by Eden
In some ways, Brief Lives is the best of The Sandman volumes. It tells a complete, fairly straightforward story with an actual conclusion. It’s the most consistent artistically. It’s charming, although it’s maybe a bit too precious in places. It’s probably the volume I’ve read the most.
Fables & Reflection is an odd one. While it is just a collection of short stories, the issues aren’t presented in order. Three of the issues were published before the A Game of You and “Ramadan,” issue #50, was published after the next story arc. There’s also a brief story that appeared in Vertigo Preview #1 and Sandman Special from 1991. If this seems like it’s all over the place, you’d be right.
I wish A Game of You was a couple of issues longer. And while as much as I want to stop saying “Neil Gaiman doesn’t know how to end these story arcs properly” well, there’s much of that here too. At only six issues, A Game of You brings up a lot of ideas without fully developing them. I still like this storyline but I always want more from it than what we got.
I always remember Season of Mists as being better than it actually is.
It certainly has enough to recommend it. It’s ambitious in its scope and is full of big ideas. However, like a lot of Neil Gaiman’s work, it doesn’t quite wrap everything up in a satisfactory fashion. Still, though, it’s a pretty fun ride.
Dream Country is the shortest of The Sandman volumes — it’s just four single-issue stories, plus the script for one of them. But because of that, it’s actually a good sampler of The Sandman. It doesn’t require a lot of prior knowledge (do you know who Dream is? Do you know who Death is? You’re pretty well caught up). To me, it’s where Neil Gaiman actually established what he was doing with The Sandman.