morpheuslikestodream

[morpheuslikestodream]

Sandman meets Authority: Why a Crossover could work. I know, I know...hear me out.

Ok, let's talk about Wildstorm. It was that universe that spawned out from Image Comics and went to DC and eventually evolved into its own imprint. (I know I'm massively botching some details here.) But from the Wildstorm Universe we had titles like WildC.A.T.S., Deathblow, Stormwatch, Planetary, and the Authority. It was a universe of ultra-violence with over-stylized physiques and guns blazing, but somewhere in there as well, there were so many interesting concepts. If you truly mine that universe, it was layered with myth and archetypes and living concepts that could amazingly blend with the Sandman Universe.

And, yes, a mini-series of some sort could work perfectly where the Endless play a role; after all, they're already there.

Here are some notes and ramblings about how this could work.

*

The world is in order. The tyrants are dead; all opposition is decimated under The Authority. From their ship, the Carrier, that shifts through reality and dimensions, Jenny Quantum, the Spirit of the 21st Century; Midnighter and Apollo; Jack Hawksmoor, God of Cities; the Engineer; and The Doctor are the new gods in a pantheon that has dominated the world.

Now something stirs, something awakens from the Space Under Space.

In his dreams, voices of stars and suns warn Apollo of a doom from before time. The Old Ones are returning from their slumber in the elder iterations of existence; the same forces that have devoured suns and defied the will of angels who gave fire to worlds. The City of Stars sends its emissaries to the young god, those who have branched off from the City of Stars itself. They are of The Burn and parliaments of flame.

The Midnighter has not lost his touch in dealing death. Although the ultimate threats have been defeated, he still walks the streets to purge the criminals and lowlifes. He will always kill; he will always excel at this. Lately, he hears a woman’s voice. She is a ray of light in his darkness, and he longs for her company. (This would develop into a companionship much like Hob Gadling and Dream. Also, if his fight machine in his head ever analyzed Death, the abstract nature of her essence would leave him catatonic when trying to process her as a threat.)

Jenny Quantum is growing sick. In an age of conspiracies and rampant fears of unease, the zeitgeist of the world churns. This age of uncertainty is a splinter Jenny is unable to remove. The spirit of the century plunges further into madness.

The Engineer communes with the living technology of the Carrier. It has always been believed a baby universe charges its core. Now, as the Engineer loses herself in the language of machinery, she discovers something else, something other. In this revelation, the Engineer along with the Authority always had a need to make the world better, a want to improve. And there is no longer any baby universe; a facet of the Threshold now exists at the heart of the Carrier. They are not the Devil, although They are not to be trusted.

At the beginning of history, people gathered and communed. A city was born and in time a city dreamt. Cities would always dream; they would develop and grow and change and perish. Cities in their own sentience would need their own champions, their interfaces and avatars. Jack Hawksmoor realizes he is now the latest in a legacy of City Gods, and the Dream Lord has a boon to ask.

The Doctor serves the Garden of Ancestral Memory, the realm of shamans and medicine men and women and ancients who were rooted to the earth. The Garden dates back to elder times and it feels the trembling of Gaia itself as the Old Ones reawake.

*

#sandman #Sandman Universe #Vertigo Comics #wildstorm #crossover #comics #DC comics #the authority #fiction #speculative fiction #warren ellis #neil gaiman #century babies #midnighter #apollo

[morpheuslikestodream]

PUCKER: a Sandman Universe fanfic

*The following is extended and lifted from the Sandman: Seasons of Mist storyline. This is a mere writing exercise and honorary gesture to play within the confines of the world created by Neil Gaiman and all creators, with honor and respect. :) 

There was a woman who achieved glory upon a vent of gushing air. Of course, she had already gained fame, and fortune, but it was the image, the stance – legs slightly bent, knees inverted, arms locked and hands clasping her dress – that cemented itself in the collective. Poor, tragic Marilyn, her fists securing that white ivory cocktail dress as it danced in the wind, like a skinned swan or a hungry lily attempting to devour its host.

