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First New Gaiman Sandman In 7 Years
meltoast writes "On September 17th, DC is releasing the first new installment in the Sandman series in over 7 years. Endless Nights is written entirely by award winning Neil Gaiman and drawn by seven different artists. Pre-order from ... well... where ever you want."
Here's a link to the first 4 pages.
I'd be careful where you pre-order from. If you buy from a bookstore, you won't be getting your copy on September 17th - you'll be waiting another week or two. The book is being distributed via comic book distribution, and so it will hit comic shops first, since that is what Diamond distributes to. From Diamond's initial distribution, it will make it to book warehouses and to bookstores, but if you absolutely want it on September 17th, buy from your comic shop. You might have better luck with something like Amazon, but people are still expecting the book to hit comic shops first (Neil Gaiman's blog had something on this earlier today, but it's late, and I don't feel like linkdiving)
They need the money more than Borders or Amazon do anyway.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
The last Gaiman Sandman story was _The Dream Hunters_ with Yoshitaka Amano. I know this, because I bought the book for my wife. That was October of 1999 (from the copyright of the book), which was only about 4 years ago.
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He's not just doing Sandman: look for the new series "1602" from Marvel out now. Supposedly a "Victorian cyberpunk" series featuring the Marvel Universe characters. Preview here.
For those that just can't wait, the $2.99 preview came out today. It has the sandman story. The hardcover had this story plaus stories of the other endless. I went ahead and bought the preview even though I know I'll end up buying the hardcover eventually.
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Sandman is a graphic novel about morpheus the god of sleep ( a very modernised and un-greek god ). Neil Gaiman's books and Novels generally deal with very dark themes - think of him as Terry Pratchett sans the humour :)
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Sandman is a 75 issue comic series, which ran from late 1988 to 1996, published by DC. Gaiman is in a lot of ways a protege of Moore, and some would argue (Myself included) that he more than surpassed his mentor.
To quote from the introduction to one volume, "there are seven beings that aren't gods, who existed before humanity dreamed of gods and will exist after the last god is dead. They are called The Endless. They are embodiments of (in order of age) Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair, and Delirium."
The Endless are personifications fo the ideas they are named after. Sandman begins in 1989, when Dream escapes from a prison he has been in since 1916, when a magician captured him.
The series can be bought in 10 graphic novels very easily on Amazon.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
/blink
Ummm... yeah, considering that his last two novels hit the NYT Bestseller list, he's actually got very little to gain from going back to comics, where he'll certainly make less money than his novels make.
To say nothing of the fact that there's no evidence he ever slept with Tori Amos - he's been married for years - he has kids in college.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
Sandman is the best comic series ever. By far. Gaiman created his own mythology (that's IMHO up there with the Greco-Roman one - well not like he didn't pull from it), and wrote some fucking amazing stories around it. Go to your local library right now and check out the whole series - many have them in graphic novel form.
I stopped reading comics when Sandman ended -- nothing could come close to matching it for me. Then I started up again when I picked up a copy of From Hell, maybe the best $35 you could spend on a single GN. Also good is Road to Perdition, but who really does it for me is Brian Michael Bendis. He's a writer on par with Gaiman, except he's more into precedural crime-type stuff. His GNs Jinx and Goldfish are kick-ass, and also Fire and Torso. He also does Powers, which is great fun to read, Alias, and does or has done Daredevil. Check out his stuff at www.jinxworld.com.
Oh and for a grippingly entertaining and laugh-out-loud funny story about trying to get a screenplay made into a movie, check out Fortune and Glory, also by Bendis.
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Gaiman didn't influence Miller - Miller predates Gaiman. Gaiman's earliest comics publication, Violent Cases, came out a year after Dark Knight Returns.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
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It's an interesting foray into the supernatural, taking lots of cues from mythologies around the world, and creates its own mythological panorama and pantheon of demigods and strange creatures.
The stories mostly focus on Dream, one of the seven Endless whose domains are the life, death, sleep, trials and emotions of mankind. Dream is the one who feels his responsibilities most deeply, and much of the series revolves around his interaction with mankind, and with his somewhat dysfunctional siblings.
It has spawned off a few series from parts of the mythos it has constructed. There's the Books of Magic, the Books of Faerie, and one of my favorites, Lucifer.
Most of the modern reprints (I'm gathering they're reprints) have some interesting introductions at the beginning by all sorts of famous (in the comic/SF/fantasy arena) folks.
You likely don't have to order them online - even most "regular" bookstores are starting to set up small graphic novels areas, and I haven't seen one of these yet without a Sandman or ten, and used bookstores often have a few.
They're a much different style from the superhero comics, however. It's a lot of myth, mystery and drama, but not much in the way of action. Definitely find out if it's to your tastes before ordering any.
Other comics, like The Invisibles are very interesting, with lots of action, but absolute noodle-benders, and will have you wondering what on earth (or planet of your choice, for that matter) they were smoking.
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This should be modded-up. It's bad when horribly false information makes the main page, and the correction doesn't.
Neil Gaimain is an old friend of Tori Amos, and they refer to eachother sometimes in their work. He also talks about her, occasionally, in his blog. However, there's no reason to think they have ever slept together, and they certainly aren't now, living thousands of miles apart and leading separate lives.
Also, Neil Gaiman is a hugely successful author. When he stopped doing comics, he started doing other things, and those other things are winning all the major awards and hitting #1 on most best seller lists. He's one of the most successful authors writing today, and as such is currently much more successful in his field than the incomparable Tori has ever been in hers.
ummm, i think you need to look up the definition of literature again...i don't think picture books with some words in balloons quite qualifies as literature.
Are you claiming it's a different form of storytelling, or are you claiming it's in some way inferior?
Words + images:
- Stage plays
- Film/television
- "Comic books"/Ilustrated novels
Seems to me that all have the potential to be great, that all have occasionally realized it.
But of the three, only the last (plus perhaps the scripts of the other two) might also qualify as "literature" by being rendered entirely in a static printed medium.
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