Marvel Masterworks: The Black Panther, Volume 1 by Don McGregor, Rich Buckler, Billy Graham, et al.

Marvel Masterworks Presents The Black Panther, Volume 1: Collecting Jungle Action Nos. 6-24

Collection published: 2016
Contents originally published: 1973-76
Read: February 2023

Writer: Don McGregor

Pencilers: Rich Buckler, Billy Graham, Gil Kane, Keith Pollard
Inkers: Klaus Janson, P. Craig Russell, Pablo Marcos, Dan Green, Billy Graham, Bob McLeod, Jim Mooney, Keith Pollard
Letterers: Tom Orzechowski, Dave Hunt, Art Simek, Joe Rosen, Charlotte Jester, Karen Mantlo, Janice Chiang, Denise Wohl, Harry Blumfield, Irving Watanabe, Shelly Lefferman

The second installment in my series of Black Panther posts brings me to the Black Panther's first ongoing series, a run in Jungle Action by Don McGregor, which is made up of two stories: Panther's Rage and The Panther vs. the Klan! The first story takes T'Challa back to Wakanda after his sojourn to America, along with his girlfriend Monica, who I guess must be from some Avengers stories I haven't read. Panther's Rage inspired the Black Panther movie, as it's about an attempt by Erik Killmonger to depose T'Challa from the throne of Wakanda.

At the same time he wrote this, Don McGregor was also writing Killraven, of which I am a big fan, and this is very similar: wordy and portentous, perhaps verging into pretentious, with a large emphasis on character and theme. Like Killraven, it has a lot of the trappings of superhero comics, but it is not one. Panther's Rage is a war comic, a war in a nation, a war in a people, and a war in one man. He fights grotesque villains working for Killmonger, but it's more like a fever dream at times, surreal battles that are really there to illuminate what's happening inside T'Challa.

I'll take all the Black Panther vs. vicious monsters you've got.
from Jungle Action vol. 2 #10 (art by Billy Graham & Klaus Janson)

I can't say I always liked it. It gets a bit repetitive at times, and the ongoing plot doesn't move very quickly. Sometimes there were just so many words. The series had eleven different letterers across its eighteen issues, and I can see why: why do more than two issues of this when you can go letter some Captain America comic with half the dialogue and none of the narration? But Billy Graham and Rich Buckler capture power in their layouts and art, and sometimes the thing whole rises to poetry.

Monica wears the hippest outfits.
from Jungle Action vol. 2 #15 (art by Billy Graham & Dan Green)

McGregor builds up a recurring cast around T'Challa, and I look forward to seeing if future writers keep these people's lives going. Indeed, if the story has a single success, it's in convincing you that though Wakanda is a strange place, it is a real place. It is a country with people and history and geography and conflict. I suspect that will be its legacy.

Maybe my favorite part of the whole run: Killmonger's two dopey followers that the Black Panther is forever getting the drop on.
from Jungle Action vol. 2 #12 (art by Billy Graham & Klaus Janson)

This makes it all the more inexplicable that for its second arc, McGregor had T'Challa go to the American South with Monica to investigate the apparent suicide of her sister. The Ku Klux Klan plays a big role, as does a not-the-KKK organization, the Dragon Clan. Gone are all the characters and history he had so painstakingly built up; T'Challa himself suddenly feels less plausible as he for some reason never takes off his Black Panther outfit. There are still fun parts—Monica's solitaire-obsessed father—and interesting imagery, but the investigation moves at a crawl, and nothing has really happened at the point where the story suddenly ends because the book was cancelled for low sales.

The Dragon Clan outfits lack the effective simplicity of the real KKK.
from Jungle Action vol. 2 #19 (art by Billy Graham & Bob McLeod)

Don McGregor and his collaborators would be soon replaced by Jack Kirby. I will be curious if Kirby's return to the character he cocreated keeps any of McGregor's innovations, but I fear I already know the answer...

(Somewhat weirdly, Marvel would actually get another writer and artist to finish the Klan storyline in three issues of Marvel Premiere, over three years after Jungle Action was cancelled. Like, why? If it wasn't worth doing at the time, why was it worth doing years later? I cannot imagine a comics publisher nicely capping off a mediocre run like this now. Those issues of Marvel Premiere are in another Marvel Masterworks Presents The Black Panther volume, but alas that one is not on Hoopla.)

