*Book source ~ Library

 

From Goodreads:

Volume Four of New York Times best selling author Neil Gaiman's acclaimed creation, with updated coloring and new trade dress. Ten thousand years ago, Morpheus condemned a woman who loved him to Hell. Now the other members of his immortal family, The Endless, have convinced the Dream King that this was an injustice. To make it right, Morpheus must return to Hell to rescue his banished love - and Hell's ruler, the fallen angel Lucifer, has already sworn to destroy him.

 

In this volume:

A Season of Mists: Prologue ~ Nice! Got to meet the other Endless: Destiny, Delirium and Despair. Death and Desire had already been in other volumes. Well, except for Destruction who has left his siblings for parts unknown.

 

A Season of Mists: Chapter 1 ~ Dream prepares for his journey to Hell and possible battle with Lucifer.

A Season of Mists: Chapter 2 ~ Dream enters Hell and is surprised by what he finds.

A Season of Mists: Chapter 3 ~ Others find out what Lucifer gave to Dream and they make plans of their own.

A Season of Mists: Chapter 4 ~ I have no idea what this is about.

A Season of Mists: Chapter 5 ~ A banquet and sneaky goings on in Dream’s castle.

A Season of Mists: Chapter 6 ~ Dream makes his decision.

A Season of Mists: Epilogue ~ Tying up lose ends.

 

An interesting time for Dream. I enjoyed the story arc and I still love the artwork.

 

In Neil Gaiman's own words (from the introduction), these stories are an assortment of 'curiosities and oddments', including some examples of his earliest writing for comics, and a couple of one-off stories.

The first few are Swamp Thing stories. I have next to zero knowledge of Swamp Thing, aside from a vague recollection of seeing that rather shonky Wes Craven movie adaptation some time in the early 80's, so most of the events that transpired in these pretty much went over my head.

However, the last two stories - a John Constantine Hellblazer short, and a very curious mash-up between Gaiman's own Sandman and DC's original Sandman character, Wesley Dodds - are both excellent, and are well worth getting hold of a copy of the book for.

This is the second volume of four collecting the excellent Madame Xanadu series from Vertigo/DC.

 

The writing from Mike Wagner is excellent, as usual. I've liked pretty much everything he's ever done, from Grendel to Mage. And what can be said that hasn't been said before about William Michael Kaluta, one of the all-time greatest artists in the comics biz? This is up to his usual high standard, it's gorgeous and gritty, which definitely suits the noir tone of the story.

 

However (and this may sound like sacrilege, as Kaluta is rightfully considered a supergiant among comics artists), as lovely as the art is, l didn't like it quite as much as I did Amy Reeder Hadley's beautiful art in the first volume. Don't get me wrong, Kaluta's art is gorgeous, but I just have a sneaking preference for Hadley's, which is strange indeed, as she's a newcomer whom I've never come across before (maybe it's because she's new, and I've never seen her stuff before), and Kaluta has always been one of my favourites. Their styles are completely different, but both of them are beautiful, far superior to the average bog-standard comic book art usually found in superhero comics.

 

Overall, Madame Xanadu Vol. 2: Exodus Noir is a very enjoyable read. I've already collected four volumes in trade paperback (I don't think there are any more, which is a great pity), and I'm really liking this series.

 

I'll get around to reviewing the other three at some point. I really should've started with Vol. 1, but this was a random impulse posting, and I was reading it at the time. :)

Silver John travels the Appalachian mountains, encountering all manner of strangness, with only his silver-stringed guitar for a companion...

I have a confession to make: I think 95% of fantasy stories are derivative and unoriginal. This collection is neither. Who Fears the Devil is the complete collection of Silver John short stories, 30 in number, ranging for three or four paragraphs to fifteen pages. Silver John is a wandering balladeer, modeled after a young Johnny Cash, who wanders from one strange event to the next.

The first thing I noticed about the stories were how skilled Manly Wade Wellman was at rendering Southern dialogue without making the speakers seem stupid. Once I dug in, the book was hard to set aside for too long and I'm not a big fan of short stories by any means.

The best way to describe the stories would be to call them American fantasy. The stories explore different aspects of Southern and mountain folklore, much having to do with witches, ghosts, demons, and other supernatural creatures. The line between fantasy and horror is blurred in some of them while others are pretty humorous. Silver John outwits supernatural beasties, encounters a giant, a house that's acutaly a living organism, and other things too odd to mention, all the while playing songs on his guitar and singing.

If you like fantasy that isn't derived from Tolkien, you could do a lot worse than spending a few evenings with Silver John.