The Sandman The original Sandman character, Wesley Dodds, first appeared in Action Comics in July 1939, published by DC. Subsequently a variety of characters took the title Sandman, including Garrett Sanford, created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in 1974, and Hector Hall, created by Roy Thomas and Jerry Ordway in 1983. Gaiman’s Sandman ran from 1989 to 1996. Though originally Gaiman had intended to revive the Sandman of the 1970s, DC editor Karen Berger encouraged him to use the title but invent a new character. However—and crucial to the discussion in question—Gaiman’s story does weave in previous iterations of the Sandman mythology, creating a new version of the central character while also redeploying existing iconography from the DC Universe to new ends.
Over its seven year run, Gaiman’s Sandman follows the figure of Dream as he seeks to make amends for past misdemeanors. Dream’s ultimate goal is to restore his lost kingdom. Gaiman himself suggests Dream’s motivation is that he must make a decision as to whether to “change or die.”20 Much of the story takes place in Dream’s own realm or in the real world in the United States or Britain, with not infrequent forays into other mythical realms. A wide variety of mythological characters make appearances, some drawn from classical myth and others characters drawn from contemporary and past DC mythology.
Dream’s appearance changes as the strip progresses and as different artists become involved, although his fundamental appearance stays reasonably consistent: a white faced androgynous male whose age is indeterminate, dressed in black with a shock of black hair. When we first meet the Dream character he wears a version of the gas mask familiar from the Wesley Dodds iteration of Sandman. This can be seen as a reward for those comic book aficionados in possession of specialist knowledge concerning The Sandman moniker, building up expectations that this might be a version of the character faithful to his predecessor, a supposition that is soon shattered by the removal of the mask. At the same time dressing Dream in this equipment is not something that hinders a reader’s understanding of the strip if he or she is not privy to this information: indeed, it adds a surprising technist aspect to a character that otherwise seems to have emerged from a purely fantastical milieu, invoking as it does images of World War I. Neither is it a throwaway allusion that might be considered somehow “tricksy:” Dream’s search for this equipment provides the impetus for a later episode in Gaiman’s Sandmaninvolving the character of John Constantine, Dream himself having appeared in a preceding issue of the Hellblazer comic featuring Constantine.
The palimpsestic redeployment of existing Sandman mythology is a key aspect of Gaiman’s version. As the comic progresses, elements from the version as created by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon and amended by Roy Thomas are brought into play; Wesley Dodds, the “Golden Age” Sandman, also makes several appearances. The Kirby/Simon version is revealed by Gaiman as an invention, the creation of two nightmares who have escaped the world of The Dreaming, in the process affording a knowing readership a palimpsestic rereading of the earlier Sandman, but one that remains consistent with what has gone before. This constitutes an important example as it suggests Gaiman is able to simultaneously achieve Genette’s “continuation” and “transformation” in his deployment of DC mythology, rather than choosing between the two options.21
The palimpsestic effect is evident in Gaiman’s deployment of other kinds of mythology, too. At one point Dream encounters The Three, a trio of witches called Mildred, Mordred, and Cynthia. The Three as presented in Gaiman’s Sandman are clearly the same ones as originated in the pages of the horror comic The Witching Hour, in which they would take turns in narrating one-off twist-in-the-tale style stories.22 However, the three crones or oracles are recurrent mythological characters, evident in Greek mythology and centuries later in the figures of the Witches from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Shakespeare himself features as a character at the end of Gaiman’s Sandman, in a story set against the writing of The Tempest, and earlier, in Fables and Reflections.
Elsewhere archetypes and locations from different mythological strands are evident. The story moves to re-rememberings of the Christian version of Hell, but also palimpsestic rememberings of Asgard. These locations are populated by versions of characters again remembered through wider mythologies but also recognizable from DC’s own mythology, such as Lucifer.
