Tacky and incomprehensible: The Sandman audiobook reviewed

Listening to the tacky and incomprehensible audio-adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel series Sandman, I couldn’t stop thinking about the 19th-century Swiss artist Rodolphe Töppfer.

Did Mr Töppfer realise what he was doing when he one day decided to draw a narrative in sequential panels with captions underneath? His satirical novel in pictures, Histoire de M. Vieux Bois, was published in 1837, and made its way to America five years later as The Adventures of Mr Obadiah Oldbuck. ‘Mr Oldbuck drinks ass’s milk’ reads one caption, and then overleaf: ‘His physician recommending exercise, he buys an Arabian courser.’ Riding the courser, ‘Mr Oldbuck increases his speed, advancing at the rate of ten leagues an hour.’ To modern eyes, Obadiah Oldbuck is something very recognisable indeed. He is the hero of the world’s first comic book.

The superhero era of comics began on the cusp of the second world war. In 1938, the first editions of Superman were published and the first Batman appeared a year later. Captain America — originally just called ‘Super American’, as in my opinion he still should be — arrived to beat up Axis baddies in 1940. After the war, it was clear that world-saving was an American business and the density (and absurdity) of heroes and villains proliferated. Bad guys, who needed to be vanquished and replaced at rapid speeds, were always in short supply: highlights from this era include Hellcow, Doctor Bong and Asbestos Lady, the sworn enemy of the Human Torch.

While the densely peopled, Technicolor doomsdays of the 1960s and ’70s provide the source code for today’s ubiquitous Marvel movies, it was the 1980s that gave mainstream comics the only arty cred they’ve ever managed to garner. Artists and writers began to write darker, more experimental storylines, following in the wake of the comic-book world’s Michelangelo, the Northampton-born author-cum-warlock Alan Moore.