Neil Gaiman's the Sandman

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Andrea Goldbergerová Themes as Characters: Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman Bachelor‟s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Michael Matthew Kaylor, Ph. D. 2011 1 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author‟s signature 2 Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisor Michael Matthew Kaylor, Ph.D. for his kind and valuable advice, and for suggesting this topic to me in the first place. 3 Table of Contents 1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………….……..5 2. Comics as a Narrative Medium……………………………………………….………7 2.1 Defining Comics…………………………………………………….……….7 2.2 Vocabulary of Comics………………………………………………….…..14 2.2.1 Panels, Closure, and the “Gutter”…………………………….…..14 2.2.2 Word Balloons and Lettering…………………………….….……15 3. The Sandman: Analysis of the Endless……………………………………….……...16 3.1 Characterization and Visual Depiction of the Endless…………………..…18 3.1.1 Dream……………………………………………………………..18 3.1.2 Death……………………………………………………………...24 3.1.3 Destiny……………………………………………………………27 3.1.4 Destruction………………………………………………………..28 3.1.5 Desire……………………………………………………………..30 3.1.6 Despair…………………………………………………………....31 3.1.7 Delirium………………………………………………………..…32 3.2 Themes as Characters: Analyses of Endless-Centered Stories……….….…33 3.2.1 “The Sound of Her Wings”………………………………...….….33 3.2.2 The Wake……………………………………………………....….35 4. Portraying Personifications in Comics…………………………………………........38 5. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...43 6. Works Cited………………………………………………………………………….44 7. Résumés……………………………………………………………………………...46 4 1. Introduction As a boy growing up in the 1960s and early 1970s, Neil Gaiman1 had already been an avid reader – having taught himself to read at the age of three – when he discovered the medium of comics. This discovery would soon turn into an addiction, and addiction into an ambition. When his dream of becoming a professional comic writer was brushed off as a teenage whim by a career counselor, he swore off comic books until the mid-1980s. In the meantime, he decided not to give up on writing and, after having no luck with selling his fiction, he launched his professional writing career as a journalist, primarily working for men‟s magazines. In 1984, he began reading Alan Moore‟s monthly comic, The Swamp Thing which made him fall in love with the medium all over again. He then befriended Moore who also taught him how to write a comic script. The understanding of the process enabled Gaiman to attempt writing scripts of his own but he would not publish anything until meeting his future friend and collaborator, illustrator Dave McKean (who would later design the cover to every issue of The Sandman). Their first assignment together was to make a five-page comics strip for Escape magazine which would, however, turn into their first graphic novel: Violent Cases. Eventually, the two of them started working for DC Comics, writing and drawing a three-part miniseries Black Orchid based on an obscure female superhero from a 1970s comic. It was at this time that Gaiman started considering a different type of a character: one that would be open to many possibilities and experimentation. He pitched his idea of writing a story using the 1970s character Sandman to Karen Berger, a DC Comics editor. Since the editorship of DC Comics was uncertain whether Black Orchid would sell – for neither the authors nor the character were particularly well-known – Berger proposed that Gaiman should first start writing a 1 All biographical information was taken from The Sandman Companion (pp. 12-24). 5 monthly comic, while McKean was assigned to illustrate a Batman graphic novel, Arkham Asylum, thus ensuring that both of them would get the needed name recognition. In the end, this was not necessary, but Gaiman started working on his monthly comic nevertheless. Owing to the fact that another writer was already using the Sandman from the 1970s, Gaiman was granted permission to create a completely new, original character with the same name and thus The Sandman was born. Gaiman‟s Sandman is, unlike its 1970s equivalent who fought crime using sleeping gas, a personification of dreams themselves and a ruler over the domain of dreaming. The Sandman – who is also known as Dream, Morpheus and a variety of other aliases – was gradually given a family of other immortals ruling over their own domains: Destiny, Death, Destruction, Desire, Despair, and Delirium. The series, however, does not only concentrate on Dream and his brothers and sisters; The Sandman features a wide range of characters: some were based on actual historical figures (including William Shakespeare or Maximilien Robespierre); others depict mythological figures, classic superheroes and an assortment of less known characters from various DC comics. Still others are unique to Gaiman‟s fictional universe. With that in mind, it