The Gift of Death (and Delirium and Desire ... etc.)

Guess what I got today? Package #4 of Paul's anniversary gift to me: the last six volumes of the Sandman series, plus Death: The Time of Your Life, Endless Nights and a l33t pair of headphones I'd been eyeing for my iPod.

Poor thing traipsed all over creation to find a matching set of Sandman books, which is why they ended up coming in four packages. See, every time they go through a new printing of the original 10 volumes, they change up the covers just to make things difficult.

I've started reading Endless Nights, and it's absolutely breathtaking. (By the way, the crooked image to the left is from Amazon, which apparently cannot be bothered to use the "auto-fix" feature on their scanner.)

Anyway, Endless Nights is beautiful. One story for each of the Endless, illustrated by some awesome artists. Honestly, if you're not yet a Sandman fan, it's really addictive. Vertigo has plenty of great series (V for Vendetta, Preacher, Hellblazer...). But Sandman beats out every other TP I've read, except maybe Maus. And in a battle royale, it'd massively beat down Watchmen and Usagi, although I still have a soft spot for the rabbit. (No yiff comments, kthx.)

Only downside to Endless Nights was that Jill Thompson (of Scary Godmother fame) didn't have a go at it. But JT did a lot of art for Brief Lives and I think the point was to have these illustrated by folks that didn't work on the original series. Except Dave McKean. Because it wouldn't be a Sandman book without Dave McKean.

Now, I'm trying to make this fast as to not bore the comic-uninitiated among us. Overjoyed by Paul's gift -- and serious about completing my collection -- I picked up a couple of out-of-print works from Amazon's zShops today. Those should be here in a week or so, at which point I'll gloat again.

I'm sure some of my buddies are shaking their heads, because I do a (pretty) good job of keeping my random nerdy hobbies to myself. But, hey, I only got into graphic novels/comic art in college. And I fell hard -- TPs, one-shots, comic strips (I read over 100 mostly obscure ones...), a little manga, a little anime, several video games and a metric assload of cartoons (anyone else digging Juniper Lee?).

Hey, I spend all day in the real world of headlines and deadlines. It's nice to come home and trade reality for fantasy. I'd highly suggest it.

P.S. For my readers who know me personally, you'll be happy to note that one of my all-time favorite indies, Girl Genius, is now online for free. Read up.