Go on. Visualize it. The dress and the damsel wed together over that gushing vent. She would always be tattooed in the eye of your mind, a girl symbol, caught in a flirtatious up-shoot of tragedy. You’ll see her, the image, in commercials and magazines and the chronicles of filmography. She’ll be immortalized in wax. You’ll smile at her as if she were an intimate friend or fond crush from a bygone youth or a pretty face you wish you had, all fulfilled vicariously in that bombshell visage.

And if you could envision her, so could they.

“The gods have come for you,” Susano O-No-Mikoto addressed her coldly, like an art collector attaining their next commission. His hair was black, pulled back into a bun, and he possessed a thin, wispy beard that sharpened into a point. He wore a scarlet robe, delicate and silky, and his eyes, which scrutinized her with an impersonal fondness, appeared to be of some Asian nationality. “As a private individual for the pantheon of my mother, the Queen Izanami, it is a grace, Miss Monroe, to be welcomed into our collection. There is a special wing that exclusively houses Americana and Western iconography.”

Marilyn didn’t understand any of this.

And she couldn’t speak, her mouth failed to beg for clarity. It was the lips, frozen, puckered lips. And the wind, blowing perpetually beneath her, danced her dress like a rabid beast. While the robed man continued, Marilyn’s focus was consumed by the dress, and here she had to convince herself she was more than this accoutrement.

“Come. Follow,” said the god. And while he spoke, she strived to recall who she was. She had entered the world as a woman, yes, and she had taken her grand exit as a star, in the same City of Angels. She had been an actress, the wife of a playwright and a baseball legend and maybe mistress to dead presidents. She was a person, goddammit, of flesh and blood, of rumor and glamor.

None of that mattered at the moment, not in her current situation.

Because Marilyn couldn’t move. She had tried. She really had, but her body refused to budge. She was alive, or she was dead. She was on-stage, or off. There were cameras in the shadows and spotlights from oblivion. Eyes in the flashes of light. And she couldn’t move because, again, her legs were bent, the knobs of her knees pressed together, arms rigid, hands taming the white bastard dress, and that cold, cold air licking her from underneath.

And lips, puckered.

Marilyn felt no trace of self here – wherever here was. Had she died? Was she being punished, because your savior was revoked if you did that act, even if that wasn’t for certain? Whatever had happened had stolen her humanity. Marilyn might have been a wax statue, a fixed caricature, someone’s midnight wank. And perhaps all those were true; after all, she was an icon now, and icons could be many things. Despite that, whoever they were now cared nothing of the personal touches, no, the gods regarded her as a pretty face in the American collective. That’s what mattered.

Puckered lips.

Susano O-No-Mikoto escorted her through his mother’s underworld, strange halls cluttered with armors and museum props. She spotted a display of a toilet that perhaps once sat the rear of a king. In his rambling, he used words like eclectic and hybridization and efficiency. His words were bloated with pride, like an uppity hunter who sought and attained the rarest treasures. But those words meant nothing to Marilyn. She still hadn’t forgotten the kind visage of the woman with raven black hair with the shadow filled with the flapping of wings in flight.

“…we hope to continue down this line,” continued the god, “acquiring you, we can acquire others. John F. Kennedy is in Hell. But his effigy is strong in the artifacts of his demise. Lee Harvey Oswald could be ours. The grassy knoll itself harbors a sentience all its own as well. The prospects of our ambitions are limitless. It is said…”

And when Marilyn refocused, Susano had stopped to inspect her, his breath – scented with the promise of storms – was cold and brutal, and a pointy finger tapped his lips, the vaguest hint of a smile on his arrogant face. She felt no love from him, no real love. Not like the love Jesus and the Lord promised her as she grew. And she had been a good person; she deserved better than to not have love. And yet the man, who might’ve been a god, cared nothing for her as the person. He only desired the spirit of what she was. But a transcendence within a certain collective didn’t change her stature. It wasn’t her. All the little details of who she was were sprinklings upon a personal mythology that only bred the impersonal. The world, cultures come and gone, could only see her in the stars. 

