DC Comics from Lunar/UCS Distributors for September 29, 2020

DC COMICS:

Batman Detective Comics Volume 3 Greetings From Gotham TP, $17.99
Batman Knight Out HC, $39.99
Batman Superman Annual #1, $4.99
Batman The Joker War Zone #1 (Cover A Ben Oliver), $5.99
Batman The Joker War Zone #1 (Cover B Derrick Chew Card Stock Variant), AR
Batman Three Jokers #2 (Of 3) Playing Cards, AR
Batman Three Jokers #2 (Of 3)(Cover A Jason Fabok), $6.99
Batman Three Jokers #2 (Of 3)(Cover B Jason Fabok Batgirl Variant), $6.99
Batman Three Jokers #2 (Of 3)(Cover C Jason Fabok Yellow Variant), AR
Batman Three Jokers #2 (Of 3)(Cover D Jason Fabok Black & White Variant), AR
Batman Three Jokers #2 (Of 3)(Cover E Jason Fabok Joker Behind Bars Variant), AR
Batman Three Jokers #2 (Of 3)(Cover F Jason Fabok Death In The Family Top Hat And Monocle Variant), AR
Batman Three Jokers #2 (Of 3)(Cover G Jason Fabok Joker Applying Makeup Variant), AR
Dark Nights Death Metal Multiverse’s End #1 (Cover A Michael Golden), $5.99
Dark Nights Death Metal Multiverse’s End #1 (Cover B Arthur Adams), AR
DC Connect Checklist Poster #4, AR
Harley Quinn And The Birds Of Prey #3 (Of 4)(Cover A Amanda Conner), $5.99
Harley Quinn And The Birds Of Prey #3 (Of 4)(Cover B Ian MacDonald), AR
John Constantine Hellblazer #10, $3.99
John Constantine Hellblazer Volume 1 Marks Of Woe TP, $19.99
Justice League Annual #2, $4.99
Legion Of Super-Heroes #9 (Cover A Ryan Sook), $3.99
Legion Of Super-Heroes #9 (Cover B Andre Araujo), AR
Low Low Woods HC, $24.99
Red Hood Outlaw #49 (Cover A Dan Mora), $3.99
Red Hood Outlaw #49 (Cover B Philip Tan), AR
Wonder Woman #763 (Cover A David Marquez), $4.99
Wonder Woman #763 (Cover B Joshua Middleton Card Stock Variant), AR
Wonder Woman 1984 #1 (Cover A Nicola Scott), $3.99
Wonder Woman 1984 #1 (Cover B Robin Eisenberg Rooster Teeth Variant), AR

Book Review: ELEVATOR PITCH

ELEVATOR PITCH
HARPERCOLLINS/William Morrow

[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]

AUTHOR: Linwood Barclay
ISBN: 978-0-06-267828-7; hardcover; 6 in x 9 in; (September 17, 2019)
464pp, B&W, $26.99 U.S.

Elevator Pitch is a 2019 novel written by Linwood Barclay, the author of such bestselling novels as No Time for Goodbye and Trust Your Eyes.  In Elevator Pitch, two veteran New York police detectives are trying to unravel the mystery of a strange and brutal murder, while a straight-shooting journalist attempts to discover why elevators in New York City are killing people, both of which may be the work of a notorious American terrorist group.

Elevator Pitch opens in New York City on a Monday when it all begins.  At the Lansing Tower on Third between Fifty-Ninth and Sixtieth, four people board an elevator in the Manhattan office tower, each pressing a button for their floor.  The elevator, however, is contrary and proceeds straight to the top floor... before plummeting non-stop right to the bottom of the elevator shaft.  Three of the passengers are killed and a fourth is mortally wounded.

One of the victims is a young woman named Paula Chatsworth.  Three years earlier, Paula had been an intern for the online publication, Manhattan Today, where Barbara Matheson reigns as the top columnist who has a reputation as a straight-shooter.  At first, Barbara's focus is on the tragic death of Paula and on her grieving parents, but then, Paula discovers that mysterious men in black SUVs don't want Paula's parents talking to the press.

