Neil Gaiman will return to the world of the Sandman, Entertainment Weekly announced today. In honor of the 30th anniversary of the author’s comics history-making run on the character, DC Comics is producing a new imprint under its Vertigo line titled The Sandman Universe.
Like Gerard Way’s Young Animal imprint, home of the modern Doom Patrol, The Sandman Universe will consist of four loosely themed titles. Like in Young Animal, Gaiman chose the creative teams and came up with the plots of the books. He isn’t writing the scripts for them, but they’ll all be stories about the broader world of magic and myth that he crafted within the DC Universe.
Gaiman described his work at DC’s Vertigo to Entertainment Weekly as “a huge sandbox with so many wonderful toys that nobody’s getting to play with right now.”
That sandbox largely revolves around the eponymous Sandman, or Dream (or Morpheus, Oneiros, the King of Dreams, the Prince of Stories, etc. etc.); a universal embodiment of the concepts of imagination, creativity and dreaming. Gaiman’s The Sandman ran in 75 issues from 1989 to 1993, telling an intricate modern myth as intimate as it was epic. Gaiman has periodically returned to the world of Sandman, most recently in 2015 with the mostly-prequel Sandman: Overture.
Ultimately, DC Comics and Warner Bros. have control of the character (technically, Dream was created as a reboot/reinterpretation of a Golden Age comic book vigilante character nearly as old as Batman). But The Sandman is a rare corporately owned comics phenomenon whose mystique and originality has defied direct continuations from other creatives. Even when he wanted to use Dream in DC’s Batman: Metal series this summer, writer Scott Snyder reached out for Gaiman’s blessing first.
“I started feeling guilty,” Gaiman told Entertainment Weekly about why the idea of The Sandman Universe appealed to him, “I liked the idea of getting the toys played with again, reminding people how much fun [Sandman] is, and also getting the opportunity to work with some fantastic writers.”
So, exactly which toys are coming out of the box? Well, not Dream himself, but some heavy hitters of his supporting cast. Dream is nowhere to be found, and in the meantime Lucien, the librarian of the Dream Library, and Matthew, a talking raven who used to be a living man, set out across a changed Dream-world on a strange adventure. Also, Lucifer is trapped in a strange situation, the Voudoun deity Erzulie has taken up residence in the Dreaming and a young British boy has discovered his magical destiny.
Nalo Hopkinson, an author who often uses themes of Caribbean folklore in her fiction, will write House of Whispers, about how Erzulie wound up with a dwelling right alongside Cain and Abel. Si Spurrier’s (X-Men Legacy: Legion, Judge Dredd) The Dreaming will follow Lucien and Matthew. Dan Watters (Limbo, Assassin’s Creed: Uprising) will cover the further adventures of the Lord of Hell in Lucifer. And, finally, Kat Howard (Roses and Rot, An Unkindness of Magicians) will bring readers back to the story of aspiring magician Timothy Hunter in Books of Magic, a revival of Gaiman’s 1990 Vertigo miniseries of the same name.
“Books of Magic was an idea I came up with and did 30 years ago and loved and had an enormous amount of fun with,” Gaiman told Entertainment Weekly. “It was pre-Harry Potter, and the idea of a bespectacled, tousled 12-year-old boy with an owl learning magic was this sort of weird new thing we were trying to figure out as it went along. I love the idea of starting that again now, because now you’re in a universe in which everybody and their brother knows how that kind of story ought to go.”
A full set of artists and release dates for the four books under The Sandman Universe imprint has not yet been revealed. However, an introductory comic, The Sandman Universe #1, will be plotted by Gaiman, scripted by Hopkinson, Howard, Spurrier and Watters and drawn by Bilquis Evely (Wonder Woman), with covers from Jae Lee. It will hit shelves on Aug. 8, with The Dreaming and House of Whispers following in September and Lucifer and Books of Magic in October.
Comments
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
By andrechapetta on 03.01.18 7:13pm
God, Sandman with an older Neil in 2018 is gonna be a trip. The issue with the 24 hours in the diner changed what I thought comics could do, and I can’t image what terror he’ll be bringing. Delirium, Desire, and Death in particular…
Plus, at least for me in retrospect, Sandman was hope in the face of cosmic horror, and I want more of that.
By Masc4MajorasMask on 03.01.18 9:20pm