You can’t keep a great franchise down – the utterly beloved Sandman universe is coming back from DC with The Sandman Universe – four titles that will be overseen by creator Neil Gaiman but written by other writers. The four book mini-imprint will deal with supporting characters and concepts from Gaiman’s Sandman-i-verse starting with a world in which, once again., Dream is missing.
EW has the exlucsive. The titles are:
• The Sandman Universe – one shot plotted by Gaiman and written by Nalo Hopkinson, Kat Howard, Si Spurrier, and Dan Watters, with art by Bilquis Everly and a cover by Jae Lee.
• House of Whisper by Hopkinson: “how the voodoo deity Erzulie ended up in the Dreaming with her titular house.”
• Books of Magic: written by Kat Howard: the continuing adventures of bespectacled wizard Tim Hunter.
• The Dreaming: written by Si Spurrier: focuses on Lucien the librarian and Matthew the Raven.
• Lucifer: written by Dan Watters “finds the titular devil blind and destitute, trapped living in a small boarding house in a quiet town where no one can ever leave.”
No artists announced for the titles. Make of that what you will!
According to Gaiman:
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You’ve done Sandman prequels before, like Overture. What inspired you to finally do some sequel stories?
NEIL GAIMAN: Well, Overture is a Sandman prequel and a Sandman sequel. It’s kind of all over the place. And there is sequel stuff in Sandman: Endless Nights. The story carries on. But it’s a huge sandbox with so many wonderful toys that nobody’s getting to play with right now. I started feeling guilty. I liked the idea of getting the toys played with again, reminding people how much fun this is, and also getting the opportunity to work with some fantastic writers. Down the line, there will be fantastic artists as well.
We’ll have more on this later today.
Sandman was never a franchise. I mean, there were spin-offs, but outside of Lucifer, they weren’t very good.
Also, Gaiman is known for having a very hands-off approach and letting others do their thing.
Oh well…I guess D.C. is doubling down on that 80s nostalgia money. Keep squeezing blood from that ever shrinking stone…
It’s like he is doing everything *but* finish Miracleman. C’est la vie.
It sounds more like 90’s Vertigo to me. Novelists with no previous experience writing major comics, little care for the artists (Bilquis Evely is great, but they didn’t even care to write her name right), overexploit of a good property. The only thing that gives me hope it’s that Gaiman seems to have left Dream out of the equation. I guess he’s saving that story to write it himself later.
What the…I read comments on here that are not over the hill excited. Are you people crazy. HOW AWESOME is it that we get more stories based on these characters. I can’t wait. I laugh at the guy who said the spin offs weren’t very good. Book of Magic series was really good. I hope we see Cain and Abel and I hope John Constantine and Swamp Thing and Dead man and Demon can all play in the books
Curation is the new creation it seems. Good on whoever can reach that level. Derivatives seem like the province of the naive or desperate though.
There’s some Black Mirror version of the DCU that’s got Moore (Watchmen), Gaiman (Sandman) and Miller’s (DKR) work running around together in a near-future DCU that’s all-digital, 32pgs and retails for $12.
Everyone involved means well though.
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