YMMV / The Sandman (1989)

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Desire naturally comes across as evil and petty, making them an obvious villain. Given, however, that the personality of each Endless is to some extent a reflection of their function and not easily changed, Desire might be understood not as malevolent, but rather amoral. Much like Delirium is insane, Destiny is indifferent, and Dream is aloof, Desire is as reckless, volatile, and cruel as human desire itself. Gaiman himself stated that Desire was an antagonist mainly because Dream was the protagonist of the series; a story told from Desire's point of view might very well make Dream a villain. Desire's chapter in Endless Nights gives us something of a look at what that would be like; Desire helps the narrator gain the young man she wants as a husband, and the knowledge they impart to her saves her from her husband's killers.
  • Remiel is a perfectly capable ruler of Hell. While he's pompous, and switching Hell's goal from "punishment" to "redemption" is seen as tediously unnecessary and a sign that he's incompetent at his job, in actuality he's still fulfilling the same role as Lucifer, keeping damned souls in their torturous afterlife as intended. When the damned claim that the idea that they're being redeemed rather than punished "makes hell worse," it could just be a new type of suffering rather than an inability to understand how Hell's "supposed" to run.
  • Death’s nonchalant attitude to her eventually being the only thing to survive the end of the universe. Is it due to an author who didn’t bother writing angst? Or is Death a Stepford Smiler hiding her inner anguish? Maybe she’s Conditioned to Accept Horror, since she is the personification of Death.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The "sleepy sickness" that mysteriously inflicts people around the world once Dream is imprisoned, making it so people fall into a coma-like state they never or barely wake up from? A real disease, that in fact had a pandemic starting around the time Dream was captured in the comic and ending in 1927. The actual scientific name of the disease is name dropped in one panel, though if you didn't know about its existence it'd be easy to think that both the disease and the name were invented from whole cloth for the story.
• Awesome Art: When not subjected to bad line art, the art of the series is pretty spectacular:
  • Dave McKean's beautiful and haunting covers, which combine many different forms of media into striking collages. They're even more impressive when taken into consideration that many were made without Photoshop.
  • J.H. Williams III's art in Sandman Overture is breathtaking.
• Broken Base: When it was first released, "A Game of You" got a very chilly reception from much of the fandom for veering away from the series' larger plot to focus on the adventures of a handful of smaller characters, only a few of whom had any connection to previous arcs. Plus, it's kind of depressing and Anvilicious, and has a Downer Ending. On the other hand, it features some of the few sympathetic LGBT characters available in comics at the time, and earned Gaiman an award from GLAAD.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Dream has been imprisoned for most of a century, first by a sorcerer named Roderick Burgess who mistook him for his sister, Lady Death, and then by the man's son Alex, who simply wanted power. As soon as he finally gets out, Dream summons Alex into a nightmare and asks What Were You Thinking?. He says that if they had succeeded in capturing Death, it would have led to near-apocalyptic problems. Then he subjects Alex to a nightmare of endless waking. It may seem disproportionate, but imprisoning Dream caused a lot of people to suffer a Sleeping Sickness and meant that his tools fell into hands that could have led to, once again, near-apocalyptic problems. Plus, Alex could have released Dream when his father died, but chose not to, instead keeping him imprisoned for several more decades, so it seems fitting.
  • We see the Corinthian torture and murder various boys and young men, stealing their eyes and leading them to bleed out while tied up in cheap motel rooms. It turns out he's inspired a generation of serial killers, who meet at a "Cereal Convention". We find out that he also kidnapped Jed and put him in the back of his car trunk on his way to the convention. Gilbert realizes who the Corinthian is and rescues Jed, telling Rose to summon Morpheus if she's put in danger. Dream is disappointed when he sees his creation, telling the Corinthian that he wasn't made to become a cliched nightmare. When the Corinthian demands a fight, Dream looks at him derisively. Then he unmakes him, like that, before taking the delusions of grandeur from the serial killers. It's a lesson that no dream can truly cross the Sandman.
