I wanted to love the Sandman TV series as much as I loved the books. I wanted gorgeous visuals, the intricate storytelling from the books, and the sense of wonder I've had whenever I've reread the stories. Many of my friends found that in the TV series. People whose opinions I respect were so thrilled to see this universe on TV that they gushed about it and had very little criticism. 

It was not for me.

I thought Morpheus was miscast. I found him utterly dull to watch. While Amazon threw a nation's economy at the tepid Game Of Thrones prequel, it looked like they gave the Sandman director a hundred bucks to spend on CGI and said "Good luck."

The episode "24/7" was a perfect modernization of the storyarc it was based on, and I think you could teach a class on how well it was constructed. I had hoped that would be a turning point for me. Alas, the rest of the series bored me. When I posted about it on social media, friends who loved the books as much as I had berated me for having bad taste or too high expectations. But my friends who hadn't read the books tended to agree, it wasn't fun to watch. It had a very high bar to reach for and it ended up beyong beyond the sound of its wingspan.

I was so disappointed that I stopped reading the Vertigo books for over a year, completely deflated. And that's not fair to the books or the people who enjoyed the TV series that would like to read more of the universe. Maybe some day I'll go back and rewatch the show and find a similar joy to that of my peers but, until then, I'm happy to return to reading the books I loved and sharing how I wish I had experienced them (you know, just the good stuff).

1. Sandman Mystery Theater Book Two
(Matt Wagner, Steven T. Seagle, Guy Davis, Vince Locke)

We open this first Gaimanless season by following the sordid adventures of Wesley Dodds, the golden age Sandman. Running concurrently with Gaiman's series, this look at the human sleuth whose gas mask resembles the one stolen from Morpheus at the beginning of the first episode, takes place just after the American Depression. Our point-of-view character is Dodds's love interest, Dian, the daughter of a police woman who likes to party and solve her father cimes. Think of her as a more sexually adventurous Batgirl. There are a few things in this volume that haven't aged particularly well, but when it was published it was a solid examination of misogyny, class warfare, and racism in the 1930s with a very slight occult bent.

2. Lucifer Book Three
(Mike Carey, Peter Gross, Ryan Kelly, Dean Ormston, David Hahn)

An Asgardian ship of fingernails, a pool flowing with the thoughts of Yahweh, a garden of human souls sewn into lanterns, the rise of gods of chaos, and a brief glimpse back into The Dreaming. There's a lot to love in this volume. I've said it before but it bears repeating: every word in this book seems a necessary part to reach its climax. No plot point is wasted, nor does Carey waste time getting from point to point. Storyarcs that most writers might draw out for twelve issues, Carey condenses to three or four, and it never feels forced. 

3. Hellblazer All His Engines
(Mike Carey, Leonardo Manco)

Just after his long run on the Hellblzer books, Carey put out this side story where Constantine and Chas head to America to stop ... the usual Hellblazer thing ... a demon has taken a step too far and has impacted the life of someone tangentially related to Constantine. And then Constantine must work with other demons to double cross the original demon but he's also got to double cross them or else ... sigh. So, while it's the same old same old Hellblazer plot, it's done deftly here with fantastically spooky art by Manco.

4. Hellblazer The Gift
(Mike Carey, Leonardo Manco)

As much as I wanted to love Mike Carey's run on Hellblazer, much of it was a build up to an apocalypse that mostly sat in the background while John Constantine's life was ruined in a bigger and more spectacular way than ever before. Until the next storyline where his life was ruined in a bigger and more spectacular way than ever before while an apocalypse happened in the very background. There's a wilting Swamp Thing storyline, and he even manages to make a "main character forgets all the trauma in his life and has to start over while being pursued by powerful demons" story pretty boring. BUT. Near the end of that amnesiac storyline, a demon offers to return everything to him in exchange for his services for a day. And during that day, he lives three lifetimes and has three separate, terrible children with three of his exes. This volume has his three aged up children from his demon-induced lifespans getting their revenge by ... checks notes ... ruining his life in a bigger and more spectacular way than ever before while society recovers from the apocalypse in the background. But this story has more character building than the previous arcs, and a better payoff.

5. Lucifer Book Four
(Mike Carey, Peter Gross, Ryan Kelly, Dean Ormston, David Hahn)

Yes, every Lucifer book is in this chronology. Rereading it was a joy and a relief that it held up my memories. Every character seems to make an appearance as this is essentially just setting up the final volume. It never feels like filler, though, it's all building to a spectacular climax.

