The Sandman 4: Season of Mists

Like many young boys I read comics as a child. Spiderman and Silver Surfer were my favorites and I still enjoy dusting off an old Marvel from time to time. When I got to college many of my brothers were passing around the old president's copy of Watchmen and I was floored by how great comics could be. I made my way through many other Alan Moore works finding, with a great deal of surprise, that I rather linked Swamp Thing which brought me to Neil Gaiman. Knew the name but was unfamiliar with his work. Started in on Sandman. The first three volumes were quite good and I could see why Gaiman was mentioned along with Moore as being the gold standard. Then I read volume 4. The layers upon layers of mythology, the masterful building of suspense. this is quite simply the best comic book I have ever read (excepting for Maus, which is in a separate category. I mean, yeah it's a comic, but...if you have read it you know of which I am trying to speak. If you haven't read it do so). The third issue I nearly applauded when I finished it. My biggest fear having just finished this volume is that all other books, comic or otherwise, will be a disappointment. Oh well. The Dark Knight Rises was no Dark Knight but it was still rather well done. Fingers crossed though that Neil could somehow replicate this extraordinary tale in volume 5!

I loved these stories in the trade paperback form, and I really looked forward to them on the Kindle Fire. The new Kindle Fire Comics with the pop-out panels are a surprisingly nice way to read comics; and I thought Watchmen in this format was a masterpiece. But I also knew Watchmen had a significant advantage in this regard: the entire series was drawn with an extremely regular panel grid, with only rare deviations. So pop-up rectangular panels suited it well. I expected the format to be more challenging for something with more panel variety -- especially something as downright experimental as Sandman.So I expected some of the pop-out choices to be difficult. I was ready to tolerate some unusual choices. And for the most part, they handled it well. They did a nice job with challenging panels like wide or tall panels with dialog balloons in many places. They even did an OK job with some of the rotated panels.But in a few places, they just plain got it wrong. In some places they got the dialog order wrong, so an response pops out before the statement that prompted it. And in a few cases, they missed a dialog balloon entirely; and the only way I could read it was to switch to page mode.So I knocked off a star for the imperfections. I hope DC takes the time to fix these after the mad rush of releasing 100 Kindle Fire Comics at once.

First up, all of the 10 volumes of The Sandman novels deserve 5 stars. They are a phenomenal acheivement in not only graphic novels but in storytelling itself. The story is complex and cerebral and the characters so well developed that Sandman is one of my favorite stories period. The novels are intensely violent and often disturbing but everything that happens serves a purpose, and nothing happens by chance or just for the sake of things happening. Something that happens in one volume may become vitally important 3 or 4 volumes later. By the end of the 10th volume everything has come full circle with an appropriate and satisfying end.With regards to Volume 4 itself it is one of my personal favorites. The main storyline being that Lucifer abandons hell and leaves the keys to Morpheus.As far as the volume's content on the Kindle Fire - I was hesitant to abandon the volumes in print worried that the Kindle Fire might provide a more difficult viewing experience. That hasn't turned out the be the case. The novel is easy to read, you can scan in to specific boxes, and the colors are vibrant.

As someone who came into the Sandman party a few decades late, I must say that this volume is a great return to form for the series as a whole. The previous volume, Dream Country, felt more like set-up for future story lines (one of which pays off in this volume), while this one feels more like the first volume in the sense that it expands upon the lore and provides fantastic character development. I honestly did not think that I would find a sequence of events that would rival the abstract battle between Morpheus and the demon in the first volume, but nearly everything in this volume rivals that scene, from Lucifer's and Morpheus' interactions to Morpheus playing host to the widest array of mythological beings I have seen outside of a Marvel or DC book (and even then, the characters are NOTHING like the aforementioned companies' iterations).Fantastic art and intriguing writing both help to make this volume of the Sandman one to be remembered for a good long while.

I've heard for years and years about how great this series was, and that I was seriously depriving myself by not reading them. Well, for the most part the hype so far has held up. You can read the blurb for the story summary. Lots of good surprises, and once again Gaiman finishes up an unfinished story (that of his long-lost love Nada) that he teased several issues back.I'm finding more and more similarities in this series to Starman by James Robinson. Robinson would put out a teaser or foreshadowing in a throwaway line, then pay it off years later in a story that had you going back and saying "Oh, so THAT"S what he was referring to!" Well thought-out characters, extremely intricate plotting, the ability to talk about adult subject matter without being prurient, rewarding the careful reader with Easter Eggs, etc. That's Gaiman. As best as I can tell from the 4 volumes I've read so far, he deserved all the accolades he received. Can't wait to read the rest of the series.

This was good. This was very good. And a great comeback from the third volume, which almost felt like a transitionary book, or even an intermission. Makes sense - given that it's called "Dream Country". So now we're back to the events in Dream's journey, which begins with a rare family dinner where we get to meet the siblings. As in all family dinners, people get upset, others get picked at, and someone always stomps off in anger.In this case, Dream is sort of ganged up on when he is told that his actions towards his lover Nada, who refused to be his Queen despite her feelings towards him, were too cruel. He banished her to Hell for rejecting him, and now feels like maybe it was too harsh of a punishment to soothe his wounded pride.From there, he travels to Hell to convince Lucifer to release her. We then arrive to the main storyline of this volume, in which in a surprise turn of events, Lucifer hands over the keys to Hell to Dream and abandons the place. This leaves Dream in charge of a place he doesn't want. Upon the news traveling, and news sure does travel fast, a hoard of Gods and representatives arrive to petition Dream to hand over the keys of Hell to them. At the same time, Dream is still trying to free his ex-lover and Death has her hands full with all the dead people who suddenly found themselves liberated.I really enjoyed this volume, and the illustrations were fantastic. It may have dragged a little bit in places, given Neil Gaiman's tendency for details, but nonetheless, it was good to be back to the main storyline after the interlude with Dream Country.

Vol 02 The Dolls House is better than this one because the former was strong the whole way through, but this one is certainly better than Vol 3 Dream Country, which was quite a let down after Dolls House.The family meeting of the Endless that starts Season of Mists is weak! Episode 2 is one long one-to-one conversation as Lucifer locks doors as he leaves - this sounds intriguing but is not much more intriguing than the premise. Episode 3 sets itself up as needing to end fascinatingly because of all the possibilities but then concludes instead logically. Episode 4 about Charles Rowland is excellent. The remaining chapters are also good.

Excellent novel - story and graphics are brilliant

Love the Sandman. Go on, read it.

Bought as gift