ACCESS AN INDEX OF ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES HERE

Review: Ironwolf: Fires of the Revolution by Howard Chaykin, John Francis Moore, Michael Mignola, and P. Craig Russell

Side note: my review of the 2015 audiobook of the 1995 novel that inspired the 2007 episode, Doctor Who: Human Nature by Paul Cornell, is up at Unreality SF! Read by Lisa Bowerman, as it deserved to be.

Comic trade paperback, 96 pages
Published 1993 (originally 1992)
Acquired and read August 2017

Ironwolf: Fires of the Revolution

Writers: Howard Chaykin and John Francis Moore

Penciller: Michael Mignola
Inker: P. Craig Russell
Colorist: Richmond Lewis
Letterer: Bob Lappan

Before reading it, I had thought Ironwolf: Fires of the Revolution would be a retelling of the events of Howard Chaykin's original IronWolf* story in the new context of his Twilight story. It turns out that Fires of the Revolution is largely a sequel to the 1973-74 IronWolf, albeit one that retcons it a little bit to fit it into the future history established by Twilight. The original IronWolf concerned struggles over the "Empire Galaktika"; Fires of the Revolution quickly establishes that this is a high-faluting name for a group of three planets. The capital of the Empire Galaktika was Earth; Fires of the Revolution clarifies that early human colonists named a ton of planets "Earth." This does require us to ignore that in the original series, IronWolf visited the Grand Canyon, but it mostly all fits together (except for the Tales of the House of IronWolf back-ups, but they weren't such a big deal anyway).

Well, I say it all fits together, but Fires of the Revolution actually opens with a retelling of an event from the first issue of IronWolf, Weird Worlds #8: Lord Ironwolf's burning down of his family's ancestral forests of anti-gravity wood, to keep them out of the hands of his brother, who's working with the Empress Erika. I complained that in the original, this moment seemed underplayed; here the writers and artists turn it into the big dramatic moment it deserved to be. From there, though, Fires of the Revolution shifts into following up rather than retelling: Ironwolf and Shebaba's fledgling revolution is cut short when one of their own betrays them. The empress is willing to cut a deal with the rebels and form a parliamentary government, but only on the condition of Ironwolf's death, so one of Ironwolf's allies betrays him.

It's a slightly different world than the original IronWolf stories of two decades prior: less sword-and-planet warlord, and more courtly intrigue. Penciller Mike Mignola follows this new approach with visuals that come right out of the French Revolution: his Empress Erika is a highly refined aristocrat, not the sultry seductress of Chaykin's originals. (Though, of course, she is no less venomous underneath.) In the highly repressed world of this Empire Galakitka, Lord Ironwolf is different from the other aristocrats: something primal and barbaric, full of energy, willing to burn the world down if it means progress might result. This resonates with the larger story of Twilight, too (to which this is a sidequel; Homer Glint puts in an appearance, and everyone in this story can live forever because of what happened over there), in that Ironwolf claims that if the Empire Galakitka is integrated into humanity's galactic civilization, it can reverse some of the stagnation that has set in.

On the whole, Fires of the Revolution is kind of pulpy just like the original IronWolf, but in a different way. Lots of fights and betrayals and fires and shadow and plotting, but the universe feels darker and less swashbuckling. But I would partially attribute that to putting the fabulously gloomy Mignola on art. I enjoyed reading it on the whole, and looking at it even more. I still do have one complaint: I get what motivates Ironwolf's personal goals. He is a simple man at heart, and he wants revenge for the various ways he's been wronged. (There's a lot of them by this point-- basically everyone who ever threw in with him was killed.) But what motivates him politically? As an "aristo" what makes him want to rid the Empire Galaktika of aristocratic control and put a democracy in place? This was a weakness in the original IronWolf and continues to be one here.

(This book was originally published as a graphic novel in hardcover in 1992, and released in paperback in 1993. DC finally collected Chaykin's Twilight in 2015; it would be cool if they also released a collection of both Fires of the Revolution and the original IronWolf stories from Weird Worlds. It would make a nice little 150ish-page space epic.)

* As always, it's hard to tell how comic book character names ought to be capitalized. While the text pieces in the 1986 reprint special used "IronWolf," Walt Simonson's introduction to this volume goes with "Ironwolf," so I am capitalizing that way in the context of this volume.

