The Sandman Overture #6- Desire, you will lead me to my end

Writer: Neil Gaiman
Artist: J.H Williams III
Publisher: Vertigo (DC)
Released: 30th September 2015



I’m back in the Swindon town centre library, and it has to be that way, as I review a book that takes me back to the days when I was a sweaty student nobody trying to survive days of nothing, but reading, writing and hoping for a better tomorrow.

All of that internal drama was played out in libraries. All of that work, longing, thinking, questioning. It was always in libraries. Now I do it alone, isolated in a room, but for today I’ll go back to the past. I need to feel the past, as the past is writ large all over this book, and that is how I feel about it today.

I’m still a nobody, not so sweaty now, that’s been sorted out, but no longer a student with dreams about doing something interesting, or noticeable, with his life. No, today I’m just as destroyed as everybody else. Going through the routines of living, here I am, alive, barely. The dream died a while back, only remnants remain. The young bloke in the library turned into an old bloke dismissed, a bloke that writes, but does anybody care? The answer is no, and I don’t mind, and so I write these words that flow as urine into the public lavatory of the world, stinking it up, briefly, then down into the sewers of the void.

I used to care about people. I used to dream of feedback, of discussions, of debates and controversies, but now all I care about is the writing. That’s all that matters now, the writing, and the lack of reaction to it, that doesn’t bother me anymore.

That’s what’s changed for me. I read about dreams, used to dream myself, but that’s all gone now. What remains is a dry sweat rash, writing continued, but with zero desire for acknowledgement. Neil Gaiman is a world away from me. People read what he writes, they look forward to it, they demand more, and they interact with him, asking him to do more of that good stuff that he used to do in the past.

That’s what I get from ‘The Sandman Overture #6.’ I get a writer, an insular, selfish, self-indulgent person, writing for his own pleasure, but discovering that he has an audience, winning. The audience enjoys the self indulgence, the world that is created, the characters resonate and when the writer wants to end it all, they shout in loud unison chorus of desire- NO.

Sandman Overture #6 reads like a writer talking to himself. Success destroys the barriers of isolation, forcing reality into the equation, the writer telling himself that it’s all a dream, that dreams must end, but fan desire rears her head, demanding more, the writer relents, and the dream/writing continues. That’s very good news for fans of the dream, so if you are reading this review and don’t know what I’m on about, I’ll make it clear.

The world of the Sandman and the endless cannot end here. There will be more. I’ve read this book and it does not read like an end. There’s no ending here. This ‘final’ book reads very much like a submission to desire.

How do I feel about this? I’m unsure. The Sandman is a comic book very much stuck in it’s time. To me it screams early 1990’s, so how to make it resonate with the now, the world post 9/11? It’s going to be difficult. Sandman Overture is a treat, but it’s a 90’s treat, out of time and existing in a comic book world of 2015 that cannot get to grips with the realities of the modern world.

Dreams come from fragments of reality, and to be a dream of real meaning there needs to be a connection with the now. You can’t hide in Goth, you have to come outside, stare at the sun, look at the wrinkles on your face, and understand that the world has changed.

Can Neil Gaiman do that? Can he say something about the world that has changed so dramatically over the past fourteen years, or does he even want to? Will his world of the Sandman continue, but stay in the past, or will it do that most difficult of things and reinvent itself for this nightmare Orwellian world in which we are now living?

I hope it’s the later. If it’s the former, then perhaps the dream should have died? Perhaps it’s best to ignore desire? I do, but I have to. My lack of success means that a desire for anything will destroy me. I expect nothing, get nothing, and remain free from the jaws of desire.

Neil Gaiman is a successful man, and in Sandman Overture #6 I read a willing submission to desire, to give his readers more of what they want. Will it be any different for him? Will his submission to desire lead to happiness? Will it lead to the happiness of his readers? Reality says no, reality says that satisfaction can never be achieved, but this is a dream we are talking about, and dreams are notoriously immune from the mundane aches, pains, discomforts and disappointments that come with the harsh light of the day. I wish him the best, desire demands, desire wins, and the dream world of the endless, continues.


Rating: 9/10 (Insular and complex, artistically and thematically)