I got the first of these a while back after hearing about how Sandman was one of the great comics. Neil Gaiman has written loads of books, but has also done a lot of comics. I have only scratched the surface of that.
My collection of comic books is growing and includes a few by Hive artists. They are quite varied as I have not really set out to get everything by an author or about a character. Some of them are quite geeky. I also have a few art books.
I got the second Sandman book this year and just finished it. As with the previous one it is largely following the story of the title character (aka Dream) and features his 'siblings' who also have names beginning with D.
The illustration is by various sets of artists, so the style varies a lot. We get lots of diversions into other stories including one about cats and then some Shakespeare. Midsummer Night's Dream must have seemed a natural choice for the character.
There are more visits to hell in this book and lots of gods make an appearance. Gaiman likes to play around with the ideas of the different religions as he has in novels like American Gods. The stories span lots of historical periods as humans have always had dreams, good and bad.
Some of the art is more like painting, whilst other stories are more abstract. The lengths of the stories vary a lot too.
One of the artists is Mark Buckingham who has also done work for one of my favourite bands, The Fierce and the Dead. He did a support slot singing at one their gigs that I attended.
I have to say I found this volume less rewarding than the first. It could be just too much of a mixture. I like some of the art styles more than others. It is a fairly expensive book, but then there is a lot of it and the quality is pretty good overall. I have had both of these books as birthday presents so far and if people are happy to buy them for me then I will keep reading them.
I have something different lined up that I took a chance on, but may switch to a different sort of reading for a while. It tends to take me a while to get through a book as I mostly just read in bed before I sleep and I may have other things like the weekend magazines to read too.
At some point we will get a version of Sandman on Netflix. It will be interesting to see what they do with it. They have been willing to experiment before. There is an audio series out there too that I have not heard yet.
That guy does look a lot like a young Neil Gaiman. I expect the comic artists were inspired by his look.
