The Sandman

The High Cost
Of Dreaming

The Sandman
Directed by various
UK/USA August 2022
Series One - Eleven Episodes

Well then... so they finally adapted one of my favourite comics, The Sandman, to a television format. Well, I say it’s one of my favourite comics and, that much is true but, I’ve only ever read the first couple of story arcs and assorted stand alones so... let’s just say I’m a big admirer of the comics (which I am now reading again, hopefully in their entirety) without being any kind of authority on them. And, it has to be said, as someone who has a special place in the heart for these particular four colour wonders, I was extremely worried just how much they were going to screw it up. Certainly, some of the casting choices were extremely concerning to me when announced. I hate this bizarre, tokenism cultural reappropriation that seems to be going on in everything right now and, certainly, many pasty, white characters have been cast as black here and, similarly, some males characters have been recast as female.

So, for example, my favourite character from the comics, the iconic looking Death, is played by black actress/writer/producer Kirby Howell-Baptiste and I figured that would be a calamity. However, one of the things this reminded me was, sometimes, it’s possible (and switching mediums, perhaps necessary) to change things but, as long as you keep something of the spirit of the character intact during that transition, then you’re onto a winner. And I have to say, not only does Kirby Howell-Baptiste look the part (skin colour aside... she still manages to look something similar to the character), she absolutely knocks it out the park with her ‘low-key powerhouse’ performance as Death. She had my heart in minutes, for sure.

Now stuff like these appalling kind of casting issues are all over this series and, surprisingly, these don’t actually deter from the spirit of the comic and these characters in the slightest. And even changing the great John Constantine to a female character, Johanna Constantine (of which there are now two in The Sandman TV universe because of this casting change), played by the extraordinary actress Jenna Coleman (as both versions of Johanna, for the record), is much less problematic than I imagined... I’ll have a little more to say on her a bit later on.

Now I’m sure the great Neil Gaiman has had something to do with the writing and development of this show so, the various changes (and there are many) can perhaps be looked at as a genius writer revisiting his earlier work and just tweaking it slightly, with the benefit of hindsight (and to make it work in another medium, for sure). And much as I hate ‘George Lucas style’ revisionism to a work, which is a little like what’s gone on here... I think they all did a wonderful job.

So, yeah, the TV version of The Sandman is not only absolutely brilliant, it’s also very true to the heart of the source which... is probably a very difficult thing to pull off but, yeah, they somehow managed it. This show deserves all the awards. Now, I’m not going to go into the story content here... if you’ve never read these brilliant comics then you’ll want to go into this show absolutely fresh (and then maybe read the comics after) but it’s a show which, like its source, is a series of brilliant ideas and concepts strung together in a heady, dramatic cocktail of supernatural and mythical shenanigans which is hard to resist... because they did it so well. Luckily for me, the first series adapts the first two story arcs plus a few stand alone issues... and it’s all the ones I’ve read. Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Death appears in the version of my favourite ever issue (to date), The Sound Of Her Wings and, it’s absolutely brilliant... I’m hoping that the powers that be will star the same actress in the first Death comic book mini series now, Death - The High Cost Of Living (please?).

Tom Sturridge plays Dream/Morpheus, the titular Sandman and, while he doesn’t quite look like the more stylised version of him in the early comics (maybe not as pale or spiky enough) he does kinda look like a young Neil Gaiman and, honestly, he does absolutely brilliantly as Dream here. Very much a cipher of a character but also a character which, already in the show, you can see is being changed from his experiences with humans. After a few episodes I turned around to my dad, who I was watching these with and said, “... you know, this guy would make a good Elric!” and it’s true. If anyone thinks to do a TV or movie version of Michael Moorcock’s brilliant Elric Of Melnibone stories, Tom Sturridge is obviously the man to go and see.

Okay, some of the changes I was not a fan of but that didn’t hurt in the long run were... hmm... okay, let’s see...

