The Sandman: Act II

 After listening to The Sandman, I used one of my audible credits and downloaded The Sandman Act II. There are two long story arcs, Seasons of Mists and A Game of You, and a large number of standalone episodes. As with the original comics, the standalone episodes are far better than the long story arcs, where Gaiman has a tendency to write himself into a corner and then allow the plot to peter out.

The sound production is outstanding, even more so than in the first part. One of the most consistent improvements in the audio/visual arts over the past 20 years has been the steady improvements in the depiction of non-Western cultures in media. We've gone from incomprehensible pidgin Mandarin in Firefly to The Sandman, where a childbirth scene in a Hong Kong hospital is depicted in completely correct and unaccented Cantonese. Color me much impressed.

As with the previous audio production, the big benefit of the audio presentation (aside from the obvious ones --- for people who can't read comics or who are visually impaired) is that Gaiman has no choice but to draw your attention to important details. That makes it hard for you to miss details that might be skipped if you're the type of person to read just all the words of the page and just glance at the pictures.

I can assure you that I'll happily jump in and pay for a month of Audible when Act III shows up and will just use an audible credit to get a copy of it. That's how good this series was. Highly recommended.