Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream Make him the cutest that I've ever seen

I've liked precisely nothing Neil Gaiman has produced for TV

Can he have wavy hair like Liberace?

I’m stoked that Brienne of fucking Tarth will play Lucifer. Perfectly cast.

More casting news. They've racebent Death and Rose Walker, which I'm sure is going to trigger people. As will the (appropriate) casting of a non-binary actor as Desire.

Stephen Fry had let his casting slip a few months ago, and he's perfect.

The Desire casting is actually completely appropriate for the role. Similarly, I don't have an issue with any of the Endless shifting their superficial ethnicity - they are supposed to be perceived differently by everyone anyway. Not that bothered about Rose, though it means the rest of her family (her grandmother Unity Kincaid and her brother) also have to shift, which is a bit weird for Unity in early 20th century England, though not utterly beyond possible.

Tom Sturridge is excellent casting for this.

They included the characters pronouns....

Ruby Rose is Desire.

John Cameron Mitchell is also listed (without a character) on IMDb. He’s basically got to be playing Hal, right?

[quote]They included the characters pronouns....

Those are the actors' pronouns. It's a press release so that journalists know how to refer to the cast.

R10 But...that just makes it worse.

[quote]Not that bothered about Rose, though it means the rest of her family (her grandmother Unity Kincaid and her brother) also have to shift, which is a bit weird for Unity in early 20th century England, though not utterly beyond possible.

Unless they're moving it to present day, which would mean Unity went to sleep in the 50s. I hope they don't do that.

The recent, spectacular first volume of an audio drama that Audible did kept the present-day stuff contemporaneous to the comics being published. I liked that quite a lot.

[quote]the moon does not buy they/them

You'd really hate the audio drama, then. Justin Vivian Bond voices Desire, and uses the pronoun v (as in vself) and the honorific Mx. Gird ye loins.

I hadn't thought of a time shift like that, R12. A shame to lose the Aleister Crowley vibe of the original setting, though.

They could update it to Anton LaVey, but that does lose a little something.

The pool of good actors is large. The level of acting in most films is pretty good anyway and has been since the late 70s. I was watching Titans (yeah) and they use former models. So fuck, yeah. Bring on the eye candy.

I haven't read the graphic novels for many years so I can't really remember the characters, and I therefore don't have any particularly strong feelings about the casting. Though I rather doubt many fans of it are going to be particularly bothered, as it's not the sort of material that appeals to ignorant narrow-minded edgelords anyway.

It is set in modern day, not the Eighties. No John.

I presume Nada is now white?

In my opinion, they waited far too long to do this. Imagine if Hollywood had waited until the late '60s to make a movie of Gone with the Wind.

R19 And Gaiman got so woke he has insomnia.

Set look.

I always thought the ruby would be bigger.

They’ve announced the cast for the next volume of the audio drama. Kristen Shaal as Delirium is perfect in a way I can’t describe.

Didn't know they'd done it as a audio. Seems a bit weird for something created in graphic form.

The first volume was honestly incredible. They do each issue as a chapter, and they’re all good, some phenomenally so. The diner issue and the convention story are both chilling, and the story with Element Girl (with Samantha Morton as Ranie Blackwell) is heartbreaking.

It probably shouldn’t work, but it does, and I highly recommend it.

This is about Mr. Sandman? I thought that pic was a promotional poster for Timothee Chalamet in Dune. My bad.

T4

Finally I know what gender Patton Oswalt and David Thewlis are, it always used to be a mystery to me.

(*r4, obviously)

The pronouns—absurd.

So Death is now African American? That is SO stupid. Death was a character with a very specific, iconic, well defined look, a kooky, pale, dressed in black (like her brother Dream) punk rock girl type that belied what her very serious purpose was: death. To make her African American belies that whole concept and makes no sense. Why not make Dream a black guy, then? I think this tv series will stink.

Blackwashing old punk characters is now de rigeur. They're doing it to John Constantine as well.

Isn't John now going to be a woman, as in his ancestor Lady Johanna Constantine?

I hope y’all are teenagers

I was when I read the comic 30 years ago. And we have zero need of a hall monitor here.

Took long enough. Terfy Gaiman.

Bad link r35

R35 Not bad, they have locked down their account. The fans boys must have been trashing her. She pointed out that the Wanda storyline, viewed from 2021 is very problematic. If you look at Gaimans' twitter feed should become clear what went down.

