Rose’s unwitting actions open up the Dream Vortex. A sacrifice must be made. Will it be Rose’s life or the existence of The Dreaming itself?
Cover by Dave McKeanWritten by Neil Gaiman
Penciled by Mike Dringenberg
Inked by Malcolm Jones III
Colored by Zylonol
Lettered by Todd Klein
Cover by Dave McKeanWritten by Neil Gaiman
Penciled by Mike Dringenberg
Inked by Malcolm Jones III
Colored by Zylonol
Lettered by Todd Klein
At long last, the secrets that lie within ‘A Doll’s House’ and Rose come to bear fruit, as Morpheus and Rose meet and Rose learns of her destiny as the Dream Vortex. But before that, we have a moment to look into the dreams of her housemates when Rose returns to Florida after the previous adventures. Those dreams prove more than character study into the people she lives with: they connect to the very exhausted Rose, who unlocks the dreams and as such, the Dream Vortex: just what Morpheus didn’t want to happen.
The dreams themselves are as different as their dreamers: Ken dreams of the vices of power, money, and sex. Barbie goes on a fantastical adventure that grants her escape from her real life. Chantal’s dreams are as abstract as she is. Zelda retreats to childhood and her unrequited love for Chantal. Hal also dreams of unrequited love as a gay man. All our housemates seek to break free from the confines of their waking life in dreams. It’s in these sequences that Todd Klein shows off his lettering and layout prowess. While the artwork mainly remains the same from dream to dream (though there are some subtle changes), Klein incorporates distinct lettering to set each apart. There’s precise cursive for Chantal’s dreams of words and language. Zelda’s dream relies on childlike block lettering in run-on sentences to express Zelda the child. Barbie’s dream script has letters with a distinct fantasy style, almost as if they are being translated from some language in Middle Earth. It keeps a sense of order in a moment full of flux.
And while they are all fully formed dreams with their own individual style, there is still a chaos to them, which comes in panel layouts. Each dream flows across pages, ebbing and flowing in the negative space of the page and across the other dreams. There’s no sequence to the panels; the reader drifts in and out of each dream just as we drift in and out of sleep. It sets the stage well for the climax of issue #15, which is Rose’s connection to these dreams, her liberation of them, which opens up the vortex – – and calls Morpheus to prevent danger. It’s either the collapse of the Dream Vortex (which unleashes horrors untold on the world), or the collapse of Rose’s mortal self. What a choice.
Morpheus’s explanation to Rose, the first full explanation of just what the Dream Vortex is and its dangers, is both clear and succinct, but also opens up questions, particularly when Morpheus reveals that this not the first time the Dream Vortex has opened. Is this something we are going to see in future issues? Or perhaps, was the groundwork for this laid before? The potential for further stories branching from this main stories are as endless as the Dream Vortex itself. As we still have Sandman stories today that build on the world but are as fresh and accessible as the original, Gaiman has done something right in creating this universe.
Continued belowBut it’s the ending of the immediate story of ‘A Doll’s House’ that can leave readers (or this one) cold. Rose’s grandmother Unity makes one final appearance, sacrificing herself to the Vortex to save her granddaughter. It reads a bit as cliche, especially since Unity had been absent since the first issue. We have not spent enough time with her to grow to know her, and we’re expected to accept her sacrifice as one done in the name of familial love – – but we haven’t had much time in that script to develop that familiar love. With the creativity that’s been at play in this series since the debut, to fall back on this trope ends up as anticlimactic.
\We also do not have the story of the Corinthian, the last of the escaped archana, resolved as of yet. (You’ll recall that Brute and Glob were captured back in issue #12. This issue reveals that Gilbert, Rose’s closest companion, is the missing archana Fiddler’s Green, and he returns willingly to the world of the Dreaming.) This has me believing that we haven’t seen the last of the Corinthian yet, and I do hope I am right – – to leave such a significant part of this world unfinished is uncharacteristic of a skilled writer such as Gaiman.
It’s also never explained the significance of the doll’s house that we see in Unity’s house, the plaything that lends itself to the name of the arc. Perhaps it is symbolic of what Rose realizes once she returns from the Dreaming with herself and her family safe and sound – – that we are merely playthings in a larger playroom:
It means that we’re just dolls. We don’t really have a clue what’s going down, we just kid ourselves that we’re in control of our lives while a paper’s thickness away things that would drive us mad if we thought about them for too long play with us, and move us from room to room, and put us away at night when they’re tired or bored.
And yet, Morpheus explains to Desire that they are not the masters of the human domain, rather, it’s the other way around: the human domain is master of them, and they best not interfere in the matters of humanity, or Desire will find herself in grave danger.
For the moment, Desire forgets this lesson, for they live in the moment. In truth, I don’t think they forgot – – and this will not be the last time Desire toys with the destiny of the living.
Next week we start the ‘Dream Country’ arc with issues #17 and #18.
If you want to read along with me this summer, single issues and trades are available through comiXology. As of this writing, the first eight issues of the comic are also available on DC Universe Infinite. You can also check your local library for trade and collected editions of the series.