Still, the elevator accident at Lansing seems like nothing more than a random tragedy, horrific though it is.  Then, on Tuesday, at the Sycamores Residences, below Sixty-Third, there is another elevator-related fatality.  This time, the incident seems to have a ghastly and macabre sense of humor about it.  When Wednesday brings more elevator death, this time at the Gormley Building on Seventh Avenue between Sixteenth and Seventeenth, New York City, America's capital of finance, entertainment, and media, falls into a state of fear and chaos.  NYC is a vertical city; it cannot function without elevators.  If this is an attempt to terrorize the city, who is behind it?

Meanwhile, Detective Jerry Bourque and his partner, Detective Lois Delgado, are investigating the homicide of a man whose body was found on the “High Line.”  His face was beaten in until it was unrecognizable, and his fingertips have all been removed.  A lucky break leads Bourque and Delgado to believe that their victim might be connected to the elevator sabotage, and the victim could somehow be connected to a domestic terrorist group, “the Flyovers,” that has been targeting cities along the coasts of America.

Are the incidents of elevator-sabotage, the High Line murder, and the Flyovers connected?  Working separately, Barbara Matheson and the team of Bourque and Delgado will have to answer all those questions... and son.  NYC's latest “big event” is a ribbon-cutting, on Thursday, for the city's newest, and tallest, residential tower, “Top of the Park.”  Practically, everyone who is anyone will be there.  So, it's the perfect time and place for terror, mayhem, and elevator mass murder.

THE LOWDOWN:  Inside the front cover flap of the book jacket, the cover copy declares that Elevator Pitch is “...an edge-of-your-seat thriller that does for elevators what Psycho did for showers and Jaws did for the beach...”  This is a bit of expected salesmanship on the part of William Morrow's marketing division, but I would not call it an overstatement.

Psycho and Jaws are movies, and they were, relative to the time of their respective releases, big hits at the movie theater box office.  Both films were based on books – Psycho a 1959 novel of the same name and Jaws a 1974 novel of the same name – and both films have overshadowed, outlived, and out-shined the books that were their source material.

Elevator Pitch is only a novel, but if it were also a movie, a lot of people would be scared shitless of elevators after seeing it.  Yeah, they would still get on elevators, but some of them would start to think that being in an elevator is like being in a shower with a knife-wielding great white shark.  If a studio could make an Elevator Pitch movie that is as chilling as Elevator Pitch the novel is, movie audiences would have a brand new thrill ride to terrorize them into the summer.

Seriously, though, Elevator Pitch, which was released in hardcover in 2019 and in paperback earlier this year, is such a stone-cold killer of a novel because its author, Linwood Barclay, is an especially effective writer of suspense fiction and of thrillers.  When Barclay starts killing his characters on elevators, there comes a point when readers will believe that any part of the story that takes place even in the vicinity of an elevator will soon turn from character drama to character butchery.  I know that I started to feel a sense of dread every time the story moved into a building with an elevator.

Elevator Pitch even has a quote from Stephen King on the front of its book jacket, which says, “One hell of a suspense novel.”  That is certainly true, and Elevator Pitch is one of those suspense novels that won't let you stop turning the pages.  You can't stop, and you “can't hardly wait,” to get to the next page and to the next chapter.

A synopsis of Elevator Pitch really doesn't do justice to the entirety of the narrative.  There are a lot more characters than I mentioned above, and there are a few back stories and several sub-plots.  They all serve the story, and a few act as effective red herrings to keep the readers' imaginations on overdrive.  The only fault that I find with the novel is that I wish it had focused a little more on the personalities of a few of the characters, for instance, Detectives Bourque and Delgado.

That aside, Elevator Pitch is the perfect pot-boiler novel for any book season.  As long as there are elevators and other vertical transportation machines like that, Elevator Pitch will have a spot in our imaginations, in the places we like to be scared.  Elevator Pitch will be waiting for us... it's sliding doors always open.

I READS YOU RECOMMENDS:  Fans of Linwood Barclay and of suspense thrillers will want to read Elevator Pitch.

