Overthinking Comics

I bought the new Sandman audiobook adaption, and gave it a listen. I have mixed reviews.

This is an audiobook, and it adapts the first 20 issues of Sandman. For those that have read it in collected edition, this covers Preludes & Nocturnes, The Doll’s House, an Dream Country. It is read by a full cast, meaning different characters are voiced by different actors.

It is in the format of a radio drama, rather than an audio book. The highlights on the voice cast are James McAvoy as Morpheus himself, and Kat Dennings as Death. The biggest treat of this production is that Neil Gaiman himself is the narrator. Hearing Neil Gaiman’s voice read his own words adds impact and richness to the story, since he knows exactly what his story is, and how it should be told. It helps that he is so very good at telling stories out loud.

I’ve read Sandman several times. It is one of those series that I go back to over and over, because it seems to be dripping with richness and meaning. I have only managed to appreciate a fraction of it. This audio production, however, didn’t do much to make me appreciate the story any moreso, or any differently than I had before.

This is a straight adaption of the comic book into radio form. It replaces the images with either narration or the characters describing their surroundings and actions. And even though it will take much longer to listen to the entire production than to read the issues of the comic book that it adapts, it feels abridged. More than anything, I feel like this production was just a very fancy recap of the comic.

There are some places in particular that it fails, and some where it succeeds:

I was disappointed, in general, with the chapters “24 Hours”, and “Sound and Fury”, which adapt issues 6 and 7 of the comic book. “24 Hours” is one of the truly horrific issues of the series, where Dr. Destiny, with the help of Dream’s warped dream ruby, shapes and warps the thoughts and actions of the people in a diner over the period of 24 hours. They are forced, by the power of the dream ruby, to brutalize themselves and each other, emotionally and physically, for the enjoyment of the deranged Dr. Destiny.

“Sound and Fury” is the confrontation between Dream and Dr. Destiny for control of the dream ruby, and it is a battle mostly told in dreams. It highlights one of the central weaknesses of this format for this story, which is:

Still the best way to read this series

The Sandman series is about dreams, and takes place in dreams, which are primarily visual. That is what makes the comic book such a good way to tell the story, since comics are primarily a visual medium, and excel at telling the portions of the story that take place in the world of dreams. Removing the images from a story that relies heavily on those dream images removed something from the story for me.

On the other hand, a big highlight of this production is Chapter 9, “Tales in the Sand”. This chapter is the story of a pair of men from an African village. One young, just becoming an adult, and one old, near the end of his years. They travel into the desert, where the old man tells the young man the story of Dream and Nada, and how their love brought about the destruction of a great civilization built by their ancestors.

The original comic book adapts the oral telling of a story to the visual format of comics. This audiobook presents this story much closer to the oral tradition that the story is meant to convey. The audio format is perfect for conveying this story that is part of the oral tradition of the people in the story.

This audiobook also does a little bit to streamline The Doll’s House. When I read this comic, I often feel like The Doll’s House meanders a bit. It feels a little disconnected. After all, it mashes together a mother/daughter/grandmother drama, the story of young Jed forced to live in the basement, the dream world of Brute and Glob in Jed’s head, a serial killer convention, a house full of eccentric character, and the heart of the dreaming.

The story of Dream and Hob Gaddling, who is gifted with immortality by Dream and Death, is moved so that it takes place before The Doll’s House begins, rather than taking place smack in the middle of it. This helps maintain the connective tissue of the main story of the Doll’s House. The Doll’s house portion of this audiobook also seems to include a little more connective material to help explain how the various twists and turns in the story are all events converging on the finale.

This audio drama adapts the entire contents of the first Absolute Edition of this series. With that in mind, I expect that there will be three more volumes of this, to adapt the contents of volume 2 through 4.

Overall, I wouldn’t suggest this to anyone over the comics, unless they have specific reading or vision challenges. The original comic book is the best version of these stories (so far), that is the format I would recommend to anyone.

I am also not sure I would even recommend this to anyone that has already read the comic, unless you just want to live with the stories a little bit longer. That is the real benefit I received from listening to this, the chance to live in the world of these stories for a few hours.

Considering how good these stories are, that’s not all too bad though.