Sandman (Netflix)

Arthur Darvill as Richard Madoc

Last week I was running the track at the Rec Center, and a song came on that I knew but I could not place from where. A bombastic anthem of nostalgia and regret with an all-encompassing theme of acceptance.

A quick search reminded me that this song, It’s Not Over (‘Til It’s Over and Done) by Bleu McAuley was the song that played over the closing credits of the Netflix series Sandman, based on the comics series of the same name.

When I was a teenager, I yearned for something which was not yet possible; that a TV show or movie might be successfully adapted from the genre materials that I loved so dear. Not just comics, but also books like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. When such attempts were made they suffered from a lack of technology and funding (see the BBC’s TV series for HHGTTG) or the inability to transfer what was essential about the material to the project (see Howard the Duck).

As I was never a DC fan, I had no strong emotional ties to either Superman or Batman, so while those movies (1978 and 1989, respectively) were important, to me they were only weigh stations to something that mattered. When X-Men (2000) was released I was a giddy 32 year old and mostly satisfied.

Sandman was an epic, 75-issue fantasy series which focused on the personification of dreams, sometimes called the Sandman – but not really, he was more often called Morpheus or often just Dream, and his primary function was managing that place we all go when we fall asleep.

Desire
Sandman #41: Brief Lives part 1 (1992)
Pencils: Jill Thompson
Inker: Vince Locke

I loved this comic because it was literate, transgressive, and Goth – Goth in that it was dark and moody and brooding and romantic. It also owes a lot of its imagery to familiar musical acts; Dream appears like Peter Murphy or Trent Reznor, Lucifer like Bowie. Word has it Delirium was modeled after Tori Amos, and Desire, of course, looks like the cover of Duran Duran’s album Rio (Patrick Nagel, RIP). My ex-wife Diana introduced me to the book, which started publication in 1988, and we read them issue by issue. Later, I bought the bound reprint books.

The other night I asked my wife Toni why Sandman has been so important to her (yes, I married two women who love Sandman, quelle surprise) and she reflected to me how expansive it is, and immersive. When she thinks of it, she doesn’t see the panels, the specific artwork, she sees worlds.

When it was announced in 2019 that Sandman would be a series on Netflix, I was excited about that. In the past, such announcements came with a certain amount of dread, like the feel you get every time they announce a new Fantastic Four movie. I love the IP, they are going to fuck it up. The thing about comics, for example, is that they are episodic, and most superhero movies prior to The Avengers (2012) would spend half the movie on the origin story. Even when there was a reboot, they would tell the origin story again.

Then there is the idea of cramming years of potential narrative into one two hour feature. It loses nuance, even when it looks spectacular. There will be nothing unique or interesting. And then there is casting. There were plans for a potential Sandman film in the early 90s that was to star Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But mostly, it is the adaptation of one thing into another thing. Comics are one particular thing, and movies a total other. Comics are cheap and movies are expensive, so comics can do so much more because it is only ink on paper and relatively few are reading them, whereas movies are practical and have to make money.

Martin Freeman (Arthur), Sam Rockwell (Zaphod)
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)

This is where Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005) failed. The source material is a science fiction satire, with the emphasis on satire, not science fiction. To wit; it is veddy British. In the original, a bunch of weird things would happen in the service of a dry, witty punchline, and the film kept the set-up but cut the punchline. The film gives us spectacular visuals and gags presented by writers and directors who did not understand or care why it was popular in the first place.

But now it is the 2020s and not only can you make almost anything look real, popular culture is so fragmented that the idea of a comic book with an enormous – and intergenerational – cult following being turned into not a single feature film but an anthology series makes total sense.

The series dropped in 2022, and we were delighted. Then came the allegations.

I will not describe the allegations here, except in how they relate to the subject at hand. Let us state what was and what is. Neil Gaiman was once a model figure for those who feel outside of the mainstream; he not merely wrote the works that made them feel seen – adult fantasy fiction like Sandman, and also children’s books like Coraline – but was a constant presence in public and on social media who defended the right for people to be different. His tweets were a protection against the trolling of J.K. Rowling.

At the same time, in his personal life, he was a serial abuser, a monster and a creep.

