The Sandman, Volume One: Preludes & Nocturnes

*Book source ~ Library

Title ~ Preludes & Nocturnes

Series ~ The Sandman, Volume One

Author ~ Neil Gaiman

Illustrator ~ Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Malcolm Jones III

Publisher ~ Vertigo

Published ~ 1 December 1998

Genre ~ Graphic Novel | Fantasy | Horror

Pages ~ 239

My Rating ~ 4 bites

From Goodreads:

In 1916, Dream is captured and encased in a glass globe in a failed attempt by a fictional Edwardian magician (very much in the vein of Aleister Crowley) named Roderick Burgess to bind Death and attain immortality. Dream bides his time for decades until Burgess dies. Afterwards, his son Alexander becomes Dream's new captor. Finally, in 1988, Alex's guards grow careless and the guards watching him fall asleep in his presence, allowing Dream to use the sand from their dream to his benefit. When the guards awake and break the seal Dream was in, he is then able to escape. Dream punishes Alex by cursing him to experience an unending series of nightmares.

The rest of the story concerns Dream's quest to recover his totems of power, which were dispersed following his capture: a pouch of sand, a helm and a ruby. The pouch is being kept by a former girlfriend of John Constantine's. Once that is recovered, Dream travels to hell to regain the helm from a demon, where he incurs the wrath of Lucifer (an enmity that will have major repercussions later in the series). The ruby is in the possession of John Dee, a.k.a. Doctor Destiny, a supervillain from the Justice League of America series. He has warped and corrupted the ruby, rendering Dream unable to use it, and with it he nearly tears apart the Dreaming. However, thinking that it will kill Dream, Dee shatters the ruby, inadvertently releasing the power that Dream had stored in the ruby and restoring Dream to his full power. The collection ends with "The Sound of Her Wings", an epilogue to the first story-arc. This issue introduces a character who has become one of the series' most popular and prominent personalities: Dream's older sister Death. She is depicted as an attractive, down-to-earth young goth girl, very unlike the traditional personification of death, and spends the issue talking Dream out of his brief post-quest depression.

This first volume contains eight stories revolving around Dream. Dream is also called Lord of Dream and Nightmare, Prince of Stories or Morpheus. I’m sure he’ll eventually be called Sandman, but not that I remember in this volume. Anyway, I went into this expecting Morpheus to be a bad guy, but he doesn’t seem to be. He’s one of the Endless, so I’m assuming he can’t be killed. Other than that I really have very little idea of what the hell is going on here. Basically, he was imprisoned, he escaped, he tracked down the tools of his trade and then hung out with his sister, Death. Not having read the comic books growing up, I’m not all that familiar with DC characters. However, this seems to be an interesting world. I look forward to more stories about Dream, who’s kinda cool looking, by the way. The artwork is really interesting and enjoyable.

In this volume:

1.       The Sleep of the Just ~ imprisonment and escape

2.      Imperfect Hosts ~ heading home

3.      Dream a Little Dream of Me ~ finding the pouch

4.      A Hope in Hell ~ retrieving the helm

5.      Passengers ~ the ruby is different

6.      24 Hours ~ waiting for Dream

7.      Sound and Fury ~ battle for the ruby

8.     The Sound of Her Wings ~ Dream and Death hanging out