" the story with Element Girl (with Samantha Morton as Ranie Blackwell) is heartbreaking."

That story, called "Facade" is one of my favorite Sandman stories. It's one of Neil Gaiman's favorites as well. But his fanbase didn't like it much because they viewed it as a story about a female who wants to kill herself because she's not "pretty" anymore. Their consensus is why should a woman be depressed and isolated and suicidal just because she's been transformed into a hideously mutated super being? Why she should relish her new existence as a revoltingly ugly super being totally separate from humanity! Why should she long for a normal life and a normal existence when she can have that! Well, I read a lot more into the story than that. My guess is that a tv version will pretty much fuck it up.

I don't see the problem with the Wanda story. She wasn't a woman from the perspective of the ancient, old-time supernatural being the Moon, but was a woman with the delightful, up to date Death at the end.

Dream met Wanda in the dream of Barbie.

Oh. Neil Gaiman replied to my accusatory tweet and now I am in a pile on. Bless the young, deluded fans.

Sorry. Fucked the link up.

I always wanted to fuck Hob.

Hilarious - they are arguing about the reality of the manifestation of Death meeting Wanda in in a dream, in a comic book which is about the world of Dreams and the personification of Dream. I mean, what point are they going for here, except to demonstrate their own stupidity and irrationality?

[quote]That story, called "Facade" is one of my favorite Sandman stories. It's one of Neil Gaiman's favorites as well.

It, along with the diner and serial convention chapters are the audio drama's best. I know it's odd that something that's so visual would be done in an audio format, but they effectively communicate things with narration or adding things to the dialog.

[quote]I don't see the problem with the Wanda story. She wasn't a woman from the perspective of the ancient, old-time supernatural being the Moon, but was a woman with the delightful, up to date Death at the end.

And who is it that doesn't recognize Wanda as a woman--mostly characters that are either assholes or actual villains. I can honestly see where, maybe reading superficially, it might appear transphobic...but then you have to ignore that A) one of the final things that Barbie does is make sure that Wanda is seen as herself, and B) we get an image of her fully as a woman. Wanda is legitimately the first positive portrayal of a trans person I ever came across in a comic, and the one comment is right, she's absolutely the most sympathetic person in the story.

They cast a trans woman in the audio drama. I'm curious to see how the show will deal with it, given that she is drawn as...I don't want to say masculine, but as someone who's not very far into transitioning.

R44 The moon is a terf to Wanda.

Teaser is here.

Tom Sturridge looks hot AF.

The second Audible installment came out last week as well. The Dead Boy Detectives chapter and the French Revolution story (with Joanna Lumley as Johanna Constantine) are as good as the best ones from the first volume.

Not to shill for the Audible, but "Three Septembers and a January," where John Lithgow plays Joshua Norton honestly made me tear up.

The trailer looks exactly like the comic...interesting.

While this is DL, and I know I can't say anything positive about a trans person, there's a nice, tiny change in A Game of You that's for the better. In the comic, when asking Foxglove for menstrual blood, she says that Fox is the only who who can provide it as "Hazel's pregnant, Wanda's a man..." Which has been updated to "Hazel's pregnant, Wanda doesn't..."

The moon is still aterf and won't let Wanda travel her path.

Wanda is a transvestite man and the moon rejects her.

Next.

Yes, Wanda identifies as a woman but has the body of a man. In the graphic novel Barbie has a dream where she sees Wanda, now looking beautiful and entirely feminine; beside her is Death. She and Death smile and wave at Barbie, implying that Wanda is now a woman and very happy. It's a moving moment. I thought "A Game of You" was heartbreaking in a lot of ways; all the deaths of Barbie's childhood toys/friends, the death of the homeless woman, the death of Wanda. Heartbreaking.

R53 Jesus, you sound weak. And deluded, Game of You blew chunks.

R54, Jesus, you sound like you have the IQ of a gerbil. No kidding, you sound as stupid and clueless as they come. And "blew chunks?" You are most certainly a clod.

R56 Tell us your pronouns...

Did you all see the poster with Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer? AWFUL. She looks dowdy and asexual. Very unattractive. Maybe that was the point.

R58 Yes! Looks ridiculous. And fat.

Is this ever coming out?

Google it, you lazy whore ^

R61 And still no release date. But rated R18. That will be the diner episode.

