This was an interesting volume. It was four stand-alone stories all revolving around different periods of Sandman's life. William Shakespeare made a short appearance in a previous volume and we get the pay-off to that here in a wonderfully bizarre explanation that 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' was commissioned by Sandman to pay tribute to creatures he knows from another dimension. I don't want to ruin the fun of it, but there's some lovely meta-things going on. One of the other stories is, essentially, a long winded explanation of what happens while cat's dream. It's brilliant, and harsh, and sad, and wonderful. The first and last stories in this volume were just kind of 'meh'. The first, "Calliope", felt a little predictable.
Now, to be fair, they're well written - they look fantastic. But now the bar for Sandman has raised, and they just don't meet it as well as some of the other books do.
Gaiman is a fantastic writer because he's a great thinker. He's excited by ideas. They influence him. I imagine he'd be a great guy to have a few pints with. A good friend of mine has given me a novel of his (geez... how pathetically long has it been since I've read one of those?!), so I look forward to that, as well as the rest of this series. I imagine I'll probably pick up my own copy of it at some point.
In the back of this there is a Gaiman script, which I look forward to studying. The script format of comics baffles me. There doesn't seem to be a standard format. If anyone knows of one, please advise. I'm anal like that.
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