The Sandman Universe Special: Thessaly // Review
She's with the studio. She's been given an assignment. That assignment is to get the script treatment from the writer. She receives the script treatment and can get on to the next bit of stress. It's not going to be easy. She's going to get the treatment she's looking for but will have to pay for it in ways that she's not going to understand in The Sandman Universe Special: Thessaly. Writer James Tynion IV weaves a fun little horror drama with artist Maria Llovet. The gradual fade-in of the supernatural fills an enjoyable little horror story peppered with intriguing pages of narrative text.
The name she was given was Jamie Tyler. The woman who answers the door doesn't exactly fit the picture of the guy that was presented to her with the name, but it doesn't really matter. All she needs is the script treatment. The woman finds herself caught up in this..." Madison Flynn Project" that's been following her around. She needs to find out more about it, and the only way to do so is by writing the film treatment. Sometime later, she's showing the woman from the studio a flaccid face that she's got boiling in the kitchen. It's apparent to the studio representative that the woman in question is NOT Jamie Tyler.
Tynion crafts a very tight, little personality around Thessaly, making for a very clever center of gravity. Thessaly is quite aware of the world of darkness lurking at the corners of everything, and she's absorbed in it. As a result, any conversation that she's going to have with a representative of any Hollywood film studio is going to be impossibly bent. She knows what she wants, and she's looking to explore the unknown to find it. Fate has paired her with a woman entangled in the film industry who has NO IDEA what she wants. It's a fun juxtaposition that might ultimately serve as the central conflict to the whole issue.
Llovet keeps very tight shots of Thessaly and the woman from the studio. There's a magnetic intensity about Thessaly that draws every panel very, very close to her. The story's tension is bright across in so many close-ups that there isn't much space for Llovet to establish mood or atmosphere beyond the intensity of the title character. That's perfectly OK. She's atmosphere enough. Something possibly enigmatic about her seems to linger on the page even when you know what she is. Even when you know what she's going through. Llovet is wise to keep the mystery quiet and simple on the page when she could be trying to do more to enhance the mood of the script.
On the whole, it's very sharp and very clever stuff. And powerful forces move around the story in ways that make for some fascinating dynamics. It is a carefully woven story with lots of moving parts that don't seem all that apparent until things wrap up toward the end of the issue. Honestly, it might be one of Tynion's best works in the past couple of years.