Review: Invasion! by Keith Giffen, Bill Mantlo, Todd McFarlane, Bart Sears et al.

Comic trade paperback, 256 pages
Published 2008 (contents: 1988)
Acquired and read June 2015

Invasion!

Plot and Breakdowns: Keith Giffen
Script: Bill Mantlo

Pencils: Todd McFarlane, Keith Giffen, Bart Sears
Inks: P. Craig Russell, Al Gordon, Joe Rubinstein, Todd McFarlane, Tom Christopher, Dick Giordano, Pablo Marcos
Letters: Gaspar, Agustin Mas, John Costanza
Colors: Carl Gafford, Gene D'Angelo

I don't blog about it much because they're not technically books, but I've been reading through DC's uncollected space-based superhero comics. I bought and read Invasion! because it essentially bridges the gap between The Omega Men (1983-86) and L.E.G.I.O.N. (1989-94). A number of the Omega Men are killed off to prove the situation is serious in that way I despise, while a couple of the characters who would star in L.E.G.I.O.N. are introduced.

The basic premise of Invasion! is that a number of alien races, led by the Dominators (primarily appearing in Legion of Super-Heroes) ally to invade the Earth. It's a neat idea, though as someone who just Omega Men, it was odd to see the Psions, the Citadel, and the Warlords of Okaara all on the same side; the Psions and the Citadel are devoted enemies, and Okaara is where most of the Omega Men trained to fight the Citadel! But it's actually realistic; these aren't races of "good" and "evil," they're just political groups whose interests usually conflict but happen to align in this particular instance.

Anyway, I bet this was really cool to read as it came out. Invasion! consists of three 80-page chapters, each of which ends with a game-changer that I'm sure played out in all the ongoings coming out in between. Collected here, though, it often feels superficial; there's no real point-of-view character except for some of the folks captured on the alien Starlag... and they're not in the main action for most of the story! You can see how this would have worked in monthly format though; the main series provides the scale-- exposition is very effectively provided by newspapers television news coverage-- while the ongoings show how these global events play out on a local scale.

Weirdly, though, even key events within the title are given short shrift. The change in allegiance of the Daxamites is a big deal, yet none of them ever display distinct personalities. As far as I can tell, none of them even have names! (Though L.E.G.I.O.N. '90 would establish one of them to be the father of future Legionnaire Lar Gand.)

The space heroes-- my whole reason for being here-- have surprisingly little to do. The Omega Men are ciphers, and don't really convince as the characters written by Roger Slifer and Todd Klein. The characters who would go on to star in L.E.G.I.O.N., on the other hand, contribute little and are easily forgotten; you could read L.E.G.I.O.N. '89 #1 without ever having read Invasion! easily. Oddly, the new characters who get the most setup are the Blasters... whose series lasted exactly one issue.

The hodgepodge of artists here doesn't help. Todd McFarlane was supposed to pencil the whole thing, but he disappears about halfway through, replaced at first by Keith Giffen and then by Bart Sears; meanwhile, an army of inkers goes to work. The art is for the most part undistinguished, sometimes confusing, sometimes very good. It could have been worse, and the big crossover kind of calls for a certain genericness of style, but I suspect that everyone involved has done better works elsewhere.

I was amused to discover the presence of old-school Justice League mascot Snapper Carr. I was even more amused to see him develop teleportation powers, as I'd only just read Final Crisis Companion, featuring a teleporting Snapper Carr. The DC universe, it connects in odd and unexpected ways sometimes.

Faster than a DC Bullet: The Sandman Spin-Offs, Part XXVII: The Dream Hunters

Comic hardcover, 126 pages
Published 2009 (contents: 2008-09)
Borrowed from the library
Read November 2012

The Sandman: The Dream Hunters

Original words by Neil Gaiman

Graphicplay and art by P. Craig Russell
Coloring by Lovern Kindzierski

Lettering by Todd Klein

I expected to love The Dream Hunters, P. Craig Russell's comic adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Yoshitaka Amano's The Dream Hunters. After all, the original was excellent, and Russell's last adaptation of a Gaiman prose original, Murder Mysteries, had also been excellent. But The Dream Hunters somehow, despite typically strong artwork from Russell, never takes off. Perhaps it's that after Amano's amazing imagery, even P. Craig Russell pales in comparison? This isn't bad, but it's not sufficiently better or different than the original to justify its own existence, sadly. But maybe I went in with too-high expectations-- it's had to imagine what a work as good as The Dream Hunters original and Murder Mysteries combined would have been like.

