Read Comics

Or not that different actually since it’s a comic, and that’s what this site is all about. The different thing is that it’s a comic by me. Despite that i didn’t draw a single panel, it took an awfully long time to put together. Four whole hours! I’m such a artistic visionary, or something. I don’t know if anyone besides me will find it amusing, but here it is.

In order for the post not be enormous I put in the pages as thumbnails.  You’ll have to click on each one to read it.

Poor Giles.  I hope it made someone smile (other than me).

Buffy season 8 came to an end last month, with issue 40.  I have some thoughts on both the final issue, and the series as a whole.  I plan on going into detail about the plot, so anyone who has not read the whole thing, and is wary of spoilers, should not read beyond the jump.

Buffy the TV show meant a lot to me.  I connected to it from the moment it came on the air, and for the entire seven years it was on the air, I looked forward to every new episode.  I think I only missed seeing two episodes the night they aired, that whole time.  It is the reason I follow every project Joss Whedon works on with great interest.  Somewhere around season two, I became an unabashed fangirl, and haven’t looked back since.  And it’s fair to say my own writing has been heavily influenced by it.  In that I think a hero (or even more so, a heroine) should not be infallible, that they can make mistakes and fall down, and still remain a hero.

So when it was announced that Joss would be resuming the series as a comic, I was thrilled.  I could not wait for my friends to return, and find out what he had in store for them next.  The first twenty issues or so were pretty spectacular, beautiful art, and brilliantly written.  Having Joss write many, and oversee the rest, assured that the tone of the show carried over to the comics, and that the characters felt true to how they had been previously portrayed.  Those issues did a really good job bringing the audience up to speed with what the Scooby gang had been doing since the end of the series.  And also establishing new characters to root for, such as Renee and Satsu.

Spoilers from here on.  You have been warned, don’t whine to me if you read something you don’t want to.

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Sandman ran for 75 issues, and in them featured hundreds of memorable characters.  All with names and interesting back stories.  I could keep going for months trying to cast them all, but I think I have covered nearly all the major players.  Today I will get through the last, that I expect to do. Unless I realize I have left out anyone important, or come up with a particularly inspired choice for one of the minor characters.

These last characters all have in common that they will need to be portrayed by either, puppets, CGI, or an actor in major prosthetics, or a combination of all of the above.  I will pick a voice actor for each.

Morpheus had a series of pet ravens.  They are usually the spirit of a dead man that has been reincarnated as a raven.  He retains his human personality and ability to speak, but in every other way, such as taste and behavior, he is a raven.  The one that he has for most of the series, except flashbacks to earlier eras, is named Matthew.  He is the spirit of Matt Cable, a supporting character from DC’s earlier horror/fantasy epic Swamp Thing.

Matthew is loyal, rough around the edges, and a little sardonic.  Before he died Matt Cable made some mistakes, and hurt people he cared about.  It was interesting to see Matthew the Raven striving to atone for those mistakes, and become a little more sensitive.  He often served as the audience’s surrogate.  One that could openly ask questions like, what is going on? And, why did you do that?  As well as being a sympathetic ear for Dream.

Though if memory serves Matt Cable was an American character, I always heard Matthew speaking with an English accent. Which is probably why I went with a British actor for the his voice.  Clive Owen

Owen has a deep, rich, but slightly gritty voice.  Just what I hear when I read Matthew’s dialogue.  He often plays characters with some darkness in their past, while still be able to deliver a biting one liner.

Next we have Barnabas.  Barnabas is Destruction’s pet/companion.  He appears to be a large grey dog.  He too can speak, and has a human like personality.  Though he does show that he likes dog things like chewing on stuff, and getting scratched behind the ears.  It is unclear if he is simply a talking dog, or a reincarnated spirit like Matthew.  He is very down to earth, and sarcastic.  If he wasn’t a dog, he would constantly be rolling his eyes. I’m going with Michael Palin for his voice.

