Chapter 3: The Aesthetic Advancement and Narrative Fluidity of Neil Gaimans Sandman: Brief Lives Neil Gaimans Sandman: Brief Lives is immediately visually distinguishable from Watchmen, and many other graphic novels, in four ways: character depiction, panel shapes, the use of multi-media artwork, and the extensive use of black-and-white. Sandmans primary characters are atypical from traditional Golden Age superheroes because they do not wear recognizable costumes with symbols, opting instead for slightly gothic (Dream) or punk (Death and Delirium) street clothes. Sandman employs non-traditional panel shapes in a direct reflection of the elegiac consciousness of the narrative (and characters), whereas Watchmens grid-like panels function similarly but to a much different end. Sandman contains images more easily expected to hang on the wall of an art gallery than appear within a comic book; the covers of the eight issues are multi-media collages that use media such as photography, painting, ink drawing, and collage with found objects. The images, overall, are clear, aided by photography as well as a finer, more wispy, line used in rendering characters and objects. Unlike Watchmen, which employs monochromatic washes, Sandman relies on black-and-white, giving the text less of a closed-in, urban, gritty feel and more of an ethereal one. Narratively, even though both are British-authored comic books written for an adult American readership, Watchmen and Sandman have nothing in common. Watchmen is a dystopian text primarily concerned with interrogating compromised heroism; Sandman is utopian and fascinated with the ways in which individual human lives interact and intersect with the mythic. Sandman: Brief Lives does not have an especially revolutionary narrative, or one as tightly structured as Watchmen; it focuses on Dream and Deliriums search for Destruction in a revamping of the American road novel. The major plot line of Sandman: Brief Lives is very simple. There are seven characters--Destiny, Destruction, Death, Dream, Despair, Desire, and Delirium--who rule over corresponding aspects of human life. Delirium wants to search for her missing older brother, Destruction, who had abandoned his realm 300 years earlier. None of her siblings will assist her in this journey; Desire and Despair have no desire to find their brother and believe that since he chose to abandon his realm and go into self-imposed exile, they should leave him alone. Destiny is aloof and Death is busy. Delirium appeals to her older brother Dream, who reluctantly elects to travel with her through the waking world to forget that his latest lover has left him. Later in the narrative, however, he acquires two specific and related reasons for traveling: he must consult an Oracle, and there is unfinished business with his son, Orpheus. Thus, in a fashion, Sandman: Brief Lives is a travel book, a road novel, but an increasingly postmodern one because it goes beyond expected convention and definition while playing with the genres stereotypes. Jack Kerouac and Ken Kesey may have made the road trip mythic, but when Dream and Delirium take to the road everything can mean nothing (and vice versa), and often does. Additionally, the character driving this story arc forward is Delirium, not Dream. Delirium was once Delight, shown in 2,21 and 7,7:5, before she went insane. She is non-linear in the extreme, asks many questions with little connection to the narrative, and speaks in brightly colored speech balloons. The art in Sandman: Brief Lives is lush and bright, since much of the narrative revolves around Delirium. Even when Delirium is the only colorful object within the panel, such as when she visits Despair early in the narrative, she is juxtaposed against the gray bleakness of Despairs realm. Sandman: Brief Lives is visually experimental, as it deviates from the expected convention of comic books through using unusually shaped panels, lush multi-media collages, rich colors, and non-standard artistic media. Through these conscious and clever deviations from the standard, the text subverts the traditional expectation of comic books and graphic novels and at the same time reveals the devices it uses to do so. By looking at the main characters in Sandman, who differ profoundly from conventional superheroes, readers can easily identify the elements that set Gaimans series apart from traditional comic books. Dream, and the six other members of the Endless, unlike superheroes, are not mortals who don costumes and attempt to save humanity, and they are unconcerned with superheroic antics. Gaimans purpose is not to interrogate American cultures fascination with superheroism or to question what superheroism is. Rather, it appears that his point is to create an artistically appealing text with a myth-rich narrative, using techniques seen in high art such as finished pencil and photography in the last format Americans would expect to see it: a comic book. Sandman was one of the first comic books in America to begin combining high art media with text in a sequential order in a lowbrow format; this experimentation makes Sandman revolutionary. Watchmen presents the reader with a complex narrative while the immediate response to the artwork, despite