Morpheus is the Lord of Dreams. As our story begins, he has been magically captured by an occult group. A pale, skinny man clad in black — he’s the quintessence of goth — Morpheus escapes, but his kingdom, the Dreaming, a kind of geographical expression of our collective unconsciousnesses, has fallen into disrepair, and he must restore it to its former glory.
Melancholy and occasionally very ruthless, Morpheus is one of the Endless, a pantheon of beings that includes Death, Despair, Destruction, and various other eternal principles that begin with D. In writing SandmanNeil Gaiman merrily pillaged the world’s mythologies, and those of his own brain, to produce a rich, literary and often beautiful mix of horror and philosophy. Has any comic begotten as many goth tattoos as Sandman? Unlikely.
In precise, almost jewel-like panels arranged in flow-charts and Mondrian-like grids, Chris Ware tells the story (does it count as a story, when there’s no hope whatsoever?) of a solitary, withdrawn man in his thirties who meets his father for the first time. The bleakness of Jimmy’s life is only relieved by his fantasies about his adventures as the Smartest Kid on Earth, which unfortunately also tend to end in … bleakness. Every page in Jimmy Corriganis a master class in minimalist graphic design, that slices time into discrete, intensely felt moments in a way that no other medium can.
Richard Dawson, the wisecracking British entertainer who was among the schemers in the 1960s sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes” and a decade later began kissing thousands of female contestants as host of the game show “Family Feud” has died. He was 79.
As we prepare for the Game of Thrones finale, we recognize Joffrey and nine other baddies who showed us that terrible, horrible things can come in small packages
