The Sandman: Dream Country
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Dream Country is the third graphic novel collection of the comic book series The Sandman, published by DC Comics. It collects issues #17-20. It is written by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Kelley Jones, Charles Vess, Colleen Doran and Malcolm Jones III, coloured by Robbie Busch and Steve Oliff, and lettered by Todd Klein.
It was first issued in paperback in 1991, and later in hardback in 1995.
This volume contains the first reference to Dream's son Orpheus (in Calliope), who will play an important role later in the series, and the first story (Façade) in which Dream does not appear. The collected edition includes Gaiman's script for Calliope.
Issues collected
- Sandman #17: "Calliope" ... art by Kelley Jones and Malcolm Jones III
- Sandman #18: "Dream of a Thousand Cats" ... art by K. Jones and M. Jones III
- Sandman #19: "A Midsummer Night's Dream" ... art by Charles Vess
- Sandman #20: "Facade" ... art by Colleen Doran and M. Jones III
Synopsis
Like the sixth collection, Fables and Reflections and the eighth, Worlds' End, Dream Country consists of short stories that do not have a common storyline running through them, though it has been argued that most Sandman stories are not entirely self-contained and are part of a larger story arc that encompasses the entire series.
Dream Country is the shortest of the ten Sandman collections, featuring just four issues ("Calliope", #17, and "A Dream of a Thousand Cats", #18, both pencilled by Kelley Jones and inked by Malcolm Jones III; "A Midsummer Night's Dream", #19, drawn by Charles Vess and coloured for the first time by computer colouring pioneer Steve Oliff; and "Façade", #20, penciled by Colleen Doran and inked by Malcolm Jones III). It holds its own nevertheless, and includes an issue widely regarded as one of the best in the entire series.
Calliope
This is the story of a frustrated author, Richard Madoc, whose first book has been released to critical acclaim but who simply cannot write a page of the promised follow-up. He bargains with an elder writer, Erasmus Fry, for Calliope, one of the Muses of Greek mythology, whom Fry had captured early in his life. Fry kept her imprisoned and raped her, which provided the inspiration for his successful novels. Madoc at first follows in Fry's footsteps, but Calliope calls upon one of the series' most intriguing characters, the triad of witches known variously as the Furies, the Kindly Ones, the Gracious Ladies and many other names, for help. They direct her to Morpheus, whom we are told was once her lover (this a thread continued later in the series), who at that time is imprisoned. Upon his release he comes to rescue Calliope, and visits a terrible punishment upon Madoc.
At the time of writing this story was original, however at Strange Horizons there is a list of stories which they see too often. Point 2e of this list is "Creative person meets a muse (either one of the nine classical Muses or a more individual muse) and interacts with them, usually by keeping them captive" which is the main point of the plot descibed above.
- Neil Gaiman's post about Strange Horizon's list (http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2004/05/happy-mothers-day.asp)
A Dream of a Thousand Cats
This is a curious piece of whimsy, a flight of fantasy concerning an inspirational cat with a vision of an alternate reality where cats are huge and humans merely their playthings, tiny organisms which groom their bodies and which the cats can kill at their pleasure. She preaches her vision to motley assortments of wild cats around the world, hoping that if she can make enough believe in and dream of this reality, it will once more become the truth. At first seemingly a complete diversion from the basic story of the Sandman, in fact it illustrates one of the core themes of the series; the idea that reality is shaped in the most literal sense by the dreams of humans, and of other animals too.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
This is a core issue of the Sandman series, sometimes cited as the best in the series. An extremely skilled piece of writing (and beautifully illustrated by Charles Vess), it concerns the premiere of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which we are told was commissioned by Morpheus as part of a bargain whereby he gifted Shakespeare his powers of writing. Performed on a hillside before an audience from Faerie - the very characters who appear in the play, Titania, Oberon and the hobgoblin Robin Goodfellow (Puck) amongst them - the Sandman's version of reality and Shakespeare's play are merged and intertwined to an extraordinary degree.
The issue received a World Fantasy Award for short fiction in 1991, which caused an outcry of indignation amongst people who felt that a mere comic book should not have won the award. The rules were subsequently changed to disqualify comic books from winning.
"Men of Good Fortune", in which Dream offers his bargain to Shakespeare, is issue #13 and appears in the second collection, The Doll's House; "The Tempest", featuring the second of the two plays commissioned by Morpheus, is the final issue of the entire series (#75) and appears in the tenth collection, The Wake.
Façade
This is another odd issue, featuring one of the methods Gaiman played with especially in the first and to a lesser extent in the second collection; it takes one of the neglected characters from the DC Universe, this time Element Girl (Urania Blackwell, a female version of Metamorpho), and shows her in a completely uncustomary situation. A reluctant superhero at best, she has now retired, and lives a meagre existence, rarely leaving her flat due to self-loathing of her "freakish" appearance. An extraordinarily poignant piece, dealing with identity and, subtly, the gap between the world portrayed in the more naïve of DC Comics' superhero comics and the reality of everyday life, it ends on a curiously happy note, with Death answering "Rainie"'s telephone and informing the caller that "she's gone away, I'm afraid".