Faster than a DC Bullet: The Sandman Spin-Offs, Part XVII: Endless Nights

Comic hardcover, 152 pages
Published 2003
Borrowed from the library
Read August 2012

The Sandman: Endless Nights

Written by: Neil Gaiman

Lettered by: Todd Klein

Neil Gaiman's triumphal return to The Sandman is a series of seven short stories, each one covering a different member of the Endless, those squabbling anthropomorphic personifications who exist beyond gods and time. Each one is drawn by a different artist, and they take place across a whole range of times.

Death: "Death and Venice"

Artist: P. Craig Russell

Colorist/Separator: Lovern Kindzierski

I'd actually read this story before, in The Absolute Death. You bet I love any chance to experience P. Craig Russell's glorious art, and it's as sharp and clean here as ever. He draws Death at her absolute prettiest, and that's how I prefer her. The story has its moments-- many of them, in fact-- but somehow never fully engages me. I'd nearly completely forgotten it until I reread it, except for the dancing paper men, and though that's not super-important, it's not a bad thing to remember, either.

Desire: "What I've tasted of Desire"

Artist: Milo Manara

This is about a Celtic village in the pre-Roman period, or something like that anyway, where a woman gains the power of Desire in order to make a man want her. Unexpected craziness ensues. Like before, there are some very great moments, but I'm not sure what they're all in aid of. Milo Manara's art looks like he's been tracing glamour models: every woman has big pouty lips, has long perfect legs, and is always on the verge of showing her ass if she leans over just a little bit more in that short skirt. It turns "desire" into something crass, which is against the whole idea here.

Dream: "The Heart of a Star"

Artist: Miguelanxo Prado

Though this story is about Dream, the character, it's not really about dreams. If anything it's more about Desire, the character, than "What I've tasted of Desire" was! Set near the beginning of the universe, this story shows Dream bringing his girlfriend Killalla of the Glow to a party with a number of the Endless in attendance. It's supposed to explain the antipathy between Dream and Desire, but it doesn't really. At the beginning of story, Dream has some super-exposition dialogue about how much he loves Desire, then Desire betrays him. We neither see the friendship between them nor understand the motive for betrayal.

There are some awesome ideas here, though, playing with the toys of the DC universe in a way that The Sandman has avoided for a long time, but what works about the story has little to do with Dream or dreams, as we understand neither better at its end.

Despair: "Fifteen Portraits of Despair"

Artist: Barron Storey
Designer: Dave McKean

This is not a comic story, but a series of collages, words overlaid on text, about people in moments of despair. You feel depressed and anguished after reading these things; they're definitely the best and most appropriate stories in the book.

Delirium: "Going Inside"

Artist: Bill Sienkiewicz

A number of delirious people are recruited for a mission by Daniel, the second Dream. Bill Sienkiewicz's art really captures the art and the concept, and though the ending doesn't make any sense, it's hard to imagine how a story about Delirium could. Matthew the Raven puts in a brief appearance, which is always nice. I think by the time this was published he had died in The Dreaming. Oh, and Barnabas is here, too. I like him. This story is clearly a fragment of a larger picture, one we'll probably never see, but it's probably better that way.

Destruction: "On the Peninsula"

Artist: Glenn Fabry

This one-- about an archaeologist digging up artifacts from the future-- is a nice little story. Probably my second-favorite in the book. A simple, personal story, and we get good appearances from Destruction and Delirium, picking up right from the previous story, in fact.

Destiny: "Endless Nights"

Artist: Frank Quitely

The art by Frank Quitely is of course very nice, but it's not a story. More a kind of poem maybe? Destiny: A Chronicle of Deaths Foretold was pretty pointless, so maybe it's for the best that there's no attempt to use Destiny as the key character in a story.


