And now I’ve finished my Sandman re-read, this time with all of the volumes in hand[1]. Well, all but the first two, which are still packed up with the rest of my books for the past two and a half years now. Argh, I really need to build those bookshelves. Anyway. The Wake is flawed in a couple of ways, I’ll acknowledge right up front. The art is initially somewhere between soft and blurry, which could be a problem with the art, or with the printer, or a purposeful representation of the reader’s eye-based emotional state at the time. Second, it frankly lasts a little bit too long. After a three-issue denouement plus an epilogue, there are still two more issues. And they’re both very good, and neither could have come any earlier in the series. But they’re still a little bit too much for the confines of the final Sandman story. It’s not like I have a good answer for what should have been done instead, so I feel a little bad even complaining about it.[2] But still, this kind of thing is my job for now, right? Right.

Those complaints are for the most part minor, though. Primarily, it was poignant, occasionally funny in that way that makes you feel a little bit sadder after you’re done laughing, and inclusive, a thank you note to the readers from the author. “I’m glad we stuck it out together, and we’re all a part of this.” Which sounds goofy when I read it over, but I still believe it. And it was very cleverly constructed, using ‘wake’ in every sense of the term I’m aware of. First, consequence, as in dealing with the outcome of what has happened, the wake of events. Second, and most obviously from the title, a celebration of the passed life. And lastly, inevitably, wakefulness, as in the long dream has ended and it’s time to return to reality. That one, I simultaneously appreciate and reject. More on that in a second, though, because I need to especially praise the epilogue first. Sunday Mourning gives us a last look at a couple of the most important secondary characters[3] a little further down the road of time, to let us know in a manner simultaneously ironic and apropos that, sure, life goes on. And back on the topic of clever, the epilogue was that, too: it managed to nicely capture everything, everything that I love about these books and everything that they mean to me in just a few short pages in which the main character is only ever referred to by pronoun.

Anyway, though, the part I mentioned appreciating-slash-rejecting, right? I quote:

…and then, fighting to stay asleep, wishing it would go on forever, sure that once the dream was over, it would never come back, …you woke up.

(And make no mistake, the art surrounding those lines is equally perfect.) Anyway… it’s good, because it admits that you have to wake up, and move on, and live. But it’s also patently false, because dreams do come back. They’re not ever the same as they were the time before, sure. They might be identical in composition, but the fact is, the dreamer has changed by the time the dream returns, so no, they’re not the same.[4] But they come back, and you get to be terrified in a different way, or sad in a different way, or filled with hilarity in a different way, or just quietly happy in a different way. And only the most vindictive author (or for that matter, personification of the concept of dreaming) would take away the option to re-experience those most powerful dreams again, as a new person, and see what they mean this time.

It will have to be a while, but I’ll come back here again.

[1] That a beautifully restored and collected series of Absolute Sandmans (Sandmen? I think not, though) has been released in the middle of my multi-year purchasing schedule is kind of unfortunate, but it’s at least something to look forward to.
[2] While on the topic of things I feel bad for saying, the very last issue, The Tempest, took me right out of the story. It was extremely good and had its place both emotionally and thematically. But at the same time, and for the first time in the series, Gaiman felt a little too self-absorbed, or maybe too self-congratulatory, or maybe the former is a necessary aspect of the latter? And I had a hard time enjoying the story part, because it pulled me so hard out of what has otherwise been a reread in which I appreciated the series just as much as the first time over a vacation week in 1996, and often more than that first time. So it at least deserves a footnote’s mention.
[3] It says something about the strength of the series, I think, that I can name many of them immediately without being able to say who was more important, only knowing that it would be impossible to talk intelligently about the themes of the series (not the plot, for which there are dozens more than these that would be necessary) without talking about Hob Gadling, or Nuala, or Matthew, or Death, or Delirium, or Rose Walker… and I’ll just stop now, rather than waste more space on a footnote nobody would bother to finish reading anyway.
[4] If I might steal another theme from The Sandman, it is literally impossible for the dreamer not to have changed. To not change is to die.