  • Richard Madoc "buys" the muse Calliope from one of his favorite authors, treating her as his Sex Slave. To make it clear that Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil, he justifies it that she's not human and only worries that if she were real, he would get into legal trouble. Even when he writes his book and she begs for freedom, Richard scoffs that she's too valuable to give up and forces her to service him. Several years pass, and Dream shows up in his house, giving him a Death Glare that could heat up an iceberg. He gives Richard several chances to admit his wrongdoing and release Calliope of his own volition. Richard doesn't get the memo, finally admitting he needs Calliope to write the ideas, not caring that she is a thinking, feeling being. Dream loses it. He tells Richard that rape is rape, and Calliope is not a plaything. Then he curses him with an excess of ideas until Richard frees Calliope, and curses him with permanent Writer's Block after Calliope tells him to take mercy on the man. It's safe to say that Richard deserves it. The lesson? Do not lie to Dream. Or kidnap and rape his exes.
  • While Barbie ends up not taking Dream up on the offer, he does say that if she wished, per her boon, he could kill the Cuckoo. Said little girl/shapeshifter dream had made Barbie's friends die, brainwashed one of them to turn traitor, and compelled her to destroy the Land. All the Cuckoo can do is stand there and make naughty faces at them. Barbie lets her go, but it's implied the path in the Dreaming won't be easy for the Cuckoo since she has no home now.
  • Desire giving Rose her heart back. Rose has become an Emotionless Girl since Unity took her heart and became the Vortex. She then starts crying about how love is painful, but she wants it anyway because it's the only way to cope with "weird shit". Desire tries to mock Rose, but gives her some space in one of their few Pet the Dog moments.
  • Dream-Daniel's "The Reason You Suck" Speech and Calling the Old Man Out to Lyta after she completely destroys the Dreaming. All she can do is stand and stammer, asking if it's him. He says that her murdering the first Dream, even if she had sympathetic reasons, is worse than what the killer of the first Despair did. While he offers his divine protection, so that Dream's friends and loved ones won't be tearing after her in revenge, he also silently exiles her from the Dreaming as punishment for nearly destroying it.
• Common Knowledge: It's thought by many people, including the DC Wiki and Lewis Lovhaug, that the "World's End" arc in was a tie-in into Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! — expect, as as pointed out by the "Hey, Kids, Comics" wiki, "World's End" was published in 1993 — a full year before Zero Hour (1994). It's more likely that the reality storm that caused the events of "World's End" was solely caused by the attacks on the Dreaming and the death of Morpheus by the titular villains of "The Kindly Ones", especially given Destiny outright said the actions would cause a reality storm and what'd be revealed to be Morpheus's funeral being first seen in "World's End".
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Crosses the Line Twice: In "24 Hours" (the 6th chapter of Preludes and Nocturnes), a kid's show is corrupted and the host says they should slash their wrists. Twisted. But then he adds, "And remember to slash down the wrist, not across!" followed by a "Technical difficulties" screen.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Lots and lots, though given the size of the cast that's not surprising. Lucifer and Death are probably the standout examples (in no small part because they both eventually got their own books for a while, driven by fan demand, and have made fairly significant appearances in works even outside of those books and Sandman), while Hob Gadling, Matthew, Mervyn, Fiddler's Green and Thessaly/Larissa also all have noteworthy fanbases.^note Thessaly is a bit ironic, and frustrating, for Gaiman, as she was actually based on someone he knew and disliked, but he made Thessaly too interesting, powerful, and show-stealing (and to some tastes, possibly too cute) in her debut. Gaiman never wrote more Thessaly material after concluding the original Sandman run, but accepted that others would pick up the character and run with her popularity.
  • Wanda is an interesting example. While A Game Of You has been critically picked apart in the years since its release due to several elements not aging well (such as Wanda being viewed explicitly through the gender binary and the other characters casually or aggressively misgendering her to various degrees), Wanda has multiple fans who feel the story had problems, but Wanda herself didn't. She holds firm against the people who misgender her, and she's shown to be a better friend to Barbie than Barbie might deserve, with the narrative explicitly stating every person who refuses to recognize Wanda's gender is the one who's wrong no matter who or what they are.