the level of detail and patterning, is not surprise. Watchmens visuals do not challenge expected convention, because the text generally looks like what a reader would expect to see in a comic book. In contrast, Sandmans visuals are revolutionary because of the shattered and overlapping panels and multi-media artwork even though the narrative is a re-telling of classical myths modernized for an adult readership. Traditional superheroes wear or put on fixed costumes with symbols, and become identifiable strictly through those costumes. Even those who hide their identity with masks transform into a superhero by donning a recognizable costume; this is certainly the case in Watchmen where the costumes are charged with an even deeper psychological context. This costume craze never happens in Sandman; Dream occasionally will wear his helm but he often wears street clothes. What makes him and the other characters in the Sandman series identifiable are characteristics, not costumes. Dream is tall and gaunt (aiding the classification of Sandman as a horror comic) and has a mop of black hair. Delirium is the direct opposite of Dream. Her appearance is consistent only in inconsistency; her wildly colored hair appears long in one panel, short and one shade in the next, and a few panels later her hair has begun to grow back but in a different color, as in 8,5:1-3. Her eyes do not match; one is blue, the other green. Her clothes are constantly changing, from a torn fishnet bodysuit in one panel to a cocktail dress in the next. These changes are obviously meant to reflect her unstable mental state, but do not keep the reader chronologically oriented. Watchmen relies on continuity and the readers attention to detail to fully convey the scope of the linear narrative, while Sandman is unconcerned with rigidity; the narrative fluidity of the text is directly reflected in the non-traditional panel shapes and shifting character aspects. Linear continuity is not Gaimans concern and would not work in accord with his fluid, shifting narrative that reads like a rumination on the Gods rather than Watchmens ticking time bomb. Delirium is the most extreme and obvious example of narrative fluidity, but Dream also represents it to a lesser degree. He changes clothes, or will suddenly be missing shoes, but he is more about constants in juxtaposition to the constantly changing Delirium. Conventional comic book characters costumes often include symbols representing more than the character; Supermans S symbol on the chest of his costume has entered into popular symbolism and is synonymous in contemporary culture with not only comic books and superheroism but also patriotism, masculinity, and power. Symbols do not stand for these characters; each has a sigil, but Deaths, an ankh, is the only symbol. They are identifiable through characteristics. The members of the Endless also have the uncanny ability to project images of themselves into other peoples minds. Their fluid appearances are problematic in ways because the reader wonders if the representations of the characters in the text are anything like what the characters look like or if they are simply, yet again, projecting an image. An example appears in the first chapter. Delirium, shoeless, and wandering the rain-drenched streets of an unspecified city, approaches a door attendant to get out of the rain. Private party, he says. Invitation only. Strict dress code. Go find a warehouse bash, eh, kid? (1,9:1). Um, Ive got an invitation and Im dressed properly, arent I? Delirium says (1,9:3), even though readers clearly notice that she is not. The door attendant, dressed in a tuxedo, holds the door for her while he apologizes. Similarly, in chapter 5, when Dream and Delirium are in search of Ishtar (nee Astarte), Destructions former lover, they go to a striptease club where she, pressed for worship, is working as an exotic dancer. Dream, tall and gaunt, Delirium, short and wildly colorful, and Matthew, Dreams familiar (a raven who was once a man) approach the door of Suffragette City, the strip club. The bouncer refuses to admit them. Dream points out that they are three adult males attired in accordance with local standards and you are only too pleased to invite us into your establishment (5,16:6). The next panel shows three male figures, clad in baseball caps and workshirts, walking into the bar, but the reader can still identify Delirium though her distinctive speech balloon as she says, I did that. What you just did. I did that in the beginning (5,16:7). She could mean the beginning of the narrative, which was, of course, the beginning of Brief Lives, or she could mean in the beginning when she first became Delirium, or something else entirely. It would come as no surprise to the reader to discover that Delirium is referring to something completely unconnected to the text, or, she could be self-referentially referring to all three. This transition from one panel to the next falls into one of six categories, according to Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics . Each transition--either moment-to-moment, action-to-action, subject-to-subject, scene-to-scene, aspect-to-aspect, and the non-sequitur--requires varying degrees of reader involvement and