Madame Xanadu #11

If you enjoyed Gaiman's Sandman, you should be reading this book.  I hate the impulse to say those words about every good Vertigo title.  Fables.  100 Bullets.  Y: the Last Man.  All brilliant works of sequential fiction.  I adore all of them.  None of them were as much like Sandman as Madame Xanadu is. 

Both feature a largely unused, unexplored character from DC's history.  Both started slowly, but powerfully, pulling in characters from around the DC Universe (anyone remember the Martian Manhunter issue of Sandman?).  Both have a deep mythology.  Both have a complex narrative that requires multiple timelines to make sense.  Both are ambitious.  Both feature amazing art (well, Sandman was a little weak until Sam Keith left).

So far, they are similar, and this issue starts a guest arc by Vertigo's Sandman.  No, the other one, the one with the Mystery Theatre.  In that, and many other ways, Madame Xanadu is more the spiritual child of Sandman than any other Vertigo book I've read.  There are differences, of course, in content and form, but the similarities run deep enough that any fan of Sandman who, like me, has longed for a comic book in the same vein, something to fill the hole left when Gaiman went on to write mediocre novels, should be reading this book.