Yahoo LifestyleNeil Gaiman's 'The Sandman' Comics Are a Masterpiece. Here's How to Read Them All.
- 1/11
Neil Gaiman's 'The Sandman' Comics Are a Masterpiece. Here's How to Read Them All.
After years of development, the long-awaited adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman finally comes to screens. The Netflix series stars Tom Sturridge as Dream aka Morpheus aka Sandman, ruler of the Dreaming and master of Dreams. The series picks up as a something of a hybrid between a mad scientist and a petty magician named Burgess (Charles Dance) captures Dream for decades, leaving his kingdom in ruins.
As he tries to restore his powers and kingdom, Dream must contend with those who have enjoyed his absence, including the madman John Dee (David Thewlis, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) and the Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook, Logan), a nightmare who escaped into our world. Along the way, Dream will be aided by his sister Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Killing Eve), the Lady Johanna Constantine (Jenna Coleman, Doctor Who), Matthew the Raven (Patton Oswalt, The King of Queens), and Mervyn Pumpkinhead (voiced by the legendary Mark Hamill).
The Sandman helped revolutionize comics in the late 1980s and 1990s. The original 75-issue run, all written by Gaiman, brought horror and fantasy back into the mainstream. Even as he dabbled in parts of the mainstream DC Universe, including storylines involving the Golden Age superhero the Sandman and D-list character Element Girl, Gaiman grounded everything in real human emotions. Aided by some of the greatest illustrators to ever work in comics, including Sam Keith, Colleen Doran, and Bryan Talbot.
The Netflix series will cover parts of the first sixteen Sandman arcs, collected in Preludes and Nocturnes and The Doll’s House. But the story spreads out in surprising and often terrifying ways. With the main story collected in several volumes, The Sandman reads best as a series of books rather than as individual issues.
DC - 2/11
1) Dream Country
Vertigo
amazon.com
$15.39
The first of what will become several short story collections involving Morpheus and his world, Dream Country follows what are largely disconnected tales involving people who interact with Dream and his siblings, called the Endless. The stories run the full gamut of genres, beginning with the Clive Barker-esque tale “Calliope” and ending with “Façade,” featuring minor DC Comics hero Element Girl.
Most importantly, Dream Country includes “A Midsummer’s Night Dream,” winner of the World Fantasy Award. Featuring meticulous pencils by Charles Vess and soft colors by Steve Oliff, the story finds William Shakespeare debuting his latest play for an audience of fairy creatures, as thanks to Morpheus for providing inspiration. As moving and funny as the original play, "A Midsummer’s Night Dream” shows Gaiman taking serialized comics to new heights.
amazon.com - 3/11
2) Season of Mist
Vertigo
amazon.com
$15.29
The Sandman may be the premier series based on Neil Gaiman’s opus, but it isn’t the first television show to come from The Sandman universe. That honor belongs to Lucifer, the long-running fantasy show that stars Tom Ellis as Lucifer Morningstar, the one-time ruler of Hell who leaves his post. Season of Mist shows us what happens when Lucifer walks away, leaving Dream with the keys to Hell, which he definitely does not want.
What follows is the most horrific real estate scenario since… well, right now, as various entities vie for control over this important part of the afterlife. Odin and the Norse Gods want it to prevent Ragnarök. The angels of heaven want it to win their battle against Satan. The Lords of Chaos and Lords of Order want it to strengthen their respective kingdoms. Season of Mist offers a deep lore dive that manages to find humanity and horror in what amounts to a bureaucratic mess.
amazon.com - 4/11
3) A Game of You
Vertigo
amazon.com
$19.59
A sequel to The Doll’s House, which will be featured in season one of The Sandman, follows the character Barbie in her new life after divorce. Taking residence in a house with other strange residents, Barbie begins imagining a fantasy quest, in which she and her animal friends must defeat a monster called “The Cuccoo" who threatens the fairy realm The Land.
At first glance, A Game of You seems like a weaker Sandman collection, as it lacks both the epic scope of Seasons of Mist and the clarity of the stories in Dream Country. But it sets up events that build in the climactic story The Kindly Ones and further uncovers the seeds of Morpheus’s undoing. Most importantly, it retains Gaiman’s sensitivity as a writer, and his unique ability to use the most fantastic and unreal plots to reveal complex human emotions.
amazon.com - 5/11
4) Fables & Reflections
VertiGo
amazon.com
$16.99
Like Dream Country, Fables and Reflections consists only of one-issue short stories. However, the tales here are more steeped in mythology and take a cosmopolitan approach, with tales that take place in different eras and different parts of the world. Standout tales include "August," drawn by Bryan Talbot and inked by Stan Woch, in which Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar disguises himself as a beggar and tours Rome, deciding if he should let the Empire expand or work toward its destruction. The double-sized tale “Ramadan,” drawn by P. Craig Russell and colored by Lovern Kinzierski and Digital Chameleon, in which a Caliph deals with the aftermath of giving Baghdad to Dream for safekeeping.
For those interested in the larger Sandman narrative, Fables and Reflections includes the story "The Song of Orpheus," which retells the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. In Gaiman’s version, penciled by Bryan Talbot and inked by Mark Buckingham, Orpheus is the son of Dream and the Muse Calliope. Morpheus’s callous response to his son and to Eurydice has disastrous consequences for the Dream King, leading to major events in later collections.
amazon.com - 6/11
5) Brief Lives
Vertigo
amazon.com
$13.64
The exact opposite of Dream Country and Fables and Recollections, Brief Lives is the densest and most lore-heavy of The Sandman collections. These issues deal with in-fighting among Dream’s family of mystical rulers, called The Endless. In addition to Dream and Death, this collection spends more time with twins Desire and Despair, their sister Delirium, the stoic brother Destiny, and the missing brother Destruction. Dissolution among the Endless capitalizes on Dream’s treatment of Orpheus, leading to the destruction of his kingdom.
