Books: Sandman, Sandman, Pseudo-Kirby, Post-Kirby

[woodwardiocom]

The Sandman: King of Dreams by Alisa Kwitney

This was going cheap at the Harvard Bookstore, so I picked it up. It's a casual overview of the original Sandman series, with excerpts, scripts, sketches, etc. It's not terribly in-depth, and in parts reads like an advertisment for the collections, but it does have some things I hadn't heard about before. Mildly recommended.

The Sandman: Endless Nights by Gaiman, et al

This is a relatively recent collection of seven stories about the seven Endless, all written by Gaiman, and illustrated by various geniuses like Milo Manara, Frank Quitely, P. Craig Russell, Bill Sienkiewicz, etc. Dream's story (illustrated by Miguelanxo Prado) delighted me the most (and, coincidentally, has Delight in it). Giving us the secret origin of the Dream-Desire feud was great, but throwing in the secret origins of Krypton and the Green Lantern Corps along the way was exactly the road to this geeky comic book fan's heart. Also, regarding the Quitely story about Destiny, I agree with Gaiman: I knew he was good. I didn't know he was this good. DC has practically been wasting him. So, highly recommended.

Godland by Casey and Scioli

dariusk recommended this to me, on the basis of my admiration for the work of Jack Kirby. Gooood recommendation. It reads a bit like a family of normal people got dumped into a Kirby universe (with one of them acquiring godlike powers along the way), and are now trying to deal with the weirdness. So, the whitebead, constantly cheerful, Captain America-esque hero drives our protagonist up the wall with his alliterative quips, and when a giant psychic alien dog says, "Call me — MAXIM!", the hero's sister says, "You know you named yourself after a moronic men's lifestyle magazine?" Plus, grumpy aliens who give out powers grudgingly, an evil genius brain in a tank whose only goal is to find new ways to get high, and art only one degree removed from being indistinguishable from Kirby Himself. Highly recommended to fans of modern comics done in classic style.

Legion of Super-Heroes: The Great Darkness Saga by Levitz, Giffen, Mahlstedt

In the early 70s, Jack Kirby created a villain who would one day be regarded as one of their greatest, darkest, and scariest: Darkseid, mad god of Apokolips.

About a year later they canceled all Kirby's books, and shuffled Darkseid into a drawer for the next decade.

In the early 80s, the creators of DC's SF superhero book, The Legion of Super-Heroes, decided to write an epic tale, in which a mysterious villain sends his dark doppelganger minions out to gather power, power enough for him to enslave worlds. The Legion has had few battles tougher than this — the scenes of them calling in all the reserves, including the Substitute Heroes, to cope with the destruction, are gripping. But, in the end, they triumphed . . .

. . . only for Darkseid to come up with a vengeance so skillfully done, that it actually depended on a coincidence that had been lurking around in the comic for nigh on 20 years. Well played, sirs. Recommended.

Comments

[dariusk.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked Godland!

And Quitely has been blowing me away with All-Star Superman. Although it doesn't hurt that ASS (what a terrible acronym) is arguably the best Superman book ever written. (And it's not even done yet!)