closure to link the panels (70-72, 74). Action-to-action transitions, which the above sequence uses, are easy to follow, are not as lengthy as moment-to-moment transitions, and frequently appear in Sandman: Brief Lives when there are gutters. McClouds categories rely on the use of the gutter, which is something that Gaiman sometimes uses and sometimes ignores. When two panels are next to one another, McCloud states, they become part of a sequence and are no longer individual images (73). However, Gaiman and his staff play with transitions, mostly through using non-traditional panel shapes and not establishing a clear linear sequence like Watchmen. A similar type of constructional play is evident in Gaimans eye motif. Delirium introduces the motif though what seems a non-sequitur; wandering the streets and audibly wondering to herself what the gunky stuff inside peoples eyes (1,7:5) is. She eventually gets her answer while visiting her sister Despair ten pages later: vitreous humor (1,17:7). However, eyes continue to reappear (or be missing when they should be present) throughout the narrative in various forms; Delirium, of course, has eyes which are different colors while Dream himself has empty eye sockets (sometimes white, sometimes black, occasionally red) where there should be eyeballs (4,5:5). The Corinthian, one of Dreams greatest nightmares (who has teeth in his eye sockets) consumes the eyes of an orangutan corpse (4,21:6-7) to the astonishment of the orangutan owner. Ruby, Dream and Deliriums chauffeur through the waking world, dies in a fire and her charred corpse is missing an eye (4,23:3). In Chapter 5, Tiffany, a co-worker of Ishtar, talks about a woman she used to work with at a strip club who injected drugs into the red stuff underneath the eyeball to avoid having needle tracks on her limbs (5,2:4-6). At the very end of the story, Desire appears floating in an eyeball larger than a cathedral (12,23:1), winding the narrative back down into itself. Gaimans structural play, both narratively and visually, is emphasized through non-rigid panels. Structure and the Doomsday clock are not central concerns of Gaimans narrative; what is important is to convey the fluidity of the Endless and the realms they inhabit. As Dream and his actions are the primary focal point in the series, it makes sense that the structure of the series would always be working to take apart conventional expectations of both time and paneling. Sandmans immediate visual effect upon the reader mirrors dreaming. In dreams, after all, time is fluid and things can simultaneously be both what they are and what they are not. Sandman: Brief Lives uses three main forms of paneling: traditional paneling, overlapping paneling, and borderless paneling. Traditional paneling entails panels on a page with a white space between one panel and the next. These white gutters are a limbo in which an unspecified amount of time passes. Sometimes, in the Sandman series, the gutters are not white but black; sometimes they are altogether absent. Often, since many panels overlap, the visual effect is not a linear point-A-to-point-B structure but rather a collage in which there is a suggested (not regulated) order, such as page 11 in chapter 1 or when Dream enters Deliriums realm in chapter 6, page 22. The burdens on the reader of Sandman to make connections between panels and to follow the flow of the words and the images on the page are much heavier than in traditional comic books due to this deviation from the standard comic book form. Interestingly, this non-regulated panel structure, in ways, looks similar to that of Richard F. Outcaults The Yellow Kid," in which single panels were crammed with barely structured chaos. Throughout the text, panels do not have fixed traditional borders (the last page of the first chapter is a stellar example, where the panels are images within various picture frames), are shattered (6,5:5), and spread across the page (6,22 and 8, 12-13 are typical examples). The result is that the reader is forced to read Sandman in a different way than reading something like Watchmen, which exists in the expected comic book format but deviates from expected formula through the complex narrative. Sandman is less concerned with the sequential nature of images in comic books, and more emphasis is given to the images themselves as images and not so much image as part of a governing narrative system, or as part of a sequence. Sandman also deviates from expected convention with various artistic teams for different books. These ever-changing staff results in story arcs having a unique visual feel that heightens the readers understanding of that specific narrative. One can very easily and quickly distinguish the art in one arc, such as Brief Lives, from another, like The Kindly Ones. Through using unique and recognizable visual characteristics, single texts are emphasized while also included in an overreaching series. In addition, Gaimans preoccupations are visibly stamped on these books, illustrated by a team of people, and points to an auteur theory in comic books. An auteur is not necessarily the author but was someone who marked a project with their central preoccupation or fascination, often subverting a mass-market