Note: “As I Go Along” is a weekly feature in which I review and discuss the best graphic novels and series that I haven’t yet had a chance to read. These are the titles your comic-loving friends have been trying to push into your hands for years, only now I’ll be doing the pushing (or telling you not to bother). The post will include spoilers for those who have not yet read the work.

“To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due.”

After a bit of a wait, the latest collection of “The Sandman” I’ve gotten to put the focus back on Dream as the central character, with, of course, a few of Neil Gaiman’s trademark jumps elsewhere mixed in. “Seasons of Mist” begins with Destiny, the oldest of the Endless, calling a “family meeting.” One member is absent, and although we don’t know anything about he/she/it yet, other than that it is sometimes referred to as “the prodigal,” I’d wager its name starts with “d” (the six members present are Death, Destiny, Dream, Desire, Delirum, and Despair).

The happy family reunion quickly turns into a family argument, as Desire tells Dream he was wrong in sending Nada to Hell for thousands of years. Recall that we saw Dream walk past his former lover during his first trip to the underworld, and that we got the full story of their relationship in the prologue of “The Doll’s House.” Dream is outraged, until in a private conversation, Death says, “condemning her to eternity in hell, just because she turned you down… That’s a really shitty thing to do.”

Think about that, the Endless, the only immortal beings in the universe, use language as colloquial as “really shitty thing to do.” Well, Death does anyway. But it’s these kinds of odd juxtapositions that make “The Sandman” so great. Anyway, the argument leads to a sequence of events that make up the bulk of the major story arc: Dream returns to Hell only to find Lucifer is busy closing it down. It seems Satan is done ruling the underworld, and he puts Dream in charge of figuring out what the hell to do with the place (see what I did there?). As such, the story sets out to answer one question: What would happen if Lucifer up and left? Or, storytelling being what it is, what would you do if you had to decide who to give the key to Hell to? Dream ends up putting a couple of angels in charge despite the pleas of a plethora of deities, demons, and demi-gods (shit, Gaiman’s got me doing the d thing now). Of course, Destiny knew that was going to happen along, it’s kind of his thing.

The main story in “Seasons of Mist” was fantastic, but my favorite issue in the collection was doubtless one of those trademark jumps. It’s the fifth story, “”In Which the Dead Return; and Charles Rowland Concludes His Education.” Charles Rowland is left at his boarding school when most everyone else has gone home. Unfortunately for Charles, this happens to be at the same time Lucifer has kicked the dead out of hell, so those that died at the school (or just didn’t have anywhere else to go) return to haunt it.

Early on, Charles sits in front of a memorial for the boys from his school that died during the “Great War.” Two of those boys end up returning to St. Hilarion’s to torment Charles. He’s rescued by one Edwin Paine, who just so happened to have died when the same boys sacrificed him to the devil in 1914. The boys thought they would get special treatment in Hell because of their actions, “but when we went to Hell… They didn’t even care. They hadn’t even known. They–they laughed at us.”

Charles ends up dying, but Death’s far too busy to take him. Charles and Edwin decide they’ve learned all they’re going to at school and leave. Although they’re dead, they plan to “see what life’s got to offer.”

Note: “As I Go Along” is a weekly feature in which I review and discuss the best graphic novels and series that I haven’t yet had a chance to read. These are the titles your comic-loving friends have been trying to push into your hands for years, only now I’ll be doing the pushing (or telling you not to bother). The post will include spoilers for those who have not yet read the work.

“Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.”

In more ways than a few, “Dream Country” differs from the two collections that preceded it. The four issues it contains are not “chapters” in a story line in the way those of “Preludes and Nocturnes” or “The Doll’s House” were, as they are independent of the overarching “Sandman” tale. “Dream Country” would be more aptly compared to a collection of short stories than a novel, but those of us who have read Gaiman’s short fiction know that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

However, just because these stories are unrelated to the overarching plot doesn’t mean they’re not self-referential and chock full of Gaiman’s trademark intersection.

Much like in “The Doll’s House,” the theoretical protagonist, Dream, took a backseat in “Dream Country.” In fact, Dream doesn’t even appear in the final issue, “Facade,” but that’s more than made up for when Death, his spunky older sister, shows up.

The first story, “Calliope,” centers around Richard Madoc, a novelist suffering from writer’s block. Madoc trades a trichonobezoar, a hairball found in the intestine of someone with Rapunzel Syndrome, for Calliope, the muse of epic poetry in Greek mythology. At its outset, this appears to be another “be careful what you wish for” cautionary tale. But Gaiman being Gaiman, it’s turned into so much more.

More than anything else, “Calliope” is a story about human nature, and as a result, greed. In mythology, the best way to get a muse to grant an artist inspiration was to woo her; to be humble and gracious, thankful for any and everything she grants. Erasmus Fry, from whom Madoc gets Calliope, had no time for such things. “They say one ought to woo her kind, but I must say I found force most efficacious.” Like Fry, Madoc rapes his muse, justifying his actions because his second novel is nine months overdue. Neither writer had time for courtship. In effect they said, “give me inspiration, or else.”

Of course, as was the case with Fry, a second successful novel was not enough for Madoc. Nor was a third, or a poetry collection, play, or a deal to write and direct the film adaptation of one of his books. The film gets nominated for three Oscars, by the way. For Madoc, as with any human being given absolute power, inspiration, or anything else, it will never be enough.

Enter Dream, who puts an end to all that. He floods Madoc with so many story ideas that it drive the writer insane, compelling him to release Calliope. Similarly, Fry is found dead, supposedly poisoned, despite the fact that bezoars are meant to protect against any poison.

