The Sandman

It's got a few problematic ideas (people of colour, particularly women get a bit of a raw deal) but given it's age and how much society has changed it's held up well all things considered inclusivity/progression wise.

Agreed. But primarily, Sandman is about stories, the message being how they change, grow and evolve. Stories change over time, they change with the telling

Fun fact I saw one guy say "Gaiman would be rolling in his grave at these changes". No really.

I'm just reminded of one of the anecdotes Gaiman will tell about his Hollywood experiences, where Anansi Boys almost got a movie adaptation but he nixed it because the executives demanded the main cast all be white. Radically missing the point of the actual book.

The people whining now remind me of those execs.

Gaiman (in the modern day at least) has reached the level of success/confidence where he doesn't really need to play corporate games any more, and if he thinks that something sucks or is stupid he's just going to come out and say so.

There's a reason he was such good friends with Terry Pratchett - they both had this reputation of being these whimsical funny writers but there's a very intelligent, serious mind at work behind both of them.

inb4 someone whines about Desire being non-binary.

Oh, that's already happening. Lots of whining about the "they/them" on the cast announcement page and why it's "necessary" when Desire was generally referred to without pronouns and sometimes with "it", and a lot of the people complaining appear to think Desire was referred to exclusively using she/her. Being able to use they/them will probably help the dialogue flow a lot better.

Good Omens (2019) also got some Adaptational Diversity (Pollution went from A Timothée Chalamet Type to a nonbinary Asian person, for one) but I didn't pay a lot of attention to the casting news; did it get the same type of backlash or did they avoid it by casting lovable white actors in the lead roles?

Kirby Howell-Baptiste will most definitely make a good Death; her role in The Good Place has that perfect mix of warmth/kindness and seriousness.

Good Omens cast was fairly diverse to be fair, although the main two characters were both white and male it was good about keeping the rest of the cast pretty diverse.

Edited by jakobitis on Jun 1st 2021 at 4:52:58 PM

Dont think so. Granted Terry's fandom are super progressive like the man himself so I dont think any of them really cared.

In both cases, the actual fans who've read and understood the works are not the ones up in arms. That's the job of the reactionary right wing dickheads.

Sandman is a comic book. So it gets a lot of overlap with the general comics fandom, and it's frequently held up as a classic so a lot of people are invested in at least pretending that they're familiar with it.

Remember that "fake geek girl" bullshit from ages ago? Fake geek boys are an actual thing where they'll pitch a huge fit because something they're peripherally aware of doesn't exclusively cater to them anymore. Or they stop being able to pretend it exclusively caters to them. Note the people who, in all sincerity, claimed that Star Trek was never interested in social issues.

Good Omens, on the other hand, is a cult classic novel. Unless a novel really blows up, the same crowd who gets really weird about comic books isn't gonna touch it. The other element is that Good Omens was sitting in development hell concerning an adaptation for decades so the fact that it turned out actually good is a much bigger deal than some of the characters having their ethnicity changed in casting.

Yep.

Take Watchmen and all the people who complained about the show inserting politics into the Watchmen. By Alan Moore. Inserting politics. In a comic by Alan Moore.

I just think that statement is so stupid, it bears repeating.

This is going to be on Netflix? I wonder if people are going to petition Amazon to cancel it.

Which while it was legitimately hilarious does serve to show the level of intellects we're talking about here.

"Inserting politics." Into a comic that was already all about how terrible the Cold War was and how it corrupted everything and everyone.

It's easier to understand when you realize that politics in this context means "anything that I don't already agree with or that tries to make me care about anyone or anything else".

Everything's political. It maybe doesn't try to espouse a viewpoint explicitly, but almost everything certainly has a viewpoint with the exception of some very abstract productions. It might not be trying to teach anything, but there is a perspective there.

The Sandman is explicitly political though.

Waiting on the costumes. I would be kinda disappointed if they go the Titansroute with some of the costumes .

Edited by Mizerous on Jun 2nd 2021 at 4:58:35 AM

Gaiman's involvement is reassuring and he seems happy with everything so far.

People don't mind it when you talk about politics but when prejudice is involved, they tend to avoid it.

Outside of the politics stuff, I wonder how they will adapt stuff with a tv buget when sandman become REAL Ly mysthical and trippy in nearly every damn issue.

I mean, just look luficer, is an adaptation in name only, a good show, but terrible adaptation.

it's not impossible, you just need a good director. Like this is one time I think Tarsem Singh might actually be beneficial XD

Him or a goth fanboy like Del Toro ^^

I would gladly eat beans on toast to have del Toro-style practical effects on the show. Especially since the Corinthian is basically the forerunner to the Pale Man.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Jun 7th 2021 at 9:57:54 AM

I do hope they go for practical effects on this one wherever they can. Swamp Thing may have been strangled in the cradle, but did prove that practical effects can still be damn amazing.

So do you think we'll get any of the cameos from dc stuff here ?

Or nah.

At the very least Destiny's backstory requires it.