system. This is certainly true of comic books; Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman both return to similar issues throughout their work. Traditional paneling emphasizes time. Watchmen, with the use of the Doomsday Clock and preoccupation with nuclear destruction, relies on time passing to create suspense. In Sandman, however, things revolve around dreams and those who are dreaming. Time is much more fluid in the narrative and the panels directly reflect that. Gutters, used masterfully in Watchmen, are not as fundamental or obvious a narrative device in Sandman and are not as distinct and marked (though they are present) as in Watchmen. The overall effect is to present a world in which things overlap and blur together, where the clock is not ticking down to a catastrophe, and where the demarcation between waking and dreaming (what is read as reality) is erased. Overlapping paneling is just that; one panel often contains another panel within its borders, or one panels borders will overlap onto another. This effect essentially creates the visual implication that the entire page is in itself yet another panel in a series of increasingly smaller panels. Borderless paneling has a similar effect as overlapping paneling, but the implication is that there is infinite space that a panel could not contain. However, when the panel is borderless the real border of the panel is the edge of the page. When a page is full of bordered panels except for one panel, attention is automatically drawn to the borderless panel. Also, time passing becomes more distorted than in narratives that do not use overlapping panels. Many of the panels that contain Delirium, the youngest of the Endless and a main character in this story arc, are deliberately and exaggeratedly crooked to indicate that Delirium, as charming as she may be, is simply not sane. An example of these panels appears in her early discussions with Despair (1,16-20) and later in the waking world (4, 14-15). Her panel borders, like her hair and speech balloons, are not only wild but ever-shifting. In this manner, the panel itself becomes as much a part of the narrative as that which is contained within its borders; the reader gets an insight into understanding the character of Delirium through the borders that contain her. However, this panel device is ultimately not consistent throughout Sandman: Brief Lives, and an equal amount of character insight comes through her inconsistent appearance. When Delirium visits Despair in the first chapter, many of the panels in which she appears are noticeably crooked. However, the reader has just read quite a few pages in which the borders surrounding Delirium are straight, though some of the gutters have been black. In chapter 6 when Dream enters Deliriums realm, the entire sequence contains non-traditional borders. These borders are different from the crooked borders shown earlier in chapter 1; these are thin and scratch-like, whereas the earlier borders looked as if they had been drawn with a wide-tip marker. Since it is Deliriums realm, it makes sense that everything within it is cockeyed and shifting. Most panels that contain Delirium are traditional, primarily because she is often shown with another character or in the realm of another character. Nearly all the panels would be crooked, if crooked panels alone signified Delirium, and this deviation from traditional paneling would become a constant (thus losing the meaning). When a panel with straight borders appeared, it would be significantly different and attract attention. Instead, when the narrative ties directly to Deliriums state of mind, where she is not bound by another characters reality, the panel borders are crooked. These non-traditional panel borders emphasize that Delirium is overwhelmingly a free character who engages in the indeterminacy of meanings, shown in the changing colors of her speech balloons and hair. Through the narrative, her words are contained within brightly colored speech balloons in a direct contrast to the black-and-white starkness of Dreams, and her words are uniquely lettered. Deliriums speech is in all capital letters, but they are in varying heights and never written in anything resembling a straight line (though they are always readable). Dreams speech balloons are black and his words are in a very precise line, but in white (which is a reversal of traditional lettering in word balloons). Also, the lettering in Dreams speech balloons is not in all capital letters. The texts lettering is a direct deviation from traditional comic book lettering in all uppercase with all letters the same height. On the other hand, Delirium and Dream are not the only characters who have their own distinctive speech balloons; Desire does, as well as Destructions dog Barnabas. Desires are very ornate, with elegantly formed letters all in capitals. Barnabas has letters similar to Dreams, but in black on a white field. Even though each has unique fonts and speech balloons, only the shapes and shades of Deliriums continue to consistently change, with one exception. When Dream enters Deliriums realm in chapter 6, her speech balloons are outlined with gray, instead of the supersaturated colors that the reader has come to associate