The second season of Sandman dropped this past July, with little notice or fanfare. I didn’t even discover that it had for a month after. The first season encompassed (more or less) the first twenty issues of a seventy-five issue series. They could have easily made three or even four seasons from the remaining fifty-five books, but chose to cram them all into this final, second series. Even the most lauded issue of Sandman, the World Fantasy Award winning story about Morpheus commissioning Shakespeare to write A Midsummer Night’s Dream is briefly shoehorned into a different episode. It is as though the folks at Netflix said, all right, let’s get this shitshow over with.

I chose to watch, even though I was conflicted about doing so. I mean, so many artists contributed to making this show a reality, that’s the thing about artistic collaboration. So I wanted to see it, I wanted to see them. But I was wondering how it would feel, knowing what we know. As it happened, I had my second bout of Covid in late summer, which was an opportune moment to binge the second season while in my own private delirium.

"It had been her own fault."
Sandman #17: Calliope (1990)
Pencils: Kelley Jones
Inker: Malcolm Jones III 

Knowing what we know, certain storylines pop with dread. To quote a meme, “Mister Police. You could have saved her. I gave you all the clues.” One, Calliope, is about Richard Madoc, a famous author with writer’s block who takes action to harbor the actual muse of epic poetry – essentially, he has trafficked her – to spur his creative output.

Dream arrives to free her from the author, something he does not actually have the power to do. The author must freely release her. But Morpheus can torture Madoc, and does so by flooding his mind with so many original ideas he goes nearly insane. When the writer announces Calliope is free, his torment ends, but he can no longer think of anything new or original.

Not arrested, not pursued by other supernatural entities, Madoc simply remains creatively empty, which we are free to assume is something Gaiman believes to be the worst punishment imaginable. (It isn’t.)

Witnessing the second season, released post-allegation, themes of remorse, regret, and atonement are pushed to the forefront. To be honest, they were always there in the text, but are so much more apparent now. Dream had committed an unforgivable act, and in the process of making it right was compelled to do something which (literally) brought the Furies down upon him.

In the end, all the chaos, pain, and anguish, the sum of a lifetime of poor decisions, are wiped away as the entity that was Dream is eliminated and replaced by someone new. End of story. 

But reality is much more complicated. Morpheus apologized, repented, and took responsibility for his actions. To date, his creator has not.

 

The Fabulous Boomer Boys (radio)

Torque, Beemer & Tower

As if the media hasn’t always been saturated by the overstated concerns of the Baby Boom generation, in the early 90s there was a talk show on WHK called The Fabulous Boomer Boys. Three guys, Stuart Fenton, Bruce Bogart and Bob Snyder, friends since childhood, had their own show to address issues which they felt had been overlooked. 

It was called “the first radio show dedicated to the Baby Boomer generation” which was utter nonsense. Since 1946 absolutely everything that exists has been dedicated to the Baby Boomer generation.

However, they were pretty fun guys. Imagine Car Talk except with Cleveland accents and the topic was, well, themselves. Lots of camaraderie, self-effacing humor and laughing at their own jokes.

Just after we opened The Taming of the Shrew, Guerrilla was invited to participate. Bruce Bogart met Beemer while she was working at Dillard’s at Westgate and asked about her Guerrilla pin. He was truly interested in our theater company, even more so when he learned that Boomers were often the focus of our abuse.

Bruce: Well we’re lucky this evening, we’ve got in our studio Torque —

Torque: Hi.

Bruce: — Tower —

Tower: Hello.

Bruce: — and Beemer —

Beemer: Hello.

Bruce: — of the Guerrilla Theater Company. These guys have a theater company — where is it located?

Torque: It’s located downtown, in funky up-and-coming Tremont — it’s right next to The Flats.

Bruce: And it’s a safe neighborhood, right?

Torque: Uh no.

Beemer: It’s getting there.

Bruce: It’s getting there, and one of the reasons it’s getting there is because of the Guerrilla Theater. What they do is, they have this show, and what Torque told me is that they poke fun at our generation with their theatrical productions.

Torque: That’s right.

Bruce: For those of you at home, these people are 24 years old, they’re not exactly Baby Boomers, and they have the audacity to poke fun at our generation.

