Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman is a many-splendored surprise. One half pulp horror, one half city fantasy comedian replete with Shakespearean and mythological cameos, the comedian covers a whole lot of floor with a bunch of characters each mundane and otherworldly. What begins as a narrative about Morpheus, the immortal King of Goals, and his quest for redemption progressively evolves into one thing even bigger: a narrative concerning the nature of tales themselves and their important relationship to humanity.

The unique 75-issue sequence, together with its assorted constellation of spinoff sequence and books, is a multifarious anthology of superbly illustrated and brilliantly instructed tales that run the gamut from bone-chilling to soul-stirring.

In celebration of the long-awaited live-action TV adaptation of The Sandman, which premiered this weekend on Netflix, we’ve put collectively a listing of a few of our favourite volumes and points from the comedian for these trying to discover the universe of the unique sequence in additional element. Candy goals, and comfortable studying.

24 Hours (Difficulty #6)

Picture: Neil Gaiman, Mike Dringenberg/DC Comics

The Sandman began its life as a horror comedian earlier than it change into one thing way more. “24 Hours” is the horror model of Sandman on the top of its powers: imply, haunting, and skin-crawlingly upsetting, a one-act play the place diner patrons slowly go mad collectively.

The story is generally stand-alone: John Dee, a D-Record DC Comics villain, has obtained Dream’s ruby, which incorporates a lot of his powers to appreciate the goals of others. Already a twisted soul, Dee is additional corrupted by the ruby, which warps his physique into its present ghoulish look. Not too long ago free of imprisonment, Dee slinks right into a diner and makes its patrons his first victims — utilizing the ruby’s powers to govern their needs and warp them into monsters, or subdue them into servitude and adulation.

From the very begin, Sandman makes it clear that goals and nightmares come hand in hand, and one can not exist with out the opposite. “24 Hours” applies that rule to the kind of goals we’ve when awake: secret ambitions, needs, and fame. They’re the stuff we construct our lives on, however additionally they our undoing — and essentially the most horrifying factor about them is that we don’t want the merciless supernatural push of John Dee to be consumed by them. —Joshua Rivera

The Sound of Her Wings (Difficulty #8)

Picture: Neil Gaiman, Mike Dringenberg/DC Comics

No different challenge of The Sandman stands out as extra definitive in my thoughts than challenge 8, “The Sound of Her Wings.” This has little or no to do with the particulars of the story itself, which alone registers as a roughly minor apart within the bigger story of Dream’s return to energy after a century of imprisonment. “The Sound of Her Wings” is important as a result of it marks the purpose during which the then-fledgling fantasy comedian lastly discovered its personal voice, or relatively, the second when Neil Gaiman stopped attempting so laborious to put in writing a DC Comics story and as an alternative allowed himself to totally write a Neil Gaiman story. Take it from Gaiman himself, who mentioned in a latest interview, “I’m extremely fond nonetheless of ‘The Sound of Her Wings,’ the primary assembly of Dying, as a result of that’s the first time I felt like I seemed like me.”

The problem follows Dream who, listless within the wake of his mission to recuperate his misplaced symbols of workplace, follows his sister — the anthropomorphic personification of demise — as she performs her responsibility of ushering the just lately deceased into the “sunless lands” of the afterlife. It’s a medley of tones, without delay whimsical and melancholic, macabre and life-affirming, heartrending and achingly poignant. “The Sound of Her Wings” is a the story of an immortal being gaining perspective by an up-close commentary of humanity and a reaffirmed grasp of the worth and which means of each life and demise. —Toussaint Egan

Males of Good Fortune (Difficulty #13)

Picture: Neil Gaiman, Michael Zulli/DC Comics

“Males of Good Fortune” has certainly one of my favourite premises for what’s basically a fairly fundamental brief story: In 1389, Robert “Hob” Gadling, a loud, brash tavern patron, is boasting to all who will hear about his newest concept. Dying, he says, is “a mug’s recreation,” one thing that folks solely do as a result of everybody else does it, they usually’re all suckers for it. However Hob Gadling, he’s no sucker like the remainder of us. He’s simply not going to die.

Unbeknownst to him, Dying and her brother Dream are within the tavern as properly, they usually determine it might be amusing to see Hob stick with his phrase. So Dream sits down and calls Hob on his bluster, saying if Hob intends to not die, he’ll have to inform Dream about it, and meet him on the identical pub in 100 years. In order that’s what they do, for hundreds of years.

