Scan barcode
acornsbooksandcoffee's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
The Constantine short story (“Hold Me”) is Gaiman’s writing at its best. Gaiman understands and communicates the human condition like no other. This anthology has hits and misses, but is overall a worthwhile read.
arachne_reads's review
3.0
There is meat to these tales, but much of it feels rough, being Gaiman's early work. Of all of them, the Hellblazer story best fits my taste. I enjoyed it, but if you're looking for polish, I'm not sure any author's early work is going to fit your bill.
pistachios42's review
2.0
I'd consider myself a fan of Neil Gaiman. His work on Sandman in particular is absolutely incredible - and some of the best work I've ever seen in the graphic novel form. I understand though, that with any writer, there are always dregs of things that don't seem to make sense, or just lack the energy of their best. This, sadly, is one of those books - the sort of thing to pick up after you've read everything else twice but still want more.
There are six issues in this, each varying wildly in tone and length. The very short Jack in the Green and Shaggy God Stories feel like they end before they even begin, and seem more like Gaiman trying to hit on a specific atmosphere, rather than flesh out any story.
Hold Me is a John Constantine story that's apparently beloved by die hard fans, yet I do feel like some of the appeal might be down to its relative obscurity. And without reading it in the context of the Hellblazer series, I felt like most of the character's nuance was lost on me.
The Sandman: Midnight Theatre issue is the most substantial, featuring a Sandman crossover between Gaiman's Dream and the 1930s Wesley Dodds. It's quite a fun mystery caper, and the characters and prewar London setting make it enjoyable enough, even if the mystery at the core of it is quite uninteresting.
Then there's Brothers which is just awful in many many ways. It's essentially a nostalgia trip for a 1960s comic called Brother Power the Geek which is about an animated mannequin who has somewhat godlike powers. It's absolutely ridiculous, and not really in a good way - there's something to do with a man with an iron hand, an FBI agent who's resentful of what the hippie movement became, Batman turns up for two pages - I'm trying to not make this sound so bad that it's good, but it really does seem to be taking it all completely seriously. Even the art style, which is consistently brilliant throughout Sandman, is really rough and scrawly. Here's a taster:
That leaves Welcome Back To The House Of Mystery at the end, which was originally the intro and outro to a DC comics House of Mystery collection - illustrated by Sergio Aragones, whose instantly recognisable style is very charming here. It is completely and utterly out of context here, but I still found it really funny, and well written - it might be my favourite of the bunch, just look at this page:
The collection as a whole though... I don't really get it. They're all random leftovers, all of which feel like they belong in a completely different collections (some of them do). Gaiman wrote a few introductions before each story, as some sort of effort to contextualise them, and he sounds quite bemused talking about them. And honestly I don't blame him, I don't know why DC comics decided to do this. Maybe they were just that eager to make money off of giving those hungry Neil Gaiman fans, the leftover scraps.
There are six issues in this, each varying wildly in tone and length. The very short Jack in the Green and Shaggy God Stories feel like they end before they even begin, and seem more like Gaiman trying to hit on a specific atmosphere, rather than flesh out any story.
Hold Me is a John Constantine story that's apparently beloved by die hard fans, yet I do feel like some of the appeal might be down to its relative obscurity. And without reading it in the context of the Hellblazer series, I felt like most of the character's nuance was lost on me.
The Sandman: Midnight Theatre issue is the most substantial, featuring a Sandman crossover between Gaiman's Dream and the 1930s Wesley Dodds. It's quite a fun mystery caper, and the characters and prewar London setting make it enjoyable enough, even if the mystery at the core of it is quite uninteresting.
