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29th out of 69 books
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26 voters
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A Game of You (The Sandman #5; issues 32-37)
by
Neil Gaiman (Goodreads Author),
Shawn McManus , Colleen Doran , Bryan Talbot , George Pratt , Stan Woch , Dick Giordano , Samuel R. Delany
Volume Five of New York Times best selling author Neil Gaiman’s acclaimed creation THE SANDMAN collects one of the series’ most beloved storylines.
Take an apartment house, add in a drag queen, a lesbian couple, some talking animals, a talking severed head, a confused heroine and the deadly Cuckoo. Stir vigorously with a hurricane and Morpheus himself and you get this fifth
...morePaperback, 192 pages
Published
May 3rd 2011
by Vertigo
(first published September 3rd 1993)
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A Game of You, the 5th volume in the Sandman series, is my favorite so far. One thing I've noticed Gaiman is very good at is picking up little threads he dropped in previous stories and building on them (this was one of my favorite things about Buffy; there's nothing more rewarding for a viewer/reader than a story that doesn't forget its past). The most noteable one that gets picked up in this volume is the main character, Barbie, who was a minor character in The Doll's House. In that volume, we...more
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It's difficult to review the Sandman books without discussing details that will rob the reader of important surprises, but this is essentially yet another story in which the corporeal world is drawn into a war being waged on the ethereal plain. It centers on a woman (who had a bit role in A Doll's House) who is a princess in the psychic realm, and must return there in order to save a kingdom her earthly self doesn't really know anything about. As always with Gaiman, it's full of great twists and...more
Easily the best volume of The Sandman through the first five. The story is the least forced of all of them. The earlier volumes seem to have too much crammed in them, and sometimes the story is awkward and unnatural. Gaiman is trying to play with deep ideas, but sometimes he doesn't let the idea speak for itself. In this volume I think he finally does manage to do that.
The theme is one of inner worlds, those inner fantasies, monologues, realities we all create and carry with us. Mo...more
The theme is one of inner worlds, those inner fantasies, monologues, realities we all create and carry with us. Mo...more
Hmm. I am divided on this one. I didn't like it as much as I did Season of Mists, for all that this is in many ways a more intelligent and incisive book. It's dark and it's often gruesome (Hazel's dream about her baby attacking Foxglove's was possibly one of the more disturbing things I've ever seen), and the dual storyline meant that the reader is often left questioning which one is reality and which fantasy, if such a concept can ever be attached to a work by Gaiman at all. Wanda was fabulous,...more
Estos libros tienen tanto éxito en la biblioteca que tengo que conformarme con el que queda en el estante, si es que queda alguno, y leerlos desordenados. En los primeros me molestaba que se cambiara de dibujante en cada capítulo, ahora ya le he cogido el punto, e incluso le intuyo un sentido.
Este me ha tocado bastante más que los otros dos (2, 4). Copio (y tal vez sea un spoiler, si os importan ésas cosas):
"Los niños y las niñas son distintos, ¿sabes? Los niños fantasean con...more
Este me ha tocado bastante más que los otros dos (2, 4). Copio (y tal vez sea un spoiler, si os importan ésas cosas):
"Los niños y las niñas son distintos, ¿sabes? Los niños fantasean con...more
This came into my bookstore and I hadn't read it in a couple years, plus it's the one with the transwoman in it, and I was feeling emotionally vulnerable. So bring it on!
