Just found myself re-reading some old Sandman comics - something I find myself returning to every now and again to feel that euphoric I-am-seeing-real-art feeling. The comics always border between extremely good fantasy and extremely disturbing horror and it's often hard to distinguish one from the other.
This specific comic, called "Facade", talks about the faces people wear when they go out into society, the tragedy of seeing someone's true face, and finally that of mortality (a recurring theme in these comics, in the guise of a cute goth girl representing Death). The following excerpt (minus the image, unfortunately) is one of those times you stop to wonder what the author was thinking when he wrote this, but then you stop wondering because you don't want to know the answer :
I hate making faces. They give me dreams.
I have only two kinds of dreams : the bad and the terrible.
Bad dreams I can cope with. They're just nightmares, and they end eventually.
I wake up.
The terrible dreams are the good dreams.
In my terrible dreams, everything's fine. I'm still with the company. I still look like me. None of the last five years ever happened.
Sometimes I'm married. Once I even had kids. I even knew their names. Everything's wonderful and normal and fine.
And then I wake up. And I'm still me.
And I'm still here.
And that is truly terrible.
PS: The use of bold lettering is originally part of the comic, and although it seems superfluous, a second reading makes you realise that it actually gives the passage that extra dimension. Neil Gaiman is a genius, he really is.
This specific comic, called "Facade", talks about the faces people wear when they go out into society, the tragedy of seeing someone's true face, and finally that of mortality (a recurring theme in these comics, in the guise of a cute goth girl representing Death). The following excerpt (minus the image, unfortunately) is one of those times you stop to wonder what the author was thinking when he wrote this, but then you stop wondering because you don't want to know the answer :
I hate making faces. They give me dreams.
I have only two kinds of dreams : the bad and the terrible.
Bad dreams I can cope with. They're just nightmares, and they end eventually.
I wake up.
The terrible dreams are the good dreams.
In my terrible dreams, everything's fine. I'm still with the company. I still look like me. None of the last five years ever happened.
Sometimes I'm married. Once I even had kids. I even knew their names. Everything's wonderful and normal and fine.
And then I wake up. And I'm still me.
And I'm still here.
And that is truly terrible.
PS: The use of bold lettering is originally part of the comic, and although it seems superfluous, a second reading makes you realise that it actually gives the passage that extra dimension. Neil Gaiman is a genius, he really is.
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