with her. Her lettering is the same, inconsistent and chaotic. Midway through the narrative, as Dream speaks with her, the gray ring is replaced by a solid lavender speech balloon and then a series of deep rose ones. Delirium is angry with Dream, who abandoned her and the search for Destruction. As Dream begins to convince her that he is ready to travel in earnest this time, her speech balloons slowly become more colorful. The complication is that this is the only time that readers view her realm; her speech balloons may be color-saturated when she is not angry and discouraging visitors. However, they reflect the progression of the narrative; as Delirium returns to her normal self, her speech balloons shades reappear. Deliriums entire realm is saturated with color and chaos the way her word balloons are in every other section of the narrative. The entire last page of chapter 6 is a full-page panel, with six smaller panels overlaid on top of the rainbow-colored background. In the final panel of the six and the smaller lower section of the full-page panel, Deliriums speech balloons have become red for no discernible reason except perhaps for the fact that Delirium is subject to change at any time. Her appearance is never consistent except in inconsistency; her attire changes as continually as her hair color. Delirium changes simply because she can, or because she cannot truly prevent herself from changing for extended periods of time (see 7,12:3). After all, change is what Delirium is about and what Dream resists. At the end of chapter 3, she asks, of nobody in particular, Whats the name for the word for things not being the same always...? Dream replies, in his understated manner, Change (3,24:5-6). Sandman: Brief Lives uses non-traditional media; the most direct example is an enormous panel in chapter 6, page 21. In it, Dream is entering his younger sister Deliriums realm, a world awash in color and in fragments because her mind is that way as well. All the characters, except for Delirium, have specific objects (their sigils) within a frame in their siblings galleries. Even Destruction has kept his gallery intact despite abandoning his realm. For instance, Dreams sigil is his helm (a large mask), which protects him in other realms. Deaths sigil is an ankh, for example, and Despairs is a ring with a sharp hook on it. In this panel, the background is a fantastical montage of crayoned drawings, photographs and paint, torn paper, words and phrases in various fonts taken from magazines, and in the middle is a hand-drawn image of Dream cut out and overlaid onto the page. Dreams realm is classical and vast, very elegant; Deliriums is a chaotic mlange of non-sequiturs. Another non-traditional paneling device appears in chapter 8, pages 12 and 13, as Destruction, Dream, Delirium, and Barnabas exit Destructions cottage, on a small Greek island, and into the night. The panel is the edge of these two pages; the borders are the outside edges of the pages. This enormous panel is logical, as the group is walking outside and gazing up into the infinite night sky as Destruction speaks of impermanence and of change. Change appears throughout this book in many forms. Change...I need a change... Delirium says (1,8:6-7) before she stumbles off into the rain, beginning the main action of the story. Delirium, of course, resists stasis. Fixed, unmoving things have no importance to Delirium, whether objects or people. While in her realm, Dream comments that her sundial is remarkable (6, 22). I dont luhluhlike it at all. Its stopped. Its not going any more. I hate it, she replies (6,23:1). It is also the center of her realm, and what she is standing by when she first speaks to Dream after he has entered her realm to apologize for prematurely curtailing their journey. Sandman: Brief Lives is revisionist, in that Gaiman revamped a minor DC Golden Age superhero, but not in the same way that Watchmen is revisionist. Gaiman uses myth and other classical subjects in ways that comic books had previously left unexplored, and questions the notion that comic books ought to conform to the panel structure standard throughout the genre. Most importantly, the Sandman series defies the notion that comic books are a domain exclusively for children because the series is fundamentally different both narratively and artistically from the traditional American conception of comic books. Gaimans target audience needs a passing acquaintance with everything from Greek mythology to literature ranging from Shakespeare to Harlan Ellison and back again (or at least to have the means to look up the allusions). Through subverting fixed expectations of how a comic book narrative should appear by using non-traditional panel forms and characters who drastically deviated from superhero stereotypes, Sandman improves and advances the comic book and graphic novel genre. It explores artistic media previously unused in comic books and significantly alters the readers perception of the limits of the genre. Sandman exposes the codes at work within its text but also uses them; through making the reader aware of the conscious deviations from convention, the series refers to the standards in superhero comics and builds upon them while taking them apart.