The Sandman: Fables & Reflections
Fables & Reflections is the sixth collection of issues in the DC Comics series, The Sandman. It was written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Bryan Talbot, Stan Woch, P. Craig Russell, Shawn McManus, John Watkiss, Jill Thompson, Duncan Eagleson, Kent Williams, Mark Buckingham, Vince Locke and Dick Giordano, coloured by Danny Vozzo and Lovern Kindzierski/Digital Chameleon, lettered by Todd Klein; the introduction is written by Gene Wolfe. The issues in the collection first appeared in 1991, 1992 and 1993; the collection first appeared in paperback and hardback in 1993. Like the third collection, the eighth and Reflections is a collection of short one-issue stories. Most of the stories do not contribute directly to the overall story arc of the series on a textual level but rather comment on its themes and provide subtext; the most conspicuous exception is the story "Orpheus" printed as the one-shot Sandman Special, central to the main story of the series. It is followed by Brief Lives; the book contains four tales under the banner of "Distant Mirrors", which are about emperors and the nature of power.
These issues all take their name from months. Three of the issues making up the "Distant Mirrors" group were published between the "Season of Mists" and "A Game of You" story arcs; the last, "Ramadan", was written contemporaneously, but because of art delays DC published it as Issue #50, after the "Brief Lives" arc. Three other issues appearing in Fables & Reflections, published as the Convergence story "arc", are single-issue short stories in which Morpheus appears little; each of these issues details various characters' meetings with one another, each is structured as a story within a story. "Convergence" appeared between the "A Game of You" and "Brief Lives" story arcs. The collection includes the Sandman Special, retelling the Greek myth of Orpheus, a brief piece from a Vertigo promotional comic; because Fables & Reflections partakes of so many elements, some believe it lacks the thematic or artistic consistency, present in the other short story collections. In an effort to make these differences less apparent, DC has shuffled the issues in the volume instead of presenting them chronologically with "Distant Mirrors" at the front and "Convergence" at the back.
Some readers may choose to read this volume cover-to-cover after "A Game of You", while others read individual stories in their place as published. Due to its nature as a collection of short stories, Fables & Reflections is the least essential volume of the series in terms of the surface plot of The Sandman, but the most accessible as the reader can dip in and out without needing a thorough grounding in the characters and previous stories; that said, some of the stories in Fables and Reflections provide key subtext, invaluable to the close reader attempting to understand Morpheus' motivations in the rest of the series. This is the story from Vertigo Preview #1; this is a short story, concerning a theatrical author/director, afraid of the consequences of his new play, be they success or failure. Drawn by Kent Williams. A playful story concerning the history of Joshua Abraham Norton, first and only Emperor of the United States of America. Despair challenges Dream to keep him in his realm for the remainder of his life.
While Dream is uninterested, Despair harkens to the memory of their brother's departure which Despair states was caused by Dream's lack of caring. Neatly dovetailed with his story is an explanation for his strange career centering on a challenge between Morpheus and Desire; the story ties into Desire's actions in the second collection, The Doll's House. Drawn by Shawn McManus. An altogether darker story set in the heat of the French Revolution, featuring the character of Lady Johanna Constantine and introducing Orpheus; the villains of the story are Saint-Just. Thomas Paine appears. Penciled by Stan Woch and inked by Dick Giordano. A fairy tale of the East European tradition concerning a young man of'The People' who comes to possess a portrait of a beautiful princess, it makes reference to The Death of the witch Baba Yaga. Penciled by Duncan Eagleson and inked by Vince Locke. Another story concerning a month. An bleak tale about the Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar set in 7 AD. Disguised as a beggar, he talks of his life to the dwarf.
We learn that as a young man, he was raped by Julius Caesar. He spends one day a year disguised as a beggar because Morpheus told him, in a dream, that if he does so the gods cannot spy on his plans, it is implied that, during his days in disguise as a beggar, Augustus plotted for the Roman Empire to fall after his death out of his hatred for Julius Caesar. Penciled by Bryan Talbot and inked by Stan Woch. In the story, Augustus a reference to I, Claudius. Most of this story is based on The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius. A story of Marco Polo lost in the desert, at a location where the boundary between reality and the Dreaming is malleable. There he encounters Rustichello of Pisa, Fiddler's Green, Morpheus himself, after the latter escapes his captiv
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is an American comic book publisher. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. since 1967. DC Comics is one of the largest and oldest American comic book companies, produces material featuring numerous culturally iconic heroic characters including: Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern,Aquaman,Martian Manhunter, Green Arrow, Hawkman and Supergirl. Most of their material takes place in the fictional DC Universe, which features teams such as the Justice League, the Justice Society of America, the Suicide Squad, the Teen Titans, well-known villains such as The Joker, Lex Luthor, Darkseid, Brainiac, Black Adam, Ra's al Ghul and Deathstroke; the company has published non-DC Universe-related material, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, many titles under their alternative imprint Vertigo. The initials "DC" came from the company's popular series Detective Comics, which featured Batman's debut and subsequently became part of the company's name.
