The Sandman # 75 page 22 by Talbot and Vess

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on, rounded with a little sleep"

When I was in college and a humble English major, I did a research paper entitled "Shakespeare in the Comics." It mainly involved me tracking down old Classics Comics/Illustrated, their equivalent and some odd issues of some of the old mystery books and apply literary and pop culture criticism techniques to their content. These comics had their charms and their faults, one of which was an over reverence that, despite all the fighting and murders and passions abounding in Shakespeare's glorious texts, often made for rather static comic storytelling and art.

Then, one bright sunny day, I read Sandman no. 19, the brilliant "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The story re-imagined the first performance of the play by Lord Chamberlain's Men before a unique audience. Aside from that, however, it was a meditation on ambition, craft, art and the prices we pay for immortality. Further, it was a revelation to me as both a comic and Shakespearean drama. For years afterward, I often mentioned it as my favorite single issue of any comic. As the years went by, however, two other issues from Sandman, gave it competition, "Ramadan" in issue no. 50 and "The Tempest" from the very last issue, no. 75.

In the latter, a companion piece to issue 19, an older Shakespeare, now fully aware of the costs of his dream and nearing the end of his life, works on his final play, a work directly commissioned by Morpheus himself. Cleverly, Shakespeare's life seems to mirror Prospero's, the main character of the Tempest, and, while only small snippets of the play are seen (and there is a wonderful sequence where Will reads a scene to his toughest critic, his wife, Anne), the story has echoes of the play throughout.

Years later, after I started getting into art collecting, I made a dream list of the kind of pages I would love to attain. At the top of that list was a page with Shakespeare and Morpheus. As luck would have it, a collector and dealer had managed to acquire several pages from issue 75 and put them up for auction on eBay. I entered them all, but, soon to be a father and planning to build a house, I was reluctant to bid more than a certain set amount that I deemed sensible and, one by one, I lost to higher bidders.

Finally, this page came up for auction, the best yet, and I knew that I had to have it. I doubled what I deemed sensible. Even then, another bidder joined the competition and overtook my bid. I, however, caught a fever, and once again upped my bid and a competition began. My rival, who, though he had overtaken me again, had a negative rating on his bidding history and the dealer canceled his bids. Once again, I was the high bidder. I suffered through the last minutes of the auction, sweating, while still holding on to the top bid. A last second bidder sniped away, matching my maximum bid, but with no time to snipe again, I was the declared winner of the auction. I actually jumped up out of my seat, hands raised in victory, and scratched my knuckles on the ceiling of our apartment! Knuckles now bleeding and stinging, my adrenaline and heart pumping away, I danced a jig while laughing giddily. That, as far as my participation in a comic art auction goes, remains the happiest moment I ever experienced. Ha!

Needless to say, this page is probably the last artwork I will ever part with. I love Vess and Talbot's artwork as much as the story itself, and I think my page is one of the few in my collection that I could honestly say is one of the best of its kind. I am lucky to have it.

PS* I was happy to provide the scan of this page that appeared in the "The Sandman Gallery Edition."