The Sandman #8-12
Originally released in 1989
Written by Neil Gaiman
Art by Mike Dringenberg (#8-11), Chris Bachalo (#12)
With Dream's quest (and revenge) complete, he's unsure about what to do now, which leads to a talk with his sister. Compared to the more serious/sombre Dream, his sister is more light-hearted, which is even reflected in her speech bubbles compared to his.
Dream and his siblings are known as the Endless, and they're called Endless for good reason. They represent concepts - dreams, desire, delirium, and other things that presumably start with the letter "d" - that are facts of life. As long as people can dream, for example, then Dream/Morpheus will continue to exist.
It's soon revealed that Dream's sister is Death, making her above conversation with a young man take on a rather ominous tone. Given the nature of the DC universe, she must be very busy, though she doesn't seem to let it impact her mood.
As she travels to collect those who have died, with Dream in tow, Dream is filled with a sense of purpose again. The glimpse we see of Death's duties is an unsettling reminder of how fragile people can be - whether someone's young or old doesn't make a difference to her, and when their time is up, it's up.
Issue 9 takes on more of a mythological tone as we are told a story about a queen who saw Morpheus and fell in love with him, wanting him to be her king no matter how much people warn her against it. It also includes myth tropes like explaining how certain things in the world came to be.
In a creepy bit of foreshadowing, I'm pretty sure I actually saw the queen in question earlier in the series - in the depths of Hell, asking Morpheus if he still loves her. I wasn't sure if this is meant to be Hell tormenting Morpheus or if her soul actually wound up there, though the issue later has Morpheus tell her that if she rejects him, he'll send her to the worst possible torment, and yet she rejects him anyway after seeing how the two of them spending one night together directly led to her city being destroyed by the sun.
It turns out that this was part of a plot by Desire and another Endless, seemingly for their own amusement. The good and bad aspects of Desire (the character and the concept) are emphasized, particularly the bad, with Desire coming across as an embodiment of greed and lust.
The story also introduces Rose Walker, a woman who's described as being a "dream vortex". She sees Morpheus in her dreams as he's told about some missing entities from his realm, including one known as "the Corinthian". These pages are sideways, making them tough to read on mobile devices.
A trio of women (I'm not sure if they're the Fates from Greek mythology, Hecate the goddess of witchcraft, or something else) warn Rose to beware the Corinthian, while Dream is keeping an eye on her. The Corinthian seems to be a sadistic serial killer from the glimpse of him at the end of issue 10.
Rose is trying to find her younger brother Jed, who has been missing since he was five years old and is held captive in a dark basement somewhere. His only escape is through dreams, and even then, his dreams are invaded by some of Dream's rebellious former subjects.
I had been expecting that he was being held captive by the Corinthian, but the truth is more complicated. (and it's a good thing that he wasn't, given the state of the Corinthian's victims) Jed is living with his aunt and uncle, who are openly abusive and only keep him there to collect welfare money. His dreams are being manipulated by Brute and Glob, two of Morpheus's former subjects (the ones in the hot air balloon above), along with Hector Hall, the son of the Golden Age versions of Hawkman and Hawkgirl who's being tricked by the pair into thinking that Dream is some kind of nightmare monster that needs to be defeated.
Hector's wife Lyta is questioning their current living circumstances, such as how she can remain six months' pregnant for several years. As Dream worms his way through the defenses surrounding Jed's mind, Rose has to stop for the night at a motel that's hosting a "cereal convention", though one look at the guest list makes it clear that it's a flimsy cover story for a serial (killer) convention.
Once Dream's gotten through the defenses, he deals with the problem of Brute and Glob almost effortlessly. Hector is apparently long dead, so Dream sends him to his place in the afterlife, snapping Lyta out of the almost trance-like state that she's been in when she sees Dream appear to kill Hector and says that he will take Lyta's unborn child some day. Meanwhile, freed from his aunt and uncle, Jed gets into a car and asks to be taken anywhere else, not knowing that the Corinithian is the one behind the wheel.
This set of Sandman issues was haunting, with Morpheus and his family feeling more alien at times than the extraterrestrials (whether they're good or evil) in DC's universe. It's a darker side of the DC universe than what I'm used to, and one that I haven't really dug into, likely due to my lack of experience with the Vertigo imprint. I'm not sure if I'll come back to Sandman before the end of the blog (there are a lot of DC comics that I want to cover before the end of the year; I found out that Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man only lasted twenty-six issues, so I'm hoping to read the last sixteen of them or at least get to the point where things get really surreal), but even if I don't, I'll still continue reading the series as it seems to be highly praised.
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