Mary Borsellino argues that though Gaiman utilizes familiar gendered archetypes in the characters of The Endless, they are not deployed in a fashion that is stereotypical: they act like people.23 This is something Gaiman himself alights upon when he resists the idea that The Sandman could ever be described as a “huge hubristic classical tragedy,” preferring instead to identify it as “a bumbling little tragedy in which the real tragedy is that people act like people and sometimes lousy things happen.”24 Borsellino goes on to note that while varied, the characters in The Sandman are “unremarkable in their diversity”: in other words, while they might recall familiar archetypes, they also invoke the diversity of the real world.25 Again, this would seem to fit with Coupe’s contention that the deployment of the mythical is a playful activity capable of offering new perspectives. This is the palimpsestic at work—or rather, the palimpsestic at play.
The Tragical Comedy or Comedic Tragedy of Mr. Punch Mr. Punch: The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy was published in 1994 and constitutes another collaboration between Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean. The story is told mainly through the eyes of a young boy, the child version of the narrator. It recounts the boy’s experiences in a seaside town in the 1960s mainly in terms of his relationship with his grandfather and the mysterious Punch and Judy man who shares a history with his grandfather. Elements from the traditional Punch and Judy punctuate the narrator’s account of his experiences. McKean utilizes a disturbing montage approach throughout, counter-intuitively using highly stylized versions of the principal human characters together with photo-realistic versions of the puppet characters such as Punch, Judy, the baby, the crocodile, and the policeman. The realist approach with regard to the puppets serves to objectify them, conversely highlighting their “Otherness.”26
The story begins with the narrator remembering a trip to the seaside with his grandfather on an early morning fishing expedition. Bored with fishing, the boy explores the otherwise empty beach, coming across a Punch and Judy stall. Punch and Judy are active, despite the fact that noone is operating the stall. Punch and Judy proceed to act out a scene for the boy’s benefit, throwing the baby out of the window, or rather, as the boy observes, from off of the stage: seeing behind the diegesis, the mechanisms by which fantasy operate, becomes a continuing point of focus in this story. The boy turns away and runs, and when he looks back the puppets are lying inanimate.
Other memories intercede in the main thrust of the story. The narrator, switching to present tense, remembers his father’s father, his mother’s father, his hunchback great uncle Morton. The boy remembers, too, seeing performers undressing behind-the-scenes in a version of Wind in the Willows, chiming with the earlier memory of the sinister Punch and Judy performance, where the boy clarifies that the baby hadn’t been thrown out of the window but instead from the stage.
Palimpsest can be seen at work in this recurrent concentration on exposing the “workings” of fiction, whereby familiar iconography is reremembered with the diegetic framing somehow broken: the world of Punch and Judy is that of a stage, the characters in The Wind and the Willows are actually actors in outfits. Indeed, the Punch and Judy stall is run by an old acquaintance of the boy’s grandfather, a man named Swatchell, whom the boy comes to assist, coming to understand the processes by which the myth of Punch and Judy is rendered animate. Similarly, the boy’s grandfather runs an arcade well away from the seafront, containing all manner of exotic things, most notably a “mermaid,” whose mythological status has been refuted by the conclusion of the story. The point, perhaps, is to illustrate the moment at which innocence — arguably naivety — gives way to gritty reality by exposing the artifice at the heart of all fantasy.
Marvel 1602 The graphic novel Marvel 1602 is formed from an eight-issue comic book series published in 2003. Gaiman wrote the series, Andy Kubert penciled the comic, and it was digitally painted by Richard Isanove, while the covers were produced by Scott McKowen. The series spawned three sequels, none of them involving Gaiman.
The story resituates a range of Marvel superheroes to the Elizabethan era, where they must work together to halt the coming Armageddon. At the beginning of the story this is evidenced by unusual weather phenomena. A dying Queen Elizabeth meets with her court magician, Dr. Stephen Strange, and her chief intelligencer, Sir Nicholas Fury, both familiar characters from the Marvel Universe. Elizabeth tells Fury to ensure that a secret weapon coveted by the Knights Templar is safely transferred to England. Fury commissions Matthew Murdoch, a blind minstrel, to locate the Knights Templar in Europe and oversee the weapon’s translation to the British mainland. Murdoch, again, is familiar to Marvel readers as the superhero Daredevil, while his companion Peter Parquah is a version of Peter Parker, aka Spiderman.
