About this title: The first of four beautifully designed slipcased volumes, "The Absolute Sandman," Vol. 1, collects issues 1-20 of "The Sandman" and features completely new coloring, approved by the author, on the first 18 issues, as well as a host of never-before-seen extra material.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
"very fan of the graphic novel format chooses for themselves the moment at which the medium "broke out." Watchmen. Miracle Man. Dark Knight Returns. The Contract With God Trilogy. While there can be no right answer to this question, for me it lies with Sandman, Neil Gaiman's brilliant, literate, and highly entertaining romp through areas as diverse as pop culture, Kaballah, Freudian analysis, serial killers, Shakespeare, death, and other areas too many to number. The story follows one of the endless, creatures that exist as personifications of certain eternal forces, Despair, Destiny, Delusion, Desire, etc, in this case Dream.
The story begins with Dream's capture by mystics in Britain between the world wars and takes off at his release in modern times, following his struggle to rebuild his realm, shattered and abandoned for his absence. While the first few issues touch at the edges of the traditional comic universe, Gaiman quickly departs this and enters his own deep textual musings. While a thread binds all the tales here together, a passion play of rise, fall, and self realization, what one finds here most pleasurable are the stories. Dream is the keeper of tales and many are to be found here. Shakespeare's troop performing a Midsummer Night's Dream for the real King Oberon, a man gifted with eternal life, another of a writer who captures and holds bound a muse for her stories, yet another of the trials of ruling hell, and many others.
Nor does this volume stand along on its prose, for the art too may be some of the most lovely in any modern graphic novel, rich and varied. While the book comes pricey, fans will love the oversized format and those beginning the collection will quickly notice that the price is only nominally higher then buying the individual soft back volumes. Of one thing I am certain, no one will likely regret taking this fine work home."
"My boyfriend got this edition for me for my birthday back in March, and I was a bit scared to open it up and dive in. It's a gorgeous, huge monster! But what is inside is brilliant, scary, funny, dark, and everything I'd expect from Neil Gaiman. I loved every episode, no matter if it was the main storyline or one of the side stories (for reasons known to everyone who knows me, A Dream of a Thousand Cats was a particular favorite). I suppose it's too much to expect my boyfriend to buy me all the other volumes, but a girl can dream. Haha, get it? Sorry, it's early and I'm not fully alert. Anyway, I'll definitely put this series right up there with Watchmen."
I'm just gonna' go ahead and give this a 5, alright? Incidentally, I had no idea a standard-size comic book written when comic books weren't blown up could LOOK so good blown-up. This is a classic of writing, comic book canon, and art.
This series is such a mind-blowing, genre-crossing, ambition-achieving masterpiece of Western comic books that it is without parallel. Watchmen, which lacks this book's skillful play in pre-existing worlds, is too short and too compact to match up with this.
"Sandman" is the greatest comic story ever told in the history of Western sequential art."
"The Absolute edition of Sandman is beautiful, and the first volume is especially well worth it's (rather hefty) price tag, because they corrected all the color errors made in the original printing. Hell is far more believable in dusky, dried-blood reds than it was in pepto pink...though to be fair, the pink was quite hellish.
Of course, once you have the first volume, you'll want to buy the next three, because they'll look nice on the shelf, and as Gaiman pointed out, they're heavy enough to be excellent weapons for home defense."
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