The Sandman (comic book)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Sandman, a dark fantasy comic book written by Neil Gaiman for DC Comics, began with a question about a catch. Gaiman remembered the day DC editor Karen Berger offered him a Sandman series. His own reply, as he told it, was: "Um... yes. Yes, definitely. What's the catch?" Berger answered: "There's only one. We'd like a new Sandman. Keep the name. But the rest is up to you." That single condition set the whole project in motion. What did Gaiman build with that much freedom? Who rules the strange realm at the centre of the story, and what does it cost him? How did a monthly comic grow into a long shelf of collected editions, spin-offs and screen adaptations? And why did its author decide to stop?

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• 2. A Name Revived

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  In 1988, Gaiman was writing the miniseries Black Orchid. He wanted a scene for its first issue that used characters from the old "Dream Stream." Those characters included the Kirby Sandman, Brute, Glob, and the brothers Cain and Abel. The scene vanished from later drafts, because Roy Thomas was already using the characters in Infinity, Inc.

  Gaiman did not drop the idea. He began building a treatment for a new series and mentioned it to Berger in passing. Even then, he doubted that DC would accept the pitch. The name he hoped to revive belonged to a DC series that ran from 1974 to 1976. Joe Simon and Michael Fleisher wrote it, and Jack Kirby and Ernie Chua illustrated it.

  Gaiman built his new hero from a single image. He pictured "a man, young, pale and naked, imprisoned in a tiny cell, waiting until his captors passed away... deathly thin, with long dark hair, and strange eyes." The character's black clothing came from a print of a Japanese kimono and from Gaiman's own wardrobe. He wrote an eight-issue outline and gave it to Dave McKean and Leigh Baulch, who drew character sketches. Berger reviewed them, along with a few drawn by Gaiman, and suggested Sam Kieth as the series artist.

  Mike Dringenberg, Todd Klein, Robbie Busch, and McKean joined as inker, letterer, colorist, and cover artist. McKean took an unconventional approach to covers. He persuaded Berger that the protagonist did not need to appear on every one.

  The first issue went on sale on the 29th of November 1988, with a cover date of January 1989. Gaiman called the early issues "awkward." He, Kieth, Dringenberg, and Busch had never worked on a regular series before. Kieth quit after the fifth issue. Dringenberg took over as penciler, and Malcolm Jones III became the inker.

  The opening seven issues drew on early DC and EC Comics. They also borrowed from authors such as Dennis Wheatley, Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, Robert Heinlein, and Alan Moore. Gaiman says he found his own voice with issue eight. As the story grew more complex, his writing slowed. In his words: "When I began writing Sandman, it would take me a couple of weeks to write a script. As time went by I got slower and slower, until a script was taking me six weeks to a month to write."

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• 3. The Endless

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  Seven siblings known as the Endless stand at the centre of the series. Dream rules the realm of dreams and is also called Morpheus, among other names. His siblings are Destiny, Death, Desire, Despair, Delirium, who was formerly Delight, and Destruction, also known as the Prodigal. Gaiman became known for giving human form to abstract forces like these. He wove mythology and history into a horror setting inside the DC Universe.

  The story opens with a ritual that goes wrong. An occult working meant to capture Death captures her brother Dream instead. The caster holds him prisoner for 70 years. Morpheus escapes in the modern day and takes revenge on his captors. He then sets about rebuilding his kingdom, which has fallen into disrepair without him. He must also reclaim his gear and hunt down escaped dreams and nightmares. Among them are the Corinthian, Brute and Glob, and Fiddler's Green.

  Death herself arrived in issue eight, dated August 1989. Gaiman and artist Mike Dringenberg introduced her as the older sister of Dream.

  Dream's manner at the start is haughty and often cruel. His imprisonment begins to soften him. Even so, undoing old sins is an enormous task for a being who has been set in his ways for billions of years.

  Most of the action unfolds in two places: the Dreaming, which is Morpheus's realm, and the waking world. Occasional trips lead to Hell, Faerie, Asgard, and the domains of the other Endless. Many stories take place in the contemporary United States and United Kingdom. Because so many characters are immortal, a number of short stories reach back into the past and meet real historical figures, as in the tale "Men of Good Fortune."

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• 4. Borrowed Heroes

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  In Swamp Thing volume 2, number 84, dated March 1989, Dream and Eve allow Matthew Cable to live in the Dreaming because he died there. They bring him back as a raven. Cable then meets John Constantine in Hellblazer number 19, which leads into Constantine's guest appearance in Sandman number 3.

  Issue 4, from April 1989, revisits Hell as Alan Moore had drawn it in Swamp Thing. It opens with a guest turn by Jack Kirby's Etrigan the Demon. The story introduces Hell's hierarchy, headed by Lucifer, who would earn his own series in 1999. Beelzebub, later an adversary to Kid Eternity, and Azazel, whom Dream defeats later in the series, round out the group. In May 1989, issue 5 sent Dream to visit the Justice League International. Martian Manhunter and Scarecrow also appeared at times, but such visits were never the norm.