While Brief Lives is among the most difficult collections to read without context from other books, it does contain some of the best writing in the series. Driven by Jill Thompson’s expressive pencils, nimble inks from Vince Locke, and evocative colors from Daniel Vozzo, Brief Lives portrays Dream at his most vulnerable, transforming the often aloof and sometimes cruel protagonist into a troubled, relatable hero.
amazon.com - 7/11
6) World's End
Vertigo
amazon.com
$18.99
The last of the short story collections in World’s End is more playful than Fables and Reflections and more thematically coherent than Dream Country. The title refers to an Inn set between realities, where travelers from other dimensions come to have a drink and share a tale. Our guides on the trip are modern-day humans Brant Tucker and Charlene Mooney, who find themselves at World’s End after experiencing a car accident. They listen to the tales, which in turn Brant tells us readers and other humans after returning home.
World’s End features some of the more experimental stories in The Sandman, including “A Tale of Two Cities,” which consists of prose and impressionistic illustrations from artist Alec Stevens. “The Golden Boy,” featuring striking pop-art from Mike Allred, resurrects one of DC Comics’ stranger characters, teenage president Prez Rickard, and retells his story as part passion play and part political allegory. These stories make World’s End one of the most challenging Sandman collections, but also one of the most rewarding.
amazon.com - 8/11
7) The Kindly Ones
Vertigo
amazon.com
$14.74
By the time readers got to 1993’s The Sandman #57, part one of The Kindly Ones, they’ve surely noticed a loose arc among the past issues. Amidst the various short stories and different adventures, readers began to notice a plot against Dream among the Endless and various reccurring characters being used as pawns. But in The Kindly Ones, Gaiman pulls together those seemingly disparate threads, creating a tale worthy of a Greek tragedy.
In The Kindly Ones, traitors among the Endless inspire trickster god Loki (not the same version from Marvel’s Thor) and Robin Goodfellow aka Puck from “A Midsummer’s Night Dream,” both of whom appeared in previous Sandman stories, to kidnap Daniel, infant son of Lyta Hall from The Doll’s House. Convinced that Morpheus killed her child, Lyta goes on a revenge quest that involves the Furies, the Endless, and more, leading to the death of Dream himself. As plot-heavy as it might be, The Kindly Ones is also thrilling storytelling, an adventure like one often finds in comics, without sacrificing any of the thematic richness Gaiman brought to his previous Sandman stories.
amazon.com - 9/11
8) The Wake
Vertigo
amazon.com
$12.99
The final proper Sandman collection, The Wake serves as a coda for the universe and a beginning of Daniel’s reign as the new Dream. As you might expect, the main storyline follows the wake after Sandman’s funeral, attended not only by many of the characters seen in previous collections, but also by mainline DC Comics characters, including Batman, Superman, and even Lord of Apokolips Darkseid. These figures and others offer recollections on the nature of dreams, allowing Gaiman to philosophize about the stories we tell one another and their larger import.
But the most interesting stories in the collection are those that serve as finales to short stories running throughout the collection. Most notably, “The Tempest,” the 75th and final issue of the main series, features Morpheus coming to watch a late play produced by William Shakespeare, long after their initial deal. Like the previous Shakespeare story, “The Tempest” retells the famous play. But here, fatigue grips both Morpheus and Shakespeare, as the two consider the cost of living your life in stories.
amazon.com - 10/11
9) Sandman: Overture
Vertigo
amazon.com
$15.49
Although The Sandman ended with issue #75, the characters continued, often with Gaiman back at the helm. In addition to occasional appearances in mainstream comic books, Sandman characters first returned in 1999’s The Dream Hunters, a stand-alone story written by Gaiman and illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano. In 2003, Gaiman wrote Endless Nights, a miniseries dealing with each of Dream’s siblings, further developing the lore.
But the most notable and impressive of the sequel series is Sandman: Overture, written by Gaiman and first published in 2013. The six-part story features surrealistic artwork from J.H. Williams III and colorist Dave Stewart. Set before his capture in Preludes and Nocturnes, Overture follows Dream and his other aspects as they investigate madness that’s gripping parts of reality. The story not only reveals the battle that left Dream weak enough to be captured in 1989’s The Sandman #1, but also reimagines the character in a bold new way.
amazon.com - 11/11
10) The Dreaming: Waking Hours
amazon.com
$22.55
Although Gaiman has been the primary architect of The Sandman Universe, he has often been a willing collaborator with other creators. To that end, several other writers and artists have worked on the characters with the Sandman Universe line, first published under DC Comics' Vertigo Imprint and now under its Black Label imprint. These series included a new Hellblazer comic featuring John Constantine, the horror anthology Nightmare Country, and Books of Magic, starring a previous Gaiman creation called Tim Hunter.
Perhaps the most compelling of the series is The Dreaming: The Waking Hours, set within the Dream Realm. Written by G. Willow Wilson, creator of Ms. Marvel, and illustrated by Nick Robles, The Dreaming: The Waking Hours introduces the nightmare Ruin and sorceress Heather After, descendent of the man who captured Dream. By bringing in a new voice, The Dreaming: Waking Hours finds new storytelling avenues in the Sandman richness, proving that Gaiman left behind a rich legacy.
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