I just saw some images...it looks good. However the Death casting seems so off. Black washing and genderbending are all the rage and it is so over the top. The days of whitewashing we're no fun either to be fair.

Lucifer looks fucking stupid.

August 5.

Tom Sturridge's upper bod looked insane in that teaser last year, hopefully he's shirtless a lot in the show.

[quote] While this is DL, and I know I can't say anything positive about a trans person, there's a nice, tiny change in A Game of You that's for the better. In the comic, when asking Foxglove for menstrual blood, she says that Fox is the only who who can provide it as "Hazel's pregnant, Wanda's a man..." Which has been updated to "Hazel's pregnant, Wanda doesn't..."

So you’re for book censorship and revising history, like 1984? Why not just burn the books?

Official trailer.

Groan.

Am I wrong in wishing the Corinthian was hotter? Aside from Morpheus, he's our only possibility of eye candy given the genderflips of Lucifer and and John Constantine.

They've kept the contemporary Joanna Constantine bisexual, as the pouch was still stolen by her ex-girlfriend.

Also, while David Thewliss is good casting, the entire point of John Dee is that he's withered and deformed from the use of the ruby, and here he looks...well, like regular David Thewliss.

While I find Boyd Holbrook extremely hot, I do wish they styled him hotter on the show. I think it's the glasses that lower the hotness factor. Maybe the hair as well.

Looking at civilian pictures of him, he's definitely better looking in real life.

It's just that Mike Dirgenberg drew the character to be pretty sexy in "The Doll's House," and Marc Hempel even managed to retain that in the simpler style of "The Kindly Ones." Like, what's with the suits? Stick with the tank top and tight jeans.

Corrinthian was so hot.

Yeah, Boyd's costume should be sleeker. I think their intention was for only Tom Sturridge to be The Hot One, for whatever reason. They obviously spent a lot of money on his personal trainer. But who knows, we might get a sexy reveal with Boyd eventually.

I liked the Sandman comic series very much. But I 'm not going to watch this. It will probably be a right mess. And making Death an African American...that's just absurd. Death, in the comic series, was a very well defined character; she was as white as her brother, had his same black messy hair and looked like a college age Goth. She came across as being flaky but is very conscientious when it comes to her "job", which is bringing death to all living creatures. Her being African American changes the character into something completely different. I don't think it will be an improvement.

^ Ugh, one of those people who refer to any black person they encounter as "African American."

But we saw most of the Endless match their surroundings or the people observing them. We saw Morpheus as African, a Martian, and a cat. We also saw Death as Asian in one of her mortal sojourns.

Desire looked like a cheap whore.

I also see no good reason to make Lucien black. He is such an archetype.

Lucien is also a woman.

R81 ....but, of course. Can't wait to see how he writes all the Wanda scenes, to cut all the fear of surgery nightmares.

I wish they hadn't fucked with the casting, I mean, what's the point of changing the race/gender of a beloved character?

Constantine. Lucifer. Death. Three of my all-time favorite characters in one of my all time-favorite reading experiences, and now I finally get to see them in live action, and the whole time that they're on-screen my brain is making unhappy confused noises and I can't just enjoy the performances.

It's not fair to the actors either. It's Beanie Feldstein's Funny Girl all over again.

[quote]Constantine. Lucifer. Death. Three of my all-time favorite characters in one of my all time-favorite reading experiences, and now I finally get to see them in live action, and the whole time that they're on-screen my brain is making unhappy confused noises and I can't just enjoy the performances.

During the panel, they screened a scene from "The Sound of Her Wings" (including Death beaning Morpheus with the bread), and the reaction online was overwhelmingly positive.

And I can't recommend the Audible drama enough. Kat Dennings is a wonderful Death.

Gaiman breaks down the trailer. I found it useful, as someone going into this blind. Addresses the gender-swapping as well.

R85 And race swapping? Death being black seems so racist.

I'm black and a fan of these comics and I like Anne Rice too. I don't get why they racelift either. This is not a stage play of an old fairy tale where you can do colorblind casting. The comics are a visual medium with clear descriptions of the characters. It's odd to try to make an already very progressive comic series even more progressive by changing the races of some of the characters. In fact it's patronizing to me. I don't care about ones like Batman or Spider-Man because those media franchises with tons of different universes and their appearances can change depending on the universes. However, Sandman remained consistently creator-driven just like Fables, Y, Hellboy and Spawn and those type of stories never deviated from what the creator established.