6. Sandman Mystery Theater  The Blackhawk And The Return Of The Scarlet Ghost
(Matt Wagner, Steven T. Seagle, Guy Davis, Matthew Smith, Richard Case, Daniel Torres)

This series has never been fully collected, which is a shame. Currently there's a compendium that contains the first half of the run but there's bee no release date for a second volume. Until then, this is the last set of issues that's been collected in trade form. Honestly, it's a perfectly fine ending. All of the Sandman Mystery Theater stories are wonderful 1930s noir with what one reviewer referred to as "Sergio Aragonés scribbles...without the silliness". It's art I usually wouldn't enjoy but is somehow perfect for this nostalgis based series. This volume, like the rest, has two excellent mysteries but it also features a brief journey through all of the different forms of Sandman, including Morpheus. It's a great callback, and it help leads to the final page of this volume which is a reveal. And if you're sad that there's no more Sandman Mystery Theater in this chronology given the reveal, don't worry. Wesley and Dian will be back next season in a completely different series.

7. Books Of Magic: Life During Wartime Book One
(Si Spencer, Dean Ormstrom)

This is the weakest episode of the season but it moves The Books Of Magic is a completely different direction that might come up later. Years have passed since we last saw Tim Hunter. In that time, he built a pocket dimension where he can be "a regular human". Apparently, this means swear, do drugs and fuck a lot. While he's off trying to be normal, John Constantine is overseeing a war between humans, demons, and faeries. I didn't love the series but I appreciated its evolution.

8. Lucifer Book Five
(Mike Carey, Peter Gross, Ryan Kelly, Colleen Doran, Michael Wm Kaluta, John J Muth, Zander Cannon, Dean Ormstrom, Aaron Alexovich)

The Lucifer finale pulls no punches. There's no Game Of Thrones sped-up narrative racing to the conclusion, the pace is steady with logical twists spiraling throughout the journey. Every character gets their curtain call, and we even see some conversations with the previously absent Yahweh. It's impressive that this never feels overly preachy or too philosophical given its characters and subject matter.  It's a lovely way to end the season.

We're a couple of weeks away from Sandman finally coming to television. The previews for it look fantastic. Fingers crossed that this ends up more Good Omens than Neverwhere.

After about a year long break, I dove back into the Vertigo universe, revisiting old favorite stories and reading some for the first time.

The central theme of this season is Death. The member of The Endless. Yes, we have three Morpheus stories, two Lucifer stories, one Lucifer, one Madame Xanadu, and one focused exclusively on Death, but Death of The Endless appears in all but one of these "episodes", even if she just pops up briefly.

Also, if you're only really invested in Morpheus's story, this can be your final season. I have at least one or two more before I'm finished, but this brings an end to the Sandman proper stories.

1. Sandman World's End
(Neil Gaiman, Mike Allred, Gary Amaro, Mark Buckingham, David Giardano, Toy Harris, Steve Leialoha, Vince Locke)
Readily available from your local shop or you can order it from Bookshop.org

If you're here for the narrative tale of Morpheus, and the march towards the end of the series, you might not love this volume as much as I do. This is technically a House Of Mystery story (what's that, you ask? well, we'll be seeing more of that next season) that occasionally, but not always features Morpheus. A group of travelers find themselves stranded in an inn where you purchase your food and drinks with stories, so this serves as sort of an anthology of dreams. Each story has a different artist. It's a wonderful read.


2. Lucifer Book One
(Mike Carey, Peter Gross, Ryna Kelly, Dean Ormston, Scott Hampton, Chris Weston, James Hodgkins)
Readily available from your local shop or you can buy it at Bookshop.org

So, last season, Lucifer gave Morpheus the keys to Hell and told him to find someone else to run it. Well, now we catch up with Lucifer and Mazikeen as they have their own fully developed stories to tell. Lucifer is not by Neil Gaiman, but by Mike Carey. And while Sandman is a brilliant tapestry that tells the story of Morpheus from different angles and at different times, Lucifer is one of the best told narrative fantasy stories in comics. Every page leads directly to its conclusion. Every word feels important. It's one of my all-time favorites, and the Mike Carey run is not at all related to the TV shows that are supposedly based on the character. And while I don't remember Morpheus appearing here, Death drops in for a bit, and the events that occured in Sandman that led up to this series are referenced a few times.


