-A Tale of Two Houses-
Authors: Various | Illustrators: Various | Issues: 60
'This dark night is full of spirits, bad dreams and old harm dressed up in the deceitful skins of men.'
A Sandman spin-off that lasted an impressive 60 issues (June 1996 to May 2001). It began life as a monthly anthology, telling both single issue and multipart stories that took place either within the Dreaming itself or had the Dreaming play a pivotal role in the telling.
Initially, the various dreamers had little or no connection to each other, but the format changed to an ongoing story arc about a third of the way through its run.
Various secondary characters from The Sandman featured from time to time — most frequently Cain and Abel, Lucien, and Matthew the Raven — but they weren't always the main focus and weren't always named.
It seems to have been assumed that most readers would be able to recognise such characters themselves, and tough shit to anyone that didn't already know. That's the nature of some spin-offs, I suppose.
A few stories were collected into TPB format, but to date the full series hasn't, so, if you weren't collecting it at the time of first publication, it'll be difficult and perhaps expensive to acquire paper copies today. Digital is your other option, if you own a suitable reading device. [1]
Personally, I don't feel the effort or expense involved to acquire a full collection is worth it. There's some fine art throughout, but the majority of the storytelling simply isn't good. Caitlín R. Kiernan's ongoing arc in the later two-thirds is especially disappointing, at times even boring. Some of the five or six-part ones were an actual test of reader-endurance for me.
NOTE: for reasons that weren't clear, not all multipart stories are labelled as such, with some having numbering at the beginning and end but nothing in the middle. It was mildly confusing and I'd to check more than once if I'd picked an incorrect issue number. (I realised too late for it to be of help to me that the various fonts used on the cover art were a clue to when each mini-arc ends.) Consequently, my original plan for listing each story on this page went tits-up. I'll list them as I recorded them, but there may be errors present after issue 24. Here's what I've got:
#01-03: The Goldie Factor. A multipart story that sees Cain and Abel venture across the Dreaming in search of Goldie, who's seemingly gone missing. Gregory is dragged along, too.
#04-07: The Lost Boy. Many of the series' multipart stories move at a more leisurely pace than they would if they were in the parent series. Before it got boring, the slower pace allowed for different kinds of stories to be told, of which The Lost Boy is a good example. It's a tale of a man who's out of his time, dropped into a world that he doesn't understand. Mad Hettie features.
#08: His Brother's Keeper is the first single-issue story. You can probably guess from the title that it features brothers Cain and Abel. The duo worked fine as secondary characters in the original Sandman comic, but they aren't as successful when promoted to primaries.
#09-12: Weird Romance. A four-part story about a woman and a wedding - or perhaps just the dream of one... I didn't enjoy it much. YMMV.
#13-14: Coyote's Kiss. A human couple stop off for a night's rest during a long drive to a new house. He's the conventional type; she's the opposite. Each one dreams differently, but come to similar conclusions about what's important and good in life. It features Matthew and Eve, the two regular characters that I liked the most.
#15: Day's Work, Night's Rest. A white-collar office worker dreams of achieving more in the time he has. He meets Merv Pumpkinhead in the Dreaming, who shows him a different way of life. Merv's an even less engaging protagonist than Cain or Abel, and the art is pretty crappy.
#16: Ice. A Faerie story with Nuala and The Cluracan. It's weak and feels unfinished.
#17-19: Souvenirs begins the (new) Corinthian's journey. The Dreaming is its own thing and some will say it shouldn't be compared to the Sandman. Either way, Souvenirs is the most Sandman-esque one so far. (The quote at the beginning of this post is from Issue #18.)
#20-21: The Dark Rose. 1894. A female author of fairy tales is drawn to an artist of grotesque and 'depraved' imagery... for she hides a grotesqueness of her own. Oscar Wilde is referenced in more ways than one. The artwork and colouring really help the vibe.
#22-24: Unkindness of One follows Eve as she searches for Matthew in the waking world. It's an ambitious story that deserves credit for a number of things, but on reflection it's where the story arc starts to shit things up. Ultimately, parts of it are good and parts of it aren't.
#25: My Year as a Man. A single-issue story telling of the year that Matthew's predecessor, the raven Aristeas, spent on earth travelling across Ancient Greece. As you do.
#26: Restitution. More Cain and Abel, one of whom gets a wish that may be his undoing.
#27-34: Many Mansions. A lengthy mini-arc that focusses on Cain and Abel and their respective houses, the House of Mysteries and the House of Secrets. The first part is dull. The second is meh but well-told. Tensions rise in the third. Lucien reaches breaking point in the fourth. The fifth is a longer than usual issue with three stories set within a frame narrative that introduces a character who reappears later. The sixth is an utterly forgettable story about Hob Gadling and Mad Hettie that has nothing to do with the arc, as far as I could tell. The seventh takes us to a part of the Dreaming that I don't personally remember seeing before; it was interesting. The eighth is the point where I fully regretted committing myself to reading the full series.
#35: Kaleidoscope. A single-issue that seems to continue the story of the previous issue more than some of the issues that were included in it did. Has a fictional W.B Yeats.
#36-38: The Gyres is a welcome upturn in quality. Aspects of the three-parter are bleak as fuck, with themes that may be upsetting to some readers, but they're well-written, with moments that are darkly poetic. There's some great dialogue that I'd have pulled a quote from if I hadn't already got one. I don't know why the author claimed Part 03 was the end. It really wasn't.
#39: The Lost Language of Flowers. A one-shot, allegedly, but not really. It brings back a secondary character seen previously for a kind of alternate Dreaming / Wizard of Oz thing. It goes nowhere interesting, and it's definitely a part of what came before and after.
#40-43: Fox and Hounds continues the story. A lot happens. W.B Yeats is relevant again. The Necropolis at Litharge is mentioned. Part 02 is fucking depressing. Part 03 has a tragic but memorable event. Part 04 has one of the Endless, but I won't say which one.
#44: Trinket is supposedly another single issue story, but it's really a part of a long and boring tale in which Nuala of Faerie plays a key role. Keats gets referenced this time.
#45-49: Masques & Hedgehogs; Mirror, Mirror; Trinket; Scary Monsters; and Shatter are a bunch of different titles that I'm collectively going to call Dawn Stone. I have no idea why they weren't given a Part 01, etc. Did somebody screw up? Whatever. It's more Faerie shit.
#50: Restoration. Issue 50! The big Five-Oh. That'll be a good one! Something special, right? A milestone story? Nope. The differing styles of the four artists made it messy. It's a great shame, because Shawn McManus and John Totleben's art both suit the location, in distinct ways.
#51: Second Sight. What is this amateur crap? And why did it even make the newsstands?
#52-54: Exiles. The Corinthian gets upset when his Bangkok ladyboy gets in trouble. You might think I made that up because my level of caring has fallen off a cliff. Well, I bloody didn't.
#55: The Further Adventures of Danny Nod, Heroic Library Assistant. At Lucien's behest, an enthusiastic youth goes in search of books that are either overdue or have simply gone missing from the Great Library's stock. About half a dozen different artists illustrate the journey. Unlike the 50th issue, there's a legitimate 'story' reason for it to be presented that way.
#56: The First Adventure of Miss Catterina Poe features Edgar and a cat. No, it isn't black. Steve Leialoha's artwork is the sketchy-line type, but it has a kind of charm, unlike the story.
#57-60: Bad Dreams. The end, finally, and what a crock of shit it is. I'm not even sure what happened. I could give a Wiki-esque version, that Event A happened, and then Event B, and then Event C, etc. But the why and the how? The motivations and the reasons, etc? I've no clue.
The story made no sense. I thought maybe I'd missed something important, so I read it again — which is twice more than it deserved — but came away with the same feeling. There's a lot of fakery in play, too, in an attempt to mask the failings. The bravado moments, for example, are a desperate ploy to hide the fact that there's nothing of value in the quieter moments.
The whispered secret that turned everything around wasn't revealed. Why not? Because it was nothing more than an eleventh hour deus ex machina, most likely; it certainly feels that way. It did serve one purpose, though, it exposed the writer's complete unsuitability for the role.
[1] I mentioned that some issues had been collected into various TPBs. They are:
The Dreaming: Beyond the Shores of Night (1997) collects #01-08. [208 pp] | The Dreaming: Through the Gates of Horn and Ivory (1998) collects #15-19 and 22-25. [224 pp] | The Sandman Presents: Taller Tales (2003) is a collection of various Sandman spin-offs including one issue of the Dreaming, which is Issue #55. [224 pp] - reviewed HERE.
Additionally, if you want to see Dave McKean's cover art for every issue, then see this post on The 7th Side blog: The Dreaming: Collected Covers (1996-2001).
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