The Sandman: Act III by Dirk Maggs
My rating: 3 of 5 stars Well-Produced, But the Graphic Novels Are Better Sandman Act III is the third Sandman graphic novels adaptation “dramatized and directed for audio by Dirk Maggs.” It is comprised of the stories found in the graphic novel trade paperbacks Brief Lives (1994) and World’s End (1995), plus a few stand-alones. Episode 1, The Song of Orpheus (1991?), integrates into the Sandman opus the tragic myth of the sublime singer and his newlywed newly dead wife Eurydice, casting Orpheus as the son of Morpheus (Dream) and Calliope. The production provides Orpheus’ song, including lyrics and synthesizer music, but I’d prefer to hear it in my imagination in the graphic novel than in my ears in this audio adaptation. That said, the art in the graphic novel is so coarse and ugly that this may be a case when overall the audio version is aesthetically better. 3 stars In Episode 2, Fear of Falling (1992), a Broadway playwright is about to give up on the production of his play in rehearsal when he dreams that Dream gives him another option for his nightmares. It’s short and fine. 3 stars In Episode 3, The Flowers of Romance (1998), an aging, out of place, sad satyr asks a last boon of Desire. 3 stars Episodes 4-12 comprise the main part of Act III in the story arc of Brief Lives (1994), depicting Dream/Morpheus’ development as the gloomy Endless one quests with his unstable little sister Delirium for their jovial AWOL big brother Destruction (“He abandoned his responsibilities”), accompanied by the strange and sudden deaths of a few immortal humans. As the plot inevitably leads him to a devastating reunion with his son, Dream more than once protests too much that he hasn’t changed. The 5-star graphic novel Brief Lives has strange, beautiful, wonderful art and is an example of the original being better than any audio (or even video) version could be. There are pages with mesmerizing layout, color, and form, like the sequence where Dream enters Delirium’s realm, with collaged photographs superimposed on a painted and crayoned background lacking usual panel frames of reference, and like the giant two-page spread showing the small, faint characters walking outside at night with sublime stars above. There are neat visual touches like Delirium’s changing hairdos and Dream’s increasingly attenuated and elongated form as the tragedy unfolds, and the clever strategy of giving the speech balloons of the different characters distinctive colors and fonts to suit their personalities and moods, such that Delirium’s are a riot of color and scribbled letters, Dream’s black with gothicky white font, Bast’s faux-Egyptian “hieroglyphic,” and so on. This can’t be approximated in an audible or movie format. It is only possible in comics. 4 stars In Episode 13, How They Met Themselves (1999), Dante Gabriel Rosetti, his sick wife, and a young masochistic Algernon Swinburne meet Desire on a train, leading to an exploration of what happens if you meet yourself: True love? Death? It’s a neat short story. 4 stars The last six episodes are the stand-alones from World’s End (1995), framed by a reality storm stranding travelers from various worlds and times in an inn, where some of them tell stories. My favorites are “The Golden Boy,” about Prez Rickard, a small-town clock repairer who becomes the youngest and best president in the history of an alternate America, ever rebuffing the attempts of Boss Smiley to “help” him, and especially “Cerements,” about the Necropolis Latharge and the different customs of different cultures for dealing with dead bodies and some visits to a creepy catacombs. “A Tale of Two Cities,” “Cluracan’s Tale,” and “Hob’s Leviathan” are OK, and “World’s Ends” climaxes in a sublime funeral procession for… 4 stars I thought in rereading the graphic novels while listening to the audio adaptation that Sandman and its world are pretty white. An African American chauffeur called Ruby isn’t treated very well by the story. Dream and most characters are also pretty heterosexual, though Desire—like Wanda, Foxglove, and Hazel from A Game of You in the Act II adaptation—are welcome exceptions or ambiguities. (By the way, the “it” and “its” that refer to Delirium in the graphic novel are changed in the audio adaptation to “they” and “their” etc.) Most every word from the original comics (and graphic novel collections) is retained for the audio adaptation, for which the author-narrator Neil Gaiman reads extra descriptions of things like settings and characters depicted by the art in the original. Like a radio drama, the audio adaptation also adds music and sound effects and a full cast of voice actors, most of whom are excellent, especially James McAvoy (Dream), David Harewood (Destruction), and Justin Vivian Bond (Desire). The adaptation rearranges some of the graphic novel issues (especially the stand-alone ones) to make a more coherent overall story. At times the audio version gets everything just right, as with the terrifying chanting of the Bacchante as they approach Orpheus and the subtle and lovely synth music in the background when in Brief Lives Dream returns to his castle after meeting his son, and the total effect is quite moving. However. There are also times when the music becomes too dramatic. I never appreciated the grandiose synthesizer movie type music starting each episode. Barnabas barking now and then before or after he speaks (English) is distracting (as if we’d forget he is a dog). And Gaiman’s tendency to too often too pregnantly pause when the punctuation or rhythm of the prose doesn’t call for any pausing started wearing on me. Like this: Orpheus (pause) is sitting (pause) on a rock. Night has fallen (pause) over the castle of Dream. Lizzy (pause) leaning on the mantel, gazes (pause) at the picture. As a result, I found myself feeling relieved during the six World’s End episodes when voice actors narrated the framed stories instead of Gaiman. After listening to the first three Sandman adaptations and rereading the graphic novels with them, I believe that the original graphic novels are the ideal medium for Gaiman’s story, that the art, layouts, colors, varied fonts, colored speech balloons, etc. are all more impactful (on this reader) than listening to the sound effects and music and talented voice actors and charismatic Gaiman. View all my reviews
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