8 out of 10

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


https://www.linwoodbarclay.com/
https://twitter.com/WmMorrowBooks
https://www.facebook.com/WilliamMorrowBooks
https://twitter.com/HarperCollins
https://www.harpercollins.com/


The text is copyright © 2020 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for syndication rights and fees.


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#IReadsYou Review: KILLADELPHIA #4

KILLADELPHIA #4
IMAGE COMICS – @ImageComics

[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]

STORY: Rodney Barnes
ART: Jason Shawn Alexander
COLORS: Luis Nct
LETTERS: Marshal1 Dillon
LOGO/GRAPHIC DESIGN: Brent Ashe
EDITOR: Greg Tumbarello
COVER: Jason Shawn Alexander
VARIANT COVER ARTIST: Eric Canete
28pp, Colors, 3.99 U.S.(February 2020)

Rated “M/ Mature”

“Sins of the Father” Part IV: “...Cry Out for Revolution!”

Killadelphia is a new comic book series from writer Rodney Barnes and artist Jason Shawn Alexander (Empty Zone).  The series focuses on a police officer who is clued onto a lurid secret by his dead father; the corrupt, but historical city of Philadelphia is vampire-ridden.  Colorist Luis Nct and letterer Marshall Dillon complete Killadelphia's creative team.

James “Jim” Sangster, Jr. is a Baltimore Police Department beat cop who comes home to deal with the final affairs of his recently murdered father, revered Philadelphia homicide detective, James Sangster, Sr.  Jimmy hated his father, who is not dead, but is of the undead.  Now, son, vampire dad, and the chief medical examiner are working to stop a vampire apocalypse initiated by... the second President of the United States!

Killadelphia #4 (“...Cry Out for Revolution!”) opens on the night of revolution.  John Adams, President turned vampire overlord, sends him vampire horde into the city of Philadelphia – to terrify it, to destroy it, and to drain it of its lifeblood.  This is Adams' revolution to free mankind and to save humanity.  Meanwhile, one of Adams' lieutenants has apparently turned counter-revolutionary, and he wants to meet Jim, Sr.

I tried waiting extended periods of time between reading issues of Killadelphia.  It was my way of putting some distance between each issue and my mad love for this thrilling, modern vampire comic book.  But forget that.  Image Comics recently made a PDF review copy of Killadelphia #4 available to reviewers and that was vampire crack to a vampire crackhead reader.  That would be me.

Artist Jason Shawn Alexander and colorist Luis Nct, who are starting to seem like the dream team of apocalyptic comic books, present the fall of a city in kinetic compositions and in spurts and splashes of end-times colors.  Meanwhile, Marshall Dillon quietly letters and notes the last, dying hours of a city that was living on borrowed time anyway.

In 2004, Marvel Comics published a small trade paperback, Blade: Black & White, to coincide with the release of the film, Blade: Trinity.  Among the stories reprinted in the collection were two Blade stories written by Chris Claremont (best known for his work on X-Men/Uncanny X-Men) and two by Marv Wolfman (best known for writing The New Teen Titans and Crisis on Infinite Earths).  The four stories were magnificent tales of urban horror and dark fantasy that mixed blaxploitation cinema with the edginess of the urban dramas and the horror movies of 1960s and 1970s.

Killadelphia's killa scribe, Rodney Barnes, is bringing da funk and da noise of edgy, urban, Black/African-American horror fantasy.  This series offers some of the best vampire fiction in recent memory, and Barnes also seems to be dancing around dropping some major family dysfunction on his readers pretty soon.  So... I'm still giving this my highest recommendation to encourage you to read Killadelphia, dear readers.

[This issue contains bonus art.]

10 out of 10

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


The text is copyright © 2020 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

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#IReadsYou Review: PSYCHODRAMA ILLUSTRATED #1

PSYCHODRAMA ILLUSTRATED #1
FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS – @fantagraphics

[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]

CARTOONIST: Gilbert Hernandez
EDITOR: Eric Reynolds
COVER: Gilbert Hernandez with Paul Baresh
24pp, B&W, $4.99 U.S. (February 2020)

Gilbert “'Beto” Hernandez is the prolific half of the comic book creating duo, Los Bros. (the other half being his brother, Jaime Hernandez).  Gilbert and Jaime are the creators of Love and Rockets (Fantagraphics Books), the greatest American comic book series of all time.

