Anatomy of A Panel: Sandman #16 by Neil Gaiman & Mike Dringenberg - page 1

in the quest to know what a comic page looks like, it used to be that one had only to refer to How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way. Fortunately, there were other approaches to be had, and certainly DC and Karen Berger exploited in the '80's, establishing an entirely new version of art for sequential comics.

It was an interesting time to be alive.

Here is the first page to the classic conclusion of The Doll's House storyline which, when collected, would be the trade to launch a hundred thousand fangirls into loving comics, when the industry, in every possible way, had ignored them for more than two generations.

It was an interesting time to be alive.

Mike Dringenberg was a classically trained artist who had no business putting his admirable skills into a monthly book, but he did anyway. His work, seen especially in the pencils, shows just how experimental and innovative he was off of Neil's scripts. Gaiman was not writing classic comic scripts, and the art had to reflect that. So, for likely the first time anywhere outside of the late Malcolm Jones' art table, here are the pencils to Sandman #16, as well as the recolored version printing in the Absolute Sandman #1.

As for me, I'm working away at The Carnival #2 for APE 2014 and looking forward to talking comics with everyone there. I'll have a new printing of  Carnival #1, as well as some prints of the Dick Sprang/yoakum collaboration of the 1950's Batman!

Sketch A Day #1 - The Sandman

Getting back to it, and going to try to do the sketch a day thing... we'll see how long a slow artist like myself can keep this up.

This Sandman is india ink on bristol, a little PH Martin's white on top, and zip-a-tone via photoshop. Enjoy!

This is an inking of a sketch started a while ago, and inspired by my visit to the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco to see The Sandman retrospective, and hear Mike Dringenberg talk about the work. I've not seen Mike in about 15  years, so it was nice to go and see him.

More on that later!

The Return of the Sandman: Revising the Revisions

As difficult as it may be to do so, try to return to the halycon days of 1989, when the Rob Liefields and Jim Lees of the world were starting to push superhero comics into a new artistic paradigm, and when how novel the concept of finding anyone to actually follow up Alan Moore on Saga of the Swamp Thing would be. And a sweet little goth book showed up on the stands with some very interesting covers. And it was really anything but sweet.

Years later, and one great revolution of Vertigo later, with millions of copies in print in tons of different permutations, Sandman started to actually look quaint. And a bit coy in places. At least to some. While I'm unable to find the link now, somewhere around 2007, a comics roundtable came together, of reviewers that i generally respected even if I didn't always agree with, to reassess Gaiman's Sandman. The result was a beatdown that made Liefield's New Mutants look fairly good by comparison. I thought that they were spectacularly wrong. While not faultless, Sandman was brave and bold and interesting and managed to pull off way more than it didn't, and slagging off the series showed more than a little of the biases of the reviewers more so than it did the faults of the series. One quote I remember was, "With some distance, the whole series is looking slightly embarassing."

In 1990 I moved in with a girl who had never read comics before, so i gave her a stack of material that she promised to read. A mix of stuff i personally enjoyed, including the just published Doll's House collection. The rest of the comics she could have cared less about. the Doll's House? She came back demanding more. The collection she'd already loaned out to a girlfriend, who would loan it out to more friends. It was the perfect collection of horror and drama and fantasy and sex and otherworldliness to hit a whole chunk of females directly in the head. She didn't become a comic fan, but she did become a Sandman fan.

I hated to tell her that there wasn't, right then, a whole lot more.

The guardian has a nice write up, with spoilers for the just released Sandman Overture, as well, and it always sounds like those music beat writers who can tell you exactly where and when they first heard Hendrix/Sex Pistols/Nirvana. It was profoundly different, it was moving, and it changed everything.

So for all the reviewers who look back, and with the somewhat brilliant and snarky hindsight of 2007 or 2013, and find the adventures of Rose Walker, or the giddy introduction of Death (holding an infant who died in its crib slightly plaintifly asking, "Is that all there is?"), or the brilliant little bits of the city who slept and dreamed away its citizens, slightly cloying. Please note that there are far more of us who were moved and touched by the beauty of the series than will ever be embarassed by it. And while none of us were clamoring for the prequel, the fact that it exists as drawn by the very best artist working in comics in the last couple of years, is a testament to the fact that neil must have a story that wanted to be told, as opposed to a check that he wanted to cash.