Then there's Brothers which is just awful in many many ways. It's essentially a nostalgia trip for a 1960s comic called Brother Power the Geek which is about an animated mannequin who has somewhat godlike powers. It's absolutely ridiculous, and not really in a good way - there's something to do with a man with an iron hand, an FBI agent who's resentful of what the hippie movement became, Batman turns up for two pages - I'm trying to not make this sound so bad that it's good, but it really does seem to be taking it all completely seriously. Even the art style, which is consistently brilliant throughout Sandman, is really rough and scrawly. Here's a taster:
That leaves Welcome Back To The House Of Mystery at the end, which was originally the intro and outro to a DC comics House of Mystery collection - illustrated by Sergio Aragones, whose instantly recognisable style is very charming here. It is completely and utterly out of context here, but I still found it really funny, and well written - it might be my favourite of the bunch, just look at this page:
The collection as a whole though... I don't really get it. They're all random leftovers, all of which feel like they belong in a completely different collections (some of them do). Gaiman wrote a few introductions before each story, as some sort of effort to contextualise them, and he sounds quite bemused talking about them. And honestly I don't blame him, I don't know why DC comics decided to do this. Maybe they were just that eager to make money off of giving those hungry Neil Gaiman fans, the leftover scraps.
booknooknoggin's review
3.0
Kinda disappointing that this is not new content...just reprints from other issues of Sandman, Hellblazer, etc.
hollowspine's review
3.0
Odds and bits of Neil Gaiman's stories for comic series. Some relate to Swamp Thing others to the Sandman or Hellblazer series.
Perhaps because I know very little of Alan Moore's work some of it was a bit lost on me I'm sure, as I've never really liked the Swamp Thing (probably because all I know of it is what I thought was a terrible 70's television show), but in the first story of the book "Jack of the Green" I really enjoyed the story of this particular "elemental" Jack of the Green.
I've also read the Black Lotus series from Gaiman and enjoyed that, so I knew somewhat about it.
My favorite of the stories, Shaggy God Stories and Hold Me both had the best collaborations I thought. In Shaggy God Stories, knowing little of Jason or Woodrue or Floro I still loved the illustration by Mike Mignola and found our main character to be a mix of Cain and Abel with his stuttering yet somehow malign mutterings.
Hold Me was an interesting story, yet again it contains many things that someone who has read more comics would understand, everything seems to be connected (Did John Constantine get hit up by the Swamp Thing and his lady for fertility help?) in strange ways.
I liked the compilation of oddments, but still not inspired to read more hero comics.
Perhaps because I know very little of Alan Moore's work some of it was a bit lost on me I'm sure, as I've never really liked the Swamp Thing (probably because all I know of it is what I thought was a terrible 70's television show), but in the first story of the book "Jack of the Green" I really enjoyed the story of this particular "elemental" Jack of the Green.
I've also read the Black Lotus series from Gaiman and enjoyed that, so I knew somewhat about it.
My favorite of the stories, Shaggy God Stories and Hold Me both had the best collaborations I thought. In Shaggy God Stories, knowing little of Jason or Woodrue or Floro I still loved the illustration by Mike Mignola and found our main character to be a mix of Cain and Abel with his stuttering yet somehow malign mutterings.
Hold Me was an interesting story, yet again it contains many things that someone who has read more comics would understand, everything seems to be connected (Did John Constantine get hit up by the Swamp Thing and his lady for fertility help?) in strange ways.
I liked the compilation of oddments, but still not inspired to read more hero comics.
sookieskipper's review
3.0
A biased purchase purely for the Writer-Artist combination that is Gaiman-McKean. The collection is a hit or miss given one's affection for the characters that are re-imagined.
Hold Me, a Hellblazer story, is brilliant. Midnight Theater set in The Sandman universe is fantastic. The rest are good; nothing great, nothing exceptional.
Hold Me, a Hellblazer story, is brilliant. Midnight Theater set in The Sandman universe is fantastic. The rest are good; nothing great, nothing exceptional.
lordofthemoon's review
4.0
This graphic novel collects six of [a: Neil Gaiman|1221698|Neil Gaiman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1234150163p2/1221698.jpg]'s early comics work for DC. Of the six stories in the collection, there are three that are from different aspects of Swamp Thing, one Hellblazer, one Sandman and a little framing story for another collection.
I'm not hugely familiar with Swamp Thing so I perhaps didn't get as much out of those stories as someone more familiar with the mythos. The first, Jack in the Green shows a Swamp Thing somewhere in England when the Black Death is sweeping the land as he tends to a dying friend. Even without knowing much about about the character or history, you can relate to that. The second Brothers is an odd little story that does rely more on DC/Swamp Thing continuity, telling the story of a living puppet who falls to earth from a satellite. Even without knowing the history though, there's enough human stories - with hippy Chester and his damaged partner Liz; and with bitter government agent Gideon Endor - to hold interest. Shaggy God Stories on the other hand, seems to be an interlude between two big stories and I don't think I got an awful lot out of it.