• Fair for Its Day:
  • A Game of You is the storyline that most heavily falls into this due to its portrayal of Wanda:
    • Wanda was explicitly stated to be transgender, back in a time (1991-92) when transgender characters virtually never appeared in comics, much less in a positive capacity, and at the very beginning of (Anglo-American) cultural acceptance that the concept of being truly transgender even existed. Now that transgender characters (never mind people, in a public capacity) are more common and understood, her character tends to be examined much more closely, particularly the fact that she's the only main character to die in the storm at the arc's climax (a common fate for gay and transgender characters). For his part, Gaiman based Wanda on a trans woman he actually knew at the time (Thessaly was based on one of her critics, who he disagreed with), and has said that he wouldn't write her the same way in the 21st century, but he's still proud of her. She's undeniably a good, loyal friend to Barbie, and Barbie treats her like the woman she knows she is.
    • Also of particular note is the moment when Wanda is denied passage on the Moon's road because she is not biologically female. The fact that it's not a human making this call but rather a larger, more ineffable cosmic entity can come across as a little harsh. On the other hand, this series states time and again that the gods (and even the Endless) are not necessarily right or infallible, and humans can influence, shape or reject them as they see fit. Plus it's not actually the Moon stating that Wanda can't make the journey but Thessaly, who, as previously mentioned, is an asshole.
    • The end of the storyline can also rub people reading in later decades the wrong way. In a dream, Barbie sees Wanda hanging briefly with Death on her way to what comes after; Wanda is "drop-dead gorgeous" in a very classically feminine way, and Barbie describes her as "[having] nothing camp about her, nothing artificial". In the 21st century, that imagery and description could cause annoyance (as it seems to support the notion that trans women must conform to "traditional" femininity to be considered women), but as noted above, the mere acknowledgement that Wanda's soul was unquestionably that of a woman, an absolute statement that Wanda was a woman, was itself unheard of not just in comics but in media at large, and was a powerful, important moment that contributed to Gaiman winning acknowledgement from GLAAD. Gaiman likely made her very feminine just to make absolutely sure the point got driven home to those who needed it, in 1992, with a big, fat, dream-dust-conjured hammer. Also, in 1992, Barbie's description is likely the way nearly anyone would have described the contrast.
  • On a different tack, the "ethnic" stories. Both then and now, the entire point was to show that everyone dreams, that Dream is much older than the USA (or UK) and that not all the action has to happen on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, which is a pretty commendable effort compared to Sandman's contemporaries (or even many efforts afterward). In the 21st century, though, it's hard not to notice that a lot of the non-Caucasian-focused stories tend to lean pretty heavily on the stereotypes ("Tales in the Sand" and "Ramadan" are the worst offenders about this), a lot of which come across pretty negatively.
    • It doesn't help that "Ramadan" seems to take inspiration from the Mardrus "translation" of Arabian Nights, which is a full-on Orientalist version that doesn't reflect the original text.
  • Also on the subject of Bury Your Gays, both Chantal and Zelda die of AIDS near the end of the story; Chantal off-panel and Zelda during The Kindly Ones. Today this can seem almost infuriating, but this one really can be chalked up to "a different time". The Kindly Ones itself was written specifically at the furious burning peak of the AIDS epidemic in 1994-95, when upwards of fifty thousand people were dying yearly in the U.S. alone, just before HAART was developed... and it was a time when many people still tried to avoid talking about AIDS or homosexuals at all. Gaiman's entire purpose was to shine a huge spotlight on the fact that, yes, gay people are people, and they hurt, and they die, and they shouldn't be ignored (which a hell of a lot of the world around Rose, the focus character for that segment, is trying its damnedest to do). It also emphasises the fact that AIDS isn't a punishment for 'sinners', not even merely an affliction of the gay community, but a disease that anyone can suffer from—Chantal contracted it not from sex or intravenous drug use, but from getting a kidney transplant from an HIV-positive organ donor who'd flown under the radar. Gaiman felt very strongly about AIDS education and awareness in general at the time — it's why he agreed to do a comic PSA about the subject featuring Death during the run of Sandman — so it's not at all a surprise he would try and emphasize it this way in his most visible work of the time, even if in later years it comes across more harshly and unfortunately.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: While Dream has multiple canon romances, including Calliope, Nada and Thessaly, most fans ship him with Hob Gadling instead, due to the Ho Yay between them and Hob being a fan favorite.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • Many supernatural associates of the Endless (such as the Fae from "A Midsummer Night's Dream") only appear briefly but have rich backstories and relationships with the Endless teased. In "Brief Lives", Etain, the Alder Man, and Bernie Capax never have either the sources of their immortality or the nature of their past with Destruction revealed despite being three of his four oldest living acquaintances outside his family.