Tower: Sometimes all you Boomer folks act as though we don’t have any brains at all. You use tactics like the “Just Say No” campaign. Rather than explaining a problem and how it might affect us, you just tell us not to do it. Political correctness is another example.

Torque: You come up with no solutions, just knee-jerk decisions and you want everyone to abide by the decision that you make.

Beemer: You know what you want the end product to be but you don’t want to take the time to reach it so you just think up a catch phrase like “Just Say No” and that’s supposed to take care of it.

Bob: Do you think there are any Baby Boomers like me who “live for today” instead of people like Stuart who like to plan their life?

Torque: Yes, I do, and I respect them, and most of them come to see Guerrilla Theater Company, which brings up another subject which is that we are currently putting up our production of "The Taming of the Shrew" and that runs every Friday and Saturday night sat 8 o’clock and Sundays at 3 o’clock.

Bruce: Okay, you guys come here, you put down my generation, you put down our basic listening audience, I wanna know what you guys would do to make this a better world.

Torque: You mean, as opposed to “making love, not war”?

Bruce: Whatever.

Bob: That slogan I like, forget the “just say no to drugs.”

Bruce: “Make love, not war,” that’s not your generation’s slogan.

Tower: No, our generation says “Make love, not divorce.”

(General groans from the Boomer Boys.)

Bob: That’s a touchy subject for our generation.

Bruce: But I’m not hearing any solutions, I’m hearing slogans from you, too.

Torque: That’s the point, instead of the quick solutions, like divorce, we’re talking about working things out, about working our problems out, not the sound bite kind of answers you get on radio, but going ahead and taking some responsibility.

Bob: Are you married?

Torque: Me? No.

Bob: Then how can you talk like that?

Tower: I’m married.

Stuart: Tower is married, he said before the show he’s been married for six months, and you call yourself a househusband, right?

Tower: Right.

Stuart: Your wife supports you, makes the money, you take care of the house — how long is that going to last?

Tower: How long is that going to last?

Bob: Househusband, isn’t that a Baby Boomer idea anyway?

Tower: Oh you wish.

Bob: Thanks to the Baby Boomers, Tower, someone like you can let their wife go out to work —

Tower: I don’t have to let her do anything, we have this wonderful relationship, it’s not what I give her permission to do.

Bruce: What does she do?

Tower: She’s a systems designer.

Bruce: What’s that in English?

Tower: She makes computer programs.

Bob: Computers, another thing the Boomers created.

Tower: Shyeah, but you don’t understand them.

Stuart: My turn, to talk about sex, with Beemer.

Torque: You want to talk about sex with Beemer?

Stuart: What about sex in your plays, do you talk about the Sexual Revolution?

Beemer: Do you mean gender issues?

Stuart: I mean about how Baby Boomers made sex free, and accessible to all people, and how it’s looked about differently now.

Beemer: You mean “Free Love” and “Expressing Yourself”?

Tower: Done that.

Stuart: Aren’t you glad the Baby Boomers opened that up for you?

Beemer: Yeah, but there’s a difference between free love and having a hundred million different partners and having free love with your own personal sexuality.

Torque: We’ve got diseases now, you gave us Free Love, thanks, now we’ve got all these things to worry about, we’re trying to figure out how to come up with one partner when all of our role models say hey, it’s okay to have as many partners as you want, there’s no need to be anything but promiscuous.

Stuart: Woo!

Bruce: You guys are really down on us!

Tower: We’re getting the big thumbs up from the slackers in the control booth.

Bruce: You people are fascinating to me because I see in you a lot of my thoughts twenty years ago when I looked at my father’s generation. And I wonder what makes you think that twenty years from now someone isn’t gonna laugh at you and say, you people think you have all the answers, you don’t.

Torque: I hope they do laugh at us.

Beemer: I think that’s the difference between our generations — you had the same thoughts that we do now, but we have the drive to carry them on as we grow and do the work, so that our children will be even more motivated to continue that.

Bruce: You think we didn’t have the same determination twenty years ago?

Beemer: Doesn’t show now.

(Hoot and groans.)

Bob: Who got these guests tonight?

- scene -