The Sandman: Overture Issue 1 – A Review

The Sandman series of is one that has always held a special place in my heart. Volume 2 of the original series, The Doll’s House, was the first graphic novel I read, a volume I discovered in my old school’s library because my old school had awesome librarians. I was hooked, captivated by a fantastical and surreal story of a godlike being, and I immediately read all of the other volumes at my library; Volume 1: Preludes and Nocturnes, Volume 3: Fables and Reflections and Volume 10: The Wake.

My reading of the rest of the series continued in an equally scrappy fashion, with the other volumes picked up from bookshops and comic shops whenever I saw them and whenever I felt like grabbing them; I only completed reading them all with The Kindly Ones about a fortnight ago.

For me, The Sandman: Overture was a bit of a curveball; I saw it sitting on a shelf in my local comic book/general nerdstravaganza shop just today when I went in to pick up Saga Issue 15, and before that I had no prior knowledge it was coming out. I had a bit of a double take; it definitely said Sandman on the cover, Neil Gaiman’s name was right there and it left me kind of confused. ‘Is this some new episodic re-release of the old Sandman comics?’ I wondered. ‘Has DC really sunk that low?’ I flicked it open to the first pace. ‘Wow, this is a whole new storyline! DC hasn’t quite sunk that low yet, but they’re still peppering the issue with adverts. Stay classy, DC.’

The full-page advertisements that litter the comic aside, I actually found The Sandman: Overtures to be a really good read. The comic is set before the main narrative(s) of the original Sandman, prior to Morpheus’ imprisonment which kickstarted the events of the first graphic novels. There are ominous premonitions of impending disaster on a distant, alien world, a few of the favourite Dreaming characters; Lucius, Merv Pumpkinhead and the ever-unnerving Corinthian; make an appearance and Destiny and Death, two of Dream’s siblings, also feature in a scene that is composed in a remarkably clever way.

It goes without saying that the writing was really good, and Gaiman once again excels at creating a world and story that is as dark and surreal as the original Sandman series (again, Corinthian. That thing terrifies me). However, what really stood out for me with this first issue was J.H. Williams III’s artwork; not only was it illustrated exceptionally well, including a fold-out page which rendered multiple incarnations of Morpheus as he appears to different peoples and species, but he also used some remarkably clever artistic devices. One scene is framed in the Book of Destiny whilst it is being held by Destiny, and another, concerning a character by the name of George Portcullis, is illustrated with the panels being arranged within the portcullis of a castle’s gate. At the moment I’m unsure whether Williams will be a permanent feature or the Overture series will be rotating artists like in the original Sandman, but I personally hope he will return for future issues.

So basically, it’s more Sandman. It’s got great writing, very nice art, it’s more Sandman, there are interesting plothooks, there are some old favourite characters back and it’s more Sandman. Seriously, what more do you want?

Guardians of the Galaxy #1 – A Review from somebody who’s never read a Marvel comic before

Having, as of late, decided to try and ‘get into’ graphic novels and comic books, I’ve been browsing at my local comic book shop (very nice establishment near Covent Garden by the name of Orbital Comics) in order to try and get the ‘lay of the land’. So far, I’ve read a couple of indie pieces including Saga and Atomic Robo, as well as the ‘classics’ such as Sandman and V for Vendetta, but none of the mainstream stuff that’s down with the kids these days, so I figured I’d give it a try whilst I was there.

I’ll admit that until now, I’ve generally avoided the mainstream Marvel and DC comics due to the fact that from where I stand, their universes and continuity appear to be even more huge, complex and impenetrable than a non-euclidian chastity belt designed for Jupiter, and instead I’ve restricted my exposure to their universes through the movies. However, I couldn’t help but notice that right underneath the bold red title was ‘#1’, and a thought popped into my unbearably handsome skull; “Aha! In numerical sequences, the number known as ‘one’ is often used to denote the start of a sequence. As well as this, I know that there is also a Guardians of the Galaxy film being released in 2014 that will tie in with Disney’s/Marvel Studio’s Avengers Initiative. From this, one can reasonably assume that this is the start of a sequence, and perhaps, as the start, it will provide an appropriate level of context and character introduction needed to acclimatise people who are new to the series. And why did I just use ‘one’ in my internal monologue? Still, this looks like it could be pretty goo-holy shit, there’s a raccoon with a rocket launcher on the cover! Ack-Ack Macaque had a heavily armed anthropomorphised mammal on its cover and I loved Ack-Ack Macaque! I should get this! Oh, and there’s someone who looks like Iron Man, too. I like Iron Man.”

Yes, as you may well have guessed, if you stick a heavily armed anthropomorphised mammal on the cover/poster of your book/film/comic/game, then it’s an easy sell for me.

The comic opened with a shot of a galaxy, then of the surface of some planet and finally of someone who I assumed was the main character who was chatting up an alien woman. Or at leat I believe he was chatting her up. It seemed to be a sort of pre-coital apology, really. And the only reason that woman was an alien was that she was blue. I could immediately tell the creators had watched Star Trek. I didn’t immediately catch his name, and as soon as I saw the first shot of his face he earned the title ‘Aryan McGenericallyhandsomepants’ so by the time it was revealed he was called Peter Quill it was too late for him in any case.

And then his dad walked into the bar and I realised that despite my initial hopes, this appeared to have a lot of continuity dragged along with it and no, I wasn’t going to be told anything. It was at this point that I decided that I might as well read it and review it in the most flippant manner possible, and so with that in mind the rest of the view is basically a page-by-page breakdown with snarky comments made by someone using sarcasm to cover up the fact that they’re desperately lost and having no idea what’s going on.