Palin is of course a member of Monty Python.  He would be able to play the sarcasm, and the intelligence, along side the warm, nurturing side of the character.  And of course he would nail the utter goofiness of him going dog-giddy over a stick.

Last but hardly least, is Mervin Pumpkinhead.  One of the few characters that is there purely for comic relief.  His body is made of twigs, and his head is a jack o’lantern.  He usually wears overalls or coveralls, and has a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.  He is the janitor/handyman of the Dreaming.  He is a smart aleck, with a wise crack for everything.  He has a somewhat inflated ego, and likes to hear himself talk.  I am choosing another Python, for him.  Eric Idle

Idle knows how to play a smart-ass.  Since Merv’s face so simplistic his personality is really going to have to come through his voice.  Idle has plenty of voice over experience, and is really versatile.

I also think the character should have a real person in a suit, perform his movement.  As again, he is such a minimal design, he could come across as very artificial if he was purely CGI or animatronic.  For that I suggest Doug Jones.

Jones has made a career of bringing to life extraordinary, fantasy characters. He played one of the Gentleman, a terrifyingly creepy monster, on a particularly memorable episode of Buffy.  More significantly he has worked with Guillermo del Torro, playing Abe Sapien in both Hellboy films, and the Faun and the Pale Man in Pan’s Labyrinth.  He is impossibly tall and thin, and is incredibly expressive with his body.

Okay, that it is it for this series of posts.  I can’t believe I made it to fifteen posts.  It has been fun.  I may try another fantasy casting project for another comic series, but I haven’t thought of one yet (maybe Fables).  As I said in the very first post, I really don’t want to see Sandman made into a film. I think it exists in its ideal form already.  I do think it probably will get adapted someday, and if even one of my casting choices made it to the screen, I would be super excited.

The three woman who repeatedly appear in Sandman went by many names: the kindly ones, the fates, the furies, the weird sisters.  They were consistently shown as a trio of woman that seemed to function as one being.  They always appear as one young woman, one middle aged women and one very old woman, aka the maiden, the mother, and the crone.

They served many purposes in the series.  They were used as prophets, that occasionally commented on the action, and less frequently propelled it.  They were also the furies, the means through which justice for a primal crime, was acted out.

Typically they looked different every time they appeared, so to remain true to the comic they should be played by several different actresses.  However for the purposes of keeping this post relatively short, I will only cast one actress each.

Lisa Backwell as the maiden.

She played the lovable, loopy, and naive, Pandora on the third and fourth series of Skins.  She has a round, child like face, that would make for a good contrast with the other two.  The maiden was sometimes drawn as older and more voluptuous than Backwell, but she also sometimes looked like little more than child.

Brenda Blethyn as the mother.

While she is a very versitile actor, she has played quite a few mothers.  In such films as Pride and Prejudice, Lovely and Amazing, and Little Voice.  All very different mums, but maternal nonetheless.

Jackie Burroughs as the crone.

Burroughs has been working steadily since the mid sixties, and is still going strong.  She has looked nearly exactly the same for the past twenty years.

Finally for today’s post is Hippolyta Hall.  She was not created for the Sandman, but was a DC Comics heroine that went by the name of the Fury.  A title she inherited from her mother, (though in a bit of confusing crisis muddled continuity, she was also Earth Two Wonder Woman’s daughter).

Poor Lyta did not have an easy time of things in the series.  She was married to the second DC hero to carry the title of the Sandman.  Both she and her husband Hector, were unknowingly tricked by a pair of renegade dreams, into being trapped inside a child’s dreams.  To make matters worse, her husband Hector was dead, but being stuck in the Dreaming, neither of them knew this.  And on top of that Lyta was heavily pregnant when she was trapped, and remained so for the whole two years, that she was stuck there.  When Morpheus discovered what had been done by the misbehaving dreams, he put end to it, setting the Halls free.  This however effectively killed Hector.  He was already dead, but freed from the dreaming, his spirit was allowed to move on.  Lyta of course had no idea what had happened, she just saw her husband disappear, and her world dissolve.  Morpheus, not being very sensitive to other being’s distress, didn’t bother to explain any of it to her.  Which left her with a mighty grudge against Morpheus.  One that was easily exploited by those who wished him ill.

