Explore Neil Gaiman’s Sandman
Neil Gaiman has written a large number of graphic novels, various short stories and a tv series. His most famous creation though is The Sandman. A long running comic series with an arc that spans right from Issue 1 to Issue 75 (the final issue).
The ” hero ” of the series is Dream, the Sandman. He is one of the seven Endless. The others being (in no particular order) Destiny, Desire, Despair, Delirium, Death and Destruction.
Although the series is called The Sandman, the character is generally referred to as either Dream or Morpheus. He has other names too though. It is his job to send out dreams into the world. He lives in the Dreaming, a place populated by figures of myth, legend and horror.
Dream is one of the older Endless and believes very firmly that he had a duty to perform. He did not understand the behaviour of his brother Destruction who went missing. As time passed Dream find himself increasingly restricted by what he sees as his duties but can see no way around them. He is a rather pompous character something which Death, his sister cheerfully points out to him.
Although brothers and sisters, the Endless are definately not a big happy family. Desire in particular would be glad to see Dream suffer a bit. Destruction is the black sheep of the family having left his duties and disappeared.
The History Of The Comic
The Sandman was a colour comicbook published by DC Comics for 75 issues. Each issue was written by Neil Gaiman with a cover by Dave McKean. The inner artwork was drawn by many different artists over the 75 issues.
The Endless are not indesctrutable although given their substantial powers they do not die easily. Should an Endless die then they are replaced by another aspect.
Sandman was one of DC’s first “Mature Readers” titles. This line started during the 80’s when there was a push to make comics more interesting to adults. The comic was origianlly envisaged as a horror title following from ” Swamp Thing ” successfully revamped by Alan Moore in the eighties.
The first few issues are firmly set in the DC universe, complete with superheros. The horror element is also quite strong. Starting with the second story arc The Doll’s House though, Neil Gaiman changed the emphasis dramatically.
While technically still part of the DC Universe, that fact was rarely if ever mentioned. Horror was no longer the emphasis, rather character studies and literate explorations of personal subjects. The Doll’s House also introduced many of the recurring Sandman characters for the first time.
Neil Gaiman has a substantial knowledge of historical and literary subjects. This knowledge, or references to it frequently found its way into the pages of the Sandman. Where many comics might be primarily about looking with only a little reading involved, the Sandman was very much a comic to read.
Gaiman followed this up with Dream Country a series of single issue stories including the award winning ” A Midsummer Nights Dream ” which is about the first production of Shakespeare’s famous play. This story won the World Fantasy Award and is the only comic ever to have done so.
The Dreaming
When Neil Gaiman drew the Sandman to a close with issue 75 DC comics respected his decision and chose not to continue the series even though it was they who owned the copyrights.
Instead they created a spin of series set in the Dreaming and using the many secondary characters created by Neil during the Sandmans run.
Where To Start
Although the series has finished you can still buy it as a series of graphic novels. Due to the continuous nature of the story arc some of the stories are better starting points than others.
One obvious possibility is to read the series chronologically. Thus one would start off with:
* Preludes & Nocturnes
* The Doll’s House
* Dream Country
* Season Of Mists
And so on.
The disadvantage of this is that the first collection of Sandman stories is not characteristic of the later ones so you may not get a clear picture of whether you like the series or not.
My suggestion for those new to Sandman would be to read either The Doll’s House or Dream Country both of which are an excellent introduction to Sandman and good stories.
Eoghann Irving is amongst other things the creator and Editor of Solar Flare. He has a life long interest in all forms of science fiction and fantasy and a pressing need to share this interest with anyone who will listen. Find out more at his personal website eoghann.com..
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