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Cover of The Sandman #1, by Dave McKean.

Preludes and Nocturnes is the first graphic novel collection of the comic book series The Sandman, published by DC Comics. It collects issues #1-8. It is written by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg and Malcolm Jones III (with cover art by Dave McKean), colored by Robbie Busch and lettered by Todd Klein, with Karen Berger as editor and Art Young as assistant editor.

The first seven issues of this collection comprise the "More Than Rubies" storyline. The eighth issue is a more self-contained story, "The Sound of Her Wings." It was first issued in paperback in 1991, and later in hardback in 1995.

The series is still finding its feet in this volume. It has a simple quest plot, and each individual episode is written in a different style as Gaiman experiments to see what direction he wants to take the comic in.

In the early issues, the creators are often pulling in different directions: Gaiman tends to write his horror and fantasy with a straight face, while Keith's drawings play up the creepy and fantastic in a somewhat camp manner, much in the style of DC's 70s "mystery" titles; and Keith's more delicate lines (as seen in his inking on Matt Wagner's Mage) are overwhelmed by Dringenberg's less than subtle inking. The combination works quite well on the chapter in which Dream visits Hell, but ultimately Keith left the series after five issues, commenting that he felt like "Jimi Hendrix in the Beatles". Dringenberg switched to pencilling (with Malcolm Jones III inking), and his deadpan realism suits Gaiman's early scripts much better.

The stories in this book conform more to the genre of horror than later books. The sixth issue, "Twenty-Four Hours," is especially disturbing, describing a madman spending a day torturing the inhabitants of a diner.

Preludes and Nocturnes is also unusual in the Sandman series in that it utilizes previously existing DC characters more than the later volumes. It features cameos by popular DC figures, such as John Constantine and the Martian Manhunter. Several characters revived for this volume, such as Cain and Abel and Lucien, would become fixtures in the series and come to be regarded primarily as Sandman characters.

In 2004 it got the award for best scenario at the Angoulême International Comics Festival.

The next volume in the series is The Doll's House.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

1 Synopsis
2 Issues collected

[edit] Synopsis

The first issue of The Sandman deals with Dream's capture by an immortality-seeking occultist. He escapes after over seventy years of imprisonment, and visits punishment on the son of his captor. The rest of the story concerns Dream's quest to recover his totems of power, which were dispersed following his capture: a pouch of sand, a helm and a ruby. The pouch is being kept by a former girlfriend of John Constantine's. Once that is recovered, Dream travels to hell to regain the helm from a demon, where he incurs the wrath of Lucifer (an enmity that will have major repercussions later in the series). The ruby is in the possession of John Dee, a.k.a. Doctor Destiny, a supervillain from the Justice League of America series. He has warped and corrupted the ruby, rendering Dream unable to use it, and with it he nearly tears about the Dreaming. However, thinking that it will kill Dream, Dee shatters the ruby, inadvertantly releasing the power that Dream had stored in the ruby and restoring Dream to his full power. The collection ends with "The Sound of Her Wings," an epilogue to the first story-arc that introduces the popular character Death.

[edit] Sleep of the Just

The first issue of The Sandman opens in Wych Cross, England on June 6, 1916 with the line "Wake up, sir. We're here." These words are spoken to Dr. John Hathaway, senior curator of the Royal Museum, who has come to make a deal with Roderick Burgess, an Edwardian magician very much in the vein of Aleister Crowley and the founder of the Order of Ancient Mysteries. Hathaway, driven by his grief over the recent death of his son, Edmund (likely a victim of one of Burgess' curses), gives Burgess the Magdalene Grimoire, an ancient tome that Hathaway plans to use as part of a ritual to summon and capture death, thus securing immortality for himself and those he favors.

Burgess' ritual is only partially successful; it does not summon Death, but it does capture Dream, Death's brother; Gaiman later revealed that Burgess was only able to even do this because Dream was just returning from an extraordinarily taxing battle, though the details of this encounter have never been explained.

Dream is encased in a crystal globe surrounded by a binding circle, and in his absence many strange problems involving dreaming occur: two girls, Ellie Marsten and Unity Kinkaid (who becomes important later), fall asleep and only wake up once every few months (they are diagnosed with encephalitis lethargica, called the "sleepy sickness"); Daniel Bustamonte, a Jamaican boy, loses his dreams and becomes a zombie-like sleepwalker; Stefan Wasserman, a fourteen-year-old who lied about his age to enlist in the army, becomes unable to sleep and commits suicide.