Delivered to life by Michael Zulli, whose wealthy pencils would reappear all through The Sandman’s run, “Males of Good Fortune” does one thing The Sandman’s stand-alone brief tales had been uniquely good at: taking the cosmic eternal scale of the Limitless and utilizing it to make smaller tales resonate that rather more. For all of his energy and surprise, Dream’s story is barely compelling for the methods it intersects with ours, even when all he does is stroll right into a bar and exit with a buddy. —JR

Seasons of Mists (Vol. 4)

Picture: Neil Gaiman, Kelley Jones/DC Comics

Spoiler alert for a possible upcoming season of The Sandman: Casting Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer is a fairly positive signal that the inventive workforce is hoping to do extra with the character. And that will imply moving into the stellar Season of Mists storyline, the place Lucifer kicks everybody out of hell, demons and souls of the damned alike, then locks it up tight and arms Dream the important thing. It’s a very refined revenge scheme, aimed straight at Dream’s unbudging sense of responsibility: He can’t stroll away from the duty of proudly owning hell, however because it seems, it’s a priceless piece of unreal property, and everybody from defunct godly pantheons to the forces of Chaos needs it, and desires to bribe or blackmail or homicide him to get it.

The way in which Dream navigates the scenario over the Season of Mists assortment tells us much more than we knew beforehand about who he’s and the way he handles his tasks and his realm. However the actual pleasure of the arc is studying a lot extra concerning the Sandman cosmos — about the important thing gamers, how they work and what they need, and what intrigue between heaven, hell, and the courts of Faerie appears to be like like. —Tasha Robinson

Transient Lives (Vol. 7)

Picture: Neil Gaiman, Jill Thompson/DC Comics

There are very, only a few duds within the 10 volumes that make up the whole Sandman, and every of them is barely totally different. However none of them combines the perfect of all elements of the comedian as vol. 7, Transient Lives. There’s Limitless household drama. The Waking World. Outdated gods in trendy settings. Amusing and disturbing interactions between mortals and immortals. A speaking severed head and a sarcastic canine.

Better of all, it’s a street journey story about two estranged siblings searching for a 3rd, and the siblings are concurrently nigh-omnipotent beings past the ken of man and don’t know learn how to drive a automotive. —Susana Polo

An Epilogue, Sunday Mourning (Difficulty #73)

Picture: Neil Gaiman, Michael Zulli/DC Comics

The perfect character in The Sandman is Hob Gadling, the Englishman from the 1300s who swore he would by no means die after which didn’t. Each of his characteristic points are nice in their very own approach. However there’s a particular place in my coronary heart for the ultimate challenge during which he seems, the place this man who was born in precise medieval instances goes to a Renaissance faire and is grumpy and homesick about each single factor he sees. In fact there’s an emotional core to the story about Hob’s unflagging zest for all times and his personal grief at outliving everybody he’s ever cherished — but additionally, each time I’m going to a Renaissance faire, I’ve Hob Gadling in my head, complaining that the beer is served chilly, nothing is roofed in shit, and there’s nobody strolling round with untreated face tumors. —SP

The Sandman: Overture (Restricted Collection)

Picture: Neil Gaiman, J.H. Williams III/Vertigo

Whereas the six-issue restricted sequence The Sandman: Overture serves as an instantaneous prologue to the primary challenge of Sandman, it’s greatest learn as an epilogue to the 10-volume sequence. Overture particulars the story of the “nice battle” that left Dream within the weakened state we discover him in “Sleep of the Simply,” chronicling his journey to a distant galaxy to research the homicide of certainly one of his elements by a renegade star whose insanity has metastasized right into a “dream vortex” that threatens all of existence.

It’s a sweeping odyssey throughout an enormous cosmos teeming with primordial oddities and unusual allies, rendered by the impeccable visible storytelling of J.H. Williams III (Batwoman, Promethea), whose grandiose widespread panels and layouts evoke the sum complete of the unique sequence’ inventive ambitions in breathtaking element. The Sandman: Overture is a lovely elliptical bookend to a saga over 1 / 4 century within the making and an excellent capstone to Neil Gaiman’s magnum opus. —TE