The first time I read The Sandman, I was twelve years old.

I came into it a bit late because the first issues were published before I was even born (and I think the series had already ended by then as well), but I knew from the first time I picked up the graphic novel at my local library, that I was going to read all of it.  I had a history with books that weren’t age appropriate and I probably shouldn’t have been allowed to take it out, but the public system in my neck of South Florida has always been a little lax when it came to graphic novel rating.

As much as I feel a little appalled at how easy it was for me to get books I really shouldn’tve been reading, I feel a little thankful to the library for their lax attitude towards monitoring who was taking out what. If not for librarians too out of the know to realize that Batman: Red Rain was a gorefest of epic and kind of awful proportions, I doubt I’d be the person that I am today.

Certainly, without Red Rain as my gateway to graphic novels, I wouldn’t have known about The Sandman.Read More »