A lot of the DC character references are gone. So the 1930s Golden Age comic book version of The Sandman, referenced in the comic as being inspired by Morpheus’ imprisonment in one panel on a page, did not make it into this. Similarly, the great David Thewlis plays John Dee but I don’t think he’s once referred to as Doctor Destiny, his alter ego as a villain in the Justice League comics. And he also doesn’t have a neighbouring prison cell next to Jonathan Crane, aka The Scarecrow from Batman, in Arkham Asylum as he does in the comic book version either. Also, while Thewlis is the perfect piece of casting for this character (I would never have thought of that... brilliant choice), his actions seem more tempered. ONE SENTENCE SPOILER WARNING... he doesn’t kill the woman who goes out of her way to give him a cross country lift in her car after they have a long, pleasant conversation, as he does in the comics either... which I personally thought was a mistake but, I guess they thought the character wouldn’t garner enough sympathy with a modern TV audience for what comes later if they’d have gone through with that (I’m guessing).

Which brings us to another important change... Jenna Coleman as John Constantine. Really? Okay, so, presumably to not cross threads with either the John Constantine TV show or Keanu Reeve’s big budget Constantine movie (and the sequel which may well be going ahead now, after all this time), they’ve turned John Constantine into a woman, Johanna, not to be confused with her/his own ancestor Johanna (who also turns up in an episode played by the same actress). And, much to my gobsmacked shock, Coleman absolutely rocks it in this role. Now, I loved the Constantine movie and I love the work of Keanu Reeves but, my main criticism of that film (which I also loved, just not as an adaptation) is that Reeves plays a down on his luck, blonde, dirty raincoat wearing Liverpudlian (I think he’s from Liverpool, right?) as a rich, black haired yuppie person who, frankly, is nothing like John Constantine. Which is why I was amazed that, not only does Jenna Coleman rule this role, she also plays it just like the John Constantine in the comics. I mean, she channels John amazingly well and I would love to see a spin off series about this version of the character as well, it has to be said.

Okay, I’ve probably written much more than I was expecting to without even going into the plot but, honestly, if you like brilliant ideas, of which there are many on display, then The Sandman is one heck of a TV show and it gets a big recommendation from me. Two of the stand alone comics (again, two of my favourites) turn up as a special double bill bonus Episode 11 at the end and, yeah, I was wondering how they’d do Dream Of A Thousand Cats credibly... the solution was, as an animation, of course.  And there you have it. Can’t wait for series two to come out and this whole show, every episode, was an amazing experience (and the way they do the ‘story fight’ between Morpheus and Lucifer is very inventive for a kinetic visual medium... it’s just right). Definitely don’t waste anymore time if you’re on the fence about this... a perfect show with a perfect cast, it turns out. Absolutely loved this and I just hope Netflix will consider releasing this on Blu Ray at some point soon (not to mention a proper soundtrack CD please).

DC Comics: Bombshells Vol 1

Bombinatrices

DC Comics: Bombshells Volume 1
by Marguerite Bennett and Marguerite Sauvage
DC Comics
ISBN: 978-1-4012-6132-0

It’s been many years since I read a superhero comic and longer than that since I read one where multiple super powered beings banded together to fight a common foe. When I first started buying the DC Bombshells merchandise a few years ago, in the form of a few travel pass holders and a deck of cards, I had no idea it was an actual comic book. As it transpires, though... it wasn’t. First manifesting itself as a series of popular prints and then progressing to statuettes of female superheroes re-imagined as 1940s examples of themselves (which almost makes no sense in terms of Wonder Woman) or, in some cases, popular male heroes re-imagined as women from that same era, this is a case of original artist Ant Lucia’s designs inspiring a retro fitted comic book series which faithfully works these creations into a 1940s wartime setting.

This first volume, with the subtitle, Enlisted, reprints the first six issues of this series. The various issues which make up this trade paperback reprint gives us some of the back story to these characters as it slowly reveals how they come to be thrown into this mess of a Second World War together and are recruited to form part of ‘The Bombshells’… a kind of US government headed, all female version of the Justice Society of America, if you will (not to be confused with the Justice League Of America, who were the Silver Age equivalent of that particular super-group).