I wanted to like this book more than I did. Most of the art is top-notch, and the imagery and ideas are great. But as I often find with Neil Gaiman, there's a noticeable gap between the story we did get and the story we could have gotten. These things could stand to be in focus a little bit more. Though, I suppose that if they were, he wouldn't be Neil Gaiman anymore.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Lucifer, Part IX: The Wolf Beneath the Tree

Comic trade paperback, 159 pages
Published 2005 (contents: 2004)
Borrowed from the library
Read February 2012

Lucifer: The Wolf Beneath the Tree

Writer: Mike Carey

Artists: Peter Gross, Ryan Kelly, P. Craig Russell, Ted Naifeh

Colorists: Daniel Vozzo, Lovern Kindizierski
Letterers: Jared K. Fletcher, Ken Lopez

The feature of this volume is obviously "Lilith."  Just like its mother series, the 50th issue of Lucifer is an extra-long flashback story gorgeously drawn by the legendary artist of Killraven, P. Craig Russell.  It looks great, of course, better than most of the art we see in Lucifer, but I was a little disappointed in the story.  It tells the story of the construction of the Silver City (thus firmly establishing that Lucifer is not set in the same continuity as Murder Mysteries) and the rebellions of Lucifer.  But with an absent God and a lot of bickering, it all feels so... petty.  It's not as interesting as I think the beginning of Lucifer's rebellion should have been, nor as high-minded.  I did really like seeing young Mazikeen, though!

There's also a short side story called "Neutral Ground," where demons from Hell and from the Disapora meet for negotiations being held within a man's soul-- poor him.  This one was fun, in a black comedy sort of way.

Most of the volume consists of "The Wolf Beneath the Tree" itself, where Fenris of Norse mythology decides to take advantage of God's continuing absence to do... well, something devastating.  I think he wants to destroy the universe, though I'm not sure why.  Like the fight between Lucifer and the comedy Titans in the previous volume, it feels like a sidetrack, a failure to capitalize on the potential of a universe without God.  And then it doesn't end so much as stop.  

 

There's a cameo by Delirium of the Endless, but the best part of the story is definitely the frustrating conversation between Destiny of the Endless, Lucifer, Michael, and Elaine Belloc, where we learn that even Lucifer can lose his cool with sufficient provocation.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Lucifer, Part I: Murder Mysteries

And here we are, starting off on a new installment of Faster than a DC Bullet! I've survived my journey into Marvel, so it's back into the DC universe with yet another Sandman spin-off. (Man, there are an awful lot of these.) It's time to meet Lucifer...

Neil Gaiman's Murder Mysteries

Original Short Story and Radio Play: Neil Gaiman
Graphic Story Script and Art: P. Craig Russell
Coloring: Lovern Kindzierski
Lettering: Galen Showman

Comic hardcover, n. pag. Published 2002. Borrowed from the library. Read December 2011.

Before reading Lucifer proper, I decided to read Murder Mysteries, a graphic novel by P. Craig Russell adapting a short story by Neil Gaiman. Murder Mysteries tells the story of the first murder-- the first murder, even before Abel and Cain, when one angel killed another. It's not technically part of the Sandman/Lucifer canon, since the short story was standalone, and the comic book was published by Dark Horse, but it's Gaiman writing Lucifer, and the story even refers to its environs as the Silver City, which is the domain of the Lord and his angels in the DC universe as well.

The story revolves around an angel named Raguel, the Vengeance of the Lord. He is assigned by Lucifer, the commander of the Host, to investigate the murder of Carasel, one of the angels working to create the universe. From this point on, the story unfolds like your typical murder mystery. Raguel interviews witnesses, those who knew the victim, those who may have had a motive. There's all the detective stuff, like where he interviews people who don't seem to have a connection to the case, but he and you know better.

(There's also a frame story about a slightly weird 20-something Brit, who visits a female friend of his in L.A. and gets a blow job, hearing the whole story from an old guy on a park bench who is actually Raguel. I like the frame, but I don't quite know how integrates with the main story, especially in the slightly disturbing way that it all ends.)

The great thing about this whole detective story thing is how it ends. Raguel calls everyone together into a room (of course he does): Lucifer; Phanuel, the senior designer of the universe; Saraquel, Carasel's partner; and Zephkiel, the other senior designer, who never leaves his cell in the Silver City. Raguel solves the murder, of course, and enacts the Vengeance of the Lord, distintegrating the murderer. (I'm not going to tell you who the murderer is, but there are some pretty big spoilers here, so be careful if you don't want it ruined.) Lucifer reacts badly to the whole thing. "Perhaps Saraquel was the first to love," Raguel says, "but Lucifer was the first to shed tears." Lucifer begins to wonder if the Lord's will is just after all and flies off. It's a powerful scene.

