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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."
I would also love to see a cross over story arc of Spider-Man and Batman with John Romita Jr. and Jim Lee alternating between titles (Jim Lee doing Spider-Man, and Romita Jr. doing Batman). You wouldn't have to search for writers, because every stellar comic writer of recent times would be fighting tooth and nail to pen this.
Talk about a fanboy's disgustingly drenched wet dream!!
OK, so I am a big nerd, so sue me.
WTF is bfast.com? I've seen them a lot in my web server logs lately getting 404's and such. Why don't they have a homepage? How about a Paypal link so I can send you a quarter instead of funneling us through this Bfast?
But Sandman is where it all went bad. And then the whole thing with his anti-Napster stance came along and blew his credibility out of the water.
He really should have stopped at Justice, which along with Puppets were the zenith of his career.
Here's a link to the first 4 pages.
Don't forget he's also written that for Marvel recently
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
Show your hate for SCO
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.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
sandman, as far as i can gather (is a comic fanboy) is some guys character that he changed at will. i believe the sandman has gone thruogh like four drastic concept changes. he was orignalyl a crime fighter w/ a gas mask. the latest rencarnation (the hell like charecter) is well... im not sure... ive only read one story about the original sandman. i am problay wrong. feel free to correct any of my errors,\.
take what i say with a grain of salt, a dash of pepper, a pinch of oregano, and an itty bitty little drip of faygo
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.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Frank Miller is the man!
The Dark Knight returns! Ronin! Electra and Bullseye!
This is like Led Zeppelin reforming for a concert! No wait, its better than a rock bank reunion, as it's got guest artists that are superstars to! People have mentioned other great comics, Dark Knight, and Watchmen, but Sandman is a collection of modern fables and urban myths, woven into reality... plus a writer only gets better with age, like a fine wine developing over the years, the prose is laced with new passages of wisdom, new nuances of meaning... like a dream of a rock band reforming, with Led Zep jamming with Louie Armstrong... September 17th? excellent!
Do you need a website upgrade?
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 :)
Linkedin http://in.linkedin.com/in/robinsaikatchatterjee
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
Proprietary format comics are evil. PROVIDE THE SOURCE!!!
this isn't a troll. this is just a lame pun.
"when life gets complicated, I like to take a nap in a tree and wait for dinner" - Hobbes.
Assuming you're not a troll, Sandman was/is a comic written by Neil Gaiman about Morpheus, the ruler of the realm of dreams. It borrowed a lot from folklore and mythology, ran for 75 issues and was the flagship for DC comics' Vertigo line. Critically acclaimed, it won a World Fantasy Award for short story before the powers-that-be banned comics from eligibility. For more info: neilgaiman.com
/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.
c-hack.com |
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
Because JLA/Avengers is of interest only to comic geeks, whereas Gaiman is a NYT bestselling author who's come back to comics, and this release stands a serious chance of being a bestseller - indeed, if sales in comic shops counted as well as sales in traditional bookstores, it would probably be a sure shot.
Not to knock JLA/Avengers. I'm excited about it. But its sales will not surpass Endless Nights.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
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Hmmm... Pie...
oh... see, i didnt know he actully wrote books... im a comic geek.. books are something i jsut sorta collect cause they look neat .. honest....
take what i say with a grain of salt, a dash of pepper, a pinch of oregano, and an itty bitty little drip of faygo
Wouldn't that be a gaipun? I wouldn't have though troll either but hey it's /. ;-)
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
It's basically a commission based affiliate agency for site owners. Basically you place a link (text, banner, etc.) and you get payed a commission for every visitor you send through your link that completes a predetermined action (sign up to something for free or by a book, cd, video, etc.).
Hmmm... Pie...
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.
Binary geeks can count to 1,023 on their fingers
does anyone have a summary of the info on the page etc.? What's the story about etc.?
you need to be stopped. :D
"when life gets complicated, I like to take a nap in a tree and wait for dinner" - Hobbes.
I suspect this is the first time DC's gotten a nice, hard Slashdotting. I wonder if they'll have a comment on that sometime in the future... (Letters page perhaps?)
Did anybody manage to get a hold of the actual text?
--
Yeah, I still RTFA. I'm new here. Sorry.
The thing that impressed me most about Neil when I interviewed home for Nova Express back in 1999 (he had just started working on American Gods), was how generous he was with his time and how his tremendous success had left him largely untouched. Despite his enormous popularity, he was quite generous about signing things for a never ending stream of people, and seemed genuinely interested in talking to every one among the legions of his fans at Armadillocon. Certainly there are others who have let far less success go to their head.
