[.ca] Sandman, The: Season of Mists - Book IV (ISBN 1563890410)

From Amazon.com:
In many ways, Season of Mists is the pinnacle of the Sandman experience. After a brief intermission of four short stories (collected as Dream Country) Gaiman continued the story of the Dream King that he began in the first two volumes. Here in volume 4, we find out about the rest of Dream's Endless family (Desire, Despair, Destiny, Delirium, Death, and a seventh missing sibling). We find out the story behind Nada, Dream's first love, whom we met only in passing during Dream's visit to hell in the first book. When Dream goes back to hell to resolve unfinished business with Nada, he finds her missing along with all of the other dead souls. The answer to this mystery lies in Lucifer's most uncharacteristic decision--a delicious surprise. There is something grandiose about this story, in which each chapter ends with such suspense and drive to read the next. This book is best summed up by a toast taken from the second chapter: "To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due." --Jim Pascoe

Gaiman is brilliantly:
Uhm...this guy is like really really good. Favorite book of the series. Thank you.

exellent artists + exellent story = SANDMAN:
i start reading Sandman with this volume, reading the 24 pages spanish comic. Since the spanish comic was discontinued in my country, and never was brought again in his 24 pages format, I just stop reading the Sandman, but over the years i kept wondering, what happen with the pale faced guy of the story and with his deadly sister. Finally in a travel to the US I saw the entire Sandman series on a library, and I bought a couple of tomes, and after that i just couldn't stop reading Sandman's books. The story it's so intrigating and fascinating that after you read a chapter you want to know what's going to happen right away. That plus the Dave McKean's artwork makes it one of the best, ifnot the best, comic and book of his genre in the last dacades. Maybe, there has been many exellent stories in the fiction style, but what Gaiman does it's admirable, not only 'cause of the creativity developed in the entire story, plus the variety of tales in the series, but also because of the workteam that participates, including remarkables inkers, drawers, painters?, and all kind of graphic artists. So when you read the Sandman you're reading clearly not just another fiction story, but one of the best co-production in the fiction genre.

Where Dream Meets Myth:
With this fourth instalment to the Sandman series, Gaiman finally takes the time to introduce us to Dream's elusive siblings, the Endless. Although we briefly encountered several of them in The Doll's House, Gaiman allows us to spy in on the family dynamics as all six (or is it seven; note the one empty chair) sit around the table together and bicker and argue as most families are wont to do. The brief little write up for Desire, Despair, Destiny, Delirium, and Dream in the introductory chapter is most welcome, but why not one for Death? Although the art was generally good, I found it a little off, at times. In particular, I didn't like the depiction of Dream or Death. I much better preferred how they appeared in Preludes and Nocturnes. To compound this problem, the text oftentimes had inconsistent images of both Dream and Death. I'm not sure why Dream sometimes appeared strikingly different in different cells on the same page, and I must say I found such occurrences distracting. I have no complaints on the story, however. Gaiman raises the bar here, and deeply immerses the text with the various myths held by civilizations past and present. Gaiman is obviously very familiar with these themes; his firm control of the narrative and adept insertion of these various complicated mythologies provides the reader access to people and places no other graphic novel does. Further, only someone with as puckish a sense of humour as Gaiman could contrive a situation where the Norse God Thor would put the moves on the Egyptian cat Goddess, Bast. Thor appears to be quite the party animal, too: drinker, swearer and maker of rowdy jokes. Like the other texts in the Sandman canon, I highly recommend Season of Mists. It is with this tome that Gaiman flaunts his 'literariness' and proves that comics are capable of high art, too.

Easily the Best of the Sandman:
...While the first volume was easily the weakest, right next to "World's End." Still, any of these books are so much better than those Marvel superhero special FX fests you see in Hollywood movies. The covers by Dave McKean are gorgeous, and if you're a sucker for worldly mythology, this is the book for you. It's a wonderful story that sets the tone for what's coming in the end of the Sandman. "Death: at Death's Door" is a cute retelling of this story from Death's point of view, which does not do it justice since it's much shorter, condensed and does not recreate the epic sense of mythology that the Sandman is.

A major step for Sandman:
It is appropriate that Season of Mists opens with the first round-table meeting of the Endless, the title character's family who all rule over some "realm" of conscious experience. This story arch marks the point where Sandman went from being a super-smart horror series to a Middle Earth for the alternarock generation. No more would scary monsters and gruesome imagery be the defining features of Neil Gaiman's adult-orientated fantasy comic book. Instead ambiguously defined gods and semi-gods, such as the Endless, and their (mis)adventures in the modern world would be the driving force behind Sandman. This type of literature would become Gaiman's specialty and was probably always his primary interest. Likewise Season of Mists sees Gaiman write with greater ease and elegance than ever before, making this the best piece of the Sandman saga thus far. In Season of Mists, Sandman AKA Dream AKA Morpheus, the series' main character and the member of the Endless who controls the realm of dreams, ventures into Hell to free a former lover he condemned there thousands of years ago. When he arrives, he finds Lucifer preparing to abandon his post, evicting all of the damned and demons and locking the gates. He gives the key to Hell to Morpheus. Afterwards, a horde of deities, from Anubis to Odin, storm Morpheus' realm, called "the Dreaming," wanting to bargain for the key. Gaiman's examination of the mythologies and religions of mankind is somehow admiring, thought-provoking and humorous at the same time. His use of characterization is marvelous and his sense of suspense is always second to none. Meanwhile, Mike Dringenberg, the artist of most the saga, creates marvels for the eyes with his portrayals of surreal settings such as Hell and the Dreaming. Although latter story archs would surpass it, Seasons of the Mist was a bold new step for Sandman and showed many of the traits that made it such a great series.