A couple of days ago, the words as near as I can remember:
PENNY: I saw someone reading that on the tram the other day.
ME: Really? This exact one?
PENNY: Yeah.
ME: (Having thought this over for a second) What did they look like? Pasty and nerdy, or dark and interesting?
PENNY: Neither. Thirty-something.
ME: Oh... (A pause. Then, in tones of scorn) Trendster.
PENNY: It was only a question of the appropriate sneer, wasn't it?
Not so! Indeed, I don't think I would've sneered at either of the two types I named myself, come to that. But true it is that I surprised myself with a certain preciousness about Sandman, and as to who else ought to (or could) 'really' read it; not surprising at all, really, it having been brought to my attention - but even so.
I didn't get to Endless Nights first time through, so the thrill of the new fizzed through my reading of it. What's being attempted here is a sort of deepening - a bringing to light of other facets than those apparent from what has gone before - coupled with an extension of the known story both forwards and backwards in time, by way of one issue/story focusing on each of the Endless, each illustrated by an artist specifically selected by Gaiman for the complementarities existing between their style and the nature of the particular member of that strange family whose tale they render. The only of these illustrators who I knew, Glenn Fabry of Preacher fame, seemed aptly matched with Destruction given his other work, but the affinities between artist and subject are obvious in all of the others, too. My favourite's the Delirium one.