Gilbert has produced a number of solo projects including (the infamous) Blubber, Yeah! (with writer Peter Bagge), and Twilight Children (with the late Darwyn Cooke).  Gilbert's latest solo comic book project is the recently launched series, Psychodrama Illustrated.  According to publisher Fantagraphics Books, Psychodrama Illustrated is a new Love and Rockets spin-off focusing on the classic character, Rosalba Martinez, best known as “Fritz,” and on her extended family.  The series will feature stories about Fritz’s film career “that bend Fritz’s reality.”

Psychodrama Illustrated #1 opens with a frontispiece (inside front cover) one-page comic in which Dr. Valus Droog breaks the fourth wall and informs the reader about Fritz.  [He also appear on the inside back cover.]  In the opening story, “False Modesty,” Fritz bumps into an old friend of her half-sister, Luba de los Santos, the classic L&R character known simply as “Luba.”

Fritz finds the gentleman starring at a one-sheet poster advertising the debut album from “Killer,” who is Fritz's grand-niece, Dora Rivera.  It seems that Killer is also a young actress, and she has replaced Fritz in “Hypnotwist 2.0,” a remake/reboot of one of Fritz's film, “Hypnotwist” (the tale of which was chronicled in Love and Rockets Vol. 2 #3).  When Fritz joins the production of the new film, will she really be able to fit in with Killer?  And what does Luba's friend want from Fritz...?

THE LOWDOWN:  I was a huge fan of Beto's Blubber comic book series.  I found it to be in the tradition (or at least the spirit) of Underground Comix with its brave and bold depictions of raunchy sex and surreal sexuality.

After only one issue, I don't quite know what to make of Psychodrama Illustrated, but I have to admit to you, dear readers, or at least the ones that already don't know, that I always love the work of Gilbert Hernandez.  [I feel the same way about Jaime Hernandez.]  I can say that Psychodrama Illustrated feels like the usual Love and Rockets comics starring Fritz, by which I mean that Beto gives us the breath and width of Fritz's character.  Fritz is always acting, in front of, behind, and on the side of the camera.  And she's always gonna f**k somebody (male, female, or otherwise), and here, one guy gets it and one (currently in prison) might get f****d.

“Inscrutable” is the word I most use to describe the late cartoonist Charles Schulz's Peanuts characters.  I will say the same thing about Fritz, and in Psychodrama Illustrated, I hope that Beto does not decide to illuminate to many of the mysteries of Fritz.

I READS YOU RECOMMENDS:  Fans of Gilbert Hernandez's Love and Rockets comics will have to have Psychodrama Illustrated.

8 out of 10

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


The text is copyright © 2020 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for syndication rights and fees.

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#IReadsYou Review: HELL'S PARADISE: Jigokuraku Volume 2

 

HELL'S PARADISE: JIGOKURAKU, VOL. 2
VIZ MEDIA – @VIZMedia

MANGAKA: Juji Kaku
TRANSLATION: Caleb Cook
LETTERS: Mark McMurray
EDITOR: David Brothers
ISBN: 978-1-9747-1321-9; paperback (May 2020); Rated “M” for “Mature”
216pp, B&W, $12.99 U.S., $17.99 CAN, £8.99 U.K.

Jigokuraku is a manga series written and illustrated by Yuji Kaku.  It has been serialized weekly for free on the Shōnen Jump+ application (app) and website since January 22, 2018.  VIZ Media is publishing an English-language edition of the manga as a paperback graphic novel series, entitled Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku, under its “VIZ Signature” imprint.

Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku is set in Japan during the “Edo period” (specifically between 1773 and 1841 for this story).  The ninja, “Gabimaru the Hollow,” is sentenced to death, but no method of execution can kill him due to his superhuman body.  Lord Tokugawa Nariyoshi, the 11th Shogun, offers Gabimaru and other monstrous killers sentenced to death a chance at a pardon.  They must travel to a strange island, known as “Shinsenkyo,” where they must find “the elixir of life,” which will make the shogun immortal.  The executioner, Yamada Asaemon Sagiri, and others of her clan will accompany these criminals to an island where “Heaven” and “Hell” are said to be practically the same thing.

As Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku, Vol. 2 (Chapters 7 to 16) opens, Gabimaru, his fellow convicts, and their escorts face murderous creatures that are either gods or monsters.  Stone, animal, insect, and human, these creatures seem to be an impossible blend of all or some of those things.  Meanwhile, we learn the back stories of a number of characters, including Yuzuriha of Keishu, a kunoichi (female ninja); the Aza Brother Bandits, Chobe and Toma; and the mountain tribeswoman, Nurugai, who joins Lord Tenza in a bid to escape the island.

Plus, Gabimaru and Sagiri start to understand each another, just as Sagiri's fellow clansman, Genji, insists she leave the island because she is a woman.  This debates occurs as the convict, Rokurota the Giant of Bizen, approaches them with murder on his mind.

[This volume includes miscellaneous art and “Translation Notes.”]

THE LOWDOWN:  The Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku manga is an Edo-period, samurai drama that is also firmly entrenched in the horror genre.  It's English title, “Hell's Paradise,” aptly fits the series' repugnant-attractive elements, as this story is like a dark fairy tale turning darker with each page.

Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku Graphic Novel Volume 2 is one of the best second volumes of a manga tankobon/graphic novel that I have ever read, just as Vol. 1 was one of the best first volumes.  Creator Yuji Kaku's ethereal, illustrative style perfectly visualizes this series' gruesome, nightmarish tableau and tapestries.  From the start, Kaku enthralls the readers with the mysteries of the island of Shinsenkyo; now, he multiplies the mysteries in this second volume.

Caleb Cook's translation conveys Kaku's move to focus on the characters' personalities, desires, and back stories with the same focus in which Cook's work conveyed the demented nature of many of the characters in the first volume.  Letterer Mark McMurray slashes and smashes us with the gory glory of Hell's Paradise using pitch perfect lettering.  Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku is a paradise for fans of manga that blend samurai, ninja, and horror.

I READS YOU RECOMMENDS:   Fans of “VIZ Signature” titles will want Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku.

A
9 out of 10

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


https://www.viz.com/
https://twitter.com/VIZMedia
https://www.instagram.com/vizmedia/
https://www.facebook.com/OfficialVIZMedia
https://www.snapchat.com/add/vizmedia


The text is copyright © 2020 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for syndication rights and fees.

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#IReadsYou Review: VENUS IN THE BLIND SPOT

 

VENUS IN THE BLIND SPOT
VIZ MEDIA – @VIZMedia

[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]

CARTONIST: Junji Ito
TRANSLATION & ENGLISH ADAPTATION: Jocelyn Allen; Yuji Oniki (“The Enigma of Amigara Fault”)
LETTERS: Eric Erbes
EDITOR: Masumi Washington
ISBN: 978-1-9747-1547-3; hardcover; 5 3/4 × 8 1/4 (August 2020); Rated “T+” for “Teen Plus”
272pp, B&W, $22.99 U.S., $46.00 CAN, £25.00 UK

Junji Ito is a Japanese writer and artist of horror manga (comics) who has created both long-form horror manga series and manga short works (short stories).  Ito's best known long-form manga include Tomie, Uzumaki, and Gyo.  Tomie was adapted into a live-action film series (beginning in 1998), and Uzumaki was adapted into a live-action film (2000).

VIZ Media has published several hardcover collections of Junji Ito's manga short stories over the last five years.  They are Fragments of Horror (June 2015), Shiver: Junji Ito Selected Stories (December 2017), Frankenstein: Junji Ito Story Collection (October 2018), and Smashed: Junji Ito Story Collection (April 2019).