While Dream is imprisoned, Burgess repeatedly demands that he give him the secret of immortality, but Dream remains silent, patiently waiting for an opportunity to escape. In June 1920, Hathaway commits suicide, but his suicide note, incriminating Burgess, is destroyed. In November 1930, Ruthven Sykes, second-in-command of the Order of Ancient Mysteries, disappears with Burgess' mistress Ethel Cripps, over £200,000, and many of the Order's treasures, including Dream's helm, ruby and pouch of sand. A month later in San Francisco, Sykes trades away the helmet for an eye-shaped amulet that will protect him from Burgess' magic. It is later revealed that the demon Sykes traded with was Choronzon. In 1936, Cripps walks out on Sykes, taking with her the ruby, pouch of sand and protective amulet; lacking his protection, Sykes is quickly and violently killed by a spell of Burgess'.

Dream continues to bide his time over the years, and in 1947 Burgess dies of a heart attack. At this point, Roderick Burgess' son, Alexander Burgess, becomes Dream's new captor, and continues his father's work of trying to obtain immortality from Dream, to just as little effect. In 1968, the Order of Ancient Mysteries receives an influx of new attention from the hippie movement, but the activity has died down by 1970, and Burgess hands over control of the Order of Ancient Mysteries to his personal assistant and lover, Paul McGuire. Burgess becomes consumed by his father's legacy, obsessively devoting himself to preserving his reputation and continuing his works.

Alex Burgess' sanity degrades over time, and by 1988 he is a confused old man in a wheelchair. It is at this point that one of the circles binding Dream in place is broken, and one of the guards kept posted around his crystal bubble falls momentarily asleep, allowing him to steal some of the sand from his dream. Dream then falls over, tricking the guards and McGuire to open Dream's cage in order to check on his condition. Dream uses the dream-sand to put them all to sleep for a moment, and escapes into dreams. There, he collects food from a dreamer's mind and creates clothes for himself. His freedom causes Ellie Marsten and Unity Kinkaid to wake up, and Daniel Bustamonte to return to normal.

Dream then enters Alex Burgess' dream, where Burgess regresses to childhood while being led by a black cat into a room where the cat transforms into Dream. Dream mocks and berates Burgess, finally giving him the "gift" of "eternal waking": an unending series of nightmares, where Burgess wakes from each nightmare into another one, never truly awakening. The issue ends with Burgess' nurse Edmunds and Paul McGuire trying to awaken him, and McGuire's line, "... We're here. It's all right. So wake up. Please wake up. Please...?"

[edit] Imperfect Hosts

[edit] Dream a Little Dream of Me

John Constantine, a character from Alan Moore's Swamp Thing series (later given his own series, Hellblazer), features prominently in this issue.

[edit] A Hope in Hell

[edit] Passengers

[edit] 24 Hours

[edit] Sound and Fury

[edit] The Sound of Her Wings

Image:Sandman no.8 (Modern Age).comiccover.jpg

Cover of The Sandman #8, by Dave McKean.

This issue introduces a character who has become one of the series' most popular and prominent personalities: Dream's older sister Death. She is depicted as an attractive, perky, down-to-earth young goth girl, very unlike the traditional personification of death, and spends the issue talking Dream out of his brief post-quest depression.

Gaiman has commented that he found his own voice as a writer with this chapter.

[edit] Issues collected

Sandman #1: "Sleep of the Just" ... penciller Sam Keith; inker Mike Dringenberg; colorist Robbie Busch; letterer Todd Klein
Sandman #2: "Imperfect Hosts" ... penciller Sam Keith; inker Mike Dringenberg; colorist Robbie Busch; letterer Todd Klein
Sandman #3: "Dream a Little Dream of Me" ... penciller Sam Keith; inker Mike Dringenberg; colorist Robbie Busch; letterer Todd Klein
Sandman #4: "A Hope in Hell" ... penciller Sam Keith; inker Mike Dringenberg; colorist Robbie Busch; letterer Todd Klein
Sandman #5: "Passengers" ... penciller Sam Keith; inker Malcolm Jones III; colorist Robbie Busch; letterer Todd Klein
Sandman #6: "24 Hours" ... penciller Mike Dringenberg; inker Malcolm Jones III (with special thanks to Don Carola); colorist Robbie Busch; letterer Todd Klein
Sandman #7: "Sound and Fury" ... penciller Mike Dringenberg; inker Malcolm Jones III; colorist Robbie Busch; letterer Todd Klein
Sandman #8: "The Sound of Her Wings" ... penciller Mike Dringenberg; inker Malcolm Jones III; colorist Robbie Busch; letterer Todd Klein