“24 Hours”

Originally Published: “Sandman” Preludes and Nocturnes, issue 6, DC Comics (Vertigo), June

1989

Writer: Neil Gaiman

Pencils: Mike Drigenberg

Inks: Malcolm Jones III with special thanks to Don Carola

Colorist: Robbie Busch

Lettering: Todd Klein

Editor: Karen Berger

Submitted by: E.M. Tonner

Preface

Genius and Gaiman are both six-letter words beginning with “G”. Upon review of his work on

‘Sandman’, they become synonymous. DC’s Vertigo imprint was stomping holes into the

boundaries of what comics could do in the late eighties by foregoing the comic’s code, and

attracting phenomenal talent. “Sandman” launched Neil Gaiman into the stratosphere and gave

horror comics a whole new dimension. But is “Sandman” horror? Are ‘super villains’ actually

scary? I’ll let you be the judge after you read “24 Hours”.

A little background information…

The character “Dee” is actually an old Justice League America villain, John Dee, alias Doctor

Destiny. Doctor Destiny influenced the dreams of various individuals to manipulate them to his

nefarious ends. When captured, the JLA altered his psyche so that he was unable to dream,

preventing him from using the Dreamstone in his materioptikon device. After years in Arkham

Asylum and unable to dream, his sanity and physique have wilted away until he has become a

shell of a man. His mother has just returned Morpheus’s Dreamstone to Dee, which has allowed

him to escape the asylum. He’s currently sitting in a diner.

Warning:

The following content is intended for mature readers. It may contain scenes of extreme

violence, obscenities, nudity, sexuality and adult situations.

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Afterword

When I was around five, I thought Manhattan really did have super heroes. I believed this was the

city where people with amazing powers actually fought crime, just like in the comics. To a five

year old, fact and fiction are often the same. A part of me always wanted to live in such a city.

What Gaiman was able to do here changed my mind. This was chilling. He took a silver age super

villain and put him into the horror genre. This was real again. A super villain is abusing and

killing innocent people to help pass the time. It made me think, what was someone like The Joker

actually capable of? Or even Batman on a bad day.

The other thing that made my jaw drop was how good of a writer Gaiman is. Part of horror is the

juxtaposition of normal to abnormal, real to unreal, something that happens constantly in the DC

universe. Gaiman also nails this juxtaposition with his use of the two narrators. The waitress,

Bette Munroe narrates the first part of the story with her vision of small town America, happy,

and politically correct. Her line “These weren’t just customers. They were raw material.” is

foreshadowing of the most heinous nature. John Dee takes over the narrative and the juxtaposition

begins, showing us that yes indeed, these customers are raw material, his raw material. He forces

out their dark sides and bitter realities where we learn sordid details from their pasts including

adultery, necrophilia, and conspiracy to commit homicide. And in the end, after 22 hours of

physical and psychological torture, every customer lay dead in the diner. There is no twist ending.

The Lord of Dreams does not arrive heroically to save them from their ordeal. He arrives two

hours later interested only in one thing, the Dreamstone.

My one critique is that the writing outshines the artwork. Sam Keith’s sudden departure after

issue five meant the art team would be in transition for this issue. Mike Dringenberg, the inker on

the first five issues steps up for the pencils and does have some great panels here but there is an

inconsistency to the artwork. It seems like certain panels were based on models posing and certain

panels were rushed. The first panel on page 16 of the comic is unconvincing while the last panel is

stunning, even though it’s the same shot from a different angle. The comic was also published

before digital coloring and it shows. The four-color process doesn’t do the artwork any favors.

Still, this was an amazing example of horror in comics. No one reads ‘Preludes and Nocturnes’

and forgets “24 Hours”. It’s not a super hero comic trying to be scary, this is well told horror.

Gaiman’s transformation of the super villain into the monster they could always be on the pages

of “24 Hours” rank it as one of the greatest horror comic stories of all time.

“For in that sleep of death what dreams may come”

- William Shakespeare

“Hamlet”

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Reprinted In:

Preludes and Nocturnes, Volume 1

Where To Buy:

Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Sandman-Vol-Preludes-Nocturnes/dp/1563890119

Neil Gaimen’s Site: http://www.neilgaiman.com/works/Comics/The+Sandman+Vol.+1:+Preludes+%26+Nocturnes/