  Issue 11, from December 1989, began folding in the old Kirby Sandman series and the changes Roy Thomas had made to it. Simon and Fleisher had treated their superhero-like character as the true Sandman. Thomas and Gaiman revealed that his existence was a sham, invented by two nightmares who had escaped to a pocket of the Dreaming. Those nightmares were Brute and Glob. They would later try the trick again on Sanderson Hawkins, sidekick to Wesley Dodds, the Golden Age Sandman.

  Thomas had identified his Sandman as Hector Hall, who married the already-pregnant Fury in the Dreaming in Infinity, Inc. number 51. Gaiman added a darker explanation. Dr. Garrett Sanford, the 1970s Simon and Kirby Sandman, had gone insane from loneliness in the Dream Dimension and taken his own life. Brute and Glob then placed the cast-out spirit of Hector Hall into Sanford's body, which slowly came to resemble Hall's.

  After 1990, well-known DC characters and places rarely appeared. One notable exception was Fury, who lived as Lyta Hall. Her powers came from the Fury Tisiphone. The Furies, called "the Kindly Ones," a translation of "Eumenides," earned that name in Aeschylus's Oresteia trilogy. In this series they become major characters, and Lyta Hall figures prominently in the arc that bears their name.

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• 5. A Tragic Course

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  Issue 69, dated July 1995, is where Dream dies. By then the series had been following a tragic path for a long time. Having learned a great deal from his imprisonment, Dream tries to correct the wrongs of his past. That effort ends with him mercy killing his own son. The act leads to his own death at the hands of the Furies. He had already found a replacement early on in Daniel Hall.

  The remaining issues deal with Dream's funeral, with Hob Gadling choosing to stay immortal despite Dream's death, and with two stories from the past. The series closes with William Shakespeare writing The Tempest, his other commission for Dream. It was his last work not written in collaboration with other writers.

  Gaiman had always planned a finite run, and the series ended with issue 75, dated March 1996. He explained his choice in 1996: "Could I do another five issues of Sandman? Well, damn right. And would I be able to look at myself in the mirror happily? No. Is it time to stop because I've reached the end, yes, and I think I'd rather leave while I'm in love."

  The Sandman became a cult success, and its readers did not look like the mainstream comics audience. Much of the readership was female, many were in their twenties, and many read no other comics at all. Comics historian Les Daniels called Gaiman's work "astonishing" and described a mixture of fantasy, horror, and ironic humor that comics had never seen. DC writer and executive Paul Levitz observed that the series was the first extraordinary success as a run of graphic novel collections. He said it converted new readers to the medium, particularly young women on college campuses.

  The early arcs read as very dark horror. Later the series became an elaborate fantasy that drew on classical and contemporary mythology, and it placed its protagonist in the role of a tragic hero. Critic Marc Buxton called it a masterful tale that created a movement of mature dark fantasy. Critic Hilary Goldstein said it is about the concept of dreams more than the act of dreaming. In the first issues, responsibility and rebirth were the main themes. The story is not a string of unconnected events or an incoherent dream, because every panel has a specific purpose. Later Vertigo books such as Transmetropolitan and Y: The Last Man adopted a similar structure.

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• 6. Beyond Issue 75

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  From March to May 1993, Gaiman published Death: The High Cost of Living, the first of two miniseries about Dream's sister. It rests on the fable that Death takes human form once a century to stay in touch with humanity. In 1996 came Death: The Time of Your Life, which featured Foxglove and Hazel from A Game of You. Other spin-offs include The Dreaming, Lucifer, and Dead Boy Detectives, though Gaiman did not write most of them. SkyBox International also issued a set of Sandman trading cards in 1994.

  In 1999, Gaiman wrote The Sandman: The Dream Hunters, a novella illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano. His afterword describes it as a retelling of an existing Japanese legend. Yet there is no trace of the tale in the source he cites, and Gaiman has since said he made up the legend. P. Craig Russell later adapted the novella as a four-issue miniseries, released from January to April 2009.

  Gaiman and Matt Wagner co-wrote Sandman Midnight Theatre, a one-shot from 1995, in which Dream and Wesley Dodds meet in person. In 2003, Gaiman published Endless Nights, an anthology with one new story for each of the Endless and a different illustrator for each tale. It was the first hardcover graphic novel to appear on The New York Times Hardcover Best Seller list.

  Jill Thompson wrote and illustrated several stories of her own, including the manga-style Death: At Death's Door. It was one of DC's best-selling books of 2003. She also made The Little Endless Storybook, a children's book that shows the Endless as children.