  • Who killed the first Despair, what was their supposedly pure motive (hoping to end suffering during a dark period of human history perhaps), and what is the nature of their terrible punishment (some eternal torture, being transformed into the second Despair, etc.)?
• Friendly Fandoms: With Discworld, as part of the general friendliness between Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. The fact that both are long running, Genre-Busting examinations of the fantasy genre with highly sympathetic (though wildly different) versions of Death as major characters helps in this regard.
• Genius Bonus: "Men of Good Fortune" begins with a scene in 1389 in which Hob Gadling declares that he's going to live forever and one of his drinking buddies does the classic "Yeah, and I'm the pope" rejoinder — or rather, two of his drinking buddies both do it, with one declaring himself to be Pope Urban and the other declaring himself to be Pope Clement. At the time, Urban and Clement were both claiming to be the real pope, with each asserting that the other's election had been invalid. (The modern Church accepts Urban as the real pope and refers to Clement and his successors as 'antipopes'.)
• Growing the Beard: Gaiman's editor has said that she believes issue #8 ("The Sound of Her Wings") to be this.
  • Also for Gaiman himself; he had a hard time figuring out the characters early on, and found the need to attach the series to the DC Universe very awkward. Issue 8 was the first time he really felt he'd gotten it right.
  • Alternately, issue #13 ("Men of Good Fortune") ^note the issue that introduces Hob Gadling can be seen as this. It marks a big step in the series breaking from its horror roots, gives humans and the Endless equal dramatic focus, and features supernatural elements as plot devices instead of as the focus of the story. It was also the first time that the series had delved into historical fiction (something that it became known for), and it largely started the series' tradition of subverting and deconstructing popular fantasy tropes, featuring a notable subversion of Who Wants to Live Forever?.
• Hard-to-Adapt Work: There have been multiple attempts to adapt The Sandman into a TV show or movie, but they all ended very early in production due to the very nature of the series. To produce the series in live-action requires a lot of expensive CGI, a lot of lore and exposition, and a large cast.
  • In 2020, most of these problems were circumvented with the production of an audiobook series, which combined the acting talent of A-list stars like James McAvoy, Kat Dennings, and Andy Serkis, with none of the visual issues that might have arisen from a live-action show (scenes are instead mostly described by the dulcet tones of a Narrator).
  • A TV show on Netflix was released in August 2022, with Neil Gaiman himself as an executive producer, and seems to be able to deal with the above mentioned issues just fine.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Martian Manhunter's reply to Clark Kent in The Wake that he's never had a dream where he's an actor in a strange TV show. Some years later, he will presumably start having dreams where he's a voice actor, or maybe a bunch of animation cels. In the fullness of time, he might even get the chance to experience the same dream for real.
  • The short story "A Tale of Two Cities" from World's End is remarkably similar in premise to the "Backrooms" creepypasta that would become popular well over 20 years later.
  • Morpheus's wild shock of hair. Neil Gaiman's hair in his older age has come to look a lot like it, even though he was sporting a smoother mullet at the time the comic started its first run.
  • Barbie and Ken, who are clearly modelled on the dolls from the famous toy line, have a less than satisfactory marriage and end up divorcing. Over thirty years later, in Barbie (2023) Barbie and Ken have a less than fulfilling relationship where he is clearly far more into her than she is into him, and they eventually realise that they're much happier apart pursuing their own lives and interests.
