The Gulf Between Conception and Execution
Back in my teenage years, as a young comic book fan, I copied a quote from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and stuck it on my wall. I wasn’t a kid given to this kind of behaviour, but this fragment where Gaiman’s protagonist, Dream, describes the creation of the first Corinthian spoke to me even then: Imagine that you woke in the night and rose, and seemed to see before you another person, whom you slowly perceived to be yourself. Someone had entered in the night and placed a mirror in your sleeping place, made from black metal. You had been frightened only of your reflection. But then the reflection slowly raised one hand, while your own hand stayed still… A dark mirror… That was always the intention… But the gulf between conception and execution is wide and many things can happen along the way. Sandman #57, Neil Gaiman My admiration for this passage came in two parts. The first, unsurprisingly, lay