In Manhattan at 432 Fourth Avenue, the DC Comics offices have been located at 480 and 575 Lexington Avenue. DC had its headquarters at 1700 Broadway, Midtown Manhattan, New York City, but it was announced in October 2013 that DC Entertainment would relocate its headquarters from New York to Burbank, California in April 2015. Random House distributes DC Comics' books to the bookstore market, while Diamond Comic Distributors supplies the comics shop specialty market. DC Comics and its longtime major competitor Marvel Comics together shared 70% of the American comic book market in 2017. Entrepreneur Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson founded National Allied Publications in autumn 1934; the company debuted with the tabloid-sized New Fun: The Big Comic Magazine #1 with a cover date of February 1935. The company's second title, New Comics #1, appeared in a size close to what would become comic books' standard during the period fans and historians call the Golden Age of Comic Books, with larger dimensions than today's.
That title evolved into Adventure Comics, which continued through issue #503 in 1983, becoming one of the longest-running comic-book series. In 2009 DC revived Adventure Comics with its original numbering. In 1935, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the future creators of Superman, created Doctor Occult, the earliest DC Comics character to still be in the DC Universe. Wheeler-Nicholson's third and final title, Detective Comics, advertised with a cover illustration dated December 1936 premiered three months late with a March 1937 cover date; the themed anthology series would become a sensation with the introduction of Batman in issue #27. By however, Wheeler-Nicholson had gone. In 1937, in debt to printing-plant owner and magazine distributor Harry Donenfeld—who published pulp magazines and operated as a principal in the magazine distributorship Independent News—Wheeler-Nicholson had to take Donenfeld on as a partner in order to publish Detective Comics #1. Detective Comics, Inc. was formed, with Wheeler-Nicholson and Jack S. Liebowitz, Donenfeld's accountant, listed as owners.
Major Wheeler-Nicholson remained for a year, but cash-flow problems continued, he was forced out. Shortly afterwards, Detective Comics, Inc. purchased the remains of National Allied known as Nicholson Publishing, at a bankruptcy auction. Detective Comics, Inc. soon launched a fourth title, Action Comics, the premiere of which introduced Superman. Action Comics #1, the first comic book to feature the new character archetype—soon known as "superheroes"—proved a sales hit; the company introduced such other popular characters as the Sandman and Batman. On February 22, 2010, a copy of Action Comics #1 sold at an auction from an anonymous seller to an anonymous buyer for $1 million, besting the $317,000 record for a comic book set by a different copy, in lesser condition, the previous year. National Allied Publications soon merged with Detective Comics, Inc. forming National Comics Publications on September 30, 1946. National Comics Publications absorbed an affiliated concern, Max Gaines' and Liebowitz' All-American Publications.
In the same year Gaines let Liebowitz buy him out, kept only Picture Stories from the Bible as the foundation of his own new company, EC Comics. At that point, "Liebowitz promptly orchestrated the merger of All-American and Detective Comics into National Comics... Next he took charge of organizing National Comics, Independent News, their affiliated firms into a single corporate entity, National Periodical Publications". National Periodical Publications became publicly traded on the stock market in 1961. Despite the official names "National Comics" and "National Periodical Publications", the company began branding itself as "Superman-DC" as early as 1940, the company became known colloquially as DC Comics for years before the official adoption of that name in 1977; the company began to move aggressively against what it saw as copyright-violating imitations from other companies, such as Fox Comics' Wonder Man, which Fox started as a copy of Superman. This extended to DC suing Fawcett Comics over Captain Marvel, at the time comics' top-selling character.
