{"id":1108,"date":"2012-07-18T05:00:39","date_gmt":"2012-07-18T12:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=1108"},"modified":"2012-07-09T12:49:23","modified_gmt":"2012-07-09T19:49:23","slug":"mark-reads-the-sandman-9x0-epilogue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2012\/07\/mark-reads-the-sandman-9x0-epilogue\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;The Sandman&#8217;: 9&#215;0 &#8211; Epilogue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the epilogue of the ninth volume of <em>The Sandman<\/em>, I&#8217;m really scared for what&#8217;s going to happen. Intrigued? Then it&#8217;s time for Mark to read <em>The Sandman<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong><!--more-->&#8220;Prologue&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know why this very brief prologue exists just yet. And that <em>frightens me<\/em>. I get the sense that even if this is just some sort of thematic introduction to the Dreaming, it still takes place <em>before<\/em> the events in volume eight. So Gaiman already gave us the ending of this story, and now we have to find out <em>how<\/em> the story gets to that point. So why this introduction, then? Is this to show us how structured and dependable the Dreaming is? Is this a way of hinting at the contrast to come? Will this all be disrupted? Will the young man who enters the Dreaming and gets the tour come back to play a larger role in the story?<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, I don&#8217;t know yet. I&#8217;m still reeling from the end of <em>Worlds&#8217; End<\/em>, and the idea that Dream <em>died<\/em> just fills me with dread. I don&#8217;t want to find out that this is real. I want there to be another twist ending, and I want to discover that this was all a ruse. But I also can&#8217;t ignore just how unhappy Dream is at the end of volume seven. The events of that story have affected him so profoundly that I wouldn&#8217;t be surprised if he did something that eventually lead to his death. Would I be upset? Of course.<\/p>\n<p>Bah, I don&#8217;t know what the <em>fuck<\/em> is going on!<\/p>\n<p>I really appreciated that there was such a drastic change to the art and lettering in this prologue. Kevin Nowlan has a much more angular style than most of the other artists in this series, and it gives this all a drastically different feel as well. It&#8217;s almost like it&#8217;s signaling change to come. Okay, that&#8217;s probably a stretch, but it&#8217;s really fun to think about <em>why<\/em> the artists make the choices they do in comic books and graphic novels. I briefly thumbed through this volume when it arrived in the mail, and I loved that it didn&#8217;t look like any of the volumes before it.<\/p>\n<p>Ah, damn it, I am so hopelessly unprepared.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mark Links Stuff<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; You can follow me on\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/markdoesstuff\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0and\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/facebook.com\/markdoesstuff\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0for any updates and live commentary on upcoming reviews I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m writing.<br \/>\n&#8211; If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to support what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m doing, you can click the little Donate button in the right sidebar,\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/markdoesstuff.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">buy eBooks on MarkDoesStuff<\/a>, or purchase physical books on\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/lulu.com\/storefront\/markdoesstuff\" target=\"_blank\">Lulu.com<\/a>.<br \/>\n-\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/markdoesstuff.com\/categories\/ebooks\/harry-potter\/goblet-of-fire\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Mark Reads Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0is now on sale for just $3.99!!!<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2012\/05\/mark-watches-doctor-who-series-one-is-now-published\/\"><br \/>\n<\/a>&#8211; The third volume of Mark Tells Stories, \u00e2\u20ac\u01531337,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0<a title=\"Mark Tells Stories #3 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \u00e2\u20ac\u21221337\u00e2\u20ac\u00b2 is now out!\" href=\"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2012\/06\/mark-tells-stories-3-1337-is-now-out\/\" target=\"_blank\">is now out and available for just $1.00<\/a>!<br \/>\n-\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/markdoesstuff.com\/product\/mark-reads--video\" target=\"_blank\">You can purchase your very own Mark Reads video for just $25<\/a>, and I will read ANYTHING you want.<br \/>\n&#8211; Mark Reads is now on YouTube, and you can watch all my videos\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PL3472C624CC0141AB&amp;feature=plcp\" target=\"_blank\">right here!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the epilogue of the ninth volume of The Sandman, I&#8217;m really scared for what&#8217;s going to happen. Intrigued? Then it&#8217;s time for Mark to read The Sandman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[239,216,104],"class_list":["post-1108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sandman","tag-hoplessly-unprepared","tag-mark-reads-the-sandman","tag-neil-gaiman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. The path to wp-cache-phase1.php in wp-content/advanced-cache.php must be fixed! -->