the sandman: preludes and nocturnes

the little brother of death: the sandman.
typically busy with ruling his realm of dreams and nightmares, but someday unfortunately he gets caught by a human devil worshipper (who, by the way, was trying to capture death). dark, but truly entertaining are the further stories, when sandman fights back and is looking for his important tools of power, which also got stolen. therefor some demons in hell have to be visited and convinced as well as psychic characters fled out of arkham asylum. "preludes and nocturnes" is the first part of the sandman series, and i'm more than excited to find out which adventures SANDMAN will experience in the future, as neil gaiman's way of storytelling is masterful.

the german edition of part 2 ("the doll's house") will be released by panini-comics these days and hopefully will be featured on this site soon.

"Wake up, sir. We're here." It's a simple enough opening line--although not many would have guessed back in 1991 that this would lead to one of the most popular and critically acclaimed comics of the second half of the century.
In Preludes and Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman weaves the story of a man interested in capturing the physical manifestation of Death but who instead captures the King of Dreams. By Gaiman's own admission there's a lot in this first collection that is awkward and ungainly--which is not to say there are not frequent moments of greatness here. The chapter "24 Hours" is worth the price of the book alone; it stands as one of the most chilling examples of horror in comics. And let's not underestimate Gaiman's achievement of personifying Death as a perky, overly cheery, cute goth girl! All in all, I greatly prefer the roguish breaking of new ground in this book to the often dull precision of the concluding volumes of the Sandman series. --Jim Pascoe

publisher: dc comics (english), panini comics (german)