Faced with declining sales and the prospect of bankruptcy if it lost, Fawcett capitulated in 1953 and ceased publishing comics. Years Fawcett sold the rights for Captain Marvel to DC—which in 1972 revived Captain Marvel in the new title Shazam
The Sandman: The Kindly Ones
The Kindly Ones is the ninth collection of issues in the DC Comics series, The Sandman. Written by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Marc Hempel, Richard Case, D'Israeli, Teddy Kristiansen, Glyn Dillon, Charles Vess, Dean Ormston and Kevin Nowlan, coloured by Danny Vozzo, lettered by Todd Klein; the volume features an introduction by Frank McConnell. The issues in the collection first appeared in 1993, 1994 and 1995; the collection first appeared in paperback and hardback in 1996. Marc Hempel is the primary penciller, inked variously by D'Israeli and Richard Case, he is relieved at different points in the story by Teddy Kristiansen, Glyn Dillon and Dean Ormston, Charles Vess draws a story within a story sequence. Kevin Nowlan draws a short story which appeared in a Vertigo promo book, it was followed by The Wake. The Kindly Ones belongs with the second collection, The Doll's House, the seventh, Brief Lives, in that it finishes off a story that originated in these collections; the most structurally ambitious of the collections, The Kindly Ones is a single storyline written as a Greek tragedy, with Morpheus as its doomed hero and an aspect of the triad of witches, the Erinyes, as the Greek chorus.
It pulls together various threads left dangling throughout the series, notably the grudges against Morpheus of several characters: Hippolyta Hall. The Kindly Ones continues several other stories, including that of Cluracan of Faerie and his sister Nuala. After Daniel is kidnapped by Loki and Robin Goodfellow, his mother convinces herself that Morpheus has killed him and resolves to destroy Morpheus. In many places, Lyta is depicted as Medusa, encounters Medusa's two sisters and Euryale. Unbeknownst to Lyta, Daniel is recovered alive and well by Morpheus' servants, the raven Matthew and a restored Corinthian. At length, Morpheus yields to the Erinyes, the main story ends with Morpheus and his sister Death on a desolate peak with a flock of pigeons. Death asks for Morpheus' hand, he disappears. Upon the death of Morpheus, Daniel becomes a new aspect of Dream, with white clothes and hair, an emerald suspended on his neck and chest. Bender, Hy; the Sandman Companion. New York: Vertigo DC Comics. ISBN 1-56389-644-3.
The Annotated Sandman
The Sandman: Season of Mists
Season of Mists is a 1992 American seven-part comic and the fourth collection of issues in the DC Comics' The Sandman series. It collects issues #21–28, it was written by Neil Gaiman. In 2004 this collection received the award for the best scenario at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, it is followed by A Game of You. The issues in the collection first appeared in 1990 and 1991; the collection first appeared in paperback and hardback in 1992 with an introduction by Harlan Ellison. The title is the opening phrase of John Keats' "To Autumn", it was followed by A Game of You. The 2003 graphic novel Death: At Death's Door by Jill Thompson is related. Kelley Jones pencils the bulk of the story, inked in various issues by Malcolm Jones, Dick Giordano and P. Craig Russell. Jones's larger-than-life grotesques and obvious sense of humour make him ideal for gods and other supernatural figures, his episodes are bookended by a prologue and an epilogue drawn by Mike Dringenberg, the former inked by Malcolm Jones III, the latter by George Pratt.
It introduces Endless siblings Destiny and Delirium, features Thor and Loki from Norse mythology. Season of Mists marks the introduction of the Norse gods for the first time in the series; this collection begins with an Endless family meeting, wherein Desire taunts Morpheus about his intolerant treatment of a former lover, the African queen'Nada', whose story formed the prologue to the second collection, The Doll's House, Death angers him further by agreeing with Desire, whereupon Morpheus visits Hell to retrieve Nada. As he arrives, Lucifer expels all the demons and damned souls from Hell, abdicates as its ruler, gives Morpheus the key to Hell's gates. Word of Lucifer's abdication spreads to other immortals, who visit the Dreaming to bargain for it: Odin wishes to control Hell to avoid Ragnarök and travels to the Dreaming with Loki and Thor. Order is personified as an empty cardboard box carried by a djinn-like being, while Chaos appears as a small girl in clown makeup; the faerie Cluracan and his sister Nuala appeal to Morpheus to give control of Hell to no one, Cluracan offers his sister in exchange.
Duma and Remiel are set to observe the negotiations. After private negotiations with single divinities that represent each group of gods, Dream gives Duma and Remiel the key. Dream apologizes to Nada for what he has done to her, she is reincarnated as a newborn human child, with permission to enter the Dreaming at will. Between these deliberations is the story ``. Although the two main characters in this tale, the ghosts of two school boys, never appear again in the Sandman series, they appear as "The Dead Boy Detectives" in Gaiman's Vertigo crossover story The Children's Crusade, in a mini-series of the same name by Jill Thompson; the collection presents two simultaneous endings: Dream discovers Loki absconding from his punishment, but decides not to reveal it, proposes the latter a negotiation to set him free. Meanwhile, without his wings, sits on an Australian beach, grudgingly admires a sunset. In the epilogue and Remiel have become the new rulers of Hell, initiate a new regimen of punishment meant to "redeem" the condemned.