It's Death, it's not a human, who cares if it's white or black or purple? Do its powers stem from its melanin levels? If not, who gives a shit.

Maybe the black actress was just the best one for the role.

R88 True. I hope they still keep her a goth. I'd love to see black goth representation.

Tom Sturridge really was the cutest thing I'd ever seen in Waiting for Forever.

The only change they've made that I object to is genderflipping John Constantine (though I expect Jenna Coleman will do a good job). He has such a long history in the comics, is the creation of a storied author other than Gaiman, and has already appeared in so many adaptations. I don't see the point.

Given that Bowie is no longer with us, I quite like the casting of Gwendolyn Christie as Lucifer.

Thank God! I thought this thread was going to be about this guy:

R91 Johanna was in the comic, except she was in revolutionary France, and helped Morpheus twice. So the gods knows who will play that part, in Thermador.

A five-minute scene with Lucifer. There's another one out with Death.

Both scenes have this awkward feel to them, but that's probably because they're pulled out of context.

R94 Also Gwen is a shitty actress. She was the very weak link in the brilliant Midsummers Night Dream.

[quote] Maybe the black actress was just the best one for the role.

Or maybe the casting director just thought it would be a good public relations ploy to make a major character in the series black. It's a stupid idea. The character will be completely changed because of it.

[quote]So the gods knows who will play that part, in Thermador.

The plan is for Jenna Coleman to do both.

Joanna Lumley voices her, and Taran Eggerton voices John in the audio drama.

Taran could play the head of Orpheus.

He could have played Hob Gadling. They cast this guy, however.

Death comes for us all.

r100 I find this scene so unremarkable, the one with Anubis in American Gods was so much better.

Okay, I'm totally geeking out over Martin Tenbones.

In this production Death comes across as...sweet. Kind, loving. She was NOT like that in the comic series. She was quirky and matter of fact: "I have a job to do and I do it." Sometimes she was downright callous. The comic book Death was a lot more interesting, both in character and appearance.

WTF is this shit???!

r103 Dee Dee, (Death in human form for a day), from The High Cost of Living was quirky and nice. Normal Death is not.

Is this series going to feature the story "Facade?" A lot of Sandman fans didn't like it but I liked it a lot. It was very moving.

There's no actress listed as playing Raine Blackwell on IMDb, but they do have an entry for Calliope, so they're at least adapting part of Dream Country.

There are ten episodes total. The first five appear to be Preludes and Nocturns and the sixth is The Sound of Her Wings. So assume three episodes for Doll's House.

But how can Rose's brother go missing in the social media age?

I think Samantha M

The series has landed.

I watched the first episode. Tom Sturridge spends most of it naked. I have to wonder if some of his body was CGI, as he's insanely sinewy.

First two episodes were entertaining, despite some really sluggish editing in the premiere.

Did Dream have this look in the comics as well, i.e. a buff gym bro in the top half and a Treblinka survivor below the waist? These proportions are quite disconcerting, boy needs to work on his legs.

David Thewlis, eugh. I swear he's the same in everything and I'm so tired of his dumb accent.

Adorable CG gargoyles are my favourite part of the show so far.

[quote]Did Dream have this look in the comics as well, i.e. a buff gym bro in the top half and a Treblinka survivor below the waist? These proportions are quite disconcerting, boy needs to work on his legs.

He always was depicted as being emaciated-looking. If anything, the concentration camp look is more comics-accurate.

Sorry to the racists, but Lucienne is great. Not sure how I feel about them setting up the Corinthian as the show's version of the Big Bad. I don't know if the series needed an season-long through-line. They could have just adapted the story arcs as discrete entities.

While I haven't encountered them yet, from the clips that played at the end of the first episode, Desire looks ridiculously like Gaga. Which I guess is maybe appropriate, as in the comics they were half Bowie, half Nagel print.

Desire always looked liked Ruby Rose, before there even was a Ruby Rose.

What a difference styling and lighting can make. And maybe starvation? Tom Sturridge's face is usually rather full and a bit more rounded. He's much more angular as Morphy, and all his naked scenes show he probably has 2% body fat. I wonder how he kept an Insta-ready gym body while holed up in a glass cage for a century.

I love Neil Gaiman's imagination and I like his stories...I tolerate the narrative meandering because he's Tori's pretend adoptive brother. 🙃

I like half of Coraline and don't like half of Coraline, but overall I love it somehow.

