Stuff and Nonsense!

Dammit! I take a few days off, and my readership goes down the toilet. What a letdown.

So I started re-reading the Sandman trades my husband has. I bought him the Absolute Sandman Volume 1 for his birthday last year, but that's his, so I won't touch it. I sat down with Preludes and Nocturnes, relaxed, and enjoyed.

Damn, John Dee/Dr. Destiny is a prick (he shows back up in JSA... and he's STILL a prick. No spoilers... read it for yourself). I didn't realize, the first couple of times I read it, that John Dee's mother is the mistress of the black guy who leaves him, takes the ruby, and the demonic protection pendant... and Mrs. Dee gives the pendant to John. But that's what I get for looking at pretty pictures and skipping over some of the dialogue.

But... if I had possession of the Dream Ruby, I can't say I wouldn't take advantage of its power and manipulate people with it. But I'm a bastard. It would be expected. God damn... the stuff he does in that diner. It's gross, but entertaining. I'm always fond of watching people suffer if it's not real.

And I'd forgotten all about the little Death mini-story at the end of the book. I love Death. She's a great character. No wonder I've dressed up as her a few times for Halloween and own both of the miniseries trades. She's like the ultimate Goth chick, no? Also, The High Cost of Living and The Time of Your Life started my infatuation with Chris Bachalo's artistry. He's one of the only reasons I've continued reading the X-Men title, despite the convoluted and ultimately boring storyline. His art is just yummy. Too bad he draws positively appetizing women and really ugly men. His men just always look goofy. Maybe it's just me.

I'll read the rest of the series and report on my newest findings at another time. I regret that I didn't discover this series until after it had ended. It was my friend Daryl, who was obsessed with both Death and Tori Amos (the template for Delirium, or so I've heard) and had all the issues, as well as not a few posters and the original Sandman Tarot deck. I spent one night, wired on snorted diet pills, reading every issue he had and thirsting for more when I was finished.

Morpheus is kind of an asshole though, isn't he? I mean, what he did to Nada... that really sucks. But, I guess if you're the King of Dreams, your ego is a bit out of control, and anyone who tells you, "No." needs to be punished. But that bothers me. Oh well, at least I got to see the resolution of that story in cute Manga form in Jill Thompson's At Death's Door. It was also interesting to see the closing of Hell from Death's point of view.

But if I had to pick one member of the Endless to brand as my favorite, I'd have to choose Delirium. I based a Vampire character on her, silly ol' geeky ol' me. Her name was Giselle, she was an eternal 8-year-old (mentally, not physically) Malkavian who got into all kinds of trouble... but that's another story for another post. Suffice it to say, I've always been enamored of the more romantic idea of insanity, not the reality; the reality is just too messy.

I really wish I'd started reading the Sandman comics earlier in my life, but the covers were just too abstract and weird for me to really comprehend what was going on. The comics I liked to read at that point in my life were comics that gave you a good decent idea of what was going on inside by what was going on on the cover. Except for that stupid X-Men comic that pissed me off so much. I even bought that Uncanny X-Men where Ilyana Rasputin died just because the cover said, "If you buy one X-Men comic this year, THIS MUST BE IT!" so I followed the instructions and was disappointed with a poorly-written, sloppily-inked sop-fest with a barely digestible dialogue between Jean Grey and Jubilee.

This post has kind of been all over the place, but that's what happens when I post stream-of-consciousness crap. It's literally that. Crap. Like a brain dump. Enjoy!