Before The Sandman ever premiered on Netflix, the selection {of professional} Handsome Menace Boyd Holbrook for the position of the Corinthian — the teeth-for-eyes nightmare who invented serial killers — all however assured a fandom attachment to him.

And simply in time, there’s a e book exactly for the gorgeous, treasured folks making gifsets and writing Corinthian/Reader fic in second-person perspective: Nightmare Country by James Tynion IV and Lisandro Estherren.

Actually, it’s extra than simply in time. The e book is 5 points deep right into a story a few younger lady who sees nightmares when she’s awake. And her collision with the Corinthian results in a twist concurrently buckwild and utterly becoming to Sandman’s logic.

In Gaiman’s world, nightmares stroll the earth, Lucifer runs a piano bar, and goals don’t need to be actual to have energy. So it’s really unimaginable that Tynion and Estherren revealed that the villain of their first arc is… the angel Moroni, who supposedly appeared to Joseph Smith, the founding father of Mormonism.

Welcome to Monday Funnies, Polygon’s weekly listing of the books that our comics editor loved this previous week. It’s half society pages of superhero lives, half studying suggestions, half “look at this cool art.” There could also be some spoilers. There is probably not sufficient context. But there will likely be nice comics.

Also, it was a slim week for releases, as “fifth Wednesdays” normally are, and so we’ve determined to give attention to one neat e book’s neat reveal. (And in the event you missed the final version, learn this.)

Image: James Tynion IV, Lisandro Estherren/DC Comics

Gaiman’s Sandman — together with American Gods — are his nice works of cosmological egalitarianism. All perception, from superstitions and concrete legend to people tales to organized faith, are on the desk and ripe for incorporation and dramatization within the American melting pot. The comics world provides us a whole lot of house to look at British people write Great American Novels, with Watchmen because the ur instance. Tapping the determine of Moroni as a Sandman character is an ideal instance of the type of perception on American non secular fucked-up-ed-ness that solely an precise American author will put into manufacturing.

Up till now, Nightmare Country has been a comic book of disparate parts, all of them extraordinarily Sandman. There’s a younger artist who by no means goals however sees a monster with toothless mouths for eyes when she’s awake. For some purpose, she has caught the attention of the employers and their horrifically self-mutilated employed killers, Mr. Agony and Mr. Ecstasy. Which fascinates a wealthy asshole, who himself is guided by an unnamed, menacing angel. And the Corinthian, in what appears to be a seek for the that means of his impression on dreamers and the id of the mouth-eyed monster who’s cramping his model, takes an curiosity in all of it.

The Corinthian, created on the shut of the Eighties, was Gaiman’s response to America’s “golden age of serial murder,” positing {that a} rogue Nightmare created to drive mortals to productively face their fears escaped into the Waking World and impressed sufficient killers that they might have a secret yearly conference about it. Horror author Tynion — co-creator of the ferociously incisive Department of Truth with artist Martin Simmonds — has been marinating in American conspiracy theories, city legend, and people mythology since roughly 2016. Perspectives that Gaiman comes by secondhand, Tynion has by birthright: a queer sensibility and a cynical American’s understanding of the nation’s mythology. It’s exhausting to consider a greater match to include America’s most mainstream home-grown faith right into a story concerning the Corinthian.

Image: James Tynion IV, Lisandro Estherren/DC Comics

Nightmare Country took its candy time establishing smaller stakes with the staples of Sandman type: mortals getting immediately wrecked by Endless drama, a monstrous murdering duo, a wealthy man who hubristically believes he can conquer the supernatural as he conquered the fabric. It was a comic book I loved studying however not one which I dropped into my associates DMs to extoll.

But your villain is the angel who invented Mormonism, again for one more swing at forcibly molding the American Dream to his mysterious intentions? I can’t wait to see the place this goes.