Preludes and Nocturnes • The Doll's House • Dream Country • Season of Mists • A Game of You • Fables and Reflections • Brief Lives • Worlds' End • The Kindly Ones • The Wake It’s yet another story of sacrifice and obligation, of love and honor and commitment, set amidst high fantasy and dark dealings and the shifting veil of the world that lies beyond sleep.

Tempo dopo, in occasione del decennale della serie, il disegnatore giapponese Amano ha fatto un poster di Sogno, che Gaiman ha trovato bellissimo anche se si trattava di un Morfeo diverso da quello che aveva raccontato fino ad allora.

New in Series

While the artwork is lovely and complements the story, I’m detracting a star because I didn’t really get anything new from this version. The original novella is already beautifully illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano, and while Sandman was always at home in the graphic novel world, I find that the original format chosen for this particular story works better. In the realm of dreams, the King of All Night's Dreaming and the raven ponder the events and their significance; The King of All Night's Dreaming is satisfied that events played out as they should have and that everyone involved learned an important lesson, particularly the monk. The narration ends implying that monk and the fox might have ended up together, but remains inconclusive. And, yes, I read the Afterword before reading the original book, because I’m one of those people who tend to read about things before they read the things themselves. I’ll read author’s notes and commentaries before I’ll read the actual text, more often than not. I’ve never been one to heed spoiler warnings. The Sandman: The Dream Hunters is a standalone story in the universe of The Sandman (1989), written by the comic's author Neil Gaiman. It was originally published as a novella in 1999, featuring painted illustrations by Yoshitaka Amano. In 2008 a four-issue comic book version with art by P. Craig Russell was released. I read all the volumes of The Sandman and loved it but this is a spinoff work, published in 2009, a fable of a monk and a fox set in “old Japan,” that has the feel of something Gaiman adapted from a centuries old myth, but in fact was invented whole cloth all by his lonesome. And Japan is a good place for a story of this mythological complexity, because it is a country and culture steeped in mythologies and monsters, in a belief in yokai.

The Dreaming • House of Whispers • Lucifer • Books of Magic • John Constantine: Hellblazer • The Dreaming: Waking Hours • Hell & Gone • Nightmare Country However, you may haven’t heard of Yoshitaka Amano, at least not for his name, but it’s very likely that you know his work if you’re into anime & manga. Amano is a Japanese illustrator, with wide successful experience in character design. He has worked with anime companies such as Tatsunoko, collaborating with the character design of iconic anime series like Gatchaman (also known as “Battle of the Planets” or “G-Force”), Speed Racer and Tekkaman (also known as “Teknoman”). Also he has been involved in illustrations of the Vampire Hunter D prose novel series. Did Dream learn a lesson from this story that would so closely mirror his own? Did this tale of the monk and the fox who loved him inform Dreams own decisions when it came time to pursue his own loved ones and possibly sacrifice his own life in exchange? Yet by the time of The Sandman: Endless Nights—an anthology project completed as the original series neared its fifteenth anniversary, and one that I’ll dig into next time—Gaiman had already flat-out said that The Dream Hunters was “a retelling of an old Japanese folktale [he] completely made up.” I must have read those words in 1993 or 1994, whenever I first sat down to read that anthology. But I ignored them, clearly, because until now I have always thought of The Dream Hunters as not-real-Gaiman- Sandman. Lessons were learned,’ said the pale king. ‘Events occurred as it was proper for them to do. I do not perceive that my attention was wasted.’”Russell has a unique line, and I love his jagged edged look for angry and scary creatures. He does a fantastic job of showing emotion in the panels. My complaint with the art is the coloring. The color uses this faux-painted look that at worst ends up looking like a wall painted with Windows Paint gradient colors. It doesn't distract too much, and sometimes does look nice - I believe the attempt was to make the book look like it was created with old Japanese silk paintings. The colors are done by Russell's longtime collaborator Lovern Kindzierski who besides for that effect I dislike does a wonderful job as usual. Just be careful about trusting that Gaiman guy. He’s a writer—an author, and if you study the origin of the latter word, you’ll know that it comes from the Latin auctorem, which translates as “magnificent liar.” Gaiman's afterword states that it was based on an old Japanese folk tale, drawn from Y. T. Ozaki's Old Japanese Fairy Tales and retooled to fit in the world of The Sandman, but no such tale is to be found in Ozaki's work. Gaiman has since stated when asked that the story was entirely of his own devising, most recently in the foreword to The Sandman: Endless Nights. [1] Plot [ edit ]

Master of Illusion: The kitsune uses magic to make the onmyōji believe she lives in a grand house with dozens of servants. When he comes to, it's in the ruins of an old estate. You would not seek to question a poem, or a falling leaf, or the mist on the mountaintop,… …Why, then, do you question me?Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder: The kitsune sees Dream as a giant fox the color of the night sky. The monk sees a gaunt Japanese man wearing a robe made of tormented souls.

But in the case of The Dream Hunters, my incorrect understanding about the origins of the story—spurred by that sneaky Neil Gaiman and his Afterword hijinx—led me to completely dismiss the book upon its original release. Until approaching the book anew with this reread, I had always thought of the Gaiman/Amano work as “lesser” Sandman because it was just a retelling of some old Japanese story. Barely even Sandman. Just something that was a related project. Like a silver ankh sold at a comic shop or something. If you’re a Sandman fan, this is worth reading as a chance to get to see Dream again. And even if you’re not, it’s a great little fairytale and one I’d definitely recommend! This is a wonderful comic adaptation illustrated by P. Craig Russell, released a decade after the original illustrated novella, which I read last year. Neil had fans and academics fooled (Russell and myself included)—everyone believed he had adapted an old Japanese fable to fit into his Sandman universe, while he had in fact entirely made it up. Knowing this, the story itself is even more brilliant and awe-inspiring in its faux authenticity. I bought it hook, line, and sinker, I really did.In the realm of dreams, the King of All Night's Dreaming is satisfied by the story, and that everyone involved learned an important lesson. The narration then suggests that the monk and the fox were re-united in the afterlife; but this is purposely ambiguous. NEXT: The finale of the Sandman reread with some of the world’s best comic book artists telling of the Endless Nights. urn:lcp:sandmandreamhunt0000russ:epub:6c81934b-bf2f-44f1-94cf-6a2d49f86c41 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier sandmandreamhunt0000russ Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2fd198wpsj Invoice 1652 Isbn 9781401224240 In The Dream Hunters, the lead characters are a young monk and a wily fox. First, the fox challenges a badger to a contest in which they will drive the young monk from the neighborhood. But the fox falls in love with the intelligent and discerning young monk. “And that,” writes Neil Gaiman, at the end of the first chapter, “was to be the cause of much misery in the time to come. Much misery, and heartbreak, and of a strange journey.” Yes, it’s true that he wrote a prose story for the tenth anniversary of Sandman and yes it was illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano, but it was no Neil Gaiman adaptation of a Japanese fairy tale. It was an original story posing as an adaptation, with Gaiman himself providing the misdirection in the form of an unreliable Afterword in which he cites his (fabricated) sources.