I would cast her with Amber Benson.

She was excellent as the lovely Tara on Buffy.  She is also a talented writer and director, who has made several independent films, and published quite a few fantasy books.  She would be able to sympathetically play Lyta’s rage at the powerlessness she has over her life, even while becoming more of a pawn.

I think the next post will be the last in this series.

The next three dreams, did not appear in Sandman as much as the others I’ve already featured, but they did make an impression.

Eve may be the biblical Eve, or she may not be, or both could be true.  She lives in a cave, and seems to have great knowledge and power.  She could have been the first woman.  Or a goddess of prehistory.  Or an old crotchety witch.  Or any of a number of other female archetypes.

Her appearance changed with each time she appeared in the series.  Sometimes she was an ancient crone, sometime a middle aged motherly type, and sometimes a beautiful voluptuous young maiden.

Since she always looked like the same woman, but at different ages, I would cast her with a single actress and put her in the appropriate aging makeup.

My choice is Christina Hendricks.

Eve is drawn as having black hair, but I’d rather keep her as a redhead, and hope the Sandman super-fans will forgive me.  Hendricks first impressed me on Firefly, where over the course of a single episode, she went from a naive farm girl, to a dangerous, seductive con artist.  She was equally convincing as both.  Lately she has been utterly mesmerizing as Joan on Mad Men.  It is one of the most nuanced performances on television.  She has been powerful, and also vulnerable.  Confidant, and also petty.  Charming, and also manipulative.  Sympathetic, and then repellent.  She owns every scene she’s in.

Fiddlers’ Green is unique in that he is actually a location.  An idyllic patch of land, that travelers, sailors in particular, often dream of.  Fiddlers’ Green decided one day to go traveling, himself.  He took a human form and set out to see the Waking World (which is what our world is referred to, in the Dreaming).  He took both the appearance, and general personality, of the prolific late nineteenth, early twentieth century, English author G.K. Chesterton.  He called himself Gilbert (which was Chesterton’s given name), and was genial, lovely man.  I didn’t know that he was based on Chesterton, when I first read Sandman.  In fact, I only learned it this afternoon, when I was reviewing the Sandman character page on Wikipedia.  I am just not as familiar with English fantasy authors as Neil Gaiman is.  Before today I had identified Gilbert as Teddy Roosevelt.

But the fact that he is English rather than American, works even better for for the actor I chose, Jim Broadbent.

Gilbert is an incredibly lovable, somewhat blustery, fellow.  Broadbent is very good at playing endearingly, bombastic men.

Finally there is the Corinthian.  The Corinthian is a nightmare.  Nightmares have just as much a place in the Dreaming, as any other dream.  He too escaped into the Waking World.  In which he became a serial killer that preyed on adolescent boys.  He is one of the most chilling characters I’ve ever come across.  He looks like a handsome, well built, blond man.  He almost always wears sunglasses.  That is because he doesn’t have eyes.  Where his eyes should be, he has two small mouths.  It is really creepy.

My choice for the part is James Marsters.

He has appeared in countless scifi and fantasy series.  Such as: Torchwood, Caprica, Smallville, but he is best known for playing Spike on Buffy, and later its spin off Angel.  He, like Hendricks, is a top rate scene stealer, but he manages to do it while making everyone he is playing against look better.  He has great comic timing, but also excels at imbuing his characters with depth.  He can go from broad physical comedy, to intense emotional soul barring, in the blink of an eye.  He is also capable of scaring the living daylights out of me.  Which is essential for the part.  But his range will also come in handy for some aspects of the Corinthian’s storyline, that I don’t want to give away.

I also want to put in a quick plug for Marsters’ audiobook narration of Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden series.  They are a blast.

Next time, some notable humans.

