A review by jenlyn
The Absolute Sandman, Volume One by Neil Gaiman, Michael Zulli, Chris Bachalo, Kelley Jones, Mike Dringenberg, Charles Vess, Malcolm Jones III, Steve Parkhouse, Sam Kieth, Colleen Doran

4.0

I've been wanting to read The Sandman comics for a while but could never really find the collection from the beginning. Thanks to the magic of Inter-Library Loan (if your library participates and you need something they don't have, check out ILL and see if you can get it through there), I was able to finally get my hands on this massive collection of the first 20 issues of the comic (and by massive, I mean massive. Seriously, it was a workout just to hold the book while reading it let alone carrying it around). I loved the stories. Not all of them were fantastic, but some were. And even when they weren't fantastic, they were still very good. I think my favourite out of the whole collection was "The Night of 1000 Cats" A. because it made me cry and B. because I wanted the cats to succeed. That's saying something if I was totally cheering for cats to take over the world, a world in which I would be nothing more than a plaything or food. Death was probably my favourite character (other than that cute little white kitten) and I thought a lot of interesting things were said through her character (so many fear Death yet she's this very nice, very welcoming presence who really likes people). I enjoyed seeing some DC characters I am familiar with but don't know very well (I didn't read a lot of DC growing up, other than Batman). The artwork was very good, the horror elements were spot on without terrifying me too much (I managed to sleep after reading some of the scarier bits so that's a win), and I thoroughly enjoyed the stories overall. Now I just need to get the next set of issues and see what else happens (though I'll probably opt for smaller collections and not another one this big, because it was seriously heavy).