And as for the little details, did those matter?

No, not to him.

And then he was gone.

When Marilyn was alone, “They have you too,” rumbled a deep and heavy voice from the room. “You are beautiful, as I was, although you are not as beautiful as the one I carried to the top of the world.”

Marilyn winced, startled.

“Be still, woman. We are family now, and I will protect you if I must. If I can.”

“Where am I?” Marilyn piped.

“The assimilation of the American Pantheon. The Underworld. Hell. Who can know for sure?”

“Who are you?” Her voice trembled. “Who’s there?”

“You remind me of her,” said the deep voice.

“Of her? Who?”

“You look like her, in your fashion, a pair of eyes and pretty hair. The one I carried to the top of the world. I was king there, before I fell, before I was forced to fall, although I confess I attained immortality in that moment, I think. At least, I’d like to look at it that way. The tragedy, the descent.”

“Are…are you…the devil?” Marilyn stammered.

Ignoring her, “They can fear you and love you and cry for you. When the tears are shed is when we become idols.”

She needed to see the face. She had to. “Oh, Mister,” she pleaded, “please come forward.”

And the beast revealed itself.

Marilyn would’ve screamed if her lips were puckered, if they could ever alter. Her frozen stance did not permit. Instead the dress blew more frantically. * “I must take my absence. Opportunities abroad bless us. The gods of Nippon and her highest majesty, the Queen, my mother Izanami, must not squander the chance in attaining most fruitful grace. If the key belongs to our kingdom…” the Asian man in his fancy gowns who smelled like a thunderstorm or a coming rain shower departed from the room through an entrance that didn’t really exist. In the silence of an attic filled with antiques from Atlantis or Wall Street or Hollywood, the white-haired star with her puckered lips kept her gaze down, until sheepishly she dared to lock eyes with the gorilla. And the gorilla rested his black hands upon his massive ape pecs and exhaled forcefully from nostrils that flared out in angst and boredom.

“I would have found the stars,” King Kong said after some time.

Marilyn raised an eyebrow, oh?

“I could have climbed forever.” Kong drummed his fingers on his chest. “It wasn’t me who was limited; it was only the ladder in which I ascended. Just me and her, the one that wasn’t you. I would’ve reached for the moon, then the stars themselves, and whatever is above that. I was limited by them, because a monster could only ascend so far and then they fall, and then they love you. In death you gain humanity; a posthumous flavor of idolatry and what you represented. You become your fall because that’s how people remember you. Not the details. It’s all what you could have been; all the what-ifs. And that’s how a star is born. That’s how idols rise.”

And the gorilla was done then, crossing its arms, and saying no more. In the silence, Marilyn felt a quiver in her lip, a tear in the corner of her eye. If she could unpucker her lips she would’ve smiled fondly at the beast and his words. After some time she glided towards him, her hungry frilly dress shooting up around her, and she moved next to him and the two touched, so slightly. Time faded then. It came in and out in waves and blurs. And sometime a hole opened in the world and a vast shadow filled the space for a moment. The sound of wings beat around them.

“Hey, down there!” called a perky voice that was kind, yet filled with urgency. “Things are a mess around here. It’s a Hell thing. Anyway,” the girl trailed, “I’ve got lots of work, you know, and, well, if you wanted to perhaps transition in a sense, I’m here. I’ll always be here, even if I’m not. Ok? But the doors open. Mister O-No-Mikoto’s dreams of attaining Hell are dead. I took them when the fiery torch was passed on to another pair of angels. And besides the mighty storm god of Nippon is in a bit of a predicament. Sorry. Talking too much.” Like that she was gone.

After a moment, hesitantly, King Kong moved to his feet. He climbed the walls and reached towards the ceiling exit. And before he departed, he looked towards her. “Come. You are not her but I can carry you to the top of the world, again.” And he took Marilyn in his grip and they ascended together towards the stars. “The winds are on your side,” said the King, “and he was a god of storms. Perhaps there’s irony in that. Or perhaps we shall rise as high as the gods allow.”