Now that I’ve got Dream and Death well cast, I’m going to try to tackle the most variable character in the series.  Delirium is the youngest of of the Endless.  Which is a bit like calling a 150 foot Sequoia, small because most get up to 160.  Nevertheless, she does have a childlike quality to her.  As the embodiment of insanity, she is unpredictable, sometimes sweet, playful, and careless.  Sometimes dangerously sensitive to slight, and quick to anger.  She is easily distracted, and nearly impossible to have a coherent conversation with.  All of which makes her the most compelling character in the series to me.  And many of her scenes are the ones I find most entertaining.

It also makes her very difficult to cast. Like her fellow Endless, her appearance changes frequently.  Unlike the others, hers changes rapidly, often mid-scene, sometimes mid-sentence.  She has few consistent physical characteristics.  She most often looks like an adolescent girl, though occasionally looks as young as nine, or as old as twenty.  Her clothing is usually in tatters.  Her hair, is often a wild variety of unnatural colors, although sometimes it is partially, or completely shaved.  Her most consistent feature is that she has one blue, and one green eye.  However, the most reliable way to identify her is by her technicolor word balloons, and nonsensical dialogue.

In my last entry, I site the fact that Summer Glau’s breakthrough role on Firefly, had too much in common with Del (as she is affectionately referred to), to make her my choice for Delirium.  It would feel a bit like a repeat performance.

So I hesitated a little with my top choice for the part, Hannah Murray, because she has also portrayed, a spacey, vulnerable, occasionally dangerous, character.  She played the mentally ill, anorexic, Cassie, on the British, out of control teens drama, Skins.  I’m giving her the part though, because fewer people who would be going to see Sandman, would have already seen Skins, than would have seen Firefly.

She demonstrated on Skins, that she possess all the necessary skills to play Delirium.  She made Cassie, a character that could have been played for laughs, or as a freak show, into someone you couldn’t take your eyes off.  She had me constantly yelling at the screen, for someone to please pay attention to her, as she desperately needed help.  Anytime someone hurt her feelings, I felt it, and demanded vengeance.  And when she was happy, it was magic.  She managed to make me entirely invested in her safety, even when she was the one endangering it.  And she scared the bejesus out of me, in her darker moments.

She looks young enough, and with good wigs, and makeup, she can pull off Del’s ever-changing looks.  The effects department will have to work out how to add the frogs, fish, and or butterflies, that tend to manifest out of thin air, around her.

My alternate choice, should the imaginary studio require a bigger name, is another Whedon alum.  Sarah Michelle Geller.

The second image, is a portrait of Delirium, that I found in a book called Vertigo Visions.  The strong likeness of the Del in this picture, to Sarah Michelle, is what put her in my mind for the role.  The books dates it as having been done in 1995, two years before Buffy made her a household name.  It could be a coincidence, or the artist Sherilyn van Valkenburgh, could have spotted the then unknown (and at that point brunette) actress in something, and used her as the model.

Either way, I think she could handle the part.  She displayed a lot of versatility over her seven years as Buffy.  Displaying strength, and spunk, along side vulnerability, and introspection.  She is in her thirties now, but she is on the tiny side, I’m sure with the right costumes and makeup, she could be made to look the appropriate age.

Okay, that’s it for the major parts.  The next entries will be two or more characters each.  Starting I think, with the twins.

Click to read parts 1, 2, and 3.

I was reading the Graveyard Book last night (and boy is it good), and I also noticed that the names of a pair of police men were Simon and Tam.  Which just happens to be the name of Firefly’s handsome and proper/desperate fugitive doctor.  So that got me wondering if it is an intentional reference.  And if it is, that is cool! Which got me to thinking if he is a fan of Firefly, perhaps he is a fan of Joss.  Since I can’t imagine anything making me happier than Neil Gaiman working on a Joss Whedon project.  So on the theory that if you shout something loudly enough into the Internet it will actually happen, and so this post can actually be about comics. I am hereby announcing NEIL GAIMAN WILL BE WRITING AN ARC OF BUFFY SEASON EIGHT!  Right, I hope that was loud enough.  Let the completely untrue rumors soar!  You can’t take the lie from me.