• I Am Not Shazam: A strange case. "The Sandman" is just one of countless names that Morpheus is known by, but he's never actually called "Sandman" except for one brief instance in issue #3. The name is mostly just used to maintain a tenuous connection to the original superhero from the 1930s. Strangely, he is always called "The Sandman" in the script of each issue.
• Magnificent Bastard: Lady Johanna Constantine, ancestor of John, grew up on the streets after her parents were hanged for treason. Bearing a child she nicknamed "Mouse" and raised as a boy and her "brother" to keep her safe, Johanna regains her family titles after tricking her way into possessing Pandora's Box, even if Mouse is lost in its recovery. Johanna later attempts to trap Dream of the Endless for her own purposes, but is spared when Dream requires a favor of her. Johanna is able to steal into Revolutionary-era France, tricking Maximilien Robespierre and his entire Committee to recover the head of Dream's son, Orpheus, leaving a legacy of adventure and manipulation behind her as she goes.
• Narm:
  • The part in "The Sound Of Her Wings" where the dead baby talks to Death in full sentences is pretty goofy. Neil Gaiman seems to agree in retrospect since the Netflix adaptation excises the baby's side of the conversation.
  • The line below under Squick, both for how over the top it is, and because it may remind some readers of a certain Cannibal Corpse song.
• Older Than They Think: The popularity of the series as a standalone "gateway series" also means some readers may not realise just how tied into DC continuity the series can be at times.
  • The series started as an attempt to drastically reinvent the Golden Age superhero, the Sandman. Almost every detail about the previous Sandmen is actually found in older volumes of Sandman, Justice League and Infinity, Inc.
  • Prez (1973) was a comic book character in his own right, right down to being countered by Boss Smiley. At the time he was obscure, though by now he's become well-known for being obscure and the concept even got a revival, which can be at least partly attributed to his appearance in The Sandman.
  • All the inhabitants of the Dreaming in the first arc are DC's old horror anthology hosts, including Cain (and Gregory), Abel (and the unseen friend he names Goldie after), Lucien, Eve, the Three Witches, and the briefly mentioned "Fashion Thing" (the Mad Mod Witch). Destiny is also one of these, making him the only Endless that predates this series, and thus the "eldest".
  • The Swamp Thing story "Abandoned Houses" featured what could be called a proto version of The Dreaming, complete with the houses of Mystery and Secrets. This is also the first DC story in which Cain murders Abel, a detail that Gaiman would later adapt for The Sandman.
• Squick: "Shep Cayle, who hasn't had an erection in a dozen years, is ejaculating violently — again, and again, and again: and now he's coming blood. And he doesn't care." Ewww...
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Alas for Philip Gist, who was extremely brave — and stupid — to try and infiltrate a convention of serial killers by posing as a well-known one called the Bogeyman. The Corinthian, Doctor, and Nimrod find out he's the founder and editor-in-chief of a magazine called Chaste, which he plugged to attendees of the convention repeatedly. When busted, Philip admits he was curious about them and wanting to learn if they killed for power, sex, or money. They kill him shortly after, but the guy had a rather unique set of balls on him.
  • Or rather, they wasted a perfectly good opportunity for a great character in Rose's mom. Much is made about Rose being Desire's granddaughter, but there seems to be no effect on her mother, despite, you know, her being Desire's daughter! She gets basically no characterization besides her role as a mother, and later her biological mother's caregiver, and seems to be in no way more than a normal human being.
  • Lucifer too gets wasted after he resigns his post as Lord of Hell. While he makes continuous cameos in the book, seeming to build up to getting involved in The Kindly Ones, he does precisely nothing to affect the story, possibly due to the fact that he has Story-Breaker Power even on the cosmic scale, and so Gaiman pulled a Deus Exit Machina. On the plus side, he got his own spin-off series.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Lyta Hall as of "The Kindly Ones." She's gone mad with grief over losing her son and being led to believe that he's dead (and Morpheus is responsible), thus leading her to seek out the Fates. Unfortunately, while possessed by them, she kills a bunch of people who have nothing to do with her grudge regarding Morpheus except for the fact that they reside in the Dreaming. Even after she learns that she was wrong and that Daniel was still alive, she later goes on to badmouth Morpheus at his wake and call him a monster. The kicker? She's basically a Karma Houdini Warranty. There are some preserving factors at play; Thessaly gives her a Mercy Lead and warns her that many beings, including herself, will be chasing down Lyta for the rest of her life. Daniel!Dream is forced to exile her from the Dreaming, gives her a Calling the Old Man Out speech saying that her actions destroyed her son forever, and says even with his protection, she won't get her family back. In a sequel series, Lyta learns from this and serves as The Atoner for the harm she caused.
