From: goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu (David Goldfarb)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc
Subject: The Annotated Books of Magic, book III -- revised
Date: 10 Nov 1992 07:21:36 GMT
Organization: The Sinister Icy Black Hand of Death Club
Reply-To: goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu (David Goldfarb)
NNTP-Posting-Host: avalanche.berkeley.edu
Originator: goldfarb@avalanche.berkeley.edu

	Not a lot of revisions on this one, actually.

                        The Books of Magic
                Book III: The Land of Summer's Twilight
                  By Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess
                  Not yet reprinted in any other form
                    Annotations by David Goldfarb

cover: 	It is not clear who this is supposed to represent. Perhaps another
of Titania's many guises?

p.2	panels 5-6: The first two speculations correspond to two of the 
stories in _Secret Origins_ #10. A _Phantom Stranger_ miniseries from the
mid-eighties portrayed him as an agent of the Lords of Order.

p.3 	panel 2: Cold iron is traditionally harmful to those of Faerie;
it can bar them from an entrance, or even slay them, depending on your
source.
	panel 4: To some extent, this book follows the format of a fairy
tale. Tim will break all (or almost all) of these rules, and be saved
by items he picks up along the way.

p.4	panel 1: A bit of foreshadowing of book IV's ending.

p.6	panel 1: That Rose Spiritus and Dr. Occult interchange is an 
invention of Gaiman's. In Dr. Occult's original series Rose was simply
a secretary/sidekick.

p.7	The stall on the lower left, with all the books, contains several
items of note. The man in dark glasses resembles Neil Gaiman, and the shorter
man next to him resembles (so I'm told) Charles Vess. Reaching up towards
Vess is Rupert Bear, star of a series of children's books. Hanging from 
the ceiling are two references to animated movies directed by Hayao Miyazaki.
The two "owl-bears" on the left are nature spirits from "Tonari no Totoro"
("My Neighbor Totoro"). (There is a third "owl-bear" at the right-hand
edge of the stall, acting as a bookend. There were three nature spirits
in the film.) To their right is the logo of "Majoo no Takyuubin" (literally
"Witch Delivery Service" but usually translated "Kiki's Delivery Service").

p.8 	The armor reflected in the mirror at lower right bears a strong
resemblance to the armor worn by King Auberon in _Sandman_ #19 (which was
also illustrated by Charles Vess).

p.9	panel 1: Are the roots bound to the pole mandrake roots? Or just,
say, ginseng?

p.10	panel 4: Glory bears a distinct resemblance to Isaac Asimov. What
significance this has, I cannot imagine.

p.14	panel 1: There is at least one ballad ("True Thomas" perhaps?)
in which a visitor to Faerie has to wade through a sea of blood for
forty days and forty nights.

p.19	panel 1: In the ballad "True Thomas", a bard named Thomas became
the lover of the Queen of Faerie. When he wished to return to mortal lands,
she ensorceled his tongue so that he could not lie. In some versions of
the tale, this was simply a curse, but in others it included the gift
of prophecy. 
	I don't know of any reference to the incident described; presumably
it's another of Gaiman's inventions.
	panel 5: In Arthurian legend, Joyous Gard was the name of the
castle on the island of Avalon where Arthur lay. (If I'm wrong about this,
no doubt I'll be corrected in a hurry.)

p.23	panel 5: "Chik" is a diminutive suffix in Russian. Baba Yaga is
a character from Russian tales.

p.25	panel 3: Baba Yaga traditionally flies sitting in a mortar and 
holding a pestle. Here she seems to be holding a pestle and sitting on
another pestle. 

p.27	panel 6: We see what is purported to be the Drum Unescapable in
_Sandman_ #43. What a Heliotrope Gamahaean Union may be I have no idea.
Any other reference on Empusa?

p.35	panel 3: In _Sandman_ #19, we see Titania talk to Hamnet Shakespeare,
the son of William Shakespeare. At the end of that tale, we are told that
Hamnet died aged eleven. Evidently the corpse was a changeling, and the
real boy succumbed to Queen Titania's temptation and came to Faerie.

p.36	Skartaris was the setting of _The Warlord_, a series written and
for most of its run drawn by Mike Grell.

p.37	Nightmaster first appeared in _Showcase_ #82.  He was created by 
Jerry Grandenetti and Dick Giordano.

p.38	The Gemworld first appeared in _Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld_ #1.
Amethyst was created by Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn. There was a later
miniseries, written by Keith Giffen, that introduced the Archmage. This
miniseries revealed that the Sorcerer's World from _Legion of Super-Heroes_
was the Gemworld, and that a minor character from _Amethyst_ became the LSH
villain Mordru the Merciless.

p.39 	The blue-caped demon is Etrigan, who has been referenced earlier.
Dr. Occult's narration is consistent with the themes of the _Sandman_
storyline _The Season of Mists_, which at this book's publication was ongoing.

p.40	panel 1: Cain and Abel were the hosts of two horror anthology series;
_House of Mystery_ and _House of Secrets_, respectively. Alan Moore revived
them in a dream sequence in _Swamp Thing_ #33; when Gaiman created the 
Dreaming he incorporated them into it.

p.41	panel 1: This is of course Dream, aka Morpheus, aka the Sandman.
His first appearance was _Sandman_ #1, and he was created by Neil Gaiman
and Sam Kieth.

p.46	panels 4-8 all seem to be faces appearing inside the egg. Panel
4 is obviously Titania in her current guise. Panel 5 bears some resemblance
to the stallkeeper on page 9 (who tried to swap Tim various things for
his heart's desire), but the stallkeeper's hair was different. It also
looks a bit like Snout, but Snout's nose was long and pointed while this
face has a blunt nose. Panel 6 is Baba Yaga. Panel 7 is Titania as she
appeared in _Sandman_ #19. Panel 8 is not immediately clear.
	It seems probable that all of the faces are forms that Titania
has taken -- panels 4 and 7 definitely are, and panel 8 has the same
mouth, as well as similar jewelry to panel 7. The story thus becomes 
a bit more paranoid; all of the people who have tried to catch Tim in
Faerie are in fact one person.
	panel 9: It would seem that Tim, like Merlin, is only half-human.
If the Queen of Faerie is really his mother, then perhaps the face from
panel 8 was the form she took to bear him.

Carl Henderson (chenders@arrisun3.uta.edu) provided creator credits for
Amethyst and the Gemworld.
Tom Galloway (tyg@hq.ileaf.com) gave the creator credits for Nightmaster
and Amethyst.

-- 
   David Goldfarb          | "Bagels can be an enormous force for good or for 
goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu  |  evil. It is up to us to decide how we will use
goldfarb@UCBOCF.BITNET     |  them."    -- Daniel M. Pinkwater