VIZ's latest hardcover collection of Junji Ito's manga short stories is a “best of” collection, Venus in the Blind Spot.  This striking book gathers ten of the most remarkable short works of Ito's career.  With a deluxe presentation, including special color pages, each chilling tale invites readers to revel in a world of terror created by a modern master of horror manga and comics.

Venus in the Blind Spot includes three stories that Junji Ito adapted from prose fiction writers.  Ito adapts two stories, “The Human Chair” (1925) and “An Unearthly Love” (1926), by Edogawa Ranpo (1984-1965), perhaps the most influential author of Japanese mystery fiction.  Ito also adapts “How Love Came to Professor Guildea” (1900), a short story by Robert Hichens (1864-1950), a British author who, among other things, wrote ghost stories, fantasy, and mystery fiction.

Venus in the Blind Spot opens with the story, “Billions Alone.”  At the center of this story is 19-year-old Michio, who has locked himself in his room for seven years.  He emerges from seclusion as people are being found dead and sewn together in pairs, bound by fishing wire that has been run through every part of their bodies.  Michio wonders that if he attends an upcoming school reunion and coming-of-age ceremony, will he become part of one of these “group corpses?”

A woman with a wicked tongue terrorizes the country as “The Licking Woman.”  A philandering husband discovers a “Keepsake” from his recently deceased wife.  And in the title story, “Venus in a Blind Spot,” the young men of the “Nanzan UFO Research Society” discover that they can't help but love their chairperson, Mariko Shono, but they can't see her either.

THE LOWDOWN:  Junji It's short works (a.k.a. manga short stories) display his incredible imagination and also the diversity in the style and tone in which he executes these stories.  Some are tales of existential terror and threats.  Others feature terrible situations, a twist on a comic situation because, by the end of the story, the reader will laugh nervously while thanking the cosmos that such situations are not his.

Venus in the Blind Spot emphasizes two other signatures Ito types, macabre tales that recall “The Twilight Zone” and eerie stories of haunting.  In such stories, Ito does not make use of beginnings, middles, and ends, so much as he offers episodes that are both terrifying and implausible.

The opening story, “Billions Alone,” is an episode of terror.  It is not metaphorically a tale of loneliness as much as it is a tale of humans alone against an existential terror that does not make sense – an implausible and ridiculous assault on the way humans live.  It is COVID-19 without the hope of science eventually saving our asses.

I have not read any of the three prose short stories that appear here as manga adaptations by Junji Ito.  “The Human Chair” is an Ito gem, and I wonder if Edogawa Ranpo's original is as deranged as Ito's take on it.  [Ranpo's huge cultural influence in Japan can be seen in Gosho Aoyama's manga, Detective Conan, which is published as Case Closed in North America.]  The other two adaptations, “An Unearthly Love” and “How Love Came to Professor Kirida” (from Robert Hichens's “How Love Came to Professor Guildea”).  These two stories have all the hallmarks of Ito's terrible power, and the latter is a tale of a haunting.  Still, they don't quite come together.

Never fear, “The Licking Woman” and “Keepsake” lay siege to your imagination, dear reader, and these two tales, each dealing with a haunting, certainly made my skin crawl.  Damn, that's nasty – both of them.  Venus in the Blind Spot, as a collection, is a good introduction to the short manga of Junji Ito.  New readers will get a taste of what is to come, and, in a way, it is not as deranged, overall, as other collections of Ito's short works.  For Ito's fans, Venus in the Blind Spot is an example of why Junji Ito is our blind spot.  We'll buy just about any book he offers us.

I READS YOU RECOMMENDS:  Fans of Junji Ito and fans of great horror comics will want the VIZ Signature edition of Venus in the Blind Spot.

9 out of 10

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


The text is copyright © 2020 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for syndication rights and fees.

