The Sandman: Overture #1

"Chapter One"
written by Neil Gaiman
art by J. H. Williams III

In 1916, a cabal of occult elitists sought to capture and enslave Death, but instead they summoned her younger brother Dream, weakened and exhausted and dressed for war.  Overture is the story of how he came to be so.

Chronologically, Gaiman's return to Morpheus' world may antedate the events of Dream's imprisonment, but the full weight of Sandman's epic 75-issue run bears down the details of Overture.  It grants Gaiman's lyrical but circuitous opening a gravitas it perhaps hasn't yet earned, but it also casts a long shadow.  Like the musical form from which Gaiman derives his title, it's a small piece that presages the themes and tone of what's to come.  Unlike the music, most of us can only presage Sandman, so to speak, in retrospect.

Nevertheless, the notes are beautiful.  It begins with a dreaming plant on a strange planet in a far distant galaxy.  Dream, as he is accustomed to do, appears in the form of the dreamer, a dark, elegant flower with a white bloom.  Something, though it is impossible to determine exactly what, is wrong.  So we begin.  It's a fine, dramatic, orchestral opening, but it's the grace notes that color Gaiman's fantasy so wonderfully.  Destiny, for instance, reads about himself reading about himself in a narrative mise-en-abyme that threatens to unravel narrative logic if not for his characteristic dogmatism and certainty.  Dream keeps a London office, in no particular time or place—though at any moment they seem so absolute—and attended by dreamers who become someone else in their duties, as changeable and absolute as the place itself.  But it's Dream's death, perhaps, that would have been the issue's most tantalizing mystery.  Though we know death to be possible for him, he appears by all accounts still to live.  But instead, we get many Dreams each with his own ruby, summoned together against their resisting, though our own Morpheus seems the only one desirous to resist.  And the only one to show up prepared for battle.

J. H. Williams III's artwork is characteristically gorgeous, echoing the tenor of the original series with crisper, cleaner notes.  Like Gaiman's lush language, there's relish in Williams' designs.  The Corinthian—one of Gaiman's more nightmarish creations—is introduced in teeth of a sinister grin, a twisted and appropriate analogy to eye-reflection artwork (6-7).  Similarly, Mr. George Portcullis is introduced through portcullis windows (11).  He even works in enigmatic messages into the wood grain along the borders:  "Where dreams live now, but sometimes some dreams die."

[December 2013]