In the late ’80s and early ’90s, Neil Gaiman took a mostly forgotten DC character, the Sandman, and reinvented him as the god of dreams, creating surreal, literary comics that explored the necessity of myth and dream to being human. It redefined what comics could be, launched a new imprint of DC Comics that still thrives today, and touched off, among other things, a lengthy time in Hollywood’s Development Hell that would make even Lucifer chuckle. Gaiman left comics, by and large, for a novel writing career in recent years, but he’s been lured back to bring back Sandman. Or, as befitting the character, versions of him at least.
Gaiman, DC Comics announced today, is returning to serve as the curator of a new line of books based off his work on Sandman and other Vertigo work, called the Sandman Universe. He won’t be writing the books directly, having instead hand-picked four writers:
- Si Spurrier‘s The Dreaming will focus on the original Sandman supporting cast, trying to save the realm of dreams as it decays without a king on the throne.
- Dan Watters will take on Lucifer, which is about the avatar of evil ditching his job (and is the basis of Fox’s oddball police procedural of the same name.)
- Acclaimed fantasy author Nalo Hopkinson will take on House of Whispers, about two young women who strand their house in the realm of dreams while trying to save their sister.
- And rising literary fantasy star Kat Howard will pick up Books of Magic, a classic Vertigo series that follows Tim Hunter, a London teenager trying to live a normal life while also dealing with the fact that he’s a powerful wizard and everyone wants to kill him for it.
It’ll all be tied together with an introductory comic all four writers tackle. And it’ll roll out this fall, with the introduction arriving August 8th, and the books debuting in September and October. This marks another experiment from DC, which, in addition to its standard superhero books, has been letting writers like Gerard Way relaunch its weirder characters and reinventing Hanna Barbera characters with more adult ideas and approaches. Will fans return to see what some quite excellent writers will do with Gaiman’s work? We’ll find out this fall.
(via DC Comics)
