What happens when you have an oh so rare confluence of supreme talents (each of whom are among the best in their respective fields) who team up to produce a graphical series ? You get a once-in-a-generation, cutting edge, high-water-mark masterpiece like this one.
Speaking as a former hardcore collector with over 5,000+ issues at home, this series is easily one of the very best graphic novels ever produced, period. No questions asked.
This fabulous comic series has been conveniently re-published by Vertigo as an 11-part Graphic Novel:
1: Preludes & Nocturnes
2: The Doll's House
3: Dream Country
4: Season of Mists
5: A Game of You
6: Fables & Reflections
7: Brief Lives
8: World's End
9: The Kindly Ones
10: The Wake
11: Endless Nights
What's it about ?
Basically it's a long series of 11 sweepingly surreal short stories, told a GN format, about "The Endless" ... a quasi-divine extended dysfunctional family of metaphorical beings who struggle with their overall role in the greater scheme of things (i.e., reality), with each other, and with the mortals whose lives they intersect. Their names are Dream, Destiny, Death, Desire, Despair, Delight/Delirium and Destruction.
I'll close with an eloquent excerpt from the prelude of Book 4, by Harlan Ellison (himself the most acclaimed and award winning short story writer currently living):
Highest recommendation marks from moi. A must read for anyone who enjoys high brow surreal fantasy.Harlan Ellison gushed:
"Possibly the only dismaying aspect of excellence is that it makes living in a world of mediocrity an ongoing prospect of living hell ... how dreary and burdensome and filled with anomie are the remainder of one's waking hours trapped in the shackled lock-step of the merely ordinary, the barely acceptable, the just ok and not a stroke better ...
In any field of endeavor, an occasional talent will manifest itself and, through its bare existence, we perceive how mundane has been the effort [prior to that point] in that field or genre ... and recognize how much higher thereafter is the high water mark.
The point being: {Edit: the peerless excellence of} Neil Gaiman's work on The Sandman ...
As of this writing, I've read parts 1-4 and 7, and all the rest are on order and will land in my eagerly grasping hands in about 4-7 days.
Neil's Website: http://www.neilgaiman.com/index.asp
Buy The Sandman: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/fe ... 29-7192612
[Mod: common series review linked to each component book in series.]