I like most of Stardust and I don't like some of Stardust and overall I really like Stardust somehow. My dad has said it's his favorite movie...!

The first season of American Gods is BRILLIANT, and I will kindly pretend everything that followed never existed.

I do love that Gaiman presents whimsy and nightmarish situations side by side. His horrors and terrors are never strictly horrific or terrible; there's always some kind of levity involved. I think that's his most distinctive quality as a writer. And he just allows his imagination to take him wherever it leads and I love that.

His work isn't transcendent but it is thoughtful genre entertainment that is usually emotionally affecting even when it meanders.

I've been enjoying it but episode five is getting on my nerves.

The fifth episode is getting raves. And while I usually hate these sorts of extended detours from the main storyline, this one worked for me as I was genuinely curious about all the characters' dirty little secrets. It didn't hurt that it was gay as hell as well. Made me think about how much of our lives and of everyday human interaction is built on lies.

I'm on the seventh episode now and I'm enjoying these one-episode adventures. The CG on Matthew is so good. Gwendoline Christie's Lucifer intrigues me, there's some fragility there that I'm super interested in. I saw people bitching about Desire looking too feminine and not androgynous enough -- oh boy, just you wait until that actor opens his mouth!

R116 I think what bugs me so much about the episode are 1) the detour from the narrative and 2) that "being honest" immediately turned into everyone fucking strangers mindlessly. It may as well be a porn plot.

r117 I do agree about the porn part, that took me by surprise. When exactly was it established that that guy's vision of a better world is just everyone fucking each other?

On the other hand, maybe that was the point, to show that we would descend to our basest instincts if you took all the lies away? But there's all sorts of primal instincts and impulses, not just sex, so why choose that for every character?

Right, R118. It had me wondering for a moment if "everyone being honest" really would reveal our only motivations in life are to have sex with strangers, and I immediately came to the conclusion of "no." So I am not really sure what this is about. It seems off the mark for Gaiman, really.

Is it wrong that I found Choronzon hot?

No, he was hot as hell, his abs were all I could look at.

[quote]The CG on Matthew is so good.

I love Patton Oswalt, and this may be my favorite thing he's ever done. I would have thought him better as Merv Pumpkinhead (or Abel, for that matter), but he's perfect.

I was iffy on the female Lucifer and I'm really not the biggest fan of Gwendoline Christie, but I thought she did okay. I didn't dig the bat wings. I liked the contrast of the Lord of Hell still keeping the angel wings.

Jenna Coleman, on the other hand, was gangbusters.

[quote]No, he was hot as hell, his abs were all I could look at.

Surprising lack of thirst traps on the actor's Instagram.

So the diner story was taken straight from the comics? It must be the basis of the Tori Amos song "The Waitress."

[quote] I want to kill this waitress / I can't believe there's violence in mind / And is her power all in a club sandwich? / I want to kill this killing wish / There're too many stars and not enough sky / If I did it fast, you know that's an act of kindness / But I believe in peace, BITCH, I believe in peace!

I haven't watched the show yet R118 and R119, but Doctor Dee in the comics expresses no "vision of a better world" or to have the people in the diner be "honest". He's a psychopath who psychologically manipulates and tortures them for his own amusement. The first words in the comic are "Hour 1: The flies walked into the web." They are his victims and he changes what he inflicts on them every hour -- because he gets bored and, as he says when asked, because he can.

It sounds to me like the adapters added elements which were not in Gaiman's original comic.

[quote]I love Patton Oswalt, and this may be my favorite thing he's ever done.

I wanted to add exactly that to my CG comment, but thought it sounded too crazy. Celebs can be hit-or-miss with the voiceovers these days and he just nails the part. He could have easily gone the whiny and annoying route with that bird, but he didn't. Rather, he's immediately established as a friendly and valued asset to Dream that I would want by my side as well.

In the comics, "24 Hours" (the diner story, which the show retitiles "24/7") was the moment the book really established itself. It was one of the things that set the tone for what Vertigo was going to be in the early-mid 90s, and that the comic was willing to go to some really atypical places. It's horrifying.

I've not watched the episode yet. But if it's done as well as the audio drama did it, I'm looking forward to it.

[quote]It sounds to me like the adapters added elements which were not in Gaiman's original comic.

Someone on Reddit who read the comics said they were in a focus group for the show last year and that watching it now, there's some obvious changes that align with what those unfamiliar with the source material wanted changed back during that focus group. Of course, adaptations are always a balancing act, so I'm sure this happens all the time.