So... yeah. So when I was a little kid I read this and it was like, I was a baby transsexual and all I knew about it was that I'd better not talk about it or admit it to myself or to anybody else. So this book touched me in kind of a weird place and I was SUPER stoked that it treated a transwoman as a human being an...more
So... yeah. So when I was a little kid I read this and it was like, I was a baby transsexual and all I knew about it was that I'd better not talk about it or admit it to myself or to anybody else. So this book touched me in kind of a weird place and I was SUPER stoked that it treated a transwoman as a human being an...more
I loved this one. As Barbie goes into her dream world and faces the little girl left dreaming inside her I can only wonder what dreams of my own that started long ago are waiting to be faced. This one was interesting in that a larger lesson seems to be coming out of it, a lesson of loss, a lost innocence, a lost friend, a lost dream. What is also unique about A Game of You, is that facing something internal, whatever it may be, often seems like a journey. Losing any part of life as we know i...more
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Good story, well told. I still wonder about male cartoonists who fetishize dykes. I have a hunch that Gaiman, writing in the early 1990s, knew that his audience healthy cross-section of freaks, weirdoes and misfits, so he tried to appeal to as wide a variety of freaks, weirdoes and misfits by playing to a number of niche markets by featuring a trans-woman for the trans/gayman sector, the dyke couple to fill the void left by Love and Rockets, and the previously character-less buxom blonde Barbie ...more
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Availability has prompted me to skip from volume II to volume V of the Sandman series and, while I cannot say how this might affect my review of the volume, I am guessing it would have come out the same, had I taken everything in order.
The quality of the artwork has severely deteriorated since Preludes and Nocturnes. Some characters are less consistent in appearance than others and it seems that the artist experienced a great deal of trouble in drawing hands and eyes - the hands appearing...more
The quality of the artwork has severely deteriorated since Preludes and Nocturnes. Some characters are less consistent in appearance than others and it seems that the artist experienced a great deal of trouble in drawing hands and eyes - the hands appearing...more
Like the majority of The Sandman saga up until this point, Gaiman's A Game of You somehow failed to be intiguing or convincing. Despite its best efforts to be both off the wall and imaginative there's still an undercurrent of conventionality that I can't quite pinpoint. Maybe Gaiman's trying too hard to make his core group of characters oddballs and misfits and ends up dehumanising them to the extent that his lesbian character, Hazel, fails to understand how one gets pregnant and he wheels out...more
"Il desiderio in una mano, la merda nell'altra: guarda quella che si riempie prima."
Sul volume in particolare:
Il genio visionario e la fantasia illimitata ed originalissima di Gaiman qui toccano un primo picco degno di nota.
Non è da tutti, del resto, scegliere come personaggio (in questo caso, addirittura protagonista) la bambola Barbie. O meglio: una sua versione decisamente umanizzata. E' il più onirico ed il più freudiano dei volumi, come suggerisce quest'alt...more
Sul volume in particolare:
Il genio visionario e la fantasia illimitata ed originalissima di Gaiman qui toccano un primo picco degno di nota.
Non è da tutti, del resto, scegliere come personaggio (in questo caso, addirittura protagonista) la bambola Barbie. O meglio: una sua versione decisamente umanizzata. E' il più onirico ed il più freudiano dei volumi, come suggerisce quest'alt...more
I love the Sandman series so far and this book was no exception. Gaiman has a way of telling dark stories that are very creative and really expand your mind and make you think.
Barbie's best friends are a drag queen named Wanda and two lesbians that live in her apartment building. Barbie seems to be dragging a bit because she never dreams. She remembers dreaming as a child; wonderful vivid dreams, but those times are long past. When a creature from her dreams dies in front of her on the...more
Barbie's best friends are a drag queen named Wanda and two lesbians that live in her apartment building. Barbie seems to be dragging a bit because she never dreams. She remembers dreaming as a child; wonderful vivid dreams, but those times are long past. When a creature from her dreams dies in front of her on the...more
I read these comics many moons ago and as my memory isn't what it used to be I can't remember a heck of a lot of the storylines. Death was always my favorite character but this one, featuring Barbie and her dreamworld, is reminding me why I loved the Sandman comics so much way back when.
