Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country – The Glass House #2 // Review
Max and Kells are snuggling on a couch together in hell. It might not exactly be hell, but it IS a place called The King of Pain, which is inhabited by all kinds of demons and things. It’s not a pretty place they find themselves in, and there are a great many issues with inhuman desires in Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country – The Glass House #2. Writer James Tynion IV continues a deep, moody supernatural horror drama that is coaxed through the shadows onto the page by artist Patricio Delpeche. Though there is some intriguing conflict between mortals, immortals, spirits, and demons, Tynion and company are trying to move through far too many different political matters to generate a story that is terribly smooth or compelling.
Max is falling in love with her. She’s not comfortable with her own past and doesn’t feel as though he should be, either. He’s a fool in love, though...totally ready to accept her regardless of the fact that she’s dead, and she’s seen so much in her life and afterlife that she’d rather forget. His total confidence in their love is enough to make her question her own discomfort with him, but shouldn’t his lack of concern over life, death, and hell be a bit of a red flag for her?
Tynion is doing a lot beyond the relationship between Max and Kells. So much of it lacks any real depth on any real level, though. The real heart of horror rests in the universals of passion, emotion, life, and death. Get too lost in the politics between beings of great supernatural power, and it all ends up feeling a little cheap and disinteresting. If the supernatural horror can be told in a way that wouldn’t lose much in traditional non-supernatural drama...then it’s really only using the drama for decoration. So much of what Tynion is doing in the first couple of issues of the series feels like it COULD be done without the horror.
There’s a powerful emotional resonance to Delpeche’s art that seems like it could take Tynion’s story and turn it into something much more potent than it has any right to be. The initial scene between two lovers at the beginning of the book is familiar enough to be a straight-ahead romantic drama, but the dark shadows and moody, dreamy restlessness of the art suggests something that is tied much deeper into the heart of reality. This isn’t some simple drama. Delpeche is wise not to amplify the supernatural too much in the course of the issue, but there’s strong enough spectral darkness around the edges of the drama to make it all resonate.
There’s a really good story somewhere in the center of what Tynion’s bringing to the page. Theoretically, when it’s finished, the full mini-series could easily be cut down into a deeply satisfying single issue about the central romance between the businessman and the dead girl. As it is, there’s simply too much going on that isn’t interesting.