There are lots of cool people among my fellow SF scribblers, but Neil has remained one of the coolest, and not to mention perhaps the most level-headed. And then there's his considerable talent...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
If I had purchased new copies of all of the books for my Economics class this semester, the total would have been well over $200.
Can't think of any SCO puns. ....
Hell!
Can you say a beowulf cluster of
Desi Noise, Live!
It was a joke. 'Enter Sandman' is a famous Metallica song off 'the black album', Metallica, known by many as the album where Metallica turned mainstream. (Don't flame me, please, I love the album!) ...And Justice For All and Master of Puppets are earlier Metallica albums.
Thank you.
A real writer.. not a journalist or a pulp fiction pimp.. but a real storyteller. I like most (but not all) of his works, but the Sandman series is the only american comic book series I seriously invested in. Its his masterpiece. Even my comic-phobe girlfriend couldn't put them down.
His novels are excellent as well, but the visual nature of his storytelling lends itself really well to the comic medium.
This is the best news I've heard all day! But a catch 22.. looks like slashdot just melted dccomics.com... doh!
Deography Photoblog
WTF is Slashdot posting articles with damn spyware links in them? service.bfast.com is a spyware/tracking service. The submittor could have just as easily submitted the URL to the B&N website.
It *is* up to the Slashdot editors to edit articles. Posting an article with a spyware link in it is slouching on the job!
At this point, it seems like the whole Morpheus story was so well settled that even prequals do the ending somewhat of a disservice. Even The Tempest, the last Wake story, seemed like a bit of a shame; the story should have ended with Master Li's thoughts at the end of Exiles (echoing the Roman ghost riders: Only the Phoenix arises and does not descend. And everything changes. And nothing is truly lost.)
Anyhow, I don't mean to sound as stupidly fanboy as I do, and I don't mean that I don't welcome the chance to dive into some more Sandman, but I suppose I do sort of long for authors to know when they've reached the end of their time with their characters, when they've reached the best end they're going to find...
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I tried posting ten puns to slashdot to try to get them modded up, but unfortunatelly no pun intendid
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
I quit buying comics when they jacked the price up to $2.25 for a comic. The Sandman was the very last series I purchased. If DC Comics, or whoever else, is going to charge me 4 bucks, then I'll keep my money in my wallet. The same reason I don't pay $22 for a CD is the same reason I don't pay $4 for a comic. Rip-off industries, GO HOME!
Where the hell did that come from? That's not true at all.
Find and support your local shop with the Comic Shop Locator Service
hijinx comics
to mail me, first remove the evil spam.
Written by Neil Gaiman drawn by Andy Kubert.
Sets the marvel universe in the year 1602.
If you enjoy Gaiman's work its worth checking out.
Here are a couple of pages
This is the "golden age" Sandman, a member of the JLA. They are not related, except by a passing ret-con in Gaimans Sandman issue #1. I believe his series was recently revived as Sandman Mystery Theater.
The Sandman referred to here ( as I'm sure other people will point out ) is one of several anthropomorphic personifications, in this case Dream. Gaimans comic tells a long and quite cool story regarding Dream and his siblings, Desire, Death, Destruction, Despair, Delirium ( nee Delight ) and Desire.
I highly recommend this series in its anthologised graphic novel format ( The Sandman Library ). It is one of the few comics I read religiously apart from Lone Wolf and Cub.
-- YLFI
P.S. Death got her own spinoffs as well. These are very cool also.
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
(Carefully Avoiding Spoilers)
.. .. still, this IS slashdot :P
The four preview pages (linked below) start this story before the fall of a certain Endless. With luck, it'll help provide the missing gaps to the mythos as I've *always* wanted to use the Endless as the core of a pen and paper RPG.
I'd go into depth with my interpretation of what and how Destruction and Delirium became what they are now (part of my initial game) but that's just too geeky
Robert Anton Wilson
Here's a cool new comic...
Here's a link to buy it.
I'd love to have a Slashdot effect on My bank account, but I don't post the stories.
www.the-master-list.com
is a good resource for finding your local comic shop.
That first "Desire" should read "Destiny".
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
Of course, there are so many poignant comic books, but one of my favorite from the 1985-1990 period was Sandman Annual #1. It came out during the first gulf war.
