Trivia / The Sandman (1989)

• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Death's famous line "You get what anybody gets. You get a lifetime." comes from an official t-shirt, not the comic. The comic's version of the line, from Brief Lives, is "You lived what anybody gets. You got a lifetime."
• Development Gag: Gaiman wrote a scene for issue #6 ("Passengers") set in Arkham Asylum and featuring a cameo by the Joker playing a lethal April Fool's Day prank on the guards, but was told by DC editorial that he couldn't use the Joker because the issue would be published alongside a Batman storyline in which the Joker is missing, presumed dead. Gaiman rewrote the scene with the Scarecrow, and added a line of dialogue in which the Scarecrow remarks that April Fool's Day isn't the same without the Joker around, and that he's doing his best to fill the gap.
• Executive Meddling: While Gaiman had almost complete creative freedom over the comic, sometimes the higherups at DC would step in. They insisted that Hell be ruled by a triumvirate when Dream visits in Issue #4 so that it wouldn't contradict an ongoing Hellblazer arc; they wouldn't let him use 'masturbate' in Issue #14 — (“Neil, you can’t use the word masturbate. Nobody masturbates in the D.C. Universe.” “Well, I suppose that explains why they all put on costumes and hit each other.”); and he had to add an extra issue to the "Season of Mists" storyline in order to fill a month while he waited for another Hell plotline to be wrapped up in The Demon; while he was annoyed about it at the time, Gaiman soon realised this actually improved the plot.
• Referenced by...:
  • The first trade paperback collection of the early-2000s Harley Quinn solo comic was titled Preludes and Knock-Knock Jokes, a reference to the title of the first Sandman TPB, Preludes and Nocturnes.
  • Bennett the Sage has made references to it a few times, including a gag for the Apocalypse Zero review where he briefly has a "mouths for eyes" appearance similar to the Corinthian, stating the version of Lucifer here is his favorite in the Lady Death movie review, comparing the use of "brother-sister" for the title character of Maze Megaburst Space to the term being used for Desire, and calling the villain of an episode of Bubblegum Crash "Loki" (after saying that the villain, Dr. Yuri, looks like Sting's rendition of Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen from Dune (1984) if he were cast to play this series's version of Loki).
  • Hades's version of Orpheus is styled after Morpheus — note the big, black, messy hair.
• Shrug of God: When asked about the identity of the Chinese boy Death spends a mortal day with by the Yangtze River, Gaiman simply replied that he found the suggestions interesting. According to Gaiman, the intention was just to show one of the many days Death would spend as a regular mortal.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Gaiman originally imagined Death as looking like the German singer Nico. When the artist Mike Dringenberg came on board, he suggested the look that was ultimately used.
  • As discussed here — Gaiman began working on a one-shot detailing the dreams and future plans of a fetus, only for all its ideas to turn into nothing as it was aborted, but he scrapped it once he realized that he didn't want it to be used against some teenage girl already agonizing over abortion.
  • "Calliope" was originally going to be a completely different story titled "Sex and Violets", featuring Desire and Puck (presumably tying into his appearance in "A Midsummer Night's Dream"); while this appeared in a handful of early solicits, Gaiman reports that actually trying to write it gave him his only serious case of writer's block in the comic's entire run, and he eventually gave up and turned his muse someplace else.
  • "The Amazing Herschel and Betty", a small-time superhero duo, were intended to be a running gag in the comic, but Gaiman never revisited the idea after Herschel's brief appearance in "24 Hours".
  • In "Passengers", John Dee's conversation with another Arkham Asylum inmate before he breaks out was originally written as a cameo for the Joker, but DC editorial insisted it be changed because in the Batman comics at the time the Joker was missing presumed dead and they didn't want him appearing alive and well in Arkham, so he used Scarecrow instead.
• Word of God: When asked on Tumblr whether Dream would have still punished Alex Burgess if the latter had freed him, Neil Gaiman said no; Dream would have shown Alex mercy instead.

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