Review: House of Whispers #2

House of Whispers #2 from DC/Vertigo“s Sandman Universe is out this week and its timing for the comic-pop cultural world is pretty perfect. The book, which may be the best corollary contribution to Gaiman“s original vision of the Sandman story worlds, follows the otherworldly exploits of Erzulie Freda Dahomey, Nalo Hopkinson“s brilliant interpretation of the Haitian African spirit of love and glamour. The timing is right because one of the MCU“s favorite actor“s, Michael B. Jordan, is still be dragged on social media for suggesting that black folklore and mythology are largely non-existent. This just ain“t so in the world of comics ”“ House of Whispers (and Image“s Jook Joint) are just a couple of titles, amongst many others, that play on, interpolate, and refashion Black diasporic mythologies for the comic book page. Sorry Killmonger.

For fans of the Sandman Universe, the magic of the characters and of the worlds that the characters inhabit is often achieved along a complex set of narrative coordinates. First, the Sandman stories feature the personification of a ubiquitous human concept like dreams/the dreaming. Next, the stories play on the porous boundaries between the supernatural world and whatever approximation of our real world that exists within the comic“s story world. And finally, the fluidity of the boundaries between these two aforementioned worlds and our reality are further blurred by a complex arrangement of powerful allusions to our literature and classic mythologies.

Nalo Hopkinson is an established, critically acclaimed writer in this regard. See “Brown Girl in the Ring” for ready reference. Her sensibility for the Sandman Universe is a gift for fans of Gaiman“s original work and a boon for any other readers who are coming on board in this current iteration of theses kinds of stories from DC/Vertigo. House of Whispers #2 will be somewhat hard to follow without the set-up established in the title“s debut issue. Mistress Erzulie is coming to terms with the disruptive event that has set the entire Sandman universe on its head. For her part in this saga this also means that she is, at least for now, disconnected from the devoted following from which she draws some of her divine power.

The parallel tale in House of Whispers follows a family of young women in New Orleans. One of them has been possessed and in issue number two we begin to understand what her ultimate predicament is. Hopkinson“s story surgically removes one of the most compelling figures from African and Haitian lore and then deposits her seamlessly into the Sandman universe with a healthy dose of the Vodoun iconography from that lore. Like some of the best Sandman stories, distinguishing fact from literary fiction, real world from mythology and our world from theirs, becomes nearly impossible, but it is also all of the fun in reading this brilliant book. 4.5/5.

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(W) Nalo Hopkinson (A) Dominike “Domo” Stanton (CA) Sean Andrew Murray