The Sandman

Gaiman, Neil. The Sandman. New York: DC Comics, 1994


Annotation: This is not a bedtime story. World’s End is filled with bizarre characters, some barely human, each waiting to spill their dark fantasy and twisted tales of terror. Each tale is richly illustrated to scare even the most hardened reader.


Justification for Nomination: The Sandman is a graphic odyssey of stranded travelers waiting out a storm at the World’s End inn. To pass the time, while the storm rages around them, they take turns telling tales of horror and mystery. I have to be honest and say that I was not looking forward to reading a graphic novel. I did not think that this kind of literature would satisfy and keep my interest. Boy was I wrong. Once I picked it up I could not put it down and read it the whole way through. Gaimen’s rock solid story telling is awesome. It reminded me of a cross between Ray Bradbury and Stephen King. Each story is smart and frightening. The illustrations are classic comic book style with a wide spectrum of vivid colors to grab the reader’s attention. The drawings detail from the setting to the expression on the characters faces reach out and grab the reader. The square bound panels made it easier to follow for a first time graphic novel reader, like me. The Author uses word balloons in each panel that designated who the speaker was and bordered captions for transition and narration. The gutter spaces were very small which helped with the quick pacing throughout the novel. There were many different panel to panel transitions. Moment to moment, action to action, subject to subject, and scene to scene were all used throughout the text. The Sandman is the 8th installment in the series of graphic novels written by Gaimen. All publishing rights are reserved to DC Comics. I am excited to start at volume one and read through them all. I do agree with the author when he stated that it was intended for mature audiences. Some of the concepts would be hard for a younger YA to grasp. For example, a character named Jim is telling a tale and within the tale a different character begins to tell a tale and then the story reverses back Jim the original story teller. A more mature YA would be able to follow this type of dialogue without losing track of who is telling the story. I encourage anyone with a liking or as in my case a dislike for gothic graphic novels to read this book.
Genre: Graphic Novel/Horror/Mystery