  To mark the twenty-fifth anniversary, Gaiman and artist J. H. Williams III made Overture, a six-issue prequel. It tells the previously hinted story of the battle that exhausted Dream so thoroughly that Roderick Burgess could capture him. Issue 1 came out on the 30th of October 2013. Issue 2 slipped to March 2014, which Gaiman blamed on a giant signing tour and the script he failed to write during it. Overture also reveals that Night and Time are the mother and father of the seven Endless. In August 2018, DC launched The Sandman Universe, a new line of comics set in the Sandman corner of the DC Universe.

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• 7. Collected Editions

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  Most monthly issues ran 32 pages, and the story inside was usually 24 pages long. Eight stories ran longer or shorter than that. Issue 1, "Sleep of the Just," ran 40 pages, and issue 75, "The Tempest," ran 38. As the series grew popular, DC began reprinting it in hardcover and trade paperback editions. Ten trade paperbacks hold the full run, and all have stayed in print. In 1998, a volume titled Dustcovers collected the cover images. McKean's covers combine painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, and computer manipulation.

  The ten volumes each have a distinct job. Preludes and Nocturnes gathers issues 1-8. Season of Mists, issues 21-28, sends Dream to Hell after Lucifer abandons it and hands him the key. A Game of You follows Barbie, a New York divorcée from The Doll's House, and introduces Thessaly. Brief Lives has Delirium convincing Dream to help her search for their missing brother Destruction. In Worlds' End, a reality storm strands travelers from across the cosmos at an inn, and they pass the time by trading stories. The Kindly Ones is the longest Sandman story, covering issues 57-69.

  The Absolute editions are large, 8-by-12-inch prints with leather-like covers and slipcases. Many early stories were recolored with Gaiman's approval. The first volume appeared in November 2006, and the series of volumes ran through 2011, with Absolute Death in 2009 and an Absolute Overture in July 2018.

  Gaiman at first hesitated over annotated editions. He changed his mind after he forgot a reference when a reader asked about it. His friend Leslie S. Klinger, of The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, annotated the series from Gaiman's original scripts. The first volume appeared in January 2012 as a black-and-white book, 12 inches square, and earned a 2012 Bram Stoker Award nomination for Best Non-Fiction.

  In 2013, a two-volume Omnibus marked the anniversary and ran to more than 1000 pages. A Silver version was limited to 500 copies, each signed by Gaiman. A third omnibus volume followed in 2019. Between 2020 and 2022, DC issued five Deluxe hardcovers, and in 2022 DC Black Label began reprinting the series as paperbacks.

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• 8. Acclaim and Adaptations

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  In 1991, issue 19, "A Midsummer Night's Dream," won the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction. The Sandman and its spin-offs have won more than 26 Eisner Awards. Three of them were for Best Continuing Series. Four went to Gaiman as Best Writer, and seven went to Todd Klein for Best Lettering. Season of Mists won the Angoulême International Comics Festival Prize for Scenario. The Dream Hunters and Endless Nights won Bram Stoker Awards for Best Illustrated Narrative, in 1999 and 2003. IGN named it the best Vertigo comic ever in 2005. The prequel Overture earned the 2016 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story.

  The series was among the first graphic novels on The New York Times Best Seller list, alongside Maus, Watchmen, and The Dark Knight Returns. Entertainment Weekly placed it at number 46 on its list of the 100 best reads from 1983 to 2008. Norman Mailer called it "a comic strip for intellectuals."

  A film was planned throughout the late 1990s. Warner Bros., the parent company of DC, first attached Roger Avary, who worked with screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio in 1996. Their revision merged the "Preludes and Nocturnes" and "The Doll's House" storylines. Avary wanted the film to draw visually on the animator Jan Svankmajer. Producer Jon Peters clashed with him over creative direction, and Avary was fired. Gaiman later called the last script Warner sent him "not only the worst Sandman script I've ever seen, but quite easily the worst script I've ever read." By 2001 the project was stranded in development hell.

  In 2007, Gaiman said at San Diego Comic-Con: "I'd rather see no Sandman movie made than a bad Sandman movie." In 2013, Warner Bros. announced a film with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, but he dropped out in March 2016 over disagreements about its creative direction. Screenwriter Eric Heisserer then turned in a draft and left, arguing that the story should become an HBO series.

  Television finally delivered. In June 2019, Netflix announced a deal with Warner Bros. for a live-action series run by Allan Heinberg, with Gaiman among the executive producers. Tom Sturridge was cast as Dream. The first season premiered on the 5th of August 2022, adapting Preludes and Nocturnes, The Doll's House, and Dream Country. A second season was confirmed that November. In January 2025, it was announced that the season would be the last.

  Audio versions came first. Audible released a full-cast audio drama on the 15th of July 2020, directed by Dirk Maggs. Gaiman narrated, and James McAvoy voiced Dream. A second act followed on the 22nd of September 2021, and a third on the 28th of September 2022. The final Netflix season arrived in two parts, on the 3rd and the 24th of July 2025, and closed with a bonus episode on the 31st of July.

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