The story starts off strong when the feminist subtext which shapes the central storyline kicks in and completely nullifies one of DC’s biggest hero characters. Instead of Bruce Wayne’s parents being shot in the street after they and young Bruce emerge from a movie theatre showing a Zorro flick, they are saved from those fatal bullets by the appearance of Batwoman, a masked vigilante who  presumably takes her name from the baseball bat she swings to brutally beat her evil foes. Thus Batman is never born in this version of the DC universe (at least not yet in these issues, anyway) and this strong, opening statement really is an overt sucker punch to those expecting some kind of Dark Knight storyline to this thing.

There are also some much more contemporary DC characters thrown back in time… ones who I am not all that familiar with in some cases…  such as Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy. They even manage to shoehorn some nice appearances from male characters in this one too… such as a couple of surprise panels of Swamp Thing raining down destruction on some soviet soldiers and Zatanna’s magic hat rabbit actually being a rodent version of John Constantine (who was played by Keanu Reeves in a terribly unfaithful but ultimately very fun movie version of that character).

The story is beautifully told and takes a fair few more twists and turns than you might reasonably expect from the material as it assembles its interesting cast. I say interesting because some characters such as Wonder Woman are already 1940s heroines to begin with and, although Diana’s origins are more or less what they always were, the story goes further with some characters in terms of its initial set up. Supergirl, for example, was rocketed to Earth and found in the Soviet Union, where she grows up with her half sister Starwoman before events take a more complicated turn.

There is some beautiful art and panel design over various sections of the comic which give it a nicely hotch potch feel in places. For instance, there’s an interesting splash panel introducing Moscow, September 1940 where the text boxes read down the panel but also take you across before going left on two of three vertical boxes which are housed within that main panel. So you read down and the third insert picture box is on the right of the panel which accompanies that text before you continue down where the text is illustrated back to the left on the second vertical insert box… which you have already, presumably, looked at as you are working your way through the text on the way to the right. Because the insert picture boxes are vertical and long, this doesn't actually spoil the flow of information as you might expect it to and it’s a pretty nice feat of visual narrative flow maintaining the sense of the story in as interesting a manner possible without popping you out of that story with its own cleverness. Although, it has to be said, there are some other, somewhat less successful spreads throughout the issues where the reading direction is less clear and I found myself reading down the left page with things not making a lot of sense before realising these pages were meant to be read across a landscape spread rather than going down… something which used to be considered a bit of a design flaw in the way comic panels are constructed (if the panels didn't automatically lead the eye so the reader didn't know where to look next) but… I dunno… maybe I’m just getting too old.

That aside, though, there are also some nice moments where different kinds of art styles are used to reflect the different tones in which the story is told. For instance, when Kara (Supergirl) tells her origin story, the art and colouring flattens more and it is presented  almost as a storybook fable in that simpler, less embellished lines are used and a texture is run into the background, underlying everything depicted in those pages and giving it an almost illustrated fairytale look… which was a nice touch, I thought.

The story itself isn’t simple, though… weaving in and out where characters start off as one kind of person before they end up as someone/thing completely different. There are hints of this even in the first six issues reprinted here and one of the problems of printing trade paperback collections (often confused with graphic novels by many film companies, for some strange reason) is that their continuous nature leaves the reader of such collections without a natural conclusion to the events which are put in motion at the beginning of what are, in the case of this one, looking to be fairly complex story arcs.

That being said, the six issues collected here do lead to a kind of natural “mini conclusion” of sorts and they could be viewed as… almost standalone. Although, to be honest, I get the strong feeling that the writers haven’t finished introducing the full cast of these comics by this point in.

In the old days, when I was reading such things more regularly, DC Bombshells would have been branded an Elseworlds story… which was the DC equivalent of the Marvel comics What If…? universe. Alas, the Elseworlds branding is nowhere in sight on this collection so I guess the concept of the comic might be a somewhat confusing prospect to people who might not know that this is not part of the regular DC canon and are trying to square this with the characters as they might remember them from years gone by or, for that matter, as recently depicted in various movie versions. However, I would certainly recommend this both to fans of comic books and also to those who are less inclined to normally pick up this sort of visual confection. It’s a nice idea inspired by some really cool artwork and it’s clearly taking that jumping on point seriously and not throwing those ideas away for a quick cash in. I’ll certainly be aiming to pick up the remaining volumes at some point.