The Dreaming Issue #2: Perspective and Time

The second issue of The Dreaming, written by Simon Spurrier and drawn by Bilquis Evely, undertakes a unique narrative approach to telling its story. Hopping between two separate time periods, the job of the narrator is taken over by a character within the work itself: Merv Pumpkinhead. The time period with the primary perspective features Merv talking to an unknown character as he rants about the problems he’s facing under new leadership. An example of how this plays out can be seen in figure 1, which is the opening page that begins the narrative in medias ras. A majority of the pages however, takes place in the past with Merv’s narration detailing his thoughts on what’s occurring with occasional inset panels returning to Merv in the present. The manner in which Merv’s narration is overlapped with what is happening and how the inset panels operate can be seen in figure 2.

                                                                          Figure #1

                                                                         Figure #2

Through these examples, the unique way in which this issue of The Dreaming treats its audience is established. In figure 1, although the perspective is from another character, the way in which it is done is very much metafictive. For example, Merv refers to the reader’s perspective in the second person multiple times, giving the sense that the audience is this actual character within the narrative. One almost gets the sense that Merv is monologuing to himself, but this notion is broken once the reader’s perspective holds up a gun to Merv, clearly illustrating to the reader that they are not simply viewing the audience perspective, but the perspective of another character. Throughout the entire work the audience’s perspective never speaks until near the end when the tight focus on Merv is broken, as seen in figure 3. To say that the audience’s perspective doesn’t have a voice until the end however, would appear somewhat incorrect. Consider the second panel in figure 1, where Merv asks “what – this?” as though he is asked a question by the unknown speaker about his rotting head. Furthermore, look towards the panel in which the audience perspective draws a gun on Merv in response to his pleading once more. Clearly, the audience perspective – who is only introduced as being Judge Gallows in the very last page – is not inactive as suggested by their physically being able to pull a gun on Merv. At the same time, the reader is not treated to any of what the audience perspective says, even though they should be very much aware that the perspective is saying something.

                                                              Figure #3

In effect, this forces audience interaction on two levels. As Randy Duncan and Matthew J. Smith observe in their The Power of Comics: “[readers] … [use] their imaginations to not only make static images come to life, but also to fill in actions between the panels” (153). This claim was made after observing the myriad of different ways readers described a single sequence of a swordfight. Put simply, readers do not simply fill in gaps, but they fill in gaps as influenced by their own perspective, thus leading to many potential responses. Understanding this approach in relation to the audience of this issue of The Dreaming means that the possibilities for the audience’s perspective are potentially endless until Judge Gallows himself is introduced. The reader knows the perspective is speaking, but they do not know what the perspective is saying, thus they are able to imagine just about anything behind the perspective. As previously touched on, this forced perspective also works on a metafictive level as the audience is made to feel as though they are within the narrative itself. Overall, like its parent series of Sandman, which was heavily metafictive, The Dreaming seems to desire to establish itself as being of a similar metafiction.