Gaiman developed and produced it, so I wouldn't think of story changes as corruptive of his ideas. Each episode does have a dedicated writer, except the pilot, which he cowrote.

I don't like it as much as the first season of American Gods but it's pretty good.

Is the reason that this is a co-production because Warners Bros thought it would be too expensive to finance themselves?

That was probably a wise choice, given how spectacularly HBOMax has been imploding this week, but this has potential as HBO Prestige Drama shit.

I never read the comic book or the graphic novel but I'm a fan of both genres - and of Gaiman.

I just watched the first two episodes and I'm in. The gaunt build of Dream was spectacular casting. Gay couple Alex and Paul was pitched just right, without drawing too much attention to it. The brothers Cain and Abel were delightful. The time shifts from the period look of Olde England to modern London and to dinner other non-waking world held me.

I missed Patton Oswalt as the voice of the Raven or is that yet to come? Like that guy.

I'm two episodes in and it's ok. Don't know anything about the source material, but Tom Sturridge's Dream seems like a mashup of Harry Potter and Twilight's brooding Edward.

It looks great, but it seems more suited for spring and Halloween than in the middle of a summer heat wave.

it seems more suited for spring and Halloween than in the middle of a summer heat wave.

MARY!

[quote]Someone on Reddit who read the comics said they were in a focus group for the show last year and that watching it now, there's some obvious changes that align with what those unfamiliar with the source material wanted changed back during that focus group. Of course, adaptations are always a balancing act, so I'm sure this happens all the time.

There are inherent difficulties in adapting something that was really only designed to be on the page--and defiantly so--for screen, and that's before you get into this having an obsessed fanbase for close to 35 years. Given all of that, I think they've balanced it incredibly well. "24/7" might be the best example of that. In the comic, they can assume that either the reader already has some familiarity with John Dee or was able to gather the gist from the appearance by Mister Miracle and Martian Manhunter as an explainer in the previous issue. Without being able to tie in with the Justice League, the show isn't constrained by previous continuity, and can approach the story's central thesis--the power of dreams/stories--in a different manner.

I knew that Bette gouging her eyes out (although it's Judy that does it in the comic) was coming, but I still gasped and shut my own eyes when she did it. As dark as the episode was, it wasn't as dark as the comic. Marsh fucking Bette's son while she's asleep downstairs is one thing. Marsh fucking Bette's son in exchange for a pack of cigarettes when they're in prison together is something else entirely.

I did miss when the comic has the puppet show on the TV where the host flips out and demonstrates to the kids watching how to slice their wrists. "...and remember to slash DOWN the wrist, boys and girls, not across the wrist..."

It does seem they are stripping out all the mainstream DC ref. Not sure how they will deal with Hector and Lyta Hall and Daniel later on. Lyta being a powerful superheroine called Fury is pretty important and Daniel is crucial.

I guess I am the only one who didn't love the diner episode. It felt like it belonged to another show. But I just watched the Death episode that follows it and I loved it. It's my favorite so far.

I think this show's approach to storytelling is bound to confuse and confound a lot of people.

It's not exactly episodic and it's not exactly a series-long narrative.

The setup is that Dream has lost three items and has to search the world for them to restore his powers. That's a standard hero's quest/video game-type fantasy storyline. But the setup is subverted pretty quickly.

Dream's items go on adventures of their own without him as they are passed along from person to person and catalyze different adventures for those people, not for Dream.

And then ultimately it becomes a question for Dream of whether this quest for objects really matters and, if it doesn't, what really does matter?

It seems to be created more to zoom in and out of different people's lives and to show life through different lenses before ultimately becoming an existential and essential vision quest. That makes some sense of Dream's portrayal as a melancholy goth. His whole being seems to be a personification of adolescent and late-life existential questioning and exploration.

[quote] I did miss when the comic has the puppet show on the TV where the host flips out and demonstrates to the kids watching how to slice their wrists. "...and remember to slash DOWN the wrist, boys and girls, not across the wrist..."

I am surprised that they even show that today. There are so many sensitivities in culture and media that have created a self-censoring so as not to trigger viewers to imitate such things as cutting wrists and gouging of eyes. I grew up in the 90s and watching this show I feel acutely how the spirit of it is a product of the late 80s and 90s, and something quite apart from the spirit of entertainment today.