#neil gaiman #Sandman #sandman universe #vertigo #fiction #creative writing #mythology #books #fanfic #fantasy #fables #Fable Unbound

[morpheuslikestodream]

Swamp Thing should be part of your diet. If you don’t consume enough greens, you know you’re missing something. And Swamp Thing is that salad you must consume into your life. So eat your veggies and buy this book. It’s good for you.

The Swamp Thing #5 story by Ram V art by John McCrea cover by Mike Perkins ON SALE : 7/6/21 $3.99 US | 32 PAGES | FC | DC 5 of 10 card stock variant cover by Brian Bolland US $4.99 Newly armed with the knowledge and powers he gained from the Green and yet lonelier than ever, Levi Kamei is pulled once more into service as the Avatar of the Green is summoned by primal forces to the city of London, where old ideas lie buried, slowly leaching into the reality above. The scars of old wars and the dangers of past ideologies resurface as the Swamp Thing must team up with an old trench-coated acquaintance and his new protégé to save the present from the atrocities of our past.

#levi kamei #swamp thing #dc #ram v #mike perkins #john constantine #fiction #the hellblazer #hype

[morpheuslikestodream]

I’m a long time Ninja Turtle fan. Nostalgia continues to bring me back when the franchise adds another comic series or cartoon, because I’m a sucker to see how every new iteration reinterprets the Turtles.

That being said, how is Rise of the TMNT? And more importantly, is the series available to purchase?

#teenage mutant ninja turtles #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #tv show #nickelodeon #dvdcollector #cartoons #mystical #action

[morpheuslikestodream]

Yet another list the prematurely cancelled Sandman Universe Hellblazer comic made it on.

Come on, folks. Don’t cut the masterpieces. I keep screaming this out, my hopes for a renewed Season 2 to the Si Spurrier Hellblazer.

#hellblazer #black label #sandman #sandman universe #neil gaiman #si spurrier #dc comics #vertigo comics #at&t #comics #fiction #graphic novel #aaron campbell

[morpheuslikestodream]

Doom patrol going in blind soo I'm okay without comics

Yea absolutely. It’s so different from the comics, even if you read them after, you’d have a lot of new experiences. Dive in. It’s the best kind of weird. Let me know what you think.

[morpheuslikestodream]

If you ever wondered if life existed in the moon, had a creative spat with your muse, experienced an influx of too many ideas that your fingers and brain couldn’t keep up with your creativity, then Fable Unbound may be for you.

Fable Unbound is a fiction fantasy about art and expression, moving on from old loves and older drafts, and what happens on a very bizarre, existential level when the creative process withers with stagnancy and pent up frustrations.

It was heavily inspired by the works of Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan, Neil Gaiman, Haruki Murakami, and Charlie Kaufman.

Check it out and spread it like a delightful infection that inspires you, where the symptoms are art and creation and nice intimate sessions with your own muses.

Feel free to contact me. I’m down for networking.

#books #writers on tumblr #my writing #author #selfpublishing #amazon kdp #fiction #speculative fiction #surreality #magical realism #urban fantasy #novels

[morpheuslikestodream]

I’ve been an idiot. For whatever strange reason, I initially was not hooked by the Doom Patrol show now on HBO Max. I thought it looked well made; it adapted heavily from the brilliant Morrison era; yet it didn’t catch me. I jumped back in with the fourth episode and have binged it and CANNOT wait for Season 3. The show blew me away. Not merely an adaptation but a full on reimagining of the already amazing comics. They took all the best elements of Morrison (pretty much every aspect) and put it in a blender to come up with something equally amazing. Throw in some scants and sex ghosts and it’s a winner. (I’m looking at you, Way and Pollack). This is literally a new story (of an old story) for all those fans of the Morrison era.

#hbo series #hbo max #doom patrol #vertigo comics #grant morrison #fiction #tv show #writers on tumblr