is necessary to note that the characters and multiple storylines are interconnected in ways that are often hard to anticipate or decipher at first reading. In a way, The Sandman is not only the story of the Sandman himself; the stories are the sole focus of the series. The Endless function as catalysts which bring things about and as constants which install a very particular – and peculiar – kind of order in the Universe. The main objective of this thesis is to prove that the medium of comics is ideal for the portrayal of personification. The first chapter will lay out the theoretical basis of the thesis by presenting an overview of the attempts to define comics, as well as a brief analysis of the main elements of its structure. The following chapter will deal with the 6 characters themselves in two ways: firstly by summarizing their characteristics; secondly by explaining their function within the story through the analysis of two concrete stories (or rather, of a story and a separate story arc) that concentrate on the relationships and interactions between the Endless, and which demonstrate how they not only rule their domains, but are also ruled by them. In other words, how they are presented both as characters and as the themes (or concepts) they personify. The last chapter will encapsulate and elaborate on what has been written in the preceding parts of the thesis. 7 2. Comics as a Narrative Medium 2.1 Defining Comics “Comics” may seem as a rather simple term to define. As it turns out, however, it is a word that is both familiar and alien: familiar to the millions of people who have become acquainted with the medium at some point in their lives; alien to those who never dared to venture beyond the comic strips in periodicals or series starring their childhood heroes, as well as those who view and treat comics with prejudice. While there may be an understanding – albeit not a universal one because there is no universal way of experiencing and exploring the medium – of what a comic is, putting this knowledge in actual words may prove to be a little more difficult. This is easily illustrated by a quick journey into the heart of comic criticism and theory. Coulton Waugh was among the first people to deal with comics critically. In his 1947 book, simply titled The Comics, he asserts that a comic usually consists of the following three elements: “(1) a continuing character who becomes the reader‟s dear friend, whom he looks forward to meeting day after day or Sunday after Sunday; (2) a sequence of pictures, which may be funny or thrilling, complete in themselves or part of a longer story; (3) speech in the drawing usually in blocks of lettering surrounded by “balloon” lines” (14). Harvey elaborates on this definition by pointing out that the very first element – that of a continuing character – was added by Waugh “under false pretenses . to eliminate anything that came along before the Yellow Kid2” (“Defining Comics Again”). The latter part of the definition would, however, come to serve as the basis for other, less outdated descriptions of the medium. One such definition was conceived by Will Eisner – a comic writer and theoretician – in the introduction to his Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative. 2 The Yellow Kid was the lead character of a late 1890s American comic strip, “Hogan‟s Alley.” 8 According to him a comic is “a form of sequential art, often in the form of a strip or a book, in which images and text are arranged to tell a story” (xvii). The coinage of the term “sequential art” is especially important because it is this particular term that another comic theoretician, Scott McCloud, uses as the basis of his own definition. In his seminal work, Understanding Comics, McCloud analyzes the medium and, in doing so, attempts to provide convincing arguments that are meant to aid in erasing the borders that have separated comics from public discourse. He suggests a rewording of Eisner‟s definition, in which he describes comics as a hybrid medium consisting of “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer” (9). He elaborates on this definition by including forms which are sequential in their nature, but are nevertheless not considered comics (e.g. instructional diagrams). He also notes that single panels – or “cartoons” – are not comics because there is “no such thing as a sequence of one” (20). He admits that there is a connection between comics and cartoons because both “[juxtapose] words and pictures” (21). But as he has already made clear in his definition above, the linguistic element of comics is not essential to him. McCloud‟s primary understanding of the term “comics” leaves out most of the elements which are typically associated with the medium. It is not so much that he completely disregards them; in fact, he continues his mock dictionary entry by adding the following three alternative definitions: “2.

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