In the course of Marvel 1602 many other familiar Marvel characters occur. Crucial to the plot is the character of Steve Rodgers, aka Captain America, who has been sent back in time from the twenty-first century. It is this occurrence that has brought about a rift in the universe substantial enough to lead to Armageddon, and that has simultaneously led to the appearance of Marvel superheroes in the Elizabethan period. At the conclusion of the story Captain America is taken back into the future by the Elizabethan version of Nick Fury, thus entailing the end of this alternate timeline. However, another existing Marvel character, Uatu, aka The Watcher, is allowed to continue watching the 1602 universe as a “pocket universe.”
Central to the approach of Marvel 1602 is the rearticulation of existing DC characters in an Elizabethan context. The nature of such licensed material tends to be that such characters are to some extent the product of accrued mythology, although there is a need to cleave to preexisting templates as consistent with whatever the contemporary requirements of the property might be. In the case of Marvel 1602 there is clearly some flexibility for Gaiman, because events are occurring in a parallel timeline.
What Gaiman chooses to do is to play at the margins of the mythologies of the various characters, while retaining chief identifiable characteristics. Peter Parquah, therefore, is aged down contemporaneous to other characters, Gaiman playing with our expectations of seeing the character’s origin story—familiar from frequent retellings—happen again, only this time in the context of a medieval setting. Parquah fulfils the role of squire to Sir Nick Fury, here reimagined as the Queen’s Intelligencer, consistent with the character’s established role as an operative of SHIELD. At the root of Marvel 1602 is alterity, the experience of seeing a set of familiar events or familiar characters recast but not beyond recognizability. Once again, as in the example of Sandman and its relationship to its history, Gaiman manages the simultaneous continuation and transformation of the mythological.
Conclusion In his deployment of the mythological, Gaiman engages in both continuance and transformation as determined by Genette. Archetypes from Punch and Judy are maintained and used as a method for exploring autobiographical memory and abuse in Mr. Punch: The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy, an example of continuance. Sandman’s three oracles, though previously transformed through Greek archetype and Shakespeare’s Macbeth, similarly remain consistent with the versions Gaiman has drawn from The Witching Hour. In Gaiman’s Future Shocks stories archetypes are shifted to fit the milieu of the story, as in the case of the teacher-narrator from “You’re Never Alone With a Phone!” and the creator figure from “Conversation Piece.”
However, in a number of examples of Gaiman’s usage of the mythological, both continuance and transformation are simultaneously apparent. In Marvel 1602 Peter Parker’s origin story as Spiderman is knowingly misremembered, Gaiman understanding the ironic pleasures this will instill in a readership alert to such references. The wider context of a parallel universe means that Spiderman’s origin story can be subverted while simultaneously remaining consistent with established Marvel mythology.
Gaiman’s utilization of this technique seems to be specific to licensed properties such as Sandmanand Marvel 1602and is evidenced in his Doctor Who television episode “The Doctor’s Wife,” explored by Matt Hills elsewhere in this volume. Perhaps this is because though these established story worlds exist in the fantasy genre, they benefit from established rule sets known to the fan-base. Gaiman’s success in concurrently managing continuance and transformation relies on his ability to remain consistent with the rules of the story world while also saying something fresh about the story world in question.
In the universes Gaiman plays in no story truly ends, but there are more than just continuances. Sometimes there are transformations, and sometimes his playful palimpsest leads to ideas and images that are simultaneously continuous and transformative.
CONTRIBUTORS
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1 Gaiman, Kubert, and Isanove, Marvel 1602, 169.
2 Hanks, McLeod, and Makins, The Collins Concise Dictionary of the English Language: Second Edition,
819-820.