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#IReadsYou Review: THE SANDMAN #1

SANDMAN #1
DC COMICS – @DCComics

[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]

STORY:  Neil Gaiman
ART: Sam Keith and Mike Dringenberg
COLORS: Robbie Busch
LETTERS: Todd Klein
EDITOR: Karen Berger
COVER: Dave McKean
48pp, Color, $2.00 U.S., $2.50 CAN, £1.20 UK (January 1989)

“Suggested for Mature Readers”

The Sandman created by Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth and Mike Dringenberg

“Sleep of the Just”

The Sandman is a DC Comics comic book series created by writer Neil Gaiman and artists Sam Keith and Mike Dringenberg.  Published by DC Comics from 1989 to 1996, The Sandman ran for 75 issues, with the first issue cover dated January 1989 (although it was published in October 1988) and the last issue, March 1996.

Sandman #1 (“Sleep of the Just”) introduces the character “Dream” of “The Endless.”  Also named Morpheus (as well as other names), Dream rules over the world of dreams.  This first issue is written by Gaiman; drawn by Keith and Dringenberg; colored by Robbie Busch; and lettered by Todd Klein, with the cover illustration produced by Dave McKean (who had worked with Gaiman before Sandman).

Sandman #1 opens June 6th, 1916 in Wych Cross, England.  Dr. John Hathaway, senior curator at the Royal Museum in London, arrives at “Fawney Rig,” the manor house of Roderick Burgess.  Also known as the “Daemon King,” Burgess is the “Lord Magus” of the “Order of Ancient Mysteries,” an occult group.  Hathaway has been stealing books and manuscripts from the museum for Burgess, who needs them in order to create the incantation for a particular summoning ritual.

On the evening of June 6th, Burgess plans to hold a ritual that will end death in the world by capturing and imprisoning the personification of “Death,” of the Endless.  However, the ritual will not go as Burgess plans, and he will capture and imprison another of the Endless, Dream.  Burgess is not fully aware of what and whom he has captured, but he is determined to make Dream submit to his will.  Burgess is also not fully aware that his prisoner has all the time in the world... and beyond.

I think Sandman had reached its fourth or fifth issue by the time I starting hearing from other comic book readers how good it was.  I do remember seeing pre-release in-house ads for Sandman #1 in other DC Comics titles.  Whatever issue I first read amazed and blew me away so much that I started looking for back issues, and I was quickly able to find all the early issues, including the first issue.

I have previously read Sandman #1 once as an individual comic book and at least twice in collected form via the first Sandman trade paperback, The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes.  DC Comics is shortly to launch a line of comic books under the banner, “The Sandman Universe.”  A recently release stand-alone comic book, The Sandman Universe #1, introduces those titles.  For the first time in probably two decades, I decided to read Sandman #1 again as a kind of preparation for the The Sandman Universe.

Sandman #1 stands the test of time, as far as I am concerned.  Todd Klein's lettering for this first issue still evokes the fonts and lettering on old parchment and in aged books and texts that are sacred, profane, and mysterious.  The production, printing, and color separation of the time only barely manages to capture the vivid weirdness and screwy surrealism of Robbie Busch's coloring.

Sam Keith and Mike Dringenberg are not my favorite “Sandman artists.”  [I lean towards P. Craig Russell.]  I am fan of Keith's, though, and I love the funky graphic sensibilities of the Keith-Dringenberg team.  Their art recalls DC Comics' horror and dark fantasy comic books of the late 1960s and early 1970s, but this team also seems to be creating a new visual language for a new kind of comic book writer.

That new kind of writer of that time was Neil Gaiman.  Over its seven years of publication, Sandman (or The Sandman) evolves into a comic book that embraces fairy tales, folk tales, legends, myth, religion and more.  This first issue is the one that began the change.  “Sleep of the Just” looks like the kind of prose fiction written by Edgar Allen Poe or H.P. Lovecraft or by some author who wrote weird fiction and horror stories between the time of Poe and Lovecraft.  As the story progress through this first issue, however, Gaiman begins the move beyond what influences him and starts to tell stories of fantasy and myth in a new voice, spoken via a medium, the comic book, that is, despite the status quo, always ready for a challenge.

Sandman #1 is one of the most important individual issues of a comic book ever published in the United States.  Hopefully, what it wrought can inspire The Sandman Universe to aspire for excellence, if not greatness.

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


The text is copyright © 2018 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for syndication rights and fees.

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