I've begun what is probably my fifth reading of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, though I guess it could be my sixth. (Memory is not always a strength of mine.) Each time I read this series, the experience is different. But unlike the Dark Knight Returns (where the experience gets worse with each reading) or Watchmen (where the experience stayed the same), with Sandman I find different things to admire, different discoveries. This time around, I'm looking for simple things, subtle things. But along the way, I am also taking note of Gaiman's propensity for representation, and how seamlessly he seems to do it. This makes sense, as he strikes me as someone who sees humanity in everyone, including (and perhaps especially) the villains.
Sandman strikes me as a very inclusive book, which is probably one reason why it brought in so many new readers and is so beloved to this day. How it took Hollywood this many decades to realize there was money to be made by being inclusive is baffling, because the answer was there the whole time.
The most terrifying parts of Sandman are the things Gaiman does not explain. He has an explanation for the lifecycle of gods, but he does not explain why the grove of "suicide trees" has now become a forest. There are things about human nature--human lives--that are frightening simply because we don't have the answers.
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