  • We're presumably supposed to be on Charlene's side when she complains that all the stories in World's End are men's stories... but seriously, she hears stories from times and places unimaginable, and that's her takeaway?
• Values Dissonance: It's mentioned a few times that Foxglove wants to come out of the closet, nationally, in Death: The Time Of Your Life. She tells her manager that she's been out for years before she became famous, and it's not fair to Hazel that she has to be the "housekeeper". Her manager convinces her to hold off, promising that they'll stage it out on a talk show. A Spanner in the Works random paramour who shacked up with Foxglove in Europe blabs to the press, outing her before she can take control of her image. Foxglove decides to retire quietly and go to the suburbs with Hazel and Alvie, raising their son using the royalties from their music. It's likely that Foxglove could have remained an indie singer in the 2020s, and people would be more outraged about her cheating on Hazel than about her being, in her words, "a dyke".
• Values Resonance: A Doll's House has a lot of this.
  • Hal is mentioned to be an openly gay man and a gender-nonconforming crossdresser. He's also a constant emotional support to Rose, making her tea while she's worried about her brother in the hospital. Rose considers him a good friend.
  • Jed's foster aunt and uncle abusing him is Played for Drama. It's shown as cruel and ugly, with him being locked in the basement on end, and being beaten up even when he behaves. Rose herself is horrified when she finds out, asking who would dare hurt her little brother. With the many horror stories coming from CPS being neglectful or Fostering for Profit, this plotline remains relevant. Neil ironically said that the child abuse was the most controversial part of the story.
  • Dream tackles the idea of romanticizing serial killers with one appropriate reaction: disgust and disappointment. He bluntly tells the "Cereal Convention" con-goers that they are neither heroes nor glorious villains, just a bunch of sick people that take innocent lives to make themselves feel better. Dream gives them Cruel Mercy: he lets them go, but destroys the illusion that they are anything but monsters. This has become more relevant in the age of Jeffrey Dahmer worship and mass shootings.
• The Woobie:
  • Poor Nuala; sold out by the fairies, summarily ignored by Morpheus, dismissed peremptorily with a broken heart, treated like crap, and then the poor thing goes and accidentally helps her crush kill himself.
  • Lyta Hall spent several years trapped in dreams with her husband, conceiving a child that stayed in her womb for a very long time. When she's finally released, she loses her husband and ends up a single mother, and has to contend with the unwanted attentions of Morpheus, who declares that since her son was conceived in the Dreaming, he is entitled to one day take the boy away from her. Is it any wonder that she ends up going mad and becoming the host for the Kindly Ones?
  • The minor character Hazel is deeply in love with Foxglove, but ends up pregnant (and she's a lesbian!) after a one-night stand that she very much regrets... and then Thessaly goes and blabs about her pregnancy to Foxglove, and drafts both her and Foxglove for a dangerous mission into the Dreaming to rescue their housemate Barbie. She and Fox ultimately work out their differences, but the mission is a failure and results in their apartment building being destroyed, leaving them homeless with a baby on the way. And then there's the spin-offs, where Foxglove becomes a successful songwriter, but leaves Hazel at home to raise their son, who dies from SIDS, causing poor Hazel to get so desperate that she makes a deal offering to let Death take her in exchange for the boy getting a little more time. And meanwhile Foxglove cheats on her. Repeatedly. She is at least able to earn her happy ending.
  • Rainie Blackwell, a.k.a. Element Girl from the short story Facades; the poor woman is so desperately lonely and unhappy, you just want to give her a hug. As does Death.