Ricky church reviews Sandman Universe – The Dreaming Vol. 1: Pathways and Emanations…
After almost 25 years, Neil Gaiman’s groundbreaking world of Sandman returns in their own line of comics, the Sandman Universe. The first of the universe’s series to be released in a trade paperback collection is The Dreaming Vol. 1: Pathways and Emanations, following Gaiman’s centric world of the Dreaming and its host of characters. After Daniel, the Lord of the Dreaming, seemingly vacates his position, the various residents deal with his absence as the Dreaming begins to collapse. It’s no easy task to follow up on such a major writer’s epic work, but writer Simon Spurrier gives a capable reintroduction to Gaiman’s world with some gorgeous artwork from Bilquis Evely and Mat Lopes.
The first thing longtime Sandman readers may notice is how well Spurrier writes Gaiman’s fantastical world. The Dreaming really does feel like a continuation of the Sandman series as Spurrier captures the tone and feel of Gaiman’s creation. Unlike Gaiman’s work, which focused on Morpheus, The Dreaming places its focus on the colourful beings who reside in Dream’s land. Spurrier does a good job getting readers acquainted with familiar characters like Lucien, Cain and Abel and Matthew the crow alongside Dora, the primary new character who has no memory of who she was before waking up in the Dreaming. Without Daniel to take care of the Dreaming, everyone descends into chaos as they try to fix the problems sprouting in the land, some of which cause quite disastrous results. It creates some interesting parallels with the very start of Sandman, where Morpheus was forcibly taken from the Dreaming, to now where his son left of his own accord. The story creates nice symmetry between the two lords and is not lost on many of the Dreaming’s populace.
The characters are all well written with Dora being a stand out. Her dialogue is snappy, fun and earnest as she deals with a massive amount of resentment she feels towards everyone in the Dreaming, not least of which is Morpheus and Daniel for seemingly forgetting about her. Spurrier makes her a fairly sympathetic and relatable character through her emotions and uncertainty in knowing who or what she is. As a relative outsider, she’s a good character for new readers to latch onto since she gives a fresh perspective to the Dreaming and is something of a wildcard to everyone around her. She is much more of a chaotic neutral than any of the other characters while the mystery over what she is is nicely built up and only gets more intriguing as the book goes on. With the ruthless and powerful Judge Gallows as the book’s antagonist, they make nice foils for each other as Gallows tries to take Daniel’s place no matter what the cost. Spurrier makes Gallows a memorable villain and he does well displaying how the pre-existing characters react to the new changes in the Dreaming, capturing each of their voices well while putting his own spin on them.
The story’s pacing is pretty fluid as Spurrier works with a lot of high concepts Sandman was known for. A significant theme of the first volume is the usefulness of broken things and how they shouldn’t be cast aside at first glance. While it starts with a slow burn there’s never a dull moment in the story, especially in the second half once Dora’s identity is put to the test. With art from Wonder Woman‘s Bilquis Evely, The Dreaming is quite a nice book to look at as Evely’s images and character work are incredibly detailed. Whether it’s the shifting imagery of the Dreamworld or moments where Dora hulks out, Evely presents great artwork and emotive facial expressions. Mat Lopes adds a vibrancy to the book with a mix of varied colours popping off each page. The visuals get pretty stimulating and whimsy the further the story goes thanks to the combination of Evely and Lopes’ art. Abigail Larson and Quinton Winter help fill in for some pages in the book’s latter half, but their style is fairly similar to Evely and Lopes’ that it doesn’t draw too much attention away from the story.
Included is the Sandman Universe #1, the special issue that kicks off the whole line of Sandman Universe titles. While it has many story threads that aren’t picked up in The Dreaming, the writing from Kat Howard, Nalo Hopkinson and Dan Watters along with the artwork from Tom Fowler, Dominike Stanton, Max and Sebastian Fiumara encourages readers to give the other titles a try. There are also some variant covers of The Dreaming as well as a few character sketches from Evely. It’s not a lot of bonus content and it would have been nice to get a little insight from Gaiman or Spurrier about continuing such a beloved franchise, but the early concept sketches are cool to view.
The Dreaming Vol. 1: Pathways and Emanations a worthy continuation of Gaiman’s Sandman that longtime fans should be pleased by while new readers will be intrigued by the world it presents. Spurrier does an ample job capturing the tone of the comics while Evely and Lopes excel at the look and feel of the imagery. The first volume of The Dreaming is a compelling starting point that is buoyed by a captivating story and colourful characters.
Rating: 8/10
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Originally published July 7, 2019. Updated July 9, 2019.