3 Coupe, Myth, 53.
4 Medhurst, “Batman, Deviance and Camp”, 149-163.
5 Bornstein and Williams, Palimpsest: Editorial Theory in the Humanities, 1.
6 Borges in Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, 374.
7 Draaisma, Metaphors of Memory, 46.
8 Genette, Palimpsests, 177, 311.
9 Genette, Palimpsests, 385.
10 Bishop, Thrill-Power Overload: 2000AD, The First Thirty Years, 28.
11 Gifford, The International Book of Comics, 213.
12 Bishop, Thrill-Power, 37.
13 Barthes, S/Z, 17.
14 Gaiman, Hicklenton, and Frame, “You’re Never Alone With A Phone”, 176.
15 Connerton, How Societies Remember, 62.
16 Gaiman, Don’t Panic, i-225.
17 Gaiman, Belardinelli, and Frame, “I’m a Believer,” 182.
18 Cavalcanti, Dead of Night, n.p.
19 Gaiman, Afterword to Preludes, 238.
20 Gaiman, Introduction to Endless Nights, 8
21 Genette, Palimpsests, 177, 311.
22 Baxter, SFX Magazine Review of The Witching Hour, 122.
23 Borsellino, “Blue and Pink: Gender in Neil Gaiman’s Work,” 52.
24 Gaiman, Interview in The Neil Gaiman Reader, 56.
25 Borsellino, “Blue and Pink,” 53.
26 McCloud, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, 44.
Samuel Brooker Born in Hackney but raised in Kent, Sam attended Dane Court Grammar, where he was heavily involved in the student magazine. This continued with student journalism at the University of East Anglia, where he received BA in English Literature and Film Studies before moving to London to study for an MA in New Media. Having worked as a bassoonist, Punch and Judy man, and magic lanternist, he now lectures in creative writing and new media at several London universities, with a particular interest in interactive fiction.
Anthony S. Burdge , an independent scholar, was first introduced to the existence of Secondary Worlds via the work of J.R.R Tolkien at an early age. Since taking that fi
rst journey out of Bag End with Bilbo, he has traveled with the Doctor, hitchhiked with Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect, and entered the realms of Dream numerous times. Anthony first came across the worlds of Neil Gaiman via The Sandman and Books of Magic series in the late 1990s. Anthony has had articles published on a variety of topics, including J.R.R. Tolkien in numerous collections such as The J.R.R. Encyclopedia, and his first book, the first in the Mythological Dimensions series, The Mythological Dimensions of Doctor Who, was published in May 2010. As an avid bibliophile and self-taught herbalist, Anthony has sought to develop his own sense of other-worldly, trans-dimensional travel via the ancient Shamanic traditions of Indigenous people. The stories he himself has gathered he hopes to one day share in print.
Jessica Burke is teacher by trade and a self-professed Geek by nature. She’s an avid bibliophile, self-taught herbalist, a fan of cats, songs about Cthulhu, and sushi. Ms. Burke first heard about Neil Gaiman while in college—when she “borrowed” a copy of Sandman: Fables and Reflections. But it wasn’t until a decade later, when attending ComicCon, that she became reacquainted with Gaiman’s work—when he appeared to read some of Bod’s Adventures. Hearing the author himself do a reading from his work is second only to one other experience in terms of inspiration— hearing J.R.R. Tolkien read on LP. When she was five years old, Ms. Burke discovered a recording of Professor Tolkien reading “Riddles in the Dark” from The Hobbit in the local library. It was a formative childhood experience. Hearing Gaiman as an adult was the natural successor as both authors have had a profound effect on her life and work. Ms. Burke has published on a range of topics from J.R.R. Tolkien to Beowulf to Doctor Who.
Leslie Drury is currently undertaking her Ph.D. in English at the University of Aberdeen. Her thesis explores the representation of “old wives’ tales” and the female storyteller in early modern English literature. She has an ongoing interest in folklore and fairy tale in all areas of literature. Having been a long-time fan of Neil Gaiman’s work, this call for papers offered an opportunity to join two ongoing passions in one project.
The Mythological Dimensions of Neil Gaiman Page 34