I love how every chapter – like this epilogue – feels like a self-contained little story that’s received some thought from Gaiman and the artists about the best presentation of that story. In a lovely, quiet epilogue he has a talk with sister Death about it. That question of what kind of character he is going to be is asked at the end of his quest. At first he just wants his things back, because they upped his mojo and really tied the dreamworld together. He’s a mythological creature and deals with angels, demon and other assorted personifications. He is a bit of a dark hero, a creature of the night, a Dark Knight if you will, but he’s not in the business of saving people. The Sandman himself, I can’t help thinking that with his unruly hair, long pale face and dark coats that he is some sort of insert for Neil Gaiman himself. The comic itself has a dreamlike quality. The drawing style reflects this perfectly, with panels full of shadows and understated colours and a kind of delirious touch to the characters and their facial expressions. Humans end up in bad places, tortured, disfigured or wasted away. While Dream’s journey is full of fantastical creatures and locations, it has a dark, nightmarish edge to it. We are treated to an exciting, imaginative and fast-moving story. On this quest he has to traverse Earth, the Dream realm and even Hell itself. They imprison Dream in a glass bowl for decades until he escapes and goes on a quest to retrieve his belongings.

The story begins with a secret society of alchemists and mages somewhere in England who try to summon Death himself but accidentally end up with Dream, the Sandman. This review will be about volumes 1 and 2: volume 1, “ Preludes and Nocturnes” and volume 2 “ The Doll’s House”. The bottom line with The Sandman is that there are 75 named issues, which are collected in 10 named volumes. Moreover, sometimes volumes and collections have the same front cover and sometimes books cover two or more volumes. First off, if you’re new to this world of comics, which I am, what an absolute nightmare it is to navigate the world of issues, volumes, books and all the various editions, omnibuses, deluxe editions and absolute editions and figure out what covers what.

The sandman vol 2