fajrdrako | The Sandman: Endless Nights

Neil Gaiman's theme is mythology, always. In this case the subject is time. This sequel to The Sandman rediscovers the Endless through the eyes of various characters, each story finding a new variation or twist. It's a series of graphic stories with different top-flight artists as diverse as Milo Manara and Bill Sienkiewicz, and Gaiman manages to make the most of each of them, so these artists - already among the most creative in the business - exceed themselves. I've always hated Fank Quitely's art before; here it was maybe my favourite. But among artists so good, how can I pick a favourite?

Each story focusses on one of the Endless, starting with Death. As always, my favourite is Desire. The last in the book is Destiny, suitably climactic. In the story illustrated by Miguelanxo Prado, "Heart of a Star", surprisingly, Dream falls in love. Dream, if you don't know, was the protagonist of The Sandman. At heart, he was something of a romantic, in a dark-loner-of-the-shadows sort of way. This story reminded me of the Hugo-award winning short story, "Daisy in the Sun" though I don't recall who wrote it. Sol made me smile; so touchingly endearing.

Art and writing are both edged, twisted, skewed to be something other than what you'd expect. But what I really didn't expect was the poetic quality to these stories - that they are elusively beautiful. Including the story about madness - the Delirium story, or the Despair story:

It was also good to see the pictures and brief bios of the artists at the end. I didn't know what Milo Manara looked like, or Todd Klein, even though their names have been familiar (and important) to me forever.

You can see the information about Sandman: Endless Nights here. You can find quotes from it here.