The Sandman: Volume VII (1994)

Brief Lives (1994)

Author: Neil Gaiman | Illustrator: Jill Thompson | Page Count: 256

"You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime. No more. No less."

Volume VII of X in the Sandman saga is a big one, nine chapters long. It uses the extra space to tell a different kind of story, to give the narrative room to breathe, and within that same space it gives characters room to grow.

The girl with the coloured hair wants to find her missing brother, who up until now has been mentioned many times but rarely seen. It's a road trip, both in essence and in actuality. What do all good road trip stories have on common? Character growth and change.

The concept of 'change' is Volume VII distilled to a single word. There's change for Dream; for the worlds he inhabits; and for the Endless, forever. If consequences are ripples, then they're potentially perpetual when the pond that the stone is cast into lacks boundaries.

The term 'graphic novel' is a bullshit banner to imply literary connotations to something that the majority of the non-comic buying public don't understand. Monthly comics may have the 'graphic' side covered but 99.9% of them aren't 'novels'. (The few exceptions include some of Alan Moore's best works). Having said that, Volume VII of Sandman is structured so very different from the traditional 'comic book' form that it almost feels wrong to be reading it within those terms. In its pages readers are given a glimpse of the novelist that Gaiman would become.

His novels are often a journey full of whimsical characters that at times are much too generic for their own good but by the end become a commentary upon those very conventions of genre - they step outside themselves. In short, the pay-off is often worth the investment of time the reader grants it. Brief Lives has that same feeling; it may appear to be going nowhere very fast, but when it pulls into a stop you may be shivering with anticipation for the next volume.

The book collects together Sandman issues 41 – 49.