Graphic Novel Review- Sandman Vol.4 Season of Mists

Sticking with Vertigo this week, to give the Marvel and DC powerhouses a rest, and again because Stevenage Library has a shockingly poor selection in its graphic novel section shelf. Not to say the odd gem isn't there- it just means that dipping in and out of series, normally habit of mine, is now enforced, and I have to start in the middle with most things. As I have here, with Volume 4 of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series, Season of Mists. I picked it up with a little trepidation and annoyed that I couldn't start with the other three, but it is a great largely self-contained volume so I needn't have worried.

My sole exposure to The Sandman has been people continuously pointing out ho much some rather half-formed ideas and short stories I worked on at university held similarity to it, something I resented at the time, firstly as I had never read the series and despite or because of saying as much people didn't seem to believe I wasn't plagiarising and secondly because I knew enough people were saying it for it to be true and to have completely ruined any chance of what I was writing standing up to comparison. I wasn't wrong, and neither were they.

At the start of Vol.4, Season of Mists, Gaiman has the character of Destiny call a family meeting of his brothers and sisters, all deified concepts and abstracts with their own vastly distinguishable personalities, each a guide and presence in mortals' lives, and each master of their own ethereal plane as a realm or domain. The basic idea is that all ideologies, deities and abstracts exist as their own beings and can interact, love, fight and build among each other above and beyond and outside mortal worlds. Above all of these are the 'family' around which Gaiman writes the series, the Endless, an alliterative brood of Destiny, Death, Desire, Dream, Despair, Delirium and Destruction (who has absented himself for some reason in a previous volume- the issue with not having read the series is apparent here but not really elsewhere). These are the characters who gather at the beginning after the Fates, the Grey Women from Greco-Roman mythology, appear to Destiny and warn him that 'a king will forsake his kingdom, life and death will clash and fray'.

They talk, and fight, and Dream decides to return to Hell where he has banished a woman he loved, as she spurned him. Again, not having read the previous volumes, I just had to roll with it but these are the only two things I didn't follow. Anyway, he's gone to the Hell, via the Fates indication to Destiny and Destiny's arrangement of a family meeting that must come to pass, having traced time and what must happen in his book, a tome embodying everything that is destined. It's all a bit complicated, ethereal omnipotence, flitting between planes, that sort of thing, but if it's your cup of tea (as it is mine) then you'll be glugging it down. It's very easy to follow from panel to panel, and Gaiman is a master of weaving recycled and reclaimed characters from the old alongside and around his own creations.

The story moves to Hell,to the mortal plane, to Dream land, where Morphues, lord of Dream, has to make a judgement over who to give great power to (I won't spoil what it is, as the concept and baton he has to unwillingly accept and pass on is a corker). This is where the meshing of his worlds and the ancient and existing ethereal netherworlds and spiritual planes comes into its own for Gaiman. Dream holds a feast attended by envoys from all worlds who want the power he must grant- Norse gods from Asgard,the Egyptian gods, God's angels, fairies, a contingent of demons, a Buddhist offshoot with a cardboard box deity the Lord of Order, every and any conceivable figure in lore, parable or religion. The depictions of Thor, Odin and Loki are particular highlights, so different to the Marvel versions many know, and so much closer to the root myths of trickster and brainless brawn, and the takes on devilry and angels, their roles and their regrets, is incredible.

The characters of demons, humans and angels are all thoroughly thrown into relief by this volume. Questioning what we are, what it is to be guilty and belong in Hell, and what it is to rule Hell as though a demon and guilt-ridden monster, everything is questioned. New ways of looking at the figures of order and chaos, God and the Devil, as influences or names or figures to attempt to emulate but never be directed by, never have the hand forced by, is a fresh take on an exceedingly old polar adversary arrangement. While it's not a reworking but rather a new look at the people behind such constant figures, it does show one thing- that the Endless Gaiman writes are the few constants that we have, and the anything else is just interpretation, image, retelling. The introduction to the volume by Harlan Ellison, while largely dry and boring, holds one line I really think sums up the story in Season of Mists- that what we read from Gaiman is 'new, is of consequence, and isn't as transitory [...] as most of what is done day-in-day-out in comics'. There's a real meaty story here, and it shows.

At every turn the distinctive art work more than backs up the words and the story, each locale and character distinctively pencilled and coloured, and the realms of Hell, Dream and the mortal world about as different as they could be.

Season of Mists has lit a fire in me for better storytelling in the comics I read rather that the week by week further adventures of heroes sixty years old, doing the same thing still. To this point I will definitely, when I've got some money together or the library have an injection of issues, be finding out what happens next and what happens before. Because if you can see the whole story whenever you want, who says you have to see it in the 'right' order? But I will undoubtedly be seeing all of it, and soon. You'd all do a lot worse than having a look too.