{"id":237,"date":"2003-11-09T22:14:25","date_gmt":"2003-11-10T03:14:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=237"},"modified":"2003-11-09T22:14:25","modified_gmt":"2003-11-10T03:14:25","slug":"gaiman_neil_112","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2003\/11\/gaiman_neil_112\/","title":{"rendered":"Gaiman, Neil: (112) Sandman: Endless Nights"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n

The Sandman: Endless Nights<\/cite>, written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by diverse others<\/strong>, is a collection of tales set in the Sandman<\/cite><\/a> universe, one story for each Endless. (Illustrated in the standard comic sense, that is, rather than a prose story with illustrations as The Dream Hunters<\/cite> was.) It’s somewhat of a mixed bag, but no more so than any of the prior Sandman<\/cite> collections. (I read this back in September and am only getting around to writing it up now.)<\/p>\n

The first story, “Death and Venice,” is one of the better in the collection. Illustrated by P. Craig Russell, it’s not as jaw-droppingly beautiful as “Ramadan,” but it’s nevertheless highly pleasant to look at, with a central story that’s interesting even though we know what the ending must, inevitably, be. I do find the framing story a touch jarring, but that may be personal taste.<\/p>\n

“What I’ve Tasted of Desire,” illustrated by Milo Manara, is okay. The most notable thing about it (besides the prevalence of nudity<\/a>) is that it’s narrated in first-person retrospective<\/em> over panels that depict the action in progress. Otherwise it didn’t particularly interest me.<\/p>\n

Dream’s story is titled “The Heart of a Star,” and is illustrated by Miguelanxo Prado. In the introduction, Gaiman says, “While it is true that I am someone who prefers mysteries to explanations, I found it pleasurable here to explain a number of things.” I wish he’d stuck to the mysteries; the explanations are more anti-climactic than illuminating, and some of them strike me as implausible (Delight seems awfully Delirium-like, for instance, and my, was that a fast change of heart or what?).<\/p>\n

“Fifteen Portraits of Despair” was designed by Dave McKean, with art by Barron Storey. I actually liked this one; several of the portraits stayed with me, as though the hook on Despair’s ring had caught my heart, which was the point. Mileage does seem to vary widely on it.<\/p>\n

Maybe I’m weird, but I really liked the Delirium story “Going Inside,” illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz. I found it charming and clever and sad, all at once. Saying more about it would spoil it.<\/p>\n

The Destruction story, “On the Peninsula,” is illustrated by Glenn Fabry and gets an “ehhh.” It doesn’t add much to my understanding of any of the characters, or tell a compelling story—though I suppose to the extent that it’s about a woman who goes seeking Destruction and returns unscathed, it’s unexpected.<\/p>\n

The last piece in the collection is about Destiny and is titled “Endless Nights.” Frank Quitely did the art, which is very pretty. You notice I haven’t called it a story, because it isn’t. It’s just telling us about Destiny, and not anything we didn’t know already, either. I have no idea what this is doing here.<\/p>\n

Because this is positioned outside the main story arc, I instinctively view it in isolation, to its detriment. However, I don’t think the proportion of good stories is any worse than in other Sandman<\/cite> collections. I can’t recommend that casual readers buy it in hardcover, but I don’t regret buying and reading it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sandman: Endless Nights, written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by diverse others, is a collection of tales set in the Sandman universe, one story for each Endless. (Illustrated in the standard comic sense, that is, rather than a prose story with illustrations as The Dream Hunters was.) It’s somewhat of a mixed bag, but … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Gaiman, Neil: (112) Sandman: Endless Nights”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,115,15],"tags":[220],"class_list":["post-237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comics","category-sandman","category-sf-and-fantasy","tag-gaiman-neil"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}