In The Kindly Ones #4, Hippolyta Hall is sent by the Gorgons to eat an apple from the garden of the Hesperides (Aegle, Erythea, and Arethusa). There she has a conversation with the 3headed dragon guarding the tree, who says his name is Geryon. It shouldn't be! Geryon was a three-bodied giant killed by Herakles. The guardian of the apple tree was supposed to be a thousand headed dragon named Ladon.
Anyone know why the wrong name is given? I have my own theories, but if there's a diefinitive answer, I'd like to hear it before I start writing something based on my idea. Given Gaiman's expertise on mythology, I thought it unlikely (possible, I guess) that he just mixed up his monsters. Also it's more fun to search for hidden significance in the panel than to deflate the perfection of Sandman.
I'm not up on my mythology. In these Sandman Annotations, they have the following guess:
quote:
Page 18 panel 2: In most versions the guardian of the apples was called Ladon, and had as many as a hundred heads. The three-headed Geryon was slain by Hercules, but in a different one of his labors. No doubt Gaiman has brought Geryon in here so as to have yet another occurrence of the number three.
Posts: 13083 | Location: Tucson | Registered: June 19, 2001
The source is what it is: fan-created. It's not from the man's mouth, but such things can be useful for collecting everyone's observations/notes into one place. Besides, even Neil has suggested their use in his blog (more than once, but here's an example)
quote:
Blog 1/21/2002 I am doing a project for my undergraduate Romantic Writers Class at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, TN. I have decided to write about the Romantic elements in your series, The Sandman. I am currently reading "The Byronic Hero" by Thorslev and "Byron's Heroines" by Caroline Franklin. I was wondering if there are any other sources which will help me to complete my project. Thank you very much for your time. I am a huge fan of your work. Brian Curtis
Er, I've never even read those. How embarrassing. Well, if you don't have it, you could pick up Hy Bender's Sandman Companion which delineates themes, explains jokes and is very readable, and there are extensive annotations for Sandman online (a google search for Sandman Annotations should take you to some) although I just noticed they only go up to Sandman 71. (There's a fun job for someone, annotating the last four Sandmans...)
And shortly thereafter, those last issues were annotated
Posts: 13083 | Location: Tucson | Registered: June 19, 2001
ok, what heppened there? The same post appeared 5 times, I deleted 4 of them... did you delete one too? Ah well. The post questioned the source, that's what I responded to
Posts: 13083 | Location: Tucson | Registered: June 19, 2001
Obviously my computer hates me. The first 4 replies refused to be posted about 5 hours ago, I logged off and shut dopwn, and then they all appeared spontaneously when I tried again later. (Ok, probably not, but htat's what my brain reported to me.) Then we apparently deleted simultaneously.
Anyway, you saw the gist of it... Thanks for the help. I think I do prefer my explanation, though.
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