The story was about a sultan of Baghdad around 1000 AD, when Baghdad was the absolute pinnacle of civilization, knew the most mathemtatics, and was the most advanced culture in the world. But he saw in the deserts the ruins of Sumeria and Egypt and knew that all great civilizations fail. So he summons Sandman by threatening to break open a glass ball imprisoning 9,999 demons, djinn, and efreeti that Abraham captured -- unless Sandman preserves Baghdad unchanged forever. Sandman agrees, but with the provision that it'll only live on forever in the Dreamworld. The Sultan agrees, and wakes up in the dirty, broken, real-world city that Baghdad has become.
On the last page, you find out it was all just a story an old man was telling a little boy to keep his spirits up while the Americans are bombing Baghdad during the war, and you see what a wreck the story is, &c. &c. &c. Super-cool story. (BTW, I supported the war and still do, but I still appreciate a good story).
That and the Animal Man comic where Wile. E. Coyote becomes Jesus Christ and takes on the suffering of the whole cartoon world so that the cartoon animals will stop blowing each other up are two of the many that stand out from that period.
Around 1990 is when I stopped following comics though.
Even better than Lone Wolf and Cub is Osamu Tezuka's "Adolf." All of Tezuka's stuff is worth looking at - a lot of it looks really youngish at first, but then turns out to be anything but.
Also recommended from the deep-end of the pool: American Splendor (check out the new movie that just came out.)
As someone pointed out, The Dream Hunters was released a bit more recently, and while it wasn't by Gaiman himself, Jill Thompson's shojo-style Endless GN (At Death's Door) came out just a month or two ago and is heartily recommended for anyone who enjoyed the original series -- it may not be as deep as much of Gaiman's work, but it's every bit as entertaining and well-written. Bill Willingham has also done various small one-shots, mostly with Merv Pumpkinhead, and of course several other writers have dipped onto the well too (Mike Carey, etc). The Endless book looks fantastic, but I still want to see Gaiman do something with Donna Barr... (Oh, and the man also gave what may be one of the finest award speeches I've ever heard, last year at Worldcon. "Fuck. I just won a Hugo...")
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.
Milo Manara illustrating "Desire"?
Buy stocks in Kleenex!
Seriously, Gaiman rocks. I'm reading American Gods right now and it's very consuming. Sandman, MiracleMan, Neverwhere, etc, he doesn't stop putting out original quality stuff. He's also got a blog http://www.neilgaiman.com. Isn't Amazon always cheaper than bn? The O'Reilly books especially.
The only way I can think of that anyone got that idea is that Tori Amos is a huge fan of his work and has given Sandman glowing (some might say "gushing") reviews. But there's no reason to believe they ever had an affair.
;)
OTOH, it is kind of cool to see celebrity gossip about geek icons like Neil Gaiman instead of the usual Hollywood crowd.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Got my econbooks for nearly half off this semester. Econometrics and IO for $45 each.
I think he might be winding you up...
Anyway, Tori Amos is friends with Neil Gaiman. They make a couple references to each other here and there. Neil uses Delirium for that, and Ms. Amos has a few lyrics here and there that refer to him.
Both with the NY book fair. Most of this info comes from his own site (www.neilgaiman.com), which has one of the most entertaining blogs around.
f air.asp
y c&query=sc hedule&venue=equitablecenter
At the street festival (early):
http://www.nyisbookcountry.com/content/
And at an earlier ticketed signing:
http://www.ticketweb.com/user/?region=n
Sorry to lazy to do more than cut and paste.
Can't say I liked Road to Perdition- well, visually anyway. But anything by Alan Moore is just as good as Gaiman, he's a great big influence, and he's a magician to boot. Promethea is his most consistent and unique title, though any of his America's Best Comics line are good (Top Ten, Tom Strong, League of Extraordinary Gentleman). A lot of his stuff plays better with a familiarity with superhero comics in general, as they play off those conventions.
Gaiman related: I think Lucifer is the only offshoot that is well written, though Tim Hunter from Books of Magic is planned to have a restart with either Gaiman at the helm or with a stronger consultant hand.
And for those who want less socially stigmatized "graphic novels", the stuff that the mainstream press likes more, Chris Ware, Love and Rockets, and quite bit more is around.
Really, I occasionally tail off because comics are expensive, but theres a lot of good material out there. Gaiman's quality isn't such a lonely thing, just visit any decent sized comic store and ask the hopefully helpful help.
