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re-reading Sandman
2021-06-26 10:49Some random notes, mostly on the first 9-10 issues. Spoilers.
* Dream can be a total asshole, e.g. putting Nada in Hell for rejecting him for the sake of his people. OTOH when not being Angry Man he's got something like a moral sense; he tries not to bring Constantine into the Toxic Dream Dump and takes responsibility for him when John insists on coming anyway. He lets himself be yelled into mercy killing Rachel. He advises Hob to get out of the slave trade.
* In issue 3, we know that from his POV, Dream is literally running on fumes, unmaking letters of commission to regain scraps of power. But from Constantine's POV, he can trivially open alarmed doors, fend off dream things, summon light. Granted Constantine seems to be a pretty weak magician, running more on cleverness and fate and ritual magic rather than conventional quick-spell power. Still, you get a sense that "Endless on fumes" is still pretty powerful from a human perspective.
* Also I wondered if Rachel's fate was the first appearance of Dream's part-time psychopomp powers. It's hard to tell, he says she'll die "soon" but that's vague. So maybe she died naturally in a few minutes, but without pain because of his dream. Or maybe he expedited and directed her end.
* I've long noted that Death seems to have an optional relationship with time, the flagrant example being when Orpheus visits her and sees her 20th century apartment. But there's a hint right in issue 8, when she tells Franklin she'll see him soon.
* Death asking if Dream had seen a movie, when she knows full well Dream had been stuck in a cage for the century, is kind of assholish of her.
* I just like the detail of how Dream is always looking away when Death does her "sound of wings" thing.
* Dream can be a total asshole, e.g. putting Nada in Hell for rejecting him for the sake of his people. OTOH when not being Angry Man he's got something like a moral sense; he tries not to bring Constantine into the Toxic Dream Dump and takes responsibility for him when John insists on coming anyway. He lets himself be yelled into mercy killing Rachel. He advises Hob to get out of the slave trade.
* In issue 3, we know that from his POV, Dream is literally running on fumes, unmaking letters of commission to regain scraps of power. But from Constantine's POV, he can trivially open alarmed doors, fend off dream things, summon light. Granted Constantine seems to be a pretty weak magician, running more on cleverness and fate and ritual magic rather than conventional quick-spell power. Still, you get a sense that "Endless on fumes" is still pretty powerful from a human perspective.
* Also I wondered if Rachel's fate was the first appearance of Dream's part-time psychopomp powers. It's hard to tell, he says she'll die "soon" but that's vague. So maybe she died naturally in a few minutes, but without pain because of his dream. Or maybe he expedited and directed her end.
* I've long noted that Death seems to have an optional relationship with time, the flagrant example being when Orpheus visits her and sees her 20th century apartment. But there's a hint right in issue 8, when she tells Franklin she'll see him soon.
* Death asking if Dream had seen a movie, when she knows full well Dream had been stuck in a cage for the century, is kind of assholish of her.
* I just like the detail of how Dream is always looking away when Death does her "sound of wings" thing.