Neil Gaiman is most famous for his ten-volume Sandman series, a 70+ issue run of some of the best stories the comics medium has ever seen. Since then the universe created by Gaiman has been explored by several others, most notably in Vertigo Comic's The Dreaming series (in which Gaiman was not directly involved).

Sandman: The Dream Hunters marks Gaiman's most significant recent work revisiting his Sandman universe. Unlike the rest of his Sandman ouvre, Sandman: The Dream Hunters is not a graphic novel, strictly speaking. Instead, it is an illustrated novel, with each page of liberally spaced text juxtaposed next to Yoshitaka Amano's dreamlike artwork. Because of the book's unusual format, I want to discuss first Gaiman's story, then Amano's artwork, and finally how well I think the two of them are integrated.

Gaiman's story is based on an old Japanese fable entitled "The Fox, the Monk, and the Mikado of All Night's Dreaming," which he read while writing the translation for "Princess Mononoke." In Gaiman's words, as he read the fable he was "struck by the similarities--some of them almost disquieting--between the Japanese tale and my own Sandman series." The basic events of the story are unchanged, according to Gaiman, although he has taken some liberties to place the story firmly within the Sandman universe (for instance, the King of All Night's Dreaming has a raven companion, Cain and Abel live in the outskirts of the Dreaming, and the guardian of the King's palace looks uncannily like a gryphon). Like most fables, the story is simple and at times move a bit too quickly. In the beginning, for instance, without any motivation at all the fox falls deeply in love with the monk, an emotional attachment that must then power the rest of the narrative. But, like all fables, this simplicity and quick movement are part of the story's charms, and although the tale never becomes gripping, it maintained in me a medium level of interest throughout. The ending is not particularly moving, but the atmosphere evoked by Gaiman still left me with the bittersweet feeling that Gaiman and Amano probably intended.

A large part of the story's effectiveness comes not from the plotline but from Gaiman's characteristically luminous prose, a curious combination of simplistic and ornate writing, both modern and archaic, that hints at great age while never becoming inaccessible. (For those familiar with the Sandman series, the entire story sounds like it could be something said by the King of Dreams himself.) A characteristic line from the book is its closing (non-spoiler) sentence: "But dreams are strange things, and none of us but the King of All Night's Dreaming can say if they are true or not, not of what they are able to tell any of us about the times that are still to come." As with the Sandman series, sometimes Gaiman's prose is still style over substance, but the brevity and simplicity of the story here prevents his style from becoming overbearing.

I enjoyed somewhat less Amano's artwork. One problem was that there was no one consistent style throughout: some of his artwork is ravishingly beautiful and gloriously colored; others look like messy charcoal sketches; and still others are just bizarrely abstract collections of pastels. I'm not the biggest fan of art in general, and there was little of Amano's work that I found truly remarkable (or even interesting).

However, for the most part Amano's artwork complements the storyline well. Although I never felt compelled to look at the artwork, when I did the art that I saw never conflicted too badly with what I was imagining after reading Gaiman's prose. On the other hand, the artwork never contributed anything significant to my appreciation of the story; I would have gladly read Gaiman's prose without having to see Amano's work.

Ultimately Sandman: The Dream Hunters is an interesting and slight diversion for the 45 minutes it takes to read it (if that). It is nowhere near as good as the Sandman series, but it does its job well as a retelling of a classic fable.

Copyright © 2002 Steven Wu