It's interesting to me how many parallels there are with the Netflix Sabrina series, including the queer characters, the overall gothic moods of both, the running joke about one character repeatedly killing their sibling, the venture to a hell that ultimately isn't all that scary. But the tones of the two is quite different. I really liked Sabrina a lot, but I was distracted throughout by contemporary sensitivities and self-empowerment storylines.

In Sabrina, all the characters obviously represented some kind of social/cultural marginalization and found power in rejecting it and embracing themselves for who they are.

In Sandman, which really has the ambiance of other 90s products like The Craft, the characters just are who they are.

I wonder how much of that is from the time and how much is just because Neil Gaiman has an encyclopedic knowledge of mythology and draws from it.

There are lots of gay characters in this show and they are just gay; there's no 'overcoming' storyline that comes with it. At least one is androgynous/gender fluid/transgender/call it what you will, and that is just their nature, no time set aside for political grandstanding or self-help soliloquies.

(Gaiman has discussed in interviews, by the way, that Loki of North mythology was gender-fluid and could be called transgender, and that just is what it is. As was the case with Dionysos and other deities.)

This series just seems to accept different characters' natures as they are, and to present them with an implied expectation that all viewers will accept them on that basis as well and otherwise focus on their humanity and essential existential questions. That quality makes it feel both more timeless/less a product of contemporary culture and also more familiar and comforting to me as someone who came of age in the 1990s, when a lot of heroes were mopey, melancholy, mystical people on quests to answer life's essential questions and not so much to precisely define their sexual/racial/gender identities in the here and now.

This Rose/Jed Walker arc is such a slog, I find myself tuning out constantly. Feels like a whole different show, I want more Morpheus and Matthew. Doesn't help that the actress playing Rose has such a flat accent, it's like listening to text-to-speech software.

Boyd Holbrook snogging Ben Wiggins off Hollyoaks was nice, although his tits didn't look that great in that one brief shot, he's getting quite the dad bod.

r128 It eventually lead to its (financial) ruin, but American Gods was overflowing with style and inventive cinematography in its first season; this show looks quite muted and flat in comparison.

R137 Yeah, season one of American Gods was spectacular and it had a lot of moments of brilliant writing/thought.

The visuals alone were astonishing, not just aesthetically but also in what they represented. I've taken ayahuasca five times—it changed my worldview immensely—and the opening-credit animation plus lots of other visual moments throughout the series really approximate DMT- and ayahuasca-induced visions and imparted information incredibly.

The pairing of trees and other aspects of nature with electronic technology and spirituality and juxtaposing them against religious dogma, politics and commerce is brilliant.

It's tragic that the first season is ingenius and it seemed to be just heading toward a point of brilliance, and then the showrunner left and season two turned into a mindless action-adventure superhero show. I can't even make sense of that.

So far, Sandman isn't close to as good as American Gods season one and it isn't close to as bad as what followed that. It's pretty entertaining. It's pretty uneven. I actually like the way it meanders and the seeming point of the narrative has been shifting along the way.

I am particularly glad there's no one great evil villain who cackles and calls out "Iiiii wiiiiillll destroyyyyy youuuuuuu BWAHHAHAHAAAAAAA!" That is when I turn off comic book shows/movies. Very glad Lucifer wasn't that kind of Lucifer, but then I wouldn't expect her to be when written by Neil Gaiman.

I am a little bit disappointed by Lucifer and hell, though. I think it's best never to show hell in visual media. It just never seems that hellish. I always feel like I could get used to living in the hellscapes they show, like 'I coukd find my tribe there. Wouldn't be bad at all.' Hell's not supposed to be like that. I am glad Lucifer wasn't some great monster devil, but I was underwhelmed by the whole interaction. The battle of imaginations, "I am the universe," really felt like a missed opportunity for something much more thrilling and profound. If that's as powerful as Lucifer gets, I think I'd be happy to sit down and have a battle of wits with her.

I am thrown by one seemingly political/cultural 'correction' of the show. When Thr Sandman goes to hell, he sees someone he knew millennia ago, and she is black—one of the first people—and we see that she sees Dream as a black man. That's fine...except I don't really understand in the greater context of the show.

She sees him as black presumably because he appears as a reflection or in a relatable way to people he interacts with? But the viewing audience sees him as white. Is that because viewers are presumed to be white?

He sees and we see one of his sisters as black.

