Neil Gaiman has famously summarized The Sandman with a single sentence. “The Lord of Goals learns that one should change or die, and makes his resolution.” It’s a humorous little assertion: poignant in its accuracy, mysterious in its vagueness.

One other good approach to describe The Sandman is: “a narrative about tales and their relationship to our humanity.” William Shakespeare seems in it. So does the Martian Manhunter, the mythological determine of Loki, Marco Polo, and Eve — like, from the Backyard of Eden? If you would like a 3rd stab at an outline, “a horror comedian that swiftly turns right into a high-concept mythological fantasy comedian” may match the invoice.

The Sandman is many issues: pulp horror, mythopoetry, city fantasy, a superhero reboot, a goth’s type handbook, Succession with anthropomorphic personifications, a flawed however earnest try to painting queer lives struggling for actualization and security within the Nineties, a graphic novel, a set of brief tales, and a piece that’s canonical with DC Universe.

The one factor you’ll be able to’t say about The Sandman is that it may have occurred at some other time in historical past, both world or particular to comics. With the primary cinematic adaptation of this supposedly unfilmable magnum opus premiering on Netflix, it’s value turning again the clock to look at the entire substances that went into the most important cult hit in superhero comics, if solely to reply the query: Why is Sandman… like that?

The unique Sandmans

Picture: Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg/DC Comics

The story of the story of The Sandman begins in 1939. Superman was simply over a 12 months outdated — actually, the 1939 World’s Honest in Flushing, Queens, New York, was the primary time anybody was ever employed to painting the Man of Metal in costume. Attendees of the honest may get their fingers on a free copy of New York World’s Honest Comics, and in its pages they met a brand new costumed crime fighter known as the Sandman.

By day, Wesley Dodds was a rich businessman, however by night time he donned a fuel masks to prowl the streets of New York Metropolis seeking criminals, whom he would interrogate and anesthetize with using his fuel gun, sprinkling sand over their sleeping our bodies as a calling card for the police. Because the Golden Age of comics got here to an in depth within the Fifties, Dodds’ tales petered out. However the world of comedian e book superheroes by no means leaves a narrative behind when it may be rebooted many years later.

And in 1974, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby — the creators of Captain America — took a spin on reviving the Sandman. This time round, the hero wore a vibrant crimson and yellow costume, and prowled the “Dream Stream” seeking rogue nightmares, dispatching them along with his magical pouch of dream mud lest they invade the desires of youngsters.

This Sandman solely caught round for a number of points, however a decade later his story was folded right into a story in Surprise Lady. Even later, that story was folded right into a story in Infinity Inc., a crew e book concerning the grown kids of the retired Justice League of Earth 2.

And in that story, Hector Corridor — son of Hawkman and Hawkwoman — grew to become trapped within the Dream Stream and took over the duties of the Sandman. Finally, he introduced his spouse, Hippolyta “Lyta” Corridor — the daughter of Surprise Lady and Steve Trevor — into desires as properly, the place the 2 conceived a baby.

These two characters each have their influences on The Sandman. For instance, Dream’s black, elongated helm is an interpretation of Dodds’ Forties fuel masks, and the linking of Sandman to precise energy over desires comes from Kirby and Simon. However for the following cease on our tour of main Sandman influences, we’ll want to go away the realm of fiction fully for a a lot scarier one: publishing historical past.

The Disaster on Infinite Earths

Picture: Alex Ross/DC Comics

The second half of the Nineteen Eighties at DC Comics was outlined by massive swings. The corporate’s first full continuity reboot, Disaster on Infinite Earths, was a proper invitation for comics creators to reinvent and redefine the most important, oldest characters in superherodom.

In Batman: Yr One, Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli carved a sweaty, sleazy, neon statue of Gotham Metropolis that continues to be definitive even in 2022. In his Surprise Lady, George Peréz gave the Princess of the Amazons a brand new origin story that endures to today. John Byrne reworked Lex Luthor from mad scientist to deprave industrialist so seamlessly that most individuals would by no means know he hadn’t at all times been a wealthy jerk. Change was within the air, and no reimagining was too wild.

Into this effervescent pot of inventive vitality stepped DC editor Karen Berger. By the point the primary problem of The Sandman was printed, her editorial eye had already fueled storylines like Alan Moore’s revamp of Swamp Factor, the primary solo collection for John Constantine, and Grant Morrison’s run on Doom Patrol and Animal Man — all on the spot classics.

Berger had already made a reputation for herself within the realm of horror books that doubled as postmodern twists on the superhero components. Moreover, she favored a steady of writers from the UK, creators who had been acquainted with American superheroes by means of the thriving import commerce, however maybe much less valuable about flipping the applecart. In a number of years, these pursuits would come collectively in her very personal publishing imprint, DC’s legendary Vertigo Comics, however for the time being, let’s think about her trying on the work of one in all DC’s brand-new writers.