And I can't wait to read it.

Sketch A Day #5 Lord Morpheus

Was rereading some of the old Sandman comics, and marveling at all the balls that Neil kept juggling through the series. Of course he bit off a bit more than he thought for the final Kindly Ones storyline, but it was one hell of a ride.

For the record, my favorites in the series: The Dolls House and Inn at the End of Time arcs.

Perhaps one day I'll find the pencils from the final issues that Dringenberg drew and scan them for you all to see.

The Miracleman Story Continues...

I've blogged before about the Miracleman/Marvelman saga from Warrior and Eclipse Comics, and now feel dutybound to continue when new developments arise, and one certainly did during Comic Con this year.

With marvel's announcement that they had acquired rights to the original Marvelman series, there is always a hope that Gaiman and Buckingham will get the chance to eventually continue and finish their arc that they started back during the Eclipse days. Obviously there are probably a host of legal issues to resolve but this is a step forward at least.

excerpted from Neil's blog:

Regarding Marvel's recent announcement concerning the acquisition of the rights to Marvelman -- Will you be involved in any way with the future publications and/or marketing? If so, would you and Marvel possibly consider continuing to use the name Miracleman rather than reverting to Marvelman? My personal experience with the character began in the mid-80's with the Eclipse run by Alan Moore and then you; and, regardless of the actual reasons those stories used the Miracleman name, I have always felt "Miracleman" was -- for lack of better explanation -- a classier, more appropriate, more adult designation than "Marvelman". Thanks for taking the time for this.

We'll see. And no, I think it's Marvelman, which is what it was until 1984ish when Marvel complained.

Right now I'm not entirely sure what's going to happen, and Mark Buckingham and I haven't signed anything, but I'm really hopeful that Marvel will bring Alan Moore's stories back into print, and the work I did with Mark Buckingham (Miracleman 25 was finished, ready for printing, 16 years ago. It's still in Mark Buckingham's possession, although some of the lettering balloons have gone a bit yellow.) I'm not entirely sure what Marvel's plans are for the character at this point -- obviously I'd like to finish the story I started.

slsl

In Review Of: Dave McKean

Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast has an interesting interview with Dave McKean with some great career retrospective moments along the way. You'll find lots of bits and pieces along the way that you probably hadn't seen before unless you were a dedicated fan.

i met Dave many years ago at the original San Diego Con, back when it was all randomly thrown in folding tables, and Dave and his wife were sitting there chatting with the few people that recognized that he was the artist behind the then recently released Black Orchid mini series. Dave had lots of lovely large pages from those issues, and had taken the time to not only paint the images but to glue down actual folliage. As I picked up the pages, his wife said in the sweetest possible voice, "Dave has pasted down actual bits of our garden on these pages." And so he had.

I had bought a couple of pieces of art from him along the way, and am proud to have a page from his Hellblazer story as well as an old Hellblazer cover, even if I don't have pieces of his garden pasted on.

Given that his output has been both large and diverse over the last few years, it is hard to actually keep a handle on the work. His stuff is made for publication, many of his Sandman covers were little multimedia constructions that needed to be photographed, and much of what looks like smeared photos with jam and Kryolite sealent were actually photos smeared with jam and sealent. But given that he has been directing movies as well as doing books like The Wolves in the Walls, it is the sort of work that has been in front of the eyes of millions and yet not in the eyes of the average comic fans at all.

The piece above is from my personal favorite series, Cages, a monumental work that sprawls and spirals and basically spun completely out of his control for ten rather interestingly scheduled issues and is since compiled into a rather fetching hardback. A number of intertwining stories work into different creation myths with the story of an artist looking to take a break and get away. Of course, the artist is both overwhelmed by his own neurosis, meeting the brilliant musician upstairs, Angel, the neighbor across the way, the mute gallery representative, and a whole host of other, interesting cast members.