Moving away from Swamp Thing, the next story in the collection Hold Me which is a touching Hellblazer story, where John Constantine encounters a dead man who just wants someone to, well, hold him. The penultimate story, Sandman Midnight Theatre sees the single meeting between Dream of the Endless and Wesley Dodds, another character to bear the name 'Sandman'. Set on the eve of WW2, Wesley Dodds is drawn to England after the suicide of an old friend, and finds himself investigating the Order of Ancient Mysteries, who still hold Morpheus in a glass box. The collection is finished off with a little framing story for a horror anthology called Welcome Back to the House of Mystery featuring the Cain and Abel who live in the Dreaming. Very much more cartoony in tone than the rest of the book, it's an odd choice to finish the volume, but not necessarily an inappropriate one.
The art throughout is lovely, Gaiman can always find good artists to work with him; the painted, appropriately dreamlike, art for Sandman Midnight Theatre especially drew my eye. A lot of this is fairly early work by Gaiman so it isn't always the most polished, but it all has heart and the storytelling confidence that marks his work. Even if you're not familiar with the characters within, the stories are (mostly) able to hold their own.
I'm not hugely familiar with Swamp Thing so I perhaps didn't get as much out of those stories as someone more familiar with the mythos. The first, Jack in the Green shows a Swamp Thing somewhere in England when the Black Death is sweeping the land as he tends to a dying friend. Even without knowing much about about the character or history, you can relate to that. The second Brothers is an odd little story that does rely more on DC/Swamp Thing continuity, telling the story of a living puppet who falls to earth from a satellite. Even without knowing the history though, there's enough human stories - with hippy Chester and his damaged partner Liz; and with bitter government agent Gideon Endor - to hold interest. Shaggy God Stories on the other hand, seems to be an interlude between two big stories and I don't think I got an awful lot out of it.
Moving away from Swamp Thing, the next story in the collection Hold Me which is a touching Hellblazer story, where John Constantine encounters a dead man who just wants someone to, well, hold him. The penultimate story, Sandman Midnight Theatre sees the single meeting between Dream of the Endless and Wesley Dodds, another character to bear the name 'Sandman'. Set on the eve of WW2, Wesley Dodds is drawn to England after the suicide of an old friend, and finds himself investigating the Order of Ancient Mysteries, who still hold Morpheus in a glass box. The collection is finished off with a little framing story for a horror anthology called Welcome Back to the House of Mystery featuring the Cain and Abel who live in the Dreaming. Very much more cartoony in tone than the rest of the book, it's an odd choice to finish the volume, but not necessarily an inappropriate one.
The art throughout is lovely, Gaiman can always find good artists to work with him; the painted, appropriately dreamlike, art for Sandman Midnight Theatre especially drew my eye. A lot of this is fairly early work by Gaiman so it isn't always the most polished, but it all has heart and the storytelling confidence that marks his work. Even if you're not familiar with the characters within, the stories are (mostly) able to hold their own.
jessiqa's review
4.0
This is basically a book of short stories. It's a collection of random stories, most of which have been published elsewhere, in comic form. The main story is called Sandman Midnight Theater. This puts both Sandman characters (Sandmen?) together in one story. It's during the time when Gaiman's Sandman is being held captive by that creepy old dude, and much of the action takes place at a party at this old man's house. The original Sandman is among the guests. In this manner, it takes the form of those mystery stories where all the players are gathered together in one place for the reveal of the murderer. I loved it.
There's lots of cameos of other DC characters, like Batman and Swamp Thing and Constantine. I don't know the chronology of these characters very well, and with a few I know next to nothing. This mattered not while reading the stories in this book. Gaiman's writing is such that one can glide right in without feeling lost or confused.
I'm really glad I picked this one up at the library!
There's lots of cameos of other DC characters, like Batman and Swamp Thing and Constantine. I don't know the chronology of these characters very well, and with a few I know next to nothing. This mattered not while reading the stories in this book. Gaiman's writing is such that one can glide right in without feeling lost or confused.
I'm really glad I picked this one up at the library!
More...