3. Madame Xanadu Disenchanted
(Matt Wagner, Amy Reeder, Richard Friend)
currently available on Thriftbooks.org

I'm embarrassed to say I slept on this series when it came out. Madame Xanadu is, like Sandman, a golden age DC character that gets reimagined with her own Vertigo series. It also features Death for a bit, but as cool as that scene is, the series would have been great without it. This volume follows Madame Xanadu from Camelot era Europe to Kublai Khan's dynasty in the Mongolian empire to Revolutionary era France to (sigh) Jack The Ripper era London to the US. There's a lot of interesting class structure in the guise of fantasy here, and just a really well told story by Matt Wagner with Eisner nominated art from Amy Reeder.


4. Swamp Thing Bad Seed
​(Andy Diggle, Enrique Breccia, Martin Breccia)
It's only really affordable on EBay right now if you can't find it at your local store.

This is a mediocre Swamp Thing story that also happens to be a wonderful Hellblazer story. Following the events of the almost unreadably bad Brian K Vaughan run on Swamp Thing (even a brilliant writer like Vaughan has off-times), Diggle tries to piece the story back together by making a buddy/road trip story where John Constantine and the skeletal remains of Alec Holland join up to seek out Abby and then have to do battle with the Alec Holland-free Swamp Thing. Come for the Swamp Thing continuity, stay for the art and the humor.


5. Lucifer Book Two 
(Mike Carey, Peter Gross, Jon J Muth, Dean Ormston, Ryan Kelly)
Hopefully, this will be back in print again soon, but for now, if you can't find it at your local shop, check out Ebay for an affordable copy.

All of the characters and storylines from Book One of Lucifer come together in this volume, which would undoubtedly be a Season Finale for Lucifer. It's epic, emotional, and really well put together. Lucifer and John Constantine would make a hell of a great mythological procedural story. And, yea, Death pops in again.


6. Sandman The Kindly Ones
(Neil Gaiman, Marc Hempel, Richard Case, D'Israeli, Teddy Kristiansen, Glyn Dillon, Charles Vess, Dean Ormstron) 
Readily available at your local shop or you can buy it from Bookshop.org

Like the previous book, a ton of seemingly unrelated Sandman storylines convene here for a steady march towards Morpheus's undoing. Everything changes for everyone involved at the end of this volume. The whole dreaming is altered. It's as intense as the previous Lucifer volume. What follows in the Sandman series is a coda, this is pretty much the climax/final boss fight/resolution of Morpheus's story.


7. Sandman The Wake
(Neil Gaiman, Jon J Muth, Charles Vess, Michael Zulli)
Readily available at your local shop or you can buy it from Bookshop.org

It's probably sacrileige, but this is, in my opinion, by a wide margin, my least favorite of the Sandman stories. It's kind of like how at the end of The Return Of The King movie when there are eight thousand "final" scenes, as every character gets a curtain call, and you realize that the story actually ended an hour ago, and it's just weeping hobbits and disaffected elves waving at the camera for a bit. I debated not including it but it is The End of Gaiman's Sandman run, and it's not terrible, it's just relatively dull compared to the previous volumes.


8. Death Complete Collection
(Neil Gaiman, Chris Bachalo, Marc Buckingham, Michael Dringenberg, P Craig Russell, Malcolm Jones III, Colleen Doran, Dave McKean)
Readily available at your local shop or readily available in hardcover form on Bookshop.org. Hopefully, the paperback edition will be back in circulation soon.

I didn't want to end this season with its weakest episode, so we close with Neil Gaiman's sagas of Death: "The High Cost Of Living" and "The Time Of Your Life", currently collected in one volume. This series is sort of a coda to Sandman: A Game Of You, and even as a standalone is an excellent story.

While the character of Bruce Wayne the Batman is one of the most revered, and interesting in all of comics, my favorite Batman stories are the ones where we see how others react to The Dark Knight.

Batman And The Monster Men, originally a mini-series written and drawn by Matt Wagner, introduces us to modern age versions of Batman characters, and shows how they are changed by their first encounters with him. 

In a roundabout way the center of this story is Sal Maroni, one of the top men in the Falcone Crime family.  He joins together the two subplots of the story by 1.) bankrolling and extorting a scientist named Hugo Strange, and 2.) bankrolling and extorting prominent businessman, Norman Madison, whose daughter happens to be dating Bruce Wayne.

Hugo Strange is your typical mad scientist bent on changing the world.  He uses Falcone money to create a series of mutants (the eponymous Monster Men).  When Maroni sends musclemen to pressure Strange into paying his debt, Strange unleashes his Monster Men on one of Maroni's underground card games, thus stealing Maroni's money, and using it to pay Maroni back.  When Batman gets involved, Strange fixates on what a perfect specimen he is, and vows to either capture or kill him.  When things don't go according to plan, he decides, rather than hiding from Batman underground, to become a public expert on Batman, going on television and tlaking about how disturbed he is.

