Dream States: The Collected Dreaming, Sandman Presents and Overture Covers 1997-2014

Collected Sandman Covers #2

by Dave McKean, Neil Gaiman

An amazing collection of dark and arresting imagery, DREAM THE COLLECTED DREAMING COVES presents the haunting artwork of this critically acclaimed and award-winning epic. Through these dynamic pieces, Dave McKean reflected the mesmerizing mythology, adult nature, and imaginative storytelling that made the story of Morpheus, the King of Dreams, such a groundbreaking series. This collection also includes insightful and revealing cover commentaries by THE SANDMAN author Neil Gaiman.

Genres: Art, Comics, Graphic Novels, Nonfiction, Design

224 pages, Hardcover

First published November 18, 2014

About the author

Dave McKean is a world-renowned artist, designer, and film director who has illustrated several books for children, including The Savage by David Almond, and Coraline, The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, and The Wolves in the Wall, all by Neil Gaiman. Dave McKean lives in England.

Reviews

[Daniel Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

A coffee table book filled with weird and wondrous, nightmarish and dreamlike, disturbing and beautiful imagery by Dave McKean, who's known for the Sandman covers among other things. They sometimes stray into freakishly uncanny valley grotesquery, such as the raven with the disproportionate human eye. Aesthetically, in these extreme cases, to like or dislike it becomes almost beside the point. As long as it interests you, draws some kind of reaction from you, and gets you thinking about it. The Dead Boy Detectives covers are more agreeable in a conventional aesthetic sense, and possess a haunting, dreamlike quality. The influence of experimental, surrealist stop-motion animators Jan Švankmajer, and the Brothers Quay are all over McKean's art, along with the poster for Terry Gilliam's film Brazil, with its wall of cabinets. McKean clearly possesses a haunting, uncanny, and daring imagination, one that pushes the boundaries of strangeness and makes you think about your own sense of aesthetic appreciation.

[Cale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dave McKean's art is always exceptional, and this collection does a good job of showing it off, at least insofar as it includes the covers to dozens of issues (there are a few that extend beyond the Dreaming series of this book's title). There's a little bit about his method and motivations, which is nice. There are also a fair number of original sketches that seem to have been created solely to fill space in the book. They're nice, but I think that space could have been used to further effect in other ways (perhaps providing synopsis of the stories to help understand some of the art choices in the covers). This is more a coffee table book than a serious read - something you'll want to flip through and just experience the art rather than read cover to cover. Definitely recommended for McKean's fans - if this is the first you've heard of him, I would recommend starting elsewhere, though (I believe there's a similarly collected Sandman covers collection that would serve as a better introduction).

[Mark Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I'm a big fan of Dave McKean's artwork so I was delighted to see that alongside the new edition of Dust Covers (his covers for the Sandman series), this now existed, collecting his The Dreaming covers and various Sandman Presents and miscellaneous work.

McKean's illustrations are peerless and unlike anything else you've ever seen. They look wonderful in their unadorned, lavishly put together fashion in this book. We also get, as we did in Dust Covers, lots of other smaller work from him littered through the book.

My big gripe with this is that its missing the voices of Dust Covers, wherein Dave and Neil Gaiman commented on the covers and their creation. This would've been a perfect opportunity to do that with the various writers of the series. In particular, I would've loved to read the dialogues between primary The Dreaming writer, Caitlin R Kiernan, and McKean, but instead we get one page of text, about McKean's work about The Sandman Overture covers. This shouldn't surprise me, since Vertigo has always seemingly (incorrectly, in my view) seen The Dreaming as the poor cousin of The Sandman no one should talk about (which is why, bar the one out of print collection that collated various issues from the middle of the run, I guess they've never bothered putting out The Dreaming as collection editions WHICH IS TOTALLY SOMETHING THEY SHOULD DO).

Still, it's wonderful to have McKean's stellar Dreaming work collected in one book. There's also a new McKean-illustrated, Gaiman-written comic at the start, but I wasn't crazy about it, and it's not a patch on The Last Sandman Story from Dust Covers.

In short, excellent, but if they had've treated this book as Dust Covers' equal, instead of its little brother, it could've been much more engaging.

[Абрахам Хосебр · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Dream States"
Dave McKean

Відкривається цей розкішний арт бук коміксом "Риба з води". Себто, це виконання найбільшої мрії Маккіна - зробити в сеттинґу "Сендмена" історію про рибу. Мимоволі приходить на гадку книга Лінча "Зловити велику рибу".
І дійсно, цей комікс справжнісінький сюрреалістичний шедевр де Маккін наслідує стиль Пікассо. Робота виконана в сіро-буро-білих тонах ("Ґерніка") і перегукується з мотивом Ґхаші, який я переказую в "Тетраморфеусі Liber E".