Season of Mists is the first appearance of one of the central themes of the series, that of rules and responsibilities. The gathering of the Endless family which opens the book makes the second reference to the "prodigal", an Endless sibling who abandoned his realm and responsibilities; the family gathering leads to Dream deciding that he must return to Hell to right a wrong he committed, an event which triggers a major plot arc throughout the series. American Gods Bender, Hy; the Sandman Companion. New York: Vertigo DC Comics. ISBN 1-56389-644-3. Gaiman, Neil; the Absolute Sandman, Vol. 2. Shawn McManus, Mike Dringenberg, Bryan Talbot, John Watkiss, Kelley Jones, George Pratt, Malcolm Jones III, Colleen Doran. Vertigo Comics. ISBN 1-4012-1083-X; the Annotated Sandman
I Want You (Elvis Costello song)
"I Want You" is a song written by Elvis Costello and recorded with his backing band the Attractions. It was released on his 1986 album Chocolate. Featuring lyrics about an obsessive romance, "I Want You" was released as the second single from Blood and Chocolate, it has since been covered by multiple artists. The dark lyrics describe a tormented romantic relationship; the narrator recounts the details of his partner's infidelities, while declaring "I want you" after each line. The music is taken at a dirge-like tempo. In his album notes for the Girls Girls Girls compilation album, Costello wrote that "he sound of this track was always going to be the aural equivalent of a blurred polaroid, so no apologies for the lack of fidelity. None are needed, it's just a pornographic snapshot. I humbly bow my head, can only wish those people a safe journey." "I Want You" was released as the second single from Blood and Chocolate in 1986, backed with "I Hope You're Happy Now", a song of which Costello said, " recorded live in the big, old studio at Olympic, after three different attempts at the song.
In the long run I'm happier to live with it being humorous, rather that murderous". The single was a moderate success on the UK charts, peaking at number 79 over a chart stay of 2 weeks. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic described it as " the nastiest songs he has recorded, both lyrically and musically". Blender Magazine named the song as one of the key tracks from Blood and Chocolate to download while Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune described the song as "riveting". Robert Christgau called the song one of the two strongest on the album. Rolling Stone called the track "an epic testament to jealousy over a former lover’s new partner". Jeremy Allen of The Guardian named the song one of Costello's top 10 best, saying, "The lyrics and music together are intimately intense, like someone breathing down your own neck, making you shudder, but the melody is irresistible too." The Daily Telegraph's Martin Chilton named the song Costello's 35th best. In 2006, Fiona Apple covered the song, accompanied by Elvis Costello, as a VH1 tribute to Costello.
Gavin Edwards of Rolling Stone said of the performance, " metabolizes every molecule of the song’s poisoned atmosphere." Costello collaborated with hip hop band the Roots to perform a version of "I Want You" in 2013. In 2017, Lydia Lunch & Cypress Grove released a version of the song on their album Under The Covers
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman is an English author of short fiction, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre, films. His works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods and The Graveyard Book, he has won numerous awards, including the Hugo and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, The Graveyard Book. In 2013, The Ocean at the End of the Lane was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards. Gaiman's family is of other Eastern European Jewish origins, his father, David Bernard Gaiman, worked in the same chain of stores. He has two younger sisters and Lizzy. After living for a period in the nearby town of Portchester, where Neil was born in 1960, the Gaimans moved in 1965 to the West Sussex town of East Grinstead, where his parents studied Dianetics at the Scientology centre in the town, his other sister, Lizzy Calcioli, has said, "Most of our social activities were involved with Scientology or our Jewish family.
It would get confusing when people would ask my religion as a kid. I'd say,'I'm a Jewish Scientologist.'" Gaiman says that he is not a Scientologist, that like Judaism, Scientology is his family's religion. About his personal views, Gaiman has stated, "I think. I would not beat the drum for the existence of God in this universe. I don't know, I think there's a 50/50 chance, it doesn't matter to me."Gaiman was able to read at the age of four. He said, "I was a reader. I loved reading. Reading things gave me pleasure. I was good at most subjects in school, not because I had any particular aptitude in them, but because on the first day of school they'd hand out schoolbooks, I'd read them—which would mean that I'd know what was coming up, because I'd read it." When he was about ten years old, he read his way through the works of Dennis Wheatley, where The Ka of Gifford Hillary and The Haunting of Toby Jugg made an impact on him. One work that made a particular impression on him was J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings from his school library, although it only had the first two volumes of the novel.
