The Sandman: Doll's House (Paperback)

This incarnation of the Sandman is *the* Sandman: Dream of the Endless, the king of the realm of dream and nightmare.

Seeking to capture Death, an order of magicians in Wych Cross, England accidentally snare Death's younger brother, Dream, in "Sleep of the Just". They seal him within an airless glass cage, then attempt to parley: his freedom in exchange for immortality, power, and his promise not to retaliate. But Dream is of the Endless; while time passes no more quickly for him than for mortals, he has *all* of it at his disposal - and a temper like an angry god rising from the bottom of the sea. The artwork has weaknesses, particularly in depicting Dream himself, but Gaiman's writing is magnificent, opening deeper mysteries in passing. For the elements of his spell, how did the magus steal a song from dirt, or a feather from an angel's wing? How did Dream come to be in such a weakened condition that a petty spell could snare him?

Gaiman's excellence as a writer shines through, as he creates depth with layer after layer of consequences to actions, planting the seeds of future stories as he does so.

The damage done to the mortal realm is unfolded gradually, by showing several people who had unusual qualities as dreamers, and what happened to them in the years after Dream's capture in June 1916: a real-life "sleeping sickness" epidemic; a thirteen-year-old who lied about his age to enlist, and now in Verdun cannot sleep; Unity Kinkaid, who falls into near-endless sleep. Gaiman even fits the first Sandman (Wesley Dodds the crimefighter) into the mosaic, as the universe, knowing that *someone* is missing, attempts to replace him. We also see the changes in the magicians' order over the decades, as the magus' son and heir carries on.

Naturally, damage was also done to Dream's own realm, which we see both in this volume and the next. The next few PRELUDES AND NOCTURNES deal with Dream's return to the Dreaming: taking stock of which dreams have escaped into the mortal realm (later tracked down in THE DOLL'S HOUSE), then going after the tools stolen from him by the magicians, lost decades before when the magus' mistress Ethel Dee ran away with 200000 pounds, several powerful artifacts, and the second-in-command.

Dream inventories his realm in "Imperfect Hosts"; many of the dreams correspond to other Marvel comics, such as the brothers Cain and Abel, who are also an interpretation of the figures of legend. (In the mortal realm, Ethel Dee seeks out her son in none other than the Arkham Asylum.) The artwork on Dream is still finding its way. The one-who-is-three - maiden/mother/crone - enters the storyline here, but her/their graphic depiction is *AWFUL* (*all* other issues of Sandman in which they appear have better treatment), although their shuffling positions between frames is established here. (That would have been Gaiman's script, though, not the artist.) They give Dream enigmatic clues to the whereabouts of the pouch of sand (last purchased by John Constantine); the helm (traded by the renegade magician to a demon decades ago); and the ruby (passed by Ethel Dee to her son, long since captured by the League of Justice).

Still debilitated from his long imprisonment, and wanting more information about the more-than-human Justice League before confronting them, Dream begins by seeking out John Constantine, in "Dream a Little Dream of Me". Even the pouch of sand, the least powerful of Dream's tools, has destroyed more than one mortal life. Constantine's viewpoint carries an undercurrent of music, all songs with dream imagery, beginning days before Dream crosses his path. We also meet Mad Hettie for the first time, a street person who knows far more than most about *real* life, and who really *is* 247. Dream's graphic depiction begins improving a little here as Gaiman experiments a little, with Constantine rather than Dream narrating.

In "A Hope in Hell", Dream confronts the Morningstar, in our first encounter with Gaiman's take on Lucifer. The distortions in mythology - Lucifer's "co-rulers" - weren't Gaiman's error, but were introduced for consistency with another comic that was to be set here. Gaiman managed to square this with Lucifer's character development later on. Here we first encounter Nada, Dream's unforgiven ex-lover, imprisoned for 10,000 years - something we understand better after "Tales in the Sand" in THE DOLL'S HOUSE. Hope is the major theme running through this issue: Dream's hopes for the meeting, Nada's hopes of freedom.

The quest for the ruby, the tool into which Dream placed the greater part of his power long ago, runs over 3 chapters, beginning in "Passengers". Dream only deals with two members of the Justice League, 'Scott Free' and the last Martian; the latter's perception of Dream underscores his standing outside humanity as an entity known to all cultures. Nevertheless, Ethel Dee's son retrieves the ruby before Dream does.

"24 Hours" is both horror story and character study; the ruby's power not only permits Dee to torment the diner's customers, but to force them to reveal their deepest secrets. Dream's battle for the ruby forms the chapter "Sound and Fury". While ordinarily no mortal could stand against Dream, the ruby allows Dee to turn Dream's own power against him.

"Sound of Her Wings" was first advertised as "A Death in the Family", as we finally encounter the one of the Endless the magi *really* wanted to trap: Dream's elder sibling, Death, as he walks beside her through a day of *her* work.