Dream’s actions display the way he changed and matured during his imprisonment, which occurred largely at the same time as Calliope’s. We learn that Dream and the muse once had a relationship which resulted in a son, the mythological figure Orpheus. Now, we know Dream can hold a real good grudge. After all, Nada, is still in hell. Both Calliope and Dream note his maturation, the former says, “You have changed Oneiros. In the old days, you would have left me to rot forever, without turning a hair,” before asking, “Do you still hate me? For what I did?” Dream responds, “No, I no longer hate you Calliope. I have learned much in recent times and… No matter. I do not hate you, child.”

It’s pretty incredible that there’s so much room for growth in the saga of one of the seven immortal beings in the universe. Remember, in this diegesis, even gods can die when the living stop believing in them. As Chuck Palahniuk put it in “Fight Club,” “On a long enough timeline, everyone’s survival rate drops to zero.” In “Facade,” Death explains this is true even of the seven Endless, saying “When the first living thing existed, I was there, waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I’ll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave.”

It seems Dream’s development will continue in the next collection. The synopsis for “Seasons of Mist” indicates that Dream travels to Hell to free Nada after millennia of incarceration and torment. We’ll just have to wait and see whether or not that means he’s forgiven her. I know I’m excited.

“Was he really there at all? When you try to remember him he fades and shimmers until he seems little more than the echo of a dream.” – Rose Walker, “Into the Night”

The tremendous amount of continuously intersecting story lines within “The Sandman” was on full display in the first issue in the “Doll’s House” collection, “Tales in the Sand,” which serves as prelude to the “Doll’s House” narrative proper. The frame story shows an old man in an African culture taking a younger man into the desert to tell him a story as part of a manhood ritual. The tale the old man tells is of “a pair of star-cross’d lovers,” Nada and Dream (Gaiman gets his Shakespeare references in, so I figure I’ll get mine).

The woman fears the ramifications of engaging in a relationship with an immortal and spurns Dream. In his subsequent Anger, Dream sends Nada to Hell, where she remains to this day. How do we know this? We saw him walk by her cell in issue #4, “A Hope in Hell.” At the time, it seemed like a bit of a random exchange, but it turned out Gaiman had Tarantino’d us, showing the end of the story ten thousand years after it began. Although saying he Tarantino’d it isn’t really fair, as these issues came out years before “Reservoir Dogs” or “Pulp Fiction.”

Of course, the intersections and criss-crossing don’t end there. One of the things that sets “The Doll’s House” apart from the series’ first collection is that while Dream is still the focal point, he’s “off-camera” more often than not while the story focuses on another character, Rose Walker. Who is Rose Walker? Well, all the way back in the very first issue, a woman named Unity Kinkaid fell victim to the sleeping sickness that occurred while Dream was imprisoned. While she was asleep, Unity was raped and gave birth. The baby, named Miranda, was adopted, and when she grew up she gave birth to one Rose Walker.

As if that wasn’t enough explanation of the intersections, I’ll continue. While the previous two examples were callbacks to events and characters from the first collection, the entire “Doll’s House” plot line is actually three intersecting stories that come together at the end, as intersecting stories tend to do.

The first story line is that surrounding Unity, Miranda, and Rose. Having awoken, Unity uses her fortune to hire a private detective to bring her long-lost daughter and granddaughter to England. Meanwhile, Dream takes a census of his realm and discovers four of his creations are missing, so he embarks on a quest to find them. Two of those creatures, Brute and Glob make up the third story line. The two have escaped the Dreaming and taken residence in the mind of a boy named Jed. Jed who? Why, Jed Walker of course, who had been in the care of Rose’s deceased father. Upon their father’s death, Jed was sent to live with some abusive relatives, who lock him the basement and basically only want him around for the $800 government check they get each month. While Miranda stays in England to care for London, Rose returns to America to search for her brother.

Perhaps my favorite issue in the collection was one that wasn’t even related to the main story arc. In issue number 13, “Men of Good Fortune,” we see Dream grant a man named Hob Gadling immortality and subsequently meet him in an East London inn once every century.

In most immortality stories, the recipient soon recognizes the folly of his ways and starts begging for death’s embrace. This is not so for Hob Gadling. Through Dream’s eyes, we see Gadling rise and fall as the centuries pass by. He becomes wealthy, gets married and earns a knighthood. His wife dies, he picks the wrong side in a war, and becomes a penniless disgrace. He gets rich a second time when he enters the slave trade, but leaves it once Dream shows him its immorality.

As we watch Gadling and Dream interact throughout the centuries, we see that there’s an awful lot that never really changes. We see conversations in which the bar’s patrons argue whether or not AIDS (in 1989) or the bubonic plague (in 1389) are punishments from God, and discuss poll taxes instituted by both King Richard II and Margaret Thatcher. But we also see how things change. For example, Hob points out that although she was Queen consort of England, Catherine of Aragon was technically black. As such, Hob notes “if Catherine of Aragon had lived in Alabama in 1950, she would have been at the back of the bus.”

The thing that struck me most about this collection (besides all the wonderful intersections of course) is the way it humanizes Dream. While he may be a member of the Endless, who are the only immortal beings in the galaxy (that’s right, even gods dies when people stop believing in them), he feels emotions like love, remorse, loneliness, and betrayal, just like the rest of us. He meets Hob Gadling once a century for a chat, at first under the auspices that granting the man immortality will “amuse” him. But in 1889, Hob call Dream out, saying they only meet because Dream is lonely, because Hob is his only friend. Dream walks out in disgust, but a century later he returns to say, “I have always heard it was impolite to keep one’s friends waiting.”