This is not really related to the comic book, but is related to Gaiman - here, I'll make it sorta-like a press release :)
The Folk Underground, a Minneapolis self described "goth-folk" band has released a couple of songs written by Neil on their new CD Buried Things.
Lorraine has collaborated with Gaiman in the past with her previous band, the Flash Girls. Here's a link to Gaiman lyrics
They are currently opening for Puke and Snot at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival (or they opened for Puke and Snot, if you're reading this after Sept 21).
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.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
When it's time, say, to contact fellow authors and friends and say, "Here's the story universe, care to have a go?"
I've never read any of the Sandman series (I'd like to, someday), so I'm not suggesting that it's time for Gaiman to consider such a step. But I don't have to, since he's made the invitation already.
I've actually read one Sandman short story without knowing it at the time. Later, after I'd heard of the Sandman stories, I happened to reread the short, and noticed "first published in The Sandman: Book of Dreams" on the flyleaf. It was a short by Gene Wolfe -- one of my favorite authors -- and was an interesting retelling of one of his own short stories, from the viewpoint of another (dreaming) character.
I don't know who else has guest-authored Sandman stories. Clearly Gaiman has good taste in picking them, however.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Yes. Well, actually no, there are plenty of other people like you. But I'm not one of them. Besides, even if I were, I'd still like Sandman (see below).
No, we haven't gotten out of our "Goth phase" because Death is such a hottie! :-)
She's even super-cali-fragil-expi-alidocious!
Furry cows moo and decompress.
So many posters in this thread either misattributing works of Grant Morrison to Gaiman, or simply mentioning Morrison's works as other favourites. Morrison and Gaiman are easily my two favourite writers today, comic or otherwise. If you like one, you'll like the other, but Morrison's style tends to be more abstractly philosophical, and often more disturbing. The three Animal Man graphic novels, which follow Morrison's 26-issue run, would be a good pick for Gaiman fans, though I recommend reading Crisis on Infinite Earths first for full enjoyment. And any in the Invisibiles series are a great choice.
Good for Neil. He deserves alot of credit. For me, I couldn't care less about anything being published unless it had an X (as in X-Men not XXX Robot Sailor Schoolgirls) in the title before Sandman came my way. Now my interests are completely changed. I'll read anythng under DC's Vertigo imprint, found Dark Horse to be amazing too (Concrete is especially under-appreciated, though critically recognized/awarded)
~~I went to battle M.C. Escher, but drew a blank...~~
Gaiman's Sandman is all about storytelling. Gaiman used the comic to explore what exactly storytelling is and what it means to humans. This is why there's so many references to so many different mythologies (Judeo/Christian, Greek/Roman, Egyptian, Norse, etc.): because myths were the dominant way to transmit stories before the printed word was cheap.
It also explains his inclusion of two issues dealing with Shakespear. Most of Shakespear's plays are derivatives (i.e., Romeo and Juliet originates in Greek mythology, ). However, two of them, Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream, are orginal stories, which is why Gaiman chose to deal with them.
The character Sandman (i.e., Dream, Morpheus) is by his nature a storyteller. Dreams are the stories that he gives us (and cats, according to one story in the series).
So basically, the Sandman is a story about stories. At one point, just to try it out, Gaiman experimented with going something like five levels deep (i.e., you're reading a story about a guy telling a story about some people telling stories, where one person tells a story where one of the characters tells a story).
It's this investigation of storytelling that is at the core of Sandman. While I'm also a big fan of TDKR and Watchman, I have to say that Sandman has thus far been the high water mark for literature in comic form.
BTW, another, albeit less prevelant, theme of Sandman is nature of rules. Should rules be followed blindly? What are the consequences of doing so? Can making the best choices within a set of rules lead to the worst consequences? Can storytelling die?
Thanks. I just ordered the first 2 books from amzn. I look forward to seeing what this is all about.
I didn't put that link in my original submission. I was considering amazon, but the session ID's in the URL were too cumbersome ... which is why I wrote "where ever you want" with no link!
if you don't feel better tomorrow, we'll just cut your legs off about here. - Theodoric of York
I believe that you might thinking of her relationship with Nine Inch Nails' frontman, Trent Reznor. Her summation of that pairing:
Don't we all, sometimes. Add my copy of "Dream Country" (and some Bailey's to the cocoa), and you have the ideal recipe for a Very Happy GeekWench.Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
FYI, Bill Gates supports contraception and abortion with his own money. That makes him even more evil than RMS.
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman