_the sandman_ was neil gaiman's breakthrough into the big time comic
publications. now he virtually controls a major chunk of the trade as a
subsidiary of DC (one of the big two with Marvel). although i buy maybe $100 in
comics every month, i was never much taken with the early _sandman_ series. i
would buy one occasionally but never enough to continue the stories until this
last one "the kindly ones". i liked the manner in which the main
characters interact with the dream characters who have developed a nice sense of
depth. i will probably trace that series backwards now to see when they started
getting good. perhaps i just missed the value in the writing earlier-- i will
see. the new story "the wake" is on the stands right now, it picks up
with the death of the dreamlord, most of his supernatural family coming together
with some mortals. meanwhile the new dreamlord is reestablishing the dreaming
after its near destruction. if you are interested you can pick them up as trade
journals. instead of collecting each issue individually like i do, they put out
the entire story under one cover like a graphic novel. i see them fairly often
in the comic shops. that is probably how i will bracktrack that series to see
where it got good.
i have some credentials as a comic artist myself-- even been published a
couple times in local publications. i have thought about producing some of my
more general audience style dreams into panel art, but the amount of work always
seems prohibitive. first, i believe we would need to start with a dreamlog as
the surest method of capturing the dream, then use that as a script for the
panel expressions. i don't think it would be very meaningful unless the cartoon
artist was the dreamer to get some visual authenticity in the image work. most
cartoonists i have known produce personal works which they don't publish and
some of them naturally contain dream material. the problem i see in doing dream
material in panel art as a general continuing form is the great amount of work
it takes to capture the visual elements in a coherent sequence.
remember when you first started a dreamlog? there is a language barrier which
has to be overcome in getting dream memories into linguistic form for
preservation. i think this is some cognitive effect that our normal language
production system usually does not originate from the memory where dreams are
stored or produced. it seems to take some effort initially to develop the
language needed to speak about dreams, even though the final language is just
like our everyday language when we have dreamlogging set up as an on going
activity. once we develop the linguistic channels out of dreamland into text, we
seem to become more fluent in it and it becomes easier. less struggling to get
some half-remembered fragment of dream memory into an expressible phrase.
the problem i see in panel art for that process is that cartooning is very
slow and labor intensive activity. sure, we have the advantage of going from
image to drawing directly, but the effort in composing the drawing is many times
greater than the similar effort in framing dream into speech stream. most people
who sleep together tell their dreams in the morning. few would get up and draw
them. comics are a special combination of words and drawings which tell a story
together in a manner which either alone cannot do as well. i am afraid that on
trying to layout a dream sequence like a comic, it would take so long that the
heart of the dream would be lost... or the cartoonist would spend all day at the
drawing table after rolling out of bed. it really seems to me the best sequence
will be dream -> dreamlog -> comic with the language element imposing its
order before the visual elements get to drawing.
i have thought about putting the 'breaking up is hard' dream (see electric
dreams vol. 2 #3) as a panel story, or maybe that first 'brick wall' lucid dream
(coming up next issue) (which would be technically very easy since there is only
me and a building to draw.) then comes the problem of how to publish. if each
panel gets its own .gif file, then we need a slide viewer to keep them in
sequence, and the byte size of the total thing gets big fast. if a strip or page
is the distributable object, then resolution of the thing on a monitor would be
a concern in the art production. comic artists have a necessary feel for the
final production media when starting out the first penciling of layout.
oh, there is another comic that just started about dreamwork. it is called _metaphysique_
or something like that. it is about a young college kid whose father is a dream
researcher. between classes, he is one of the research subjects who have been
trained in lucidity but his father has a lot of restrictions on what they can do
when they are out of the lab. particularly they are not associate with other
research subjects, but the kid has the hots for this girl from india, so he is
sneaking out to see her. also they are beginning to use lucidity for astral
projection so they can get into each others' dreams... so far so good. but
unfortunately the kids are using their lucid control to turn themselves into
superheroes who fly through the air and rescue people from disasters.
they have just established that at least the boy can effect realtime objects
while in his dreamtime, but the girl can just watch and talk with him. her hands
pass through solid objects while his can or cannot as he wills it. undoubtedly
there will be some bashing supervillians with the fists and mystical powerbolts.
what a waste. after setting the research basis of lucid dreaming, it seems to be
descending into just more costumed x-men with silly names and silly powers.
i would now recommend "the kindly ones" _the sandman_ (for grown
ups with eccentric tastes) but not _metaphysique_ (unless you like juvenile
conflict resolution).
Editor's note: There is also a comic book devoted to the sharing of dreams
called "Roarin' Rick's Rare Bit Friends" which is reviewed by Jeremy
Taylor in the last ASD newsletter 12(2) pg. 8. Subscriptions are $24.00 for 6
issues. Checks payable to "King Hell Press" POB 1371, West Townsend,
VT 05359-1371
Also, for more _Sandman_ stuff try the web site "A Page of Dreams"
URL:
http://lucien.berkeley.edu/dreams.html
|
