This paper is a brief look at some aspects of The Sandman, in particular issue 19 “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”[1].  For any here who don’t know about The Sandman, it was a series of monthly comic books which ran from Dec ‘88 until the last issue in March ‘96.  However most of us will be more familiar with their current incarnation as a series of 10 graphic novels.  Published by DC Comics, under their Vertigo label, these groundbreaking comics have received critical acclaim, cult following as well as some degree of literary scrutiny.  While the various issues were all written by Neil Gaiman, a number of different artists were employed to illustrate the stories.  Although the term ‘illustrate’ is problematic as this paper will address.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the comic in terms of the meta-narrative and ideas of multiple and parallel realities and how this achieved through both textual referencing and the use of the art.  In particular how the art itself not only illustrates the text but is an added dimension to the narrative and supplies its own coded information for the reader.  As an additional note I owe a great deal of this paper to Jo Sanders’ article in Extrapolation on a similar topic in relation to this issue.

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