I was just rereading Preludes and Nocturnes and I just realized how much I loved the scences at Arkham Asylum. His characterization of Ichabod Crane (The Scarecrow) was great... trying always to find names for various fears, he seemed exactly like the carrer academic he is when he isn't being a supervillian. And his constant quoting and such... and the line "Mr. Dent tried to choke himself" is pretty hilarious-- just the image of one side of Two-Face getting so pissed at the other that he tries to kill it. Stuff like that makes me wish Neil will do a superhero project, specfically Batman... he already seemed to have the villians spot-on. And the hero-- remember Scott's line? "Its 3am. He'll be working." Hilarious.

Or maybe i'm just too much of a superhero fanboy. Anway, does anyone have any other bits that, for some reaons, you just really like?

http://lon.blogspot.com -- Its a slightly less eloquent me.

The bit in World's End's Litharge story with the teacher as a child. That stuck in my head for years before I even read The Wake. Just a weird wonderful little aside that suddenly made sense four books and three years later.

------------------------------
'Huns! Visigoths! Vandals!'
(Hugh, Brian Friel's Translations)

The part where Rose Walker, I forget which book, is sitting in the bed all disgruntled and a couple of frames go by with no action until the last one where she lets out a little tiny "fuck."


I love that.

**************************
ARTHUR: By what name are you known?
AMY: There are some who call me... 'Amy'?
ARTHUR: Greetings, Amy of Doom.
****************************
All Hail the Might and Power of the Amii!!

God, there's literally thousands of moments I can pick and choose from. Lets take a look at a few . . .

I love the sections talking about Destiny's Garden, (both in Seasons of Mists and Brief Lives), the descriptions and images are really great. I especially like the idea presented in Brief Lives that you can be walking through this garden and suddenly you see behind you or off to the side little snippets and flashes from your life being replayed. Great imagery. I also like how the statues of the Endless in the garden change depending on their condition and mood, including how Destruction is looking the opposite way from everyone else.

The section in the Kindly Ones where Neil does a sort of take off of "A day in the life," with Dream, where we see him doing everyday things is just fantastic writing. Really shows us just what a huge presence Dream is, just what a life it is he has. (And ironically, it's done showing us his everyday activities).

~
James

Larger than life is the perfect size

Here's a few more I just had to throw in:

Brief Lives is my favorite of all the Sandman books, and there's a wealth of great moments I could choose from there alone like; the opening and closing of the book with Orpheus' servant, how when Orpheus' blood hits the ground, it transforms into flowers, the interaction between the lawyer and Death, when he's talking about having lived for thousands of years, and how it was a pretty good run, and her response to him "You got the same thing everyone gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime." There's the way Dream's guards don't recognize him when he returns to the dreaming after killing his son, and that scene where's he's alone in his room, grieving by himself and washing the blood off his hands, that's another great moment.

But I think my two favorite little things from Brief Lives are the scene where Delerium thinks about when she was Delight, and how Destruction comforted her during the very beggining of her change, and the foreshadowing that takes place when we see into Destiny's books and we see "the Dream King is dressed entirely in white." It's great because it's a huge fake, (we assume it must be taking place in the past, because the other scenes we see do, and because the Corinthian is there, and he was killed off way back in volume two), and the full meanings there won't be understood until after the series is finished.

Can you tell this is one of my all-time favorite stories? Anyway, that's what I've got for now, I may come back later with more.

~
James

Larger than life is the perfect size

Favorite parts... hmm...

Rose Walker's journal entry about love. (The angsty I hate love monologue.)

The story the grandfather tells to his granddaughter about the wolf people and the hunter.

In The Wake when Daniel is sitting with the doorkeepers and petting them.

and a whole lot more I'd be able to list if it wasn't almost 2 AM...

..:Lauren:..

"And if you spin your love around
The secrets of your dreams
You may find your love is gone
And is not quite what it seemed
To appear to disappear
Beneath all your darkest fears
I believe in never, I believe in all the way
But belief is not to notice, belief is just some faith"
-Smashing Pumpkins - Thru Eyes of Ruby

I like the bit in one of them which was written before dream dies. where you see a flash of the future with the corinthian standing behind the throne crying blood, with blood on the throne and the dream king all in white.

and then it is the same, exactly, as the bit when Daniel turns into the new dream king...

aheheh.

___________________________________________
Who is stronger than hope? Death
Who is stronger than the will? Death
Stronger than love? Death
Stronger than life? Death

But who is stronger than death?
Me, evidently
-Ted Hughes

LoN, I agree, he did a great job with the mainstream DC heroes and villains, even managing to catch an aspect of Martian Manhunter, arguably the wierdest superhero ever, that rarely gets covered well in the comics. My only beef was with the rather normal Constantine he showed, but it seems obvious he was in between cases and not being pleasured by dogs, so I suppose that's all right.

