Sandman (Gaiman)

selenak reminded me this graphic novel series existed, and that I'd never checked them out at all even though they were Classics of the genre. (I had read Watchmen and thought it was amazing, but only because someone in grad school -- D, maybe? -- told me I had to.) Turns out the library had all but one of the ten-volume set, so I was submersed in these for a while. The first several volumes were quite slow going, partially because (as selenak had warned me) there is a lot of straight horror in those first few volumes, which is really not my favorite, and partially because A. was curious about them, meaning I had to read them mostly when he was busy with other things because I really didn't think it was suitable for him :P Then it got really compelling and I zoomed through basically the rest of it in a week, which is super fast given how long it is and the fact that I had to use time where A. wasn't around (and which I wasn't using to do other things).

I still am not sure I can say "I really liked it," as I might do with some other work; I will say that I found it riveting and disquieting and very interesting. One of the things I found so interesting about it is that it took advantage of the graphic format not just with playing around with artistic styles (which it did do) but also with the trope where throwaway characters come back later in more important roles. Not, of course, that one can't do that in a non-graphic format, but there's an immediacy with the visual medium, a sort of "waaaaait I've seen that face before!" that I think doesn't really replicate exactly with text (much as I love text format :P )

And of course there was also a lot of "...hold on, THAT was whom he was referring to earlier??" which isn't necessarily a graphic-format thing, but which I love. And the thing where it's made up of a lot of stories that are self-contained, but which have an arc that connects them.

There's something very dreamlike about the whole series, the way it hints at a lot of things and spins stories about a lot of things with a kernel of truth within the larger story, that's very fitting for a series about the incarnation of Dream. It hasn't got the tight plotting-with-every-panel-being-meaningful that attracted me to Watchmen, and it is, well, Gaiman, so it's well-stocked with disturbing images, but I'm glad I read it.

( A couple of things. Some spoilers. )