(Вранішньої пори, коли Маса-Ману велів принести йому чашу з водою для умивання, а був він королівським масажувальником і руки мав завжди чисті і ніжні, принесено йому було дві мідні чаші – порожню й наповнену. І в час, коли зливалась холодна вода на його руки, і мив він руки, впала йому між долонь невелика риба, що була впіймана в річці, коли вода набиралась до вмивання. І мовила риба до Ману такі слова: Зрости мене і я порятую тебе! На сю мову Ману дав такий одвіт: Від чого рятуватимеш мене? І риба сказала: Прийде час і пішле Варуна великий вдар на Землю і розтрощаться підмурівки її і хлине вода зі зподу і з тверді небесної і буде Суша затоплена сорок днів і сорок ночей і все живе що є на ній буде знищене, лиш тебе одного я порятую. І сказав Ману: Як маю ростити тебе? І відповіла йому: Поки я ще риба мала і можуть мене з’їсти у водах річкових, але поклади мене в чашу і коли виросту з неї, поклади ув колодязь, а коли виросту з колодязя, то поклади у річку і вже не боятимусь нікого, бо стану дужа. Непобавом стала ся риба Ґхашею – Рибою Великою і Могучою і пустив її Ману в річку і таке вона мовила йому: Тепер же збирайся у ліс і там дістань собі сухої кори з хлібних дерев і обв’яжи її людським волоссям і зладнай собі пліт а на плоті постав дім з очерету і дерева гашем, бо вже скоро буду велике движення вод і не багато часу маєш.)

...being driven to a new city so huge, waiting to fall into the sky, and me not knowing my above from beliw, not anymore, holding my poor pregnant fish out of water, and my world all turned upside down.

Зараз скажу страшну річ. Я люблю спін-оф "The Dreaming" більше ніж основну серію. Перша арка про карликову золоту ґарґулію Ґолді - абсолютне попадання в моє серце. І ця любов почалась вже з обкладинки - просто гляньте на цей шедевр : намальована в полум'яно-золотих тонах картина з двома домами двох братів і ґарґулією, яка малює тавро на чолі Каїна!!

Наступні кавери теж величні і в них багато риб (Маккін розігнався на повну). Ці витвори просто хочеться постійно розглядати і помістити на свою стіну.
Як додатки і розділювачі між обкладинками - персональні ілюстрації, фото, аплікації та замальовки Маккіна, а також деякі відхилені обкладинки.
Більше не знаю, що тут додати - існування генія Маккіна це ще одне підтвердження того, що комікси можуть бути високим, глибоким та інтертексуальним мистецтвом.

P.S. Одна з найкращих обкладинок - The Dreaming No.30 "Many mansions" з полівкою, яка тягнеться за вишнею!

[Jaimie · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s been far too long since I delved into Dave McKean’s strange and surreal artwork and even longer since I’ve engaged with the Sandman universe, so this was an excellent treat of a book to come in over Inter-Library Loan! This collection explores the work that McKean created for the later iterations of the Sandman universe books, including covers for the Dreaming, the Dead Boy Detectives, and the latest Sandman book itself: Overture (among others). Now, I haven’t read all of the books yet, since they’re not always the easiest to find outside of the internet (and ebooks are not my preferred medium), so I am sure that I’m missing some of the more subtle details that hint towards the actual storylines in comics like the Dreaming, but that doesn’t make the artwork itself any less enjoyable. McKean is so symbolically strange that even with the storylines revealed his artwork could likely be interpreted in a million different ways, so it was great fun to imagine all the forthcoming stories I’ll get to enjoy - even if they end up being totally different than what I’ve imagined. Familiar characters appear here as well, and it was a complete delight to stumble upon Marvin Pumpkinhead, Goldie, Cain & Abel, and my personal favourite, Matthew the Raven, many of whom I haven’t seen in years. I may just have to break out the e-reader and tackle some of the digital versions of the comics I have waiting, since my life needs more McKean (and the Sandman universe) STAT, and I don’t know if I can wait to order over the internet in this uncertain time...

[Ian Allan · Rating 3 out of 5]

He's a great artist. But (as pointed out in the title) this is just covers. There's only one story, and it was of modest interest. This is about 215 pages, but only about 35 pages are an opening, initial dream/story.

I like McKean more when his skills are being used in a story (like the WWI project he was a part of).

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story in the beginning about the fish dream was excellent.

The art is fantastic throughout.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, disturbing, and beautiful again.