So it turns out Daddy McGenericallyhandsomepantsinasortofSilverFoxway has persuaded some council somewhere to not invade Earth. I’m not sure quite why that was a big deal, for as far as I can remember Earth hasn’t been invaded by aliens in any case, but Aryan McGenericallyhandsomepants seemed upset about it so I assumed it was important. At this point, it was also revealed he was supposed to be ‘Prince Something of Someplace that has a name that sounds like Sparta’ but by this point the label of Aryan McGenericallyhandsomepants had stuck so I realised I was now reading a comic where one of the most important characters had a stupidly unwieldy name.

At that point, one of the other major characters introduced herself by kicking down the front door and shanking a few royal guards/robots, and not long after that she was introduced as Gamora, the universe’s most dangerous assassin (do they mean Gamora as in the biblical city? Is the writer purposely inviting STD jokes?). I wondered if by “universe’s most dangerous assassin” they meant the sort of assassin who employs subtlety, cunning and subterfuge to eliminate a target with surgical precision, but judging from the entrance she had made it appeared she was an assassin of the school that I’m in when I’m playing Dishonoured and have stopped giving a fuck. I mean, it’s certainly an effective approach, don’t get me wrong, but it appears to be an approach that isn’t suitably described by the word “assassin” and more suitably described by the words “deranged mass-murdering killing machine”.

She had the decency to stop, and Daddy McGenericallyhandsomepantsinasortofSilverFoxway does a bit of guilt tripping of McGenericallyhandsomepants Junior and I wondered why I was supposed to care about all this.

The scene changed, and it was at that point that Iron Man ripoff from the cover appeared again, and it turned out that he was, in fact, Iron Man, only he was in space. Once again, I found myself confused and feeling that I was missing out on a good deal of background (a rather routine occurrence by this point), but I decided I’d just go with it seeing as Iron Man was probably my favourite member of the Avengers and more Tony Stark can only be  a good thing (though it always struck me as rather strange that Herr Stark is always ignored as a favourite by the female portion of the Avengers fanbase in favour of Thor).

Yeah, I’ve got no idea what it is the ladies find so appealing about this.

So Iron Man appeared, and then a spaceship appeared as well and apparently it was full of bad guys who were either called the Badoon or were actually all Babboons and so Iron Many starts trying to fight them and what the hell is going on? And why is Pepper Pots now an AI called P.E.P.P.E.R. when she was Tony Stark’s main squeeze? And how did Iron Man get into space? And who’s pen is this? It just appeared on my desk. I don’t know why this pen is here, but it’s on my desk and I don’t know why. WHO PUT THIS PEN HERE? THIS ISN’T MY PEN!

Cue a splashpage with the entire cast of the Guardians of the Galaxy bursting in, replete with helpful nametags over the members of each member of the team. Most of them appeared to be suitably attired for hard vacuum, and the once called Groot got a free pass because it was a tree, but it kind of threw me that Drax the Destroyer didn’t appear to have any kind of spacesuit on, and instead was going around topless; for the love of god, man, put on a jumper before the absolute-zero chill of space’s completely empty, freezing, pressure-less vacuum means you catch a cold!

At that point, they all started shooting at the ship of the Badoon people (it soon became apparent that they weren’t baboons on account them looking kind of like lizards and lacking massive, brightly coloured arses). In all honesty, I’m not quite sure what the Badoon were doing that warranted attack, and when Iron Man first rocked up they were just sitting there. In fact, as far as I could tell their mission statement was never actually given and they appeared be to defending themselves from  an unprovoked attack from a bunch of nutters. I mean, seriously, the line Stark utters when he sees the Badoon ship is “Badoon. I hate these guys.” then he starts shooting at them without any provcoation. Did you attack the Badoon because you think they were evil, Guardians of the Galaxy? Are you saying the entire race are evil? Is that it? Are you actually all racist? You’re all racists, aren’t you?

The tree person (is the tree person an it? A she? I’m getting a kind of she-ish vibe from the tree person, for some reason. She-it? Shit?) seemed to have only one line of dialogue, that being ‘I am Groot’, which I certainly found very helpful in reducing shits chances of confusing shit with another character and yes, I’m using shit as a pronoun now. Yeah, suck on that, grammar.

So without much explanation as to why they were doing it, the Guardians plus Iron Man massacred what appeared to be an innocent ship and killed the crew. If there’s one thing I learned from that comic, it’s that Badoon profiling is wrong, and that innocent people can get hurt by it.

And then it turned out that Earth was being invaded by Aryan McGenericallyhandsomepants’ dad for some reason that I think may have been childish spite. To be honest, I find the whole ‘You must save the Earth!’ card a pretty cheap one to play, and by this point in Marvel universe’s history Earth being invaded by aliens must have become an absolutely mundane occurrence  “We’re hearing reports this morning of traffic disruption on the M4 due to megalomaniacs from space shooting the motorway with a laser. Drivers are recommended to take a diversion in order to avoid major delays, or to sit tight and wait for a member of the Avengers to clear the disruption. And now for the weather.”

Of course, considering that the characters who were no doubt going to come riding to Earth’s rescue are a bunch of murderous psychotics, I’d rather just see if Thor was in the neighbourhood. He may be a bit of an arrogant git, but at least he isn’t a racist. Honestly, Iron Man, I expected better of you.