Signal to Noise, which has been released with at least two different covers along the way, is also an interesting piece of work, one that was originally serialized in the UK and then collected into a square bound, tells the story of a dying director casting his final film in his head as his own clock winds down.

If you only know McKean from his Sandman covers, read this interview, and feast on a great collection of jpegs, including some new ones from the Graveyard book with Gaiman that I will now have to rush out and get. Feast away.

In Praise Of: The Miracleman Saga

The Miracleman saga never ends. At least not if you're Neil Gaiman. Maybe not even if you're Alan Moore. Certainly not if you're the original creator.

Here, unless you've missed this, is the short version. Todd McFarlane is suing Gaiman for his share of the rights to Miracleman, rights that were given to Neil by Alan Moore, who was given them by Dez Skinn back in the Warrior days. Alan wanted Neil to have a stake in the character that he was taking over, so he handed his rights over. Once Eclipse Comics went under, McFarlane bought the rights to everything, thinking that he would get Miracleman. What wasn't apparent until now is that all this right being handed back and forth is all for naught. Mick Anglo, the original creator, is alive and should retain all the rights to the character.

So Dez Skinn was wrong. And lied about Miracleman to Moore. Among other things should anyone care to do so digging about Dez.

What stands out, however, is the work, ad the fact that it is likely that the Miracleman saga will never be reprinted with all the horrible rights being thus entangled, and that is more of shame than can be imagined.

For those who have never read the whole thing, or just heard about it, it is, with all its early bumps and bruises and false starts, the furthest imagining of what a superman character would actually do to the world. And it is, in a few words, alternately horrifying, stunning, beautiful, and beyond shocking.

Here is reality, if we can call it that: this series will shatter any myth that you might have had over the Fantastic Four or the Avengers as being in the "real world". That's bullshit. The day that a real superman shows up in our world, it will destroy our world to its very foundation. He will change things so much, that we will not recognize the world that he will leave behind. As his first daughter asks non-chelantly, "You decided to leave the sky that color?"

And he will bring, because this is Alan Moore, the evil that will destroy London and the world, eating life and shitting skulls, along the way. And the architect, the human/god that will create all this and then believe that he can control it, Gargunza. All the archetypes are represented, but without a Marvel or DC universe status quo to return to, Moore is free to reimagine just how devastated that world would be, and take those archetypes to their furthest places. A superhero battle? New York wouldn't survive. Not once. Neither would Metropolis. And London doesn't. I've already blogged once about Miracleman #15 being the most brutal comic that i've ever read. And I don't expect that to change.

Gaiman was able to further, as is his want, someof the more interesting tangendental ideas, ideas that we mentioned or hinted at in first "book", and take the time to explore the side roads: Miraclewomen as the Aphrodite/Love/Sex goddess of the world, both unattainable and attainable at the same time; Evelyn Cream, the connsumate intelligence professional given over to being "Number 1", the most brilliant pastice of The Prisoner that i've ever seen; Andy Warhol and whole concept of Pop Art is turned on its head given the artist as our introduction to the artificial underworld that Miracleman creates. Given his head, Miracleman becomes God in all ways, in reshaping the world, repopulating it with his progeny, creating an Olympus for the gods as well as an underworld for the dead to live in.

Its a shame that the series is in true developmental hell; it can't be reprinted nor will it even ever be finished, as the well researched book on the subject, Kimota, from Twomorrows Press, shows us. Gaiman has only one more issue to go, and it, honestly, didn't sound like it would do a lot to resolve many of the questions that Alan and Neil had raised.

Is it worth the time and money to track down the issues? Absolutely. Are they out there? I would suppose so, although I bought the series as it came out, and haven't had to look for the issues. Kimota may be out of print, however, and that is why Ebay was invented. And comic cons.

Go. Discover the ubermench saga the way it was meant to be read. Find the issues and read it.

Illustrations by the magnificent John Totleben and Alex Ross.