There are two worlds here; Barbie's gritty urban reality and that of her unique friends including drag queen Wanda and lesbian neighbors, and Barbie's dreamworld where animals speak. The two worlds col...more
There are two worlds here; Barbie's gritty urban reality and that of her unique friends including drag queen Wanda and lesbian neighbors, and Barbie's dreamworld where animals speak. The two worlds col...more
Something about "A Game of You" just captivated me. Focusing on the story of Barbie and "the Land", I felt like I was reading a new-age Alice in Wonderland, although taken to much stranger lands where creativity, (and not drugs), was the primary influence for such a wonderfully tragic journey. From hundred year old witches that can communicate with the dead by cutting off their faces and nailing it to the wall to transsexuals who are individually courageous/heroic but self-...more
The first thing I noticed about this volume was that it was dedicated to Jonathan Carroll. Less than two pages in, I realized why. How cool is it to realize that the book (graphic novel, whatever) you're reading dovetails with a book you read less than a month ago? How cool is it when you learn that it did this without even meaning to? Long live Martin Tenbones, then!
This book is classic Carroll, though A Game of You and Bones of the Moon were written independently. A Game of Yo...more
This book is classic Carroll, though A Game of You and Bones of the Moon were written independently. A Game of Yo...more
I am not good at reviews, sometimes I wonder why I bother. This book helped me re-evaluate how I was mentally categorizing the story divisions in The Sandman. Specifically, I had assumed that certain characters that appeared in earlier volumes were one-shots, never to reappear, that they were unrelated to other things. BOOM, they're back in this volume and many things begin to connect that I never expected. Color me impressed, my respect for Gaiman's storytelling abilities just went up a notch...more
Mám pocit, že ten komix je o hodně složitější, než na jaký si hraje. Přeci jen to napsal Gaiman. A bohužel (a tentokrát to už pocit není... xP) nejsem schopná to prokouknout. Proto jsem raději přeskočila úvod, kde se děj pitval, jinak bych ve svých očích velmi hluboce klesla. Tečka.
Tento díl Sandmana je... jiný. Sám Gaiman na konci napsal, že vlastně ani tento nápad nechtěl zveřejnit. (Nechal se ukecat... :D) Chápu proč se zdráhal, je to pro něj něco neobvyklého. Píše o něčem tak obyče...more
Tento díl Sandmana je... jiný. Sám Gaiman na konci napsal, že vlastně ani tento nápad nechtěl zveřejnit. (Nechal se ukecat... :D) Chápu proč se zdráhal, je to pro něj něco neobvyklého. Píše o něčem tak obyče...more
The fifth book of the Sandman graphic novel series, but also a stand-alone tale. Apparently, this story had been brewing for years in Gaiman’s insanely creative mind. This one stars a young, blonde heroine named Barbie who is transported back into the Narnia-like landscape of her childhood dream-world, which is now being threatened by an enemy known only as the Cuckoo.
The collision of this fantasy land with the ‘real world’, a grungy urban jungle populated by a crew of unlikely char...more
The collision of this fantasy land with the ‘real world’, a grungy urban jungle populated by a crew of unlikely char...more
When I first read these things, this was the first volume I read. Bad move! It's much easier to follow, already knowing where Martin TenBones, Barbie and Ken, Foxglove, etc. come from--let alone Dream and Death. Still, this volume has a lot going on, and a lot of strange concepts to grasp. The overall storyline skitters toward some sort of sense by the end, though it's a kind of nod and say "uh-huh" kind of sense, not something anyone could sit down and explain.
The art in...more
The art in...more
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Mary
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A "skerry" is "a rugged, insulated sea-rock or stretch of rocks, covered by the sea at high water or in stormy weather; a reef."
The world of Dream is enormous and scattered with countless skerries, each one a setting for a thousand dreams. Morpheus is alerted that "One of the skerries is dying ..." His companion crow, Matthew, asks, "So what are you going to do about it, Boss?"
The Sandman responds, "Do about it? The Skerries are ...more
The world of Dream is enormous and scattered with countless skerries, each one a setting for a thousand dreams. Morpheus is alerted that "One of the skerries is dying ..." His companion crow, Matthew, asks, "So what are you going to do about it, Boss?"
The Sandman responds, "Do about it? The Skerries are ...more
Wow. I loved this. Absolutely the best book so far. There isn't really anything I didn't like, and it kept doing more and more things I like on top of the things I already liked. Well except, I think it is responsible for an extremely grisly nightmare I had, but that is what I get for bedtime reading.
