SOURCE: Sanders, Joe. “Of Parents and Children and Dreams in Neil Gaiman's Mr. Punch and The Sandman.” Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction 71 (autumn 1997): 18-32.

In the following essay, Sanders explores the theme of knowledge and communication between parents and children in Neil Gaiman's Mr. Punch and his Sandman series, asserting that Gaiman uses these texts to illustrate the affect of misinformation on the minds of children.

“I wouldn't want to gloss over the true facts”, says the narrator of Neil Gaiman's first graphic novel, Violent Cases (1987), lounging comfortably and looking for all the world like a portrait of Gaiman himself. “Without true facts”, he continues, “where are we?” Since Violent Cases goes on to demonstrate how few unquestionably true facts there are and how awkwardly they fit together, the answer to that apparently rhetorical question seems to be that we are, without objective certainties to depend...