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Title: Brief Lives (Sandman, Book 7) by Neil Gaiman, Jill Thompson, Vince Locke, Peter Straub ISBN: 1-56389-138-7 Publisher: DC Comics Pub. Date: January, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.96 (25 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Best of the Sandman
Comment: The only reason I gave this story 5 stars is because there wasn't six, or ten, or a hundred available as choices.
Simply put, the Sandman is one of the greatest, most involving, most touching, (even for a hard to touch person such as myself) work of literature (yes, despite being a mere comic book it is literature, or as Peter Stuab says, nothing is) in the past century, perhaps in the past several centuries.
And Brief Lives is the best volume in the Sandman series, hands down.
The story, plot wise, is about a quest to find a missing brother.
The story is really about so many things more; about death, fate, redemption, mercy, terrible kindness, the meddling of gods and endless in human affairs, what happens to a family when the person that is its glue leaves, what it means to have a conscience, pride, honor, and much more.
Brief Lives is, even more than the other Sandman volumes, rich with beauty, imagery, imagination, and scenes that fire the imagination and touch the heart. Who cannot be moved by the anguish of Delirium and Despair, who is not awestruck by the scenes in the garden of Destiny or the conversation with Destruction, who is not genuinely saddened by the death of Orpheus and at Dream's terrible grief after the act, and who cannot be uplifted by the ending and the bond of love between Orpheus and his servant.
As an aspiring writer, I can honestly say that Brief Lives is both an inspiration and a goal; I hope that I may be able to write a single work that compares to it.
I will admit to being initially reluctant to pick up Brief Lives, perhaps because I sensed where Gaiman would take the Sandman in the last four issues, the inevitable turn to tragedy. Brief Lives is like the last warm day before winter or the last flash of light and color at sunset. The course of the Sandman was always destined to be a tragic one, and Brief Lives is the beginning of the end, the movement from dreamy stories to true tragedy, and watching it happen to an incredible character like Dream only makes it that much more affecting. Towards the end of the story, Desire, foretelling the future, says that Dream was wreck waiting to happen, and that has been true. Dream has been a wreck waiting to happen since he escaped his captivity, or maybe since Orpheus went down to Hades, or maybe before that. Up till now, though, there was always the chance that things would go another way, that there was a way around that destiny, but after Brief Lives, that is no longer the case. There is only one possible outcome, and it is only a matter of time.
That knowledge, heart wrenching as it is, is what makes this the best of all the Sandman series, and the best story, of any type or genre that I've read in quite some time.
Rating: 5
Summary: Brief encounter with Omnipotence
Comment: Oh, yes! Change is indeed the topic debated throughout Neil Gaimans masterpiece volume in the highly thought-stimulating saga of the Dreamlord. It is the book that sees Gaiman making his main character emotionally vulnerable (whereas "Preludes & Nocturnes" portrayed his "physical" weakness), thus more human in action, thought and word. By doing this Gaiman's genious sends this fascinating, somewhat inexplicable dark and mute, "human" incarnation of dreams from the rather easily awoken sense of a "sympathetic" prothagonist in action, to the empathetic core of our hearts. His clumsy approach at establishing a dialogue with the elf-housemaid Nuala on his return to the dreamcastle, stands out as proof of change - actions and reactions within this brief conversation bear witness to the Dreamlords waking will to take other beings welfare into consideration, within the limits of all realms.
The turning points are, due to the non-linear narrative, generally spread out through most of the volumes of the Sandman story, but to me the ultimate change of the storyline occurs as Morpheus initiates a final rendez-vous with his human son, as described in this wonderful, and not least powerful, collection of beautiful stories. In short a powerful set of thoughts on the nature of "the word for things not being the same always".
The presence of the Almighty is felt briefly through actions, beyond the control of even the Endless Seven, and dialogues reflecting an inevitable masterplan that will seal the fate of Morpheus as we have come to know him.
Rating: 5
Summary: The best Sandman story arch
Comment: Each story arch of Sandman, Neil Gaiman's adult-orientated comic book starring Morpheus, an amalgamation of morose twenty-something and Greek God, is excellent. But Brief Lives, in which Morpheus' loopy kid sister, Delirium drags him on a quest to find their long-lost brother, Destruction, may be the series' pinnacle.
This is for several reasons. Firstly, the story brings the resolution of the series' biggest mystery: the identity of the lost sibling in Morpheus' family (a group of mystic beings called the The Endless who all rule over some "realm" of consciousness) and his reason for disappearing. Yet, the collective little scenes in each Sandman story arch are always just as important as the underlining storyline itself and Brief Lives has many of the series' best little scenes: Delirium (one of Gaiman's most unforgettable characters) trying to remember the proper name of eye-gunk; Barnabas, Destruction's talking dog, slamming his paintings and poetry; Mervyn, a pumpkin-headed nightmare of Morpheus' creation, explaining why his boss is a flake.
Another reason why this may be the definitive best Sandman volume is that Jill Thompson may be the definitive Sandman artist. Thompson's simple, cartoon-ish pictures and her flair for telling facial expressions have a way of tenderly assisting the story without letting overly detailed imagery get in the way (a major problem in the Jim Lee era of comics).
But the best reason why this is the best Sandman story arch is what is at the heart of the story. Brief Lives is, godlike entities and talking animals aside, a simple, touching story of love and family. There is something about Delirium's naïve attempt to make The Endless "one big happy family again" and the tenderness and grace by which Gaiman writes it that makes Brief Lives an exceptional part of an exceptional series.
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Title: Season of Mists (Sandman, Book 4) by Neil Gaiman, Kelley Jones, Harlan Ellison, Mike Dringenberg ISBN: 1563890410 Publisher: DC Comics Pub. Date: January, 1994 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Doll's House (Sandman, Book 2) by Neil Gaiman, Malcolm Jones III, Mike Dringenberg, Michael Zulli, Clive Barker ISBN: 0930289595 Publisher: DC Comics Pub. Date: September, 1991 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Preludes and Nocturnes (Sandman, Book 1) by Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, Michael Dringenberg, Malcolm Jones III ISBN: 1563890119 Publisher: DC Comics Pub. Date: December, 1993 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Dream Country (Sandman, Book 3) by Neil Gaiman, Malcolm Jones III, Colleen Doran, Kelley Jones, Charles Vess, Steve Erickson ISBN: 156389016X Publisher: DC Comics Pub. Date: November, 1991 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Death: The High Cost of Living by Neil Gaiman ISBN: 1563891336 Publisher: DC Comics Pub. Date: June, 1994 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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