I’ve been re-reading Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, partly for a forthcoming essay on the series’ politics, partly out of nostalgia. I began reading
the comic in college, around issue #13, and my memories of the story arcs
intertwine with those of my undergrad and early grad school years. Gaiman’s
cast of deities, superheroes, transcendent Endless, and other arcana, all with
their own schemes and flaws, provided a welcome diversion from the mundane
forces (parents, professors, a bad economy) that controlled and deformed my own
small world.
Reading the original comics reminded me, too, of a time when
Sandman wasn’t a wildly popular graphic novel series with a global following,
but a comic book, marketed to a relatively small and predominantly young-male
audience. Here are two images from issue 27 ("Season of Mists" Part 6), one
sublime and one ridiculous, that make this point.
The first image was a left-hand page showing a turning point
in the story and the larger mythos. Lucifer has abdicated and given Morpheus
the key to Hell, whose demons and damned souls he had peremptorily expelled. Now the Supreme Being has decided that Hell must reopen
under the control of his loyal Angels. The Kelley Jones paintings on this page
capture the anguish of Angel Remiel as he begins to realize the fate in store
for him.
The second image, which appeared on the facing page, advertises the kind of movie Gaiman’s readers presumably liked and
planned to watch: a schlock action picture with an ex-football player, a
reactionary tough-on-crime message, a Nazi biker gang (to pre-empt charges of
racism, I assume), and a heaping helping of violence. I confess I had to look
up Brian Bosworth, whose acting career never took off, and I don’t remember
seeing Stone Cold in theaters. In fact, I don’t recall seeing it mentioned
anywhere outside of Wikipedia. (Though it apparently co-starred Lance
Henriksen, who always deserved better roles than he got.)
The Sandman became one of the more influential fringe-cultural
artifacts of the 1990s, influencing comics, goth culture, even music videos.
The sensibilities of its publishers, for most of the series’ run, remained
anchored in the 1980s*, when comic books were for adolescent boys and their
readers ostensibly liked football, violent movies, and video games. Cultural
change always takes more time than we think.
(Photos above by the author, and, yes, they are deliberately low-res and grainy.)
* Seriously, just look at that hair.
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