A Game Of Me

My favorite comic book author actually writes on his own website and I mean; how great isn't that?!. His name is Neil Gaiman and he has one of these things they call a blog.

I've never been a big fan of comic books, cartoons or animation in itself. I didn't even cling to it as a child. I were more attracted to the fairytale book world and real movies. One of the things I really enjoyed though, were Fraggle Rock. Usually Fraggle Rock would be on every saturday sometimes when I were little. I would have enjoyed it just as much, if it were on today. I loved those strange puppets that were put into a real atmosphere, in a way it is very creative and theatrical. I also liked the Muppets, but not just as much as I liked the fraggles. I guess it was because The Muppets were made for a mature audience, while the fraggles were put into a more childish fantasy world. My favorite part of the fraggle world were the Gorgs, you know the big troll alike creatures that hated the fraggles and saw them as mice that pestered their home. I specially liked the teenage gorg creature that went around hunting the fraggles, I always thought of myself being him, catching one of the cool and funny fraggle things. The trash heap that sang was also fun, I really liked the two little strange beings that lived in it. Of course, the boozers was just cool as well, their buildings seemed so delicious to eat when one of the fraggles ate on it. The Doozers kind of remind me of a computer game I cant remember the name of...

Anyway, I did like some comic books when I grew up, most of them are things I could read today if I they would sell them. I really liked one comic book called Teddy (Bamse), when I were really little. I belive I liked it generally because it took place in a fantasy world. My favorite character in it were the witch. I remember these meat balls that the grandmother in Teddy used to make, that made the fluffy brown innocent looking bear into a superman, they always looked so delicious to eat. Then I really enjoyed the grey and white sketched Tales From The Crypt comics. They were meant for adults and could be pretty scary, but it was my taste in every way. I came over them when my brother borrowed a whole plastic bag full of them from a friend of his. I was around ten or so at the time and it was summer and all I remember from those days was that I lay in our garden couch reading Tales From The Crypt and drinking the Shout (Kjeft) soft drink. I liked Shout because it had stickers that illustrated graffiti looking monsters, on the side of the box. I collected these stickers. They kind of reminded me of the drawing style that MAD magazine brought about. I never liked MAD, as it were more of a boy thing, but I liked it's drawing style. In those days I remember my mum was very happy about me spending time in the garden and not inside, in front of the computer, in the hot summer days. Even though I just lay in the shadows reading comic magazines. Now later on, these magazines have become more of a collector thing for me. They are harder to get a hold of today and therefor seems more precious to keep.

I cant remember that there were any other specific comic books that I really liked when I grew up. Of course there were other horror comics that were simular to Tales From The Crypt, that I also liked a lot thought. However, then came Sandman, I discovered it some years ago. I had come over a news paper article on Neil Gaiman and I wanted to check out his work, generally because the drawings were so beatiful. They are published trough Vertigo and can be bought at Amazon if nowhere else, his novels are also great. Sandman are many stories in one serie. It's about the seven Endless beings, called; Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair and Delirium, it's about their involvement with the human world. The thing that Neil Gaiman have in his comics, that other comics often lack; is story and creativity. Now I wouldn't really like to say anything specifically negative about other comics, I mean they have their charm and their theme and I find them great in their own way. However Gaiman changed my way of looking at comics. He haven't made the drawings himself, but it makes it even more interesting. He writes the story and the dialogs and have an artist to do the drawing. Dave McKean (you MUST click that link!) is one of the artists that worked with Gaiman on Sandman and some of his other comics. I just love his images with a huge passion. There is this really great book called Dustcovers, that features the Sandman comic book covers, it's really great art work all in itself. I love the fact that it seems like the drawings are just as important as the written content. Gaiman's stories are serious and deep, which is a unique thing in the world of comics (maybe that is why they call it comics too). The stories are not funny or scary in the way that the stories of Tales From The Crypt are, even though I love the dark twisted humour and grotesque world of the horror comics just as much. Gaiman writes things that makes you wonder and ponder. He have created characters that you dont easily forget, it's amazing how he makes them so human and alive with his short comic bubble texts. The stories are often sad and melancholic, they make you smile, they make you think and they make you shiver, all at the same time. They are symbolic in their own creative sense, with it's fantasy world, it's psychological and philosophical features. It's everything I ever wanted in a comic book, it's everything I ever missed in the fairytale books without images. This doesn't mean that I started to dislike my old favorites, it just means that I thought it was great with something fresh and new.

My most favorite Sandman story is "A Game Of You". It's just so sad, so beautiful in it's human expression. It affected me just as much as Lord Of The Rings did; I've had dreams and strange thoughts that are linked to these stories ever since I read them. I like all of the characters in Sandman, but my most favorite is possibly Dream himself, he was gentle, hopeless, lonely and passionate all at the same time. When he died it was like Frodo in Lord Of The Rings that died over again, I had a numb feeling in my chest after reading it, it was as though something in me had died as well. Ah, you know; I live more trough literature than I do in reality. Some people might think it's sad, but really; most of the time, it's a great place to be...