[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]
Writer: Nalo Hopkinson
Artist: Dominike “DOMO” Stanton
Colors: John Ravuch
Letters: Deron Bennett
Summary
Erzulie is still stuck in the dreaming. Cain and Able are trying to be helpful. People are coming to visit. There are talking alligators, healing waters and what appears to be a whole lot of tripping (and I don’t mean that in the slip and fall way). Seriously, the dreaming is a hot mess.
Things on dry land, or just below sea level, in New Orleans isn’t much better. Maggie and Toya realize that they can’t feel anything and when you first meet them in this issue, that really truly means anything. The rustle up some dead people and then go to Bourbon Street to make some trouble and figure things out. That does not go as planned.
Positives
The real hero of this series has been Domo. Once again in issue three, this is the case. The dreaming is a crazy place. As we know, to spend time there feels like madness. How does one capture madness? How about something like this?
Does that work for you? Crazy rants that kind of seem out of nowhere, have so much context in this light. If only we all had a mirror we could use that would show us how people feel. The details are so great. The fangs, the drooling, the light bursting out of her eyes. I mean, she is trapped. She is lost. She has no control. Her top becomes a mermaid flippers. Left is right. Here is what that looks like.
Negatives
The story telling is organized better this issue. We spend time in the dreaming and then time in New Orleans. Still, the problem is, the readers don’t care about what is going on. These women, in New Orleans, they are dead. The go around killing everyone with their touch, or almost touch. They can’t eat. They can’t feel. That should be pretty interesting, but it just isn’t. The whole story of the family in the real world is just disjointed. They seem like pretty likable characters, but reading about them feels a bit like reading about events from around the world. You see what is happening, but you move on by the time you get to the local news or the sports page. By the next day, you’ve forgotten what happened. That is what is happening here. There is just something missing. Maybe it is intentional as Maggie and Toya are dead and so things feel incorporeal, but I want to remember what I read for more than a few minutes and I just don’t.
Verdict
This is the Sandman Universe, so I am sticking with this for the long haul and you should too. I suspect, that by the time we reach issue six, things will make sense. We will care and we can see where this is going. For now, tune in for some excellent pencil work.
