Comicsgirl

OK, so it was personal to about 10,000 of his Twitter followers, but look, I can pretend.

This is his favorite trailer for Coraline:

I was very grumbly and ambivalent on this movie at first — mostly because it wasn’t going to be my vision of Coraline (it’s probably the book of Neil Gaiman’s I most related to) but then I was won over by how awesome it looks. I am very excited to see it.

(And I will, one day soon, review P. Craig Russell’s comic version of it. When I remember what pile of books it is in.)

Eric San Juan is re-reading the series, volume by volume over at Weird Tales.

I certainly didn’t think my idea was unique and I have no clue if Eric San Juan knows of it. But it’s a lot of fun to see someone else’s take on the series. I loved re-reading it and discovering new things in the process. It delights me that someone else is doing the same thing and recording his thoughts on it. Obviously, I don’t agree with everything he’s said, but I’m also surprised at some of the conclusions we both came to, like that Dream Country is where Neil Gaiman finds his voice in the series. I’m also surprised at where we differ — he likes Season of Mists much more than I did this time around.

I also admire his ability to write about each volume every week day — I could barely manage one per week.

It’s very quiet out there and my schedule being what it is, I haven’t had much time to work on much. All my Google searches are just turning up stuff about Twilight right now (although the post from Splash Page about Neil Gaiman’s daughter Maddie and Mike Mignola’s daughter Katie reading the books was pretty much fun). Also a lot about Gossip Girls creator Josh Schwartz writing a movie script for X-Men: First Class (Not that I watch Gossip Girls or any of the other shows he’s been a part of, but I approve. I always liked the angst of X-Men. Still, we’ll see what happens).

Both those things are interesting on their own, but not so much worthy of their own post.

But I do feel the Coraline trailer is worthy of one.

OK, so it wasn’t a comic (although I did quite like P. Craig Russell’s comic version of it, which I’ll get around to reviewing here eventually), but I like Coraline. I was dubious about the movie at first but I’m now squarely in the “WANT TO SEE NOW” camp on this one.

I do think it’s funny that Neil Gaiman is not mentioned anywhere in the trailer. Not that I noticed, anyway.

I started reading The Sandman the day after my 14th birthday. I turned 28 a few weeks ago. If you do that very easy math, you find out that The Sandman has been in my life for half of it.

What has changed in these 14 years? Well, for one thing, I can tell you there was no young adult novel that featured a young female Neil Gaiman fan as one of the major characters 14 years ago.

It’s impossible to know quite how The Sandman changed comics. Yes, the title gave rise to the Vertigo imprint and showed there was interest in adult stories (even if most of those take the sex-and-violence bit of “adult” too much to heart). It gave creators permission to make titles that were finite from the beginning. It opened a door for titles like Hellboy, with their mishmash of history, literature and mythology. It put comics in the hands of people who never picked up a superhero title, who in turn, put comics into the hands of other people who’d never read comics either.

And it was – and is — read by a lot of girls and women. This is undeniably important.

The comic book industry is still trying to figure out what women and girls want. They give us things like the Minx imprint, which is, at most, well-intentioned. They try out titles like Mary Jane Loves Spider-Man. They create manga-style comics. They do all the gimmicks they can think of. They never stop to think girls and women may just want something that doesn’t set out to appeal to them. They just want something that’s good.

Women read The Sandman because it’s good. Yeah, it’s a cliché that boys recommend it to their girlfriends (a few weeks ago, a man at the bar was overheard doing so to his date). And I’d gladly recommend it to women. Not in a general “you’re a woman so you’ll like this” kind of way, but to a woman I’d think would like it? Yes, there’s no question there. (Of course, I’d also gladly recommend it to men who I think would like it.)

Personally, it opened up a new world to explore. It was a world of literature and myth, of music and art. It was one I fit into. It’s one I could see myself being a part of. It’s maybe a little dramatic, but feeling trapped in the halls of high school, it was important to me to know that there was more out there. I’m not trying to give it too much credit, but I think The Sandman showed me who I could be, if I wanted. (I was 14 when I first read The Doll’s House. Rose Walker was 21. That seemed impossibly distant to me. It’s funny for me to think that I’m as far from that age now as I was then.)

