Comic Art

The power of comics as a medium is unique, it the power of something combining some of the greatest advantages and disadvantages of other great art forms like literature and drawing. Every now and then comes a work of genius, an artistic creation so beautiful and poetic it’s hard to realize it’s just a comic, because it’s not. It’s a little bit of everything put together in a mix of something even superior. As far as I’m concerned the best example of this is Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, something so extraordinary and breathtaking people still read it manically.

This is the story of Dream, not the god of dreaming or the spirit of the stories but Morpheus, the manifestation of dreaming itself. He is one of the seven Endless, created long before humanity and destined to end when the last living creature will die, all of them personifications of something different and necessary. They are Destiny, Death, Delirium (who once was Delight), Despair, Desire, Destruction (long ago self-banished) and Dream, the mysterious tall, thin figure that creates the worlds we visit when our subconscious gains the upper hand. Reading every issue of this magnificent tale you will follow him in the present and past as “The king of dreams learns one must change or die and then makes his decision”.

I’ve spent half my life over pages and this might be my favourite work in literature, comics and drawing altogether, and before you hurry to object that it is literature you should know that it is the only comic book to ever have won the World Fantasy Award for its issue #19 (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), the next day the rules were changed so that it would never happened again. This is really not just a comic book, it’s the creating of a new world that affected story tellers, music artists, WWF wrestlers (it’s true, there’s a guy that fights wearing Sandman T-Shirts), people of all ages, you read it and it changes you in every page. To conclude I am not able to describe the phenomenon called The Sandman, get your asses of your chairs and go buy the issues (hard), the trade paperback albums (easy) or the Ultimate Sandman edition (expensive), don’t just sit here, go!