"You think there are the good people and the bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people. But some of them are on different sides."
- Lord Vetinari

the two chocolate people spending their last moments... "I'm following my fishee"... Abdulah painting the sky... more when i edit and get off the phone...

*fades into the night once more...*

More good bits...

Brief Lives: Delerium and the doorkeepers - 'My Lord?' ('Weeeeeeeee!!!') 'Thats my sister. Put her down.Gently.'

And Dream and Delerium driving. I've had that driving lesson...

------------------------------
'Huns! Visigoths! Vandals!'
(Hugh, Brian Friel's Translations)

Haha, the look in the Wywern's eyes when Delirium kisses him.

Ah, one good part that springs to mind is Death's and Dream's final conversation. You know exactly how it's going to end ... (if you read the introduction that is), and you expect them to say a lot of grand and deep things and they don't, but still it's so fascinating ...

I also love Brief Lives. My two favorite moments are the moment where Dream is grieving in that almost-full-page panel (already mentioned), and the moment after Despair remembers Destruction, and she's just walking through her domain and Desire keeps trying to talk to her but Despair doesn't respond. That whole image is so silent and haunting.

And a moment that ALWAYS makes me smile, in The Doll's House: "At least Hal, our landlord is normal." ... "Well, relatively normal, anyway." The timing on that page is fantastic!

My three favorite parts in the series, just thinking out loud anyway......

Since Brief Lives is mentioned a lot, I'll say I really really like the end of the story when it talks about how Andros won't live to see the blossoms again. But it's still going to be a beautiful day. That's one of the best things Neil ever wrote, I think.

And then in Season of Mist, when Hob Gadling wakes up and there's that bottle of wine on his nightstand. I LOVE that part! It always makes me cry, but I really don't know why it does. Not an "all sadly" cry. But a so-good-it-hurts kind of cry.

And Destruction taking his bread and cheese break in Litharge!!!


Haft sá hún liggja undir Hveralundi,
lægjarns líki Loka á†ekkjan ...

Two spring to mind

Kindly Ones i think: Hob and how he can't remember how his dead lover smelt. That bit gets me.

And the shot of Dream mourning in his chair with his head in one hand.

I really love the last page of 'Exiles', issue 74. 'Only the phoenix arises and does not descend. And everything changes. And nothing is truly lost.' That's one of the most hopeful sentences I've ever read, it's a nice one to remember when considering mortality. And the art is just gorgeous.

Heh, picking your favourite Sandman moments is as difficult as trying to count the stars in the night sky (erm...there’s 214 by the way).

Anyway, at the moment I’d have to plump for the witty banter between a certain Robin Goodfellow and his ‘devious’ pal in ‘The Kindly Ones’.

Loki - “So I fed him a gallon of castor oil, painted his arse blue and shoved a cork in his bum-hole”.

Puck - “Why?”

Loki - “Because it amused me to do so. I told him it was the cure for his condition. Then I went off to sleep with his wife”.

I heard there was over 3000 stars visible where I live. But we don't have so much pollution of course.

Another moment of brilliance: At the end of Morpheus's funeral, Death makes a speech. You can't make out/remember the words because then your world would collapse, but - quote: "Her words make sense of everything. She gives you peace. She gives you meaning" - end quote. It really made me believe I could understand the secrets of life and death. For a moment, I even thought I did.

Lives could be changed by that scene. I think mine was. At least I got a nice case of goosebumps, even as we speak.

In "Preludes & Nocturnes", when Dream has assembled the three witches and they change places with eachother, while Dream stands still and we see it from his neck. It looks bizarre in a funny way... Like something that would come out of the darkness during a ghost ride att the amusement park... Or like talking to a bunch of people that dances around you. That would feel odd, I mean. Yup.

And I find it quite heartbreaking in "Brief Lives" when Destruction kisses Despair on the cheek in that plagueridden city, and the text says something like "Noone used to kiss Despair", and Despair looks out from the panel with that look in her face. It just makes you feel so sorry for... Despair... Hm...

-Death ranting at Dream for being a sorry excuse for an anthropromorphic personification, in "Sound of her wings"

-the clothes Dream wears at the Hellfire Club when he's in a contest for his helm... *grin*

-Just Shakespeare's son in Midsummer Nights Dream, because about a year later he died, and lots of Shakespearean scholars say that the man's plays got much more serious and depressing - he never got over the loss of his son.

there are more, but my books are on the other side of the ocean... *sigh*

~breathe~

I had a random thought that can't seem to get unstuck. Hopefully voicing it will make it go away. If for some reason anyone decided to make a Sandman movie or something, and for some reason needed someone to play The Corinthian, I think that James Marsters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer would fit his shoes nicely. Just a thought. Thanks for listening. I'll just be off now.