gorgeous volume. Leather bound, nice paper — and it’s oversized, too, so the art is all the easier to see.
While the early Sandman art (and, to be honest, writing) was a bit rough, it’s been all recolored, which helps a lot.
This volume has stories setting up the entire rest of the series — Sandman’s capture and freedom, his recovery of his items of power, the humans with the “sleepy sickness” and their descendants, his kinfolk of the Endless, Lucifer, Rose — and one-off stories, like the Cat tale, and the Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Supplementary material in the book is the initial proposal for the book, a step-by-step script and raw art of the Midsummer issue, and afterwords by Gaiman.
I’m not big for re-buying books I already own — but it was worth buying this and giving away the TPBs I already had covering these. The next volume is out in a couple of months …
Lost Girls (Top Shelf)
w. Alan Moore; a. Melinda Gebbie
| Writing | | New reader? | |
| Art |  | Non-comics reader? | |
Okay — so imagine if Alice (from Wonderland), Dorothy Gale (from Oz), and Wendy (from Peter Pan), three women who, as children, had fantastic adventures, encountered one another in a Swiss hotel shortly before WW I, and ended up revealing their adventures as sexual ones, which then led to Edwardian porn encounters between the three of them, et al.
That’s essentially what Moore and Gebbie have done here. Is it just smut? No — the tale actually has enough meat to it (you should pardon the expression) to make it something more than a backup feature in Penthouse. But it’s not great literature, either (at least as I understand it) — there’s simply too much simple titillation (so to speak). The sex gets in the way of anything else, but there’s enough of the “anything else” to keep it from just being smut. Instead, it’s a very long (and fairly expensive) creative exercise in creating overtly sexual material that’s not just sexual material, that offers something odd, intriguing, It deals with consequences, not just actions, with history, not just the now. It’s certainly more than porn, and more even than erotica — it’s Alan Moore either being clever or having a good laugh at our expense.
Did I like it? It was … interesting. I sort of wish I’d waited for the trade paperback version (had one been forthcoming). As it stands, it’s something I can imagine pulling off the shelf on occasion, but I’m not altogether certain what for.
(listening to: Baez, Joan, “In The Pines” from Very Early Joan)
(listening to: Dora the Explorer, “I’m the Map!” from Dora the Explorer)
(listening to: Symphonic Cast, “Look Down” from Les Misérables (Symphonic))
(listening to: Wainwright III, Loudon, “Little Ship” from Little Ship)
(listening to: Elfman, Danny, “Imports / Quiet Moment” from Men in Black)
And what intrigues me about this review is that you were listening to Dora the Explorer at the time….
🙂
Yeah, it’s amusing what sort stuff comes up on random shuffle (and that seemed interesting enough to hit the media button on the ecto client).
“Come on, let’s get to it,
You know that we can do it!”