Norman Madison's tale is a little different.  As a prominent businessman from the Gotham elite, he believes himself superior to Maroni and his thugs, and refuses to see them as a threat until they threaten his daughter, Julie.  To protect her, he asks her to find a place to hide, and not tell him where it is.  He demands the Falcone thugs take him to Maroni directly.  While there, the Falcone compound is attacked by Strange's Monster Men.  He is ultimately rescued by Batman who addresses him by name, and tells him to leave.  The issue ends with Norman sitting in front of the TV, watching Hugo Strange tell a reporter that Batman is a relentless, insane vigilante.  He is visibly sweating, thinking to himself "He knows my name."  There's also a neat panel about halfway through the trade, where we Norman Madison's face shrouded by the Gotham skyline, suggesting that Wagner is using Norman as a metaphor for Gotham City's troubled relationship with both crime and Batman.

When her father asks her to go into hiding, Julie Madison rushes to Wayne Manor to tell Bruce, who responds by drugging her (Wayne is easily one of the worst superhero boyfriends in comics.  I once saw Hank Pym shaking his head at Wayne, muttering "At least when I hit Janet, she knew that I loved her.").  When she wakes up, a day and a half later with a Roofie hangover, Bruce tells her that her father's debts are taken care of, and she continues to be all starry-eyed over her mysterious playboy lover.  She doesn't know that (dun dun dun) her life is soon to be completely altered by her involvement with Batman.

We also get to see Lieutenant James Gordon come into conflict with the new police commissioner, Grogan, over Gordon's alleged connection with Batman. 

Even Alfred gets some face time in this book, when he lays his eyes on Bruce's new crimefighting car  and quips "I'm actually surprised that you didn't add winged fins to the rear fenders and make it a true 'Batmobile!'  Oh good lord!  You're actually considering it!"

DC has placed a #1 on the spine of this book, and a #2 on Wagner's follow-up story "Batman And The Mad Monk".  While the two stories are related, there are definitely a number of Batman stories that take place between the two collections.  It's actually odd that DC has numbered them at all, as they rarely put any sort of label on any trade paperback that isn't part of some giant crossover.

I've seen other reading lists that place The Joker: The Man Who Laughs as the book that immediately follows Year One, as it features The Joker who LT. Gordon mentions on the final page of Year One.  While I do think that Miller intended the next story to feature the joker, and Brubaker certainly intends for The Man Who Laughs as the first Joker story, I think the chronology works better if we get to know Batman better before introducing his greatest villain.  There's also the issue that Gordon has grown comfortable enough in Gotham to call it "my city" early on in The Man Who Laughs, and he has not arrived at that point in his life at the end of Year One.

Story: 5/5, Art 5/5

Everyone has that friend.  The one who watches a lot of standup comedians and reports the jokes they heard as their own.  I can't tell you the amount of times I've heard the whole Scooby Doo stoner theories.  The snickering moron who wonders aloud about Smurf sex lives.  That person will always give you a little elbow to the ribcage and make some remark about Batman's "inappropriate relationship" with Robin.

Of course, that person doesn't know that there have been several Robins, and that one of them is his son.  That person has no idea about Batman at all, apart from possibly having seen the 90's movie franchise and a few scattered episodes of The Animated Series.   But most importantly, that person doesn't know how both Batman and Bruce Wayne are defined by the women in their lives.

It's no mistake that, in the modern era retelling of Batman's first few years, Catwoman appears several times before we get our first glimpse of The Joker.  While The Joker is often regarded as Batman's nemesis, it's his relationship with Selina Kyle's alter ego that gives us a feeling for who Bruce is under the cowl. 

Batman And The Mad Monk opens with Bruce standing up his current girlfriend, Julie Madison, to capture Catwoman.  He sends Alfred to send his "sincerest regrets" to her, and to let her know "his scheduling problems won't be changing any time soon."

Another thing not changing anytime soon is Jim Gordon's problems with the hierarchy of the Gotham City Police Department.  The new Commisioner, Grogan, appears as corrupt as Loeb was, and has sent some officers to deliver a message to Gordon, just as Gordon is awaiting Batman on the roof (he calls him with a Batpager...still no signal yet)

At the end of the first chapter of the story, we're introduced to the villains: vampires!  In particular, a cultish vampire leader named The Monk.  While he's not known as one of the front-runners of Batman's rogues, he goes all the way back to Detective Comics #43.  In fact, this entire trade is a reimagining of the very early adventures of Batman. 