But what comes is even more powerful. Raguel realizes that there is another murder in the room. The Lord Himself.

"Because nothing occurs without a reason, and all the reasons are Yours."

And just like that, Gaiman , in mixing a murder mystery with theology, creates something new out of both. Because at that moment I realized, There is always another murderer in the room, and that murderer is always the Lord. It's one thing to know this-- certainly Gaiman is not the first person to observe the theological problems that result from having an omnipotent creator managing a universe with injustice in it-- but in depicting it through the generic tropes of murder mysteries, Gaiman makes it real to me all over again.

Just like that. I've sometimes been skeptical of Gaiman. I mean, I liked The Sandman a lot, but it took me half the series before I was finally sold on it. This, though, is powerful, creative stuff.

Of course, it's not all Gaiman. He wrote the story on which this was based, but Russell did all the work not only of illustrating it, but converting it into the format of a comic story. I don't know how much the latter involved, but he does a magnificent job at the former. His art is clean and beautiful, everything a story about angels at the beginning of Creation requires. Russell was also the illustrator for Don McGregor's run on Killraven, but suffice it to say that that never sang like this does.

Lucifer is only a small part of this story, but just like that, you understand so much more about him. Lucifer, the comic series, has a lot to live up to if it's going to follow on from this...

Faster than a DC Bullet: The Sandman, Part III: The Absolute Sandman, Volume Three

Comic hardcover, 616 pages
Published 2008 (contents: 1991-2000)
Borrowed from the library
Read September 2010

The Absolute Sandman, Volume Three

Writer: Neil Gaiman
Artists: Jill Thompson, Vince Locke, Bryan Talbot, Mark Buckingham, P. Craig Russell, Michael Zulli, John Watkiss, Dick Giordano, Michael Allred, Shea Anton Pensa, Alec Stevens, Gary Amaro, Kent Williams, Tony Harris, Steve Leialoha
Colorists: Dave Vozzo, Lovern Kindzierski, Sherilyn Van Valkenburgh
Letterer: Todd Klein

As I'd mentioned earlier, I was somewhat lukewarm towards the earlier volumes of The Absolute Sandman. There was certainly an amazing mythology at work, but I found it hard to be interested in Dream as a character; often, I was more invested in the random people who got caught up in his adventures. (Curiously, all of these substitute protagonists seem to usually be women. I wonder if there's anything in that.) But the substory Brief Lives, collected here, changed all that. This story features Dream and his sister Delirium searching for their lost brother Destruction-- and in the process of that, Dream finally has to come to terms with his relationship with his son. It's half a road-trip comedy, half a meditation on knowing when to move on, and half a very dark fairy tale. It's definitely the funniest of the Sandman storylines... but it's also the most touching. I enjoyed every aspect of this one a lot, from Delirium's inane attempts to try to drive a mortal car, to Dream and Destruction's conversation on reuniting, from the first appearance of Merv, the pumpkinheaded janitor of the Dreaming, to the moment where Dream finally goes and sees Orpheus. Most of all, it's great to finally get a sense of Dream as a person. (Inasmuch as an anthropomorphic personification of an abstract universal concept can be one, I suppose.)

What struck me as I was reading it is that The Sandman really is a literary comic book. I mean, there have been plenty of literary graphic novels produced-- non-superhero fare that is done in one sitting. But The Sandman unlike most "highbrow" sequential art pieces, is completely and utterly a comic book: an ongoing, indefinite story. In total, the series comprises some 75 issues, and stories and characters and ideas weave in and out of these issues the same way they might in a Superman or Spider-Man ongoing. Gaiman really utilizes the potential of the comic ongoing to its maximum here, and that is the reason I like The Sandman as much as I do. It might have taken until Brief Lives for me to like The Sandman, but Brief Lives would never have worked without all the preceding issues to lead up to it. Gaiman has utterly mastered one of my favorite aspects of the medium here, and I find that delightful.

A brief word about the other storyline collected in this volume, Worlds' End. This is a collection of one-issue stories set in the world of The Sandman, but unlike many of the other ones, they're connected with a frame narrative. They're also the weakest; most of these did nothing at all for me. Strangely dull for Gaiman.