He took them out and read them. He would win the school English prize and the school reading prize, enabling him to acquire the third volume. For his seventh birthday, Gaiman received, he recalled that "I admired his use of parenthetical statements to the reader, where he would just talk to you... I'd think,'Oh, my gosh, so cool! I want to do that! When I become an author, I want to be able to do things in parentheses.' I liked the power of putting things in brackets." Narnia introduced him to literary awards the 1956 Carnegie Medal won by the concluding volume. When Gaiman won the 2010 Medal himself, the press reported him recalling, "it had to be the most important literary award there was" and observing, "if you can make yourself aged seven happy, you're doing well – it's like writing a letter to yourself aged seven." Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was another childhood favourite, "a favourite forever. Alice was default reading to the point where I knew it by heart." He enjoyed Batman comics as a child.
Gaiman was educated at several Church of England schools, including Fonthill School in East Grinstead, Ardingly College, Whitgift School in Croydon. His father's position as a public relations official of the Church of Scientology was the cause of the seven-year-old Gaiman being blocked from entering a boys' school, forcing him to remain at the school that he had been attending, he lived in East Grinstead for many years, from 1965 to 1980 and again from 1984 to 1987. He met his first wife, Mary McGrath, while she was studying Scientology and living in a house in East Grinstead, owned by his father; the couple were married in 1985 after having Michael. As a child and a teenager, Gaiman read the works of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, Mary Shelley, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Steve Ditko, Will Eisner, Ursula K. Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, Lord Dunsany and G. K. Chesterton; when he was 19–20 years old, he contacted his favourite science fiction writer, R. A. Lafferty, whom he discovered when he was nine, asked for advice on becoming an author along with a Lafferty pastiche he had written.
The writer sent Gaiman an informative letter back, along with literary advice. Gaiman has said Roger Zelazny was the author who influenced him the most, with this influence seen in Gaiman's literary style and the topics he writes about. Other authors Gaiman says "furnished the inside of my mind and set me to writing" include Moorcock, Samuel R. Delany, Angela Carter, Lafferty and Le Guin. Neil Gaiman has taken inspiration from the folk tales tradition, citing Otta F Swire's book on the legends of the Isle of Skye as his inspiration for The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains. In the early 1980s, Gaiman pursued journalism, conducting interviews and writing book reviews, as a means to learn about the world and to make connections that he hoped would assist h
Alisa Kwitney
Alisa Kwitney is a writer of comedic romance novels and graphic novels. Kwitney grew up in New York City, on Manhattan's Upper West Side, the daughter of science fiction author Robert Sheckley and Ziva Kwitney. Alisa Kwitney has a BA in English from Wesleyan University, where she received the Horgan Writing Prize for Fiction, an MFA in fiction from Columbia University, where she received a scholarship of merit, her master's thesis was published by HarperCollins as her first novel, Till The Fat Lady Sings, in 1991. Kwitney was an editor for Vertigo Comics, she is the editor for Liminal Comics at Brain Mill Press. Kwitney lives in an old farmhouse two hours from Manhattan with two children. Till The Fat Lady Sings ISBN 0-06-019021-3 The Dominant Blonde published by Avon Books in June, 2002 ISBN 0-06-008329-8 Does She or Doesn't She? Published by Avon Books in June, 2003 ISBN 0-06-051237-7 On the Couch published by HarperCollins, July 1, 2004 ISBN 0-06-053079-0 Sex as a Second Language: A Novel published by Atria Books, April 25, 2006 978-0-74326890-5 Flirting in Cars published by Atria Books, August, 2007, 978-0-7432-6897-4 The Better to Hold You by Ballantine Books, 2009, 978-0-345-50587-3 Moonburn by Ballantine Books, 2009, 978-0-345-50588-0 New Avengers: Breakout Marvel, 2013, 978-0-7851-6517-0 Cadaver & Queen published by Harlequin Teen, February 2018, 1335470468 The Dreaming: Beyond The Shores of Night DC Comics, 1-56389-393-2 Destiny: A Chronicle of Deaths Foretold ISBN 1-56389-505-6 Vertigo Visions: The Phantom Stranger ISBN 0-8230-5603-1 Sandman: King of Dreams ISBN 0-8118-3592-8 Token ISBN 1-4012-1538-6 A Flight of Angels by Vertigo/DC Comics 978-1-4012-2147-8 Batman: No Man's Land Volume 3 by DC Comics 978-1-4012-3456-0 Mystik U by DC Comics, November, 2017 Child of Mine ISBN 0-7868-6233-5 Vertigo Visions: Artwork from the Cutting Edge of Comics 0-8230-5603-1 The Sandman: King of Dreams 0-8118-3592-8 The Sandman Official website Alisa Kwitney at the Comic Book DB