I love the atmosphere of the parts of the series set in sketchy '80s NYC. I love all the stories with a woman dealing with intrusions of the supernatural in her normal life, and hav...more
I love the atmosphere of the parts of the series set in sketchy '80s NYC. I love all the stories with a woman dealing with intrusions of the supernatural in her normal life, and hav...more
" It's like we fell down the rabbit hole, woke up in...I don't know. Stephen King's basement, " (Wanda to George's head-page 91)
177
"But surely you want to go home," Wanda's aunt to Barbara
"I'm...I'm not sure about that. I don't think home's a place. It's a state of mind." (177)
I'm getting that wonderlust itch again.
Hey, first comes America, then the world. Back down that rabbit's hole.
"Inside them the...more
177
"But surely you want to go home," Wanda's aunt to Barbara
"I'm...I'm not sure about that. I don't think home's a place. It's a state of mind." (177)
I'm getting that wonderlust itch again.
Hey, first comes America, then the world. Back down that rabbit's hole.
"Inside them the...more
A beautiful story, taking place in two parallel worlds, and definitely my favorite of The Sandman's three multi-issue story arcs so far. With A Game of You, collecting issues #32-37 of The Sandman series, Gaiman deftly explores themes of gender, sexuality, identity, and self-definition.
However, while the story itself was excellent, it was largely peripheral to the larger series, with recurring characters like Death and Dream appearing only briefly. In my opinion, Preludes and Noc...more
However, while the story itself was excellent, it was largely peripheral to the larger series, with recurring characters like Death and Dream appearing only briefly. In my opinion, Preludes and Noc...more
This is another solid addition to the Sandman series. This is a sequel (of sorts) to the events in The Doll's House (Volume 2); however, the main thing I remember from that volume is the serial killer convention while I only have a vague memory of the other stories. Nevertheless, it was still a delight to read A Game of You, a tale about exploring one's identity. I'm sure it was much deeper than I could actually comprehend, but I enjoyed it anyway, even with my limited understanding. I probably ...more
This I think is one of Gaiman's finest. I would be happy to throw in another star but that epilogue is waaaay too long.
And fans of LOST should really get this book.
I'm a-wondering whether Damon and Carlton got the idea for the plot from this book or not because what The Cuckoo after (Cuckoo is the villain in A Game of You) is quite similar to what The Man in Black wants.
In LOST, The Man in Black wants to leave the Island and he manipulated everyone to destroy each o...more
And fans of LOST should really get this book.
I'm a-wondering whether Damon and Carlton got the idea for the plot from this book or not because what The Cuckoo after (Cuckoo is the villain in A Game of You) is quite similar to what The Man in Black wants.
In LOST, The Man in Black wants to leave the Island and he manipulated everyone to destroy each o...more
This has to be one of my favourites of the Sandman series so far. I love how Gaiman brings back former characters, and is able to intertwine them all. The overarching story is also moved along- not as much as in other books, granted, but still slightly.
Having since read American Gods and The Graveyard Book, I can really appreciate Gaiman's storytelling techniques. I feel The Graveyard Book is so far the weakest of them all, but that's another story.
I really enjoyed this,...more
Having since read American Gods and The Graveyard Book, I can really appreciate Gaiman's storytelling techniques. I feel The Graveyard Book is so far the weakest of them all, but that's another story.
I really enjoyed this,...more
La protagonista di questo volume è Barbie, la vicina di casa di Rose Walker incontrata in Casa di Bambola, che si è separa da poco da suo ragazzo perfetto Ken e si è trasferita a New York. Ha due amiche, la vivace Wanda e la più tranquilla Thessaly, due vicine di casa lesbiche e un inquietante vicino di casa di nome George, tutti collegati con il Regno del Sogno. Barbie scopre infatti che i suoi sogni sono un portale per un regno incantato, che lei stessa creò durante la sua infanzia, e che ora ...more
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“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.”
—
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“And if there's a moral there, I don't know what it is, save maybe that we should take our goodbyes whenever we can.”
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