This 27-year-old grew up within the south of England, and he’s primarily a journalist, however with some brief fiction credit. He’s written a number of strips for the British comics anthology 2000 AD, and a few brief graphic novels with a relatively avant garde illustrator pal. He’s additionally received a number of problems with Marvelman below his belt, selecting up from the place author Alan Moore — one other of Berger’s younger Brits — had left off. Perhaps he would have executed extra if Marvelman’s residence journal hadn’t gone out of enterprise. His solely work for DC up to now is a miniseries that mixed botanical horror (together with a Submit-Disaster revamp of Poison Ivy) and a form of journey tour of DC Comics characters from Swamp Factor to Lex Luthor.

After contemplating all of this, Berger decides to ask him if he’d be taken with pitching a reboot of maybe probably the most obscure member of the Justice Society, a personality that even Jack Kirby and Joe Simon couldn’t crack. And with the hubris of a 27-year-old, Neil Gaiman stated sure.

Neil Gaiman

Picture: Albert L. Ortega/Getty Photos

That’s the story of how The Sandman got here to be. However the story of why it encompasses a lot and is so troublesome to outline isn’t full with out its author. At this time, Neil Gaiman is an internationally identified novelist whose bestselling books have been tailored into award-winning motion pictures like Coraline and Stardust, and big-budget tv like American Gods and Good Omens. It’s troublesome to image him as an up-and-coming journalist turned comedian e book author whose solely printed novel is a biography of Duran Duran.

However when you repair that lens into the telescope of your thoughts, The Sandman comes into focus. A younger author had no concept if he’d ever get one other likelihood at success, and so he packed each single factor that he appreciated into the work. The Sandman by no means attracted a single attribute artist collaborator — artistically, its steadiest throughline was Gaiman’s creativeness and prose.

A voracious reader of fantasy and a devotee of gothic horror, Gaiman supplied Berger a very massive swing. As a substitute of one other Sandman journey story, he’d write a six-issue yarn a few sentient personification of the human creativeness escaping from captivity and fixing a thriller. Every problem would have the arc of a gothic horror story, and over the course of the six, his character would make a journey tour of the DC Universe, from the headquarters of the Justice League to the depths of hell itself.

Within the very first problem, he’d set up that Wesley Dodds’ urge to turn into a sleep-themed costumed crime fighter was the results of an upset within the realm of desires. Then, from DC’s personal historical past of gothic horror, he’d pull in Cain and Abel. Not the biblical figures (a minimum of not at first, though later Gaiman would enable a little bit of Genesis to bleed again into them) however the Cryptkeeper-style hosts of Home of Secrets and techniques and Home of Thriller, DC’s midcentury makes an attempt to steal the ravenous viewers of Tales From the Crypt.

Subsequent, from Saga of the Swamp Factor, by Gaiman’s buddy Alan Moore, he would borrow John Constantine. Following the Hellblazer, Dream of the Limitless would go to hell itself, peopled each by biblical Lucifer and DC’s personal Etrigan the Demon. From hell the reader would go to a hell on earth — Arkham Asylum — to introduce the story’s final foe: the Justice League supervillain Physician Future. And simply earlier than the climax, we’d even get a fast kibbutz with Mister Miracle and the Martian Manhunter within the headquarters of the Justice League Worldwide.

Picture: Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, Malcolm Jones III/DC Comics

As The Sandman’s success assured its life past its first story arc, Gaiman solely expanded his referential palette. He resurrected Swamp Factor character Matt Cable as Matthew the Raven. He revealed that Hector Corridor’s Sandman was led to by heretofore unknown actions of Morpheus the Dreamlord, as had been numerous Shakespeare’s performs, characters of Greek delusion and theater, parts of English folklore, actions in basic literature, and historic figures like Emperor Norton III. The collection’ penultimate arc attracts in Lyta Corridor, daughter of Surprise Lady, and her dream-conceived child, and likewise featured Lucifer Morningstar, Puck from A Midsummer Night time’s Dream, the mythological Loki, and the Furies of historic Greece.

In The Sandman, Gaiman created the Dreaming, a realm that contained each concept of which the human creativeness is able to conceiving. And, as a result of to do in any other case would have been dishonest, his story handled all these concepts — faith, delusion, folklore, theater, literature, superhero comics — as equally helpful parts.

Ask a fan of Sandman concerning the collection right this moment, they usually may say that what they like about it’s the Outdated Gods Do New Jobs concepts, which Gaiman would increase upon for American Gods; the city fantasy parts that will crop up in Neverwhere; the love of folklore evident once more in Stardust; or the creepily creative dream worlds filled with practically ineffable guidelines a la Coraline. All of them are proper.

In Sandman, Gaiman creates a narrative about creation — creation of fiction, creation of self, creation of historical past — that’s, if nothing else, about how creation is a steady course of fueled by all of the fictions and selves we’ve got entry to at any second. It was inevitable that The Sandman would even be a portrait of the younger artist within the course of of making himself.