I’m glad that Neil Gaiman is currently associating himself with Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls. This will only mean that a new generation of teenage girls (of certain sensibilities, of course) will want to know who this “Neil Gaiman” is and pick up The Sandman. No bad can come of this.

I still love the comic. Maybe I love it more now than I did, but it’s in a different way. I see the craft (or sometimes, the lack thereof) of it, I see the beauty and the storytelling. It’s far from perfect, but I can’t think of anything else that covers so much history, encompasses so many characters. Like I said, The Sandman just has so much stuff in it. Maybe “24 Hours” freaked you out but “Ramadan” made you cry. Maybe you wanted to smack Dream sometimes and then other times you just felt sorry for him. The Sandman feels like it set out from the beginning to be huge and ambitious. Maybe it didn’t always make it to where it should’ve gone, but it’s a fabulous, lovely series.

It deserves its reputation. I’m proud to own it. I think if I learned anything by rereading it, I learned that. Or, at the very least, just had it re-affirmed.

(And also, it was a lot of fun rereading it. I recommend it!)

The Wake Buy from tfaw.com

Three things first off:

1. The hardcover of The Wake is beautifully presented and I think the cover is my absolutely favorite Dave McKean image. So perfect and gorgeous. I feel lucky to have the book in this form.
2. Matthew’s comments at Dream’s funeral make me cry. Like in that impossible-to-read-anymore-can’t-see-through-the-tears-have-to-put-the-book-down way. Every time.
3. The pun of the title is an obvious one, but I still love it.

It’s hard to know what to say about The Wake, really. After the manic The Kindly Ones, this is a quiet, meditative conclusion.

Michael Zulli’s intricate art in the first four parts provides a great counterpoint to Marc Hempl’s blocky, saturated art in The Kindly Ones. The contrast is a fitting one. There’s little action here. It’s mostly just characters talking, trading stories about Dream. I especially like his old lovers exchanging their thoughts about him. I like seeing Richard Madoc again (who, until he appeared, I’d forgotten about). I also like Batman and Martian Manhunter showing up here. While Neil Gaiman did get farther and farther away from trying to put this story in the DC Universe, I like the little reminder of “yes, friends, this was, in fact a comic book by the same people who publish Batman.” It’s a subtle bit of self-awareness.

While the three issues of “The Wake” and its epilogue, “Sunday Mourning,” do a good job of wrapping up the major plot points, I liked the feeling that these stories weren’t over. These characters are going to go off and have other adventures. I just may not get to watch. The Sandman exists in such a rich, lovely world that I feel like I was just given small glimpses into.

Hob’s decision to live in the end is beautiful and hopeful – it’s a choice that Dream couldn’t make for himself. Gwen even jokes about “they all lived happily ever after.” (And I know that he has a black girlfriend in the end was, in part, a reaction to that most of the black women in the comic ended up dead.) We know, from having read this comic, that there probably aren’t too many cleanly happy endings out there, but we leave most everyone at the point of a new beginning.

“Exiles” is a strange story – almost unnecessary, except that Jon J. Muth’s style here is amazing and for one line – “Sometimes I suspect that we build our traps ourselves, then we back into them, pretending amazement the while.” That is, essentially, the theme of all of The Sandman. Dream was his own prisoner. The only way he could find the way out of his cage was by dying.

And it’s impossible to not read “The Tempest” without injecting Gaiman himself into the story. Shakespeare is at the end of his career, writing his final play, and Gaiman’s wrapping up a nine-year long project. Shakespeare’s comments about family neglect, using personal tragedies in his work may or may not be autobiographical, but it’s pretty clear that any creative work involves making some sacrifice. It’s Gaiman’s explanation as to why he didn’t want to do this anymore, in one way or another.

And it’s the perfect ending to an amazing series. I closed the book and was left feeling thoughtful and complete. There’s other stories we could’ve been told, sure, but I don’t think I could really ask for The Sandman to be anything other than it was.

Except, for you know, being told about Alianora. But tiny, tiny complaint.

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In a few days (next week?), I’ll do a final wrap-up on The Sandman. But I will say this now: I am absolutely glad I reread it. I don’t know what took me so long to do it. I already knew the series well, but I was amazed at how much there was in it I didn’t remember or didn’t notice before. I’m sure, in a few years, if I reread it once again, there will be even more. I think that is what struck me this time – just how much stuff there is here.