The Sandman (1989 series) #1

[alicemacher]

"Neil Gaiman is a writer who loves to overturn expectations, and there are ample examples of this in [the first issue]. In a standard epic quest, the hero starts out in ordinary surroundings, and then experiences some kind of shock that sends him into a shadow realm where he does battle with primal forces. In the Sandman's case, however, his ordinary surroundings are the shadow realm, because he's the personification of myths and dreams. Therefore, the shock he experiences is being dragged from his realm of mystery and nightmare to some penny-ante magician's basement. And instead of doing battle with epic forces, he remains a still and silent prisoner in that basement for seventy-two years.

"Nonetheless, this quiet experience has a profound effect on the Sandman. The extent to which it changes him isn't apparent until later in the series... and isn't something he even realizes himself. But we can deduce that a metamorphosis is occurring from visual cues, such as the Sandman looking like a fetus after he's captured; his being kept naked in a womblike glass bowl: and his feigning death to get his cage opened: after which he springs to life."
--Hy Bender, The Sandman Companion

Warning for suicide and gore.


From The Sandman vol. 2 #1 (Jan. 1989). 13 pages of 40.

In England, 1916, Royal Museum curator John Hathaway, having just learned of his son's death in combat, agrees covertly to give the occultist Roderick Burgess (head of the Order of Ancient Mysteries) a grimoire containing instructions for a ritual to capture and bind Death, so that "no one need ever die again."








Burgess assures his prisoner that the circle traps his spiritual aspect and the glass cage his physical one, and offers unspecified preconditions for his release. Around the world, various people fall prey to "sleepy sickness," in which they spend nearly all their days and nights asleep.









In 1930, the Order's second-in-command Ruthven Sykes disappears with Burgess's mistress Ethel Cripps (whose photo we saw Sykes admiring four years earlier in the previous scan). They take with them the pouch, helmet and ruby looted from Dream upon his capture. Fearing retribution, Sykes trades the helmet to a demon for a protective amulet.










The decades pass by. Although Alex Burgess eventually retires as head of the Order and passes the reins to his assistant and lover Paul McGuire, he continues to obsess over his prisoner and to regularly cajole and threaten Dream, to no avail. Finally, in 1988, McGuire unknowingly erases part of the magic circle as he wheels Alex away from it. With the spell broken, one of the guards on duty falls asleep. The Sandman grabs some sand from his dream, and wakes him with a loud THUD.









The severely weakened Sandman returns to the Dreaming, supplying himself with food and clothing. Meanwhile, the various sufferers from sleepy sickness throughout the globe wake up properly for the first time in decades. Dream confronts the dreaming Alex, who appears as the younger man he once was.

Comments

[tcampbell1000]

The part of this that always sticks out to me is how Gaiman so beautifully misdirects us about the nature of Death, when his vision for that character was far less traditional than even Terry Pratchett's or Jim Starlin's. At no point is it even mentioned that Death is female. The panel-and-a-half where Dream is like "YOU FOOLS WILL NEVER KNOW HOW LUCKY YOU WERE" would make me think that Death was some nine-foot-tall hooded skeleton who would have instantly cut Burgess, his son, and all his minions into ribbons before giving them the gift of Eternal Dying.

(I mean, the surprise was spoiled for me because I was not ready for horror when the first issues of the series came out and my first exposure to it was The High Cost of Living, but it's still a great misdirect.)

Much later in the series, we will get a bit more of an idea of what Dream meant, though the clues to that are in the first issue if you look carefully. It's not that Death herself is such a fearsome presence, far from it... it's that what she embodies is a necessary part of the world and things go sideways really quick if her function is disrupted.

This happens as a result of Dream's imprisonment too, though the effects are a lot more subtle... and it's worth asking why, even if that does challenge the premise a bit. Why didn't dreams or even the whole Dreaming simply wink out of existence when Dream was imprisoned? (Presumably the resulting fallout would force the Magus to let his captive go within the week, but Gaiman is presumably above abusing his story logic for the sake of the plot.) If some kind of dreams can transpire without Dream's direct involvement, then why is Death everywhere at once and seeing off everyone? Or was there something else wrong with our dreams from 1916-1996? Is there something Gaiman was trying to say about the modern imagination, something we lost around 1916 that he was trying to bring back?

For all Gaiman's ornateness, questions like this don't seem to have easy answers other than "the Endless operate in mysterious ways ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" That's oddly liberating, because it frees us to concentrate on the more literal aspects of the story. And although the first seven issues are a little rough compared to the rest of the series, the historical texture of this story, its scope and ambition beyond its main character, made it clear from the start that Sandman was going to be more than just the next House of Secrets or whatever, as the earliest advertising for the series implied it might be.

[locuatico]

If I were to guess, unlike Death, who does her job herself, Dream has built a... well... a kingdom of Dreams. Servants and agents and the like, all who ensure The Dreaming keeps going.
Cain & Abel, Lucien, The Corinthian, Fiddler's Green. They are all their own entities with wills of their own who serve a function in The Dreaming. (some are not even Dreams, but simply people who just happen to live in The Dreaming, like Nuala, so logically their existence isn't dependant on Dream)
He doesn't need to be constantly present 100% of the time for The Dreaming to exist because he has made it so The Dreaming doesn't just collapse if he is temporarily absent, even if such a long absence DOES leave The Dreaming in complete ruins.

[lego_joker]

I don't remember much about "Brief Lives" (still my least favorite leg of the series), but it did hinge its premise on how at least some of the Endless can willingly abandon their portfolios and not bring the Universe to a grinding halt.

(I'd wonder if Death is the big exception here because what she handles is much more objective - scientific, even - than all her siblings. But maybe that's overthinking it...)

Something else I've never thought about 'til now: wouldn't a magus as amoral as Burgess have some magical doohickey he (thinks he can) hurt Dream with? Did he seriously never try to coerce his precious captive with anything but the most passive threats in thirty-odd years?

[bruinsfan]

Burgess had some inkling of what the Endless are. My assumption is he knew merely capturing one was really pushing his luck as far as magical compulsion goes, and doing anything other than bargaining with the captive might have horrible consequences.