Now that series is back and ready for returning readers, and the Sandman Universe team has plans for a year or more of storytelling, it’s time to answer some questions. There’s hardly a college dorm in the English-speaking world where you can’t find a dog-eared copy of at least one of the 10-volume Sandman set on a shelf somewhere. Under Gaiman, Sandman was ahead of its time, taking a hard left from superhero adventures to craft a truly global look at mythology that pushed stories about women and queer and trans folks to the fore.įor every new comics reader who was forged in the pages of a Sandman trade paperback, there’s someone who, though they didn’t get dragged bodily into the hobby, were deeply touched by its story. Legendary DC Comics editor and Vertigo founder Karen Berger had the simple idea of inviting the then relatively unknown British comics writer Neil Gaiman to reboot the Sandman, an obscure Justice Society superhero who had already been rebooted by Jack Kirby a decade earlier. Unlike a lot of its contemporaries that have reached the same level of success and longevity - The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, The Killing Joke - Sandman garnered a group of fans that was assumed to be impossible for a comic to grab in 1989: Women. Who those old fans are is one of the title’s defining characteristics. The masterplan kicks off with this month’s The Sandman Universe #1, an anthology issue that gives new fans a taste of each tale, and gets returning readers up to speed with the setting. “If anything that we’re talking about here is going to hinder you in any way,” Gaiman said, according to Doyle, “then I don’t want to do it.”ĭenizens of the Dreaming in The Sandman Universe #1. But also let’s make sure these books stand on their own.’” ”When we all finally sat down in the room with Neil,” DC Vertigo editor Mark Doyle told Polygon, “and we were talking about it, he was like, ‘Look, this is great.
Gaiman considered those interconnections carefully, and realized that there was one more necessary step to take.
The writers arrived to Louisiana with their pitches prepared, their notes shared and their minds focused on building a new interconnected era of Sandman stories under a new DC imprint, The Sandman Universe. To resurrect The Sandman, Gaiman handpicked Si Spurrier ( The Dreaming), Kat Howard ( Books of Magic), Nalo Hopkinson ( House of Whispers) and Dan Watters ( Lucifer) to pen four books - about a disaster in the realm of dreams, a young British wizard, a Vodoun goddess and Satan himself - that would interconnect, interweave and affect each other’s plots. The book’s eponymous lead and his supporting cast have maintained a rare status in an age when corporations stretch comic characters’ legacies as far as licensing agreements will allow: Even though the artist who made them famous doesn’t own them, other artists voluntarily ask for his blessing to use them in their stories. Since its original - and only - series run, from 1989 to 1993, Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman has sucked in comics readers in like a portal hidden in a piece of antique furniture. The future of The Sandman was in their hands. The DC Comics creative summit had a specific, yet singular aim: revive one of the most influential comic-book epics of the last thirty years. This past January, Neil Gaiman delivered that simple direction to four acclaimed fantasy writers assembled in New Orleans, a city known for the blurring of mythology and reality.
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