It's not long before The Monk's cult kidnaps Julie Madison.  While the Batman is off rescuing her, her father, Norman Madison, mistakenly thinking Batman is stalking him, decides he must permanently erase his connection to organized crime by killing Sal Maroni.  It doesn't go well.

Neither does Julie's rescue from The Monk Cult.  She manages to survive and, in the process becomes the first non-butler to discover that Bruce Wayne is Batman.  But Batman's dangerous life, plus his role in her father's death leaves Julie unable to cope with Bruce's night life, so she takes off for Africa.  Also during the course of the action, Jim Gordon decides his interactions with Batman are too risky, so at the end of this story Bruce is left only Alfred as an ally, but as he Spider-Mans his way into the Gotham skyline, he goes directly past a billboard for The Haly Circus featuring The Flying Graysons.

Story 4/5, Art 5/5

I've never been a fan of Superman stories.  There's something about the silver age goofiness that no one notices it's just Clark Kent with his glasses off that never sits well with me.  He's also too powerful.  And, I'm still baffled by how the most powerful superhero in the DC universe was killed in a seven issue fistfight with a villain who, at the time, had no back story.  One of the few times Superman interests me is when he's shown in the context of other heroes, particularly Batman.

If there is a modern era retelling of the first meeting of Batman and Superman collected in trades, I haven't read it yet.  But Trinity by Matt Wagner (not to be confused with the Kurt Busiek weekly series from 2009) not only gives us a great Superman and Batman interaction, it also serves as an introduction to Wonder Woman, another character who I only enjoy amongst other heroes.  Her inclusion in this story gives us an outsider's view to the odd relationship between Batman and Superman.

In the Golden and Silver Ages, DC continuity had established their two main heroes as best buddies who played sports together and never had more than the occasional mild dispute.  In 1986, Frank Miller changed all that with The Dark Knight Returns (which, for this chronological project, is considered an Elseworld tale), and John Byrne made it canon with The Man Of Steel.

This story presents us with bumbling Clark Kent missing his train to work.  When the conductor of the train he missed is shot by a sharpshooter, Clark goes all Superman and rescues the train, but doesn't have time to go after the men who caused this act of terror.  Luckily for him, Bruce Wayne was in town, and Batman hogtied the criminals for the police.

The terrorist group is called Purge, and is run by Ra's Al Ghul.  Ra's is an immortal eco-terrorist whose schemes usually involve purging the Earth of humanity.  This time he frees Bizarro, a Superman clone with severe mental limitations, and uses him to obtain a cache of nuclear missiles from a Russian Submarine. He also hires an Amazonian assassin named Diana to train members of The Purge.

During Bizarro's mission, he accidentally releases one of the non-nuclear missiles near the island of Themyscira, home to a sect of Amazon warriors.  The sect believes Superman to be responsible, and sends Wonder Woman to Metropolis to investigate.

Wagner fills this book with a bunch of plot misdirects.  The young Amazon punk named Diana turns out to not be Wonder Woman, and then he sets up an obvious battle between Wonder Woman and Superman over identity confusion, only to have Wonder Woman act very sensibly and work everything out on her own.

It's Batman who causes friction by roughly interrogating a member of The Purge, despite Wonder Woman aiding him with her Lasso Of Truth.  The relationships between the three characters for the rest of the book is fantastic.  Wagner plays them off each other flawlessly, giving them a depth I haven't seen in any other book.  We get to see all three of them exceed the call of duty in their own way.  Each of them adheres to their morals, and apart from their first meeting, and after an unfortunate dip in a Lazarus Pit for Wonder Woman, the three do so without bickering.

As with Batman And The Monster Men, and Batman And The Mad Monk, Wagner pulls double duty as writer and artist.  And with the exception of one oddly sketch-faced panel of Ra's Al Ghul, the book is gorgeous.  Wagner is really up there with Tim Sale as one of my favorite Batman artists.

The story also features a few little cameos, including Dick Grayson as Robin, and this chronology's debut of Aquaman.  We really get to see the DC Universe starting to take shape outside of Gotham, without having to go too in-depth to the other characters.

JLA Year One by Mark Waid comes right after this on my bookshelf.  There's not a lot of Batman in it, so I won't be including it on this website, but this story is in some ways a precursor to it.  And it's a decent read.

As for Wagner's Trinity, it should be no surprise that I give it

Story 5/5, Art 5/5