Again, that is fine, but why then did we get just one fleeting view of Dream presenting as a black man to a black woman? I wish that had not been depicted because it distracted me with all these thoughts about what that was meant to accomplish and what the implications are. It made me wonder if the producers discussed this and decided that "oh, yeah, Dream can look like anyone any person wants Dream to look like, but since most viewers are white and the comic book version was white, let's make him a sexy white guy. But to be racially sensitive, let's make sure people know he can look like anyone!" Huh?

[quote]I am thrown by one seemingly political/cultural 'correction' of the show. When Thr Sandman goes to hell, he sees someone he knew millennia ago, and she is black—one of the first people—and we see that she sees Dream as a black man. That's fine...except I don't really understand in the greater context of the show.

That's not a "correction;" it's a direct lift from the comic, and will be explained later.

The Endless always shift their appearances based on their surroundings and who's observing them, as you can see by Dream's changing clothes and hair in the second half of "The Sound of Her Wings." This is maybe something that is clearer on the page and with the connections to the greater DC universe intact--in addition to Nada seeing him as African, we get Martian Manhunter seeing him as a Martian dream god--but it's not some invention of the show to give anyone who doesn't like changes the opportunity to whine about how the show is all woke.

Speaking of the "Men of Good Fortune" half of that episode, Marlowe and Shakespeare were totally fucking, right?

R140 Right, I got the idea of it without any explanation. I question it because the logic of it makes me realize that we, the audience, are observing Dream. If Nada, as a black woman observing him, sees him as black because that is most relatable to her, then as observers, shouldn't nonwhite viewers be seeing him as someone other than a white goth guy who dresses like The Cure x Neo from The Matrix? That's the only reason I am pointing it out. The idea calls attention to the reality that someone made the conscious decision that "the viewer" is white and therefore seeing Dream as white.

r140 Totally. The actor playing Kit Marlowe, Angus Yellowlees, is a cutie. So many handsome guys on this show, someone in casting has a real eye for them.

[quote]I am surprised that they even show that today. There are so many sensitivities in culture and media that have created a self-censoring so as not to trigger viewers to imitate such things as cutting wrists and gouging of eyes. I grew up in the 90s and watching this show I feel acutely how the spirit of it is a product of the late 80s and 90s, and something quite apart from the spirit of entertainment today.

I think it's worth remembering that whatever the comic evolved into, it began its life as a contemporary (for the late 80s/early 90s) version of the early 70s horror comics, which were a reaction to the CCA starting to be loosened. And they could get away with this stuff because the CCA had been loosened again the same year the series debuted, which allowed them to release with the "For Mature Readers" content warning. As horrifying as the gore in "24/7" was, it actually disturbed me less than the original, unedited suicide at the end of the first season of 13 Reasons Why.

[quote][R140] Totally. The actor playing Kit Marlowe, Angus Yellowlees, is a cutie. So many handsome guys on this show, someone in casting has a real eye for them.

Nice feets. Will Shaxberd was a lucky boy.

I wonder of Hob ever went dabbled in the homosex at some point across the centuries.

This is the gayest show on TV. The only straight people seem to be the ones with children. Everyone else is gay or at least having gay sex. It's a wonder Neil Gaiman isn't 'kneel, gayman!' himself given the characters he writes.

[quote]If Nada, as a black woman observing him, sees him as black because that is most relatable to her, then as observers, shouldn't nonwhite viewers be seeing him as someone other than a white goth guy who dresses like The Cure x Neo from The Matrix? That's the only reason I am pointing it out.

The idea is not so much that she's seeing him as Black because she's Black. She sees him that way because in her culture, that's what the Lord of Dreams looked like. She calls him "Kai'Kul," not "Dream" or "Morpheus." That might be splitting hairs, but consider that even in a more diverse modern society, the depiction of gods tends to default to white in the media (which has been changing, causing no end of complaints from the Klan Grannies). So I don't think that the depiction of Dream as white makes it automatically follow that the viewer is also white.

R145 I think you're working a little hard to come up with an explanation, but it's a fine explanation. And it's not a huge deal to me, just one little detail that distracted me and set my mind off wandering and wondering instead of staying glued to the story.

Oh, Desire...

Someone needs to tell them that the plural of "vortex" is "vortices," not "vortexes." Took me right out of the episode.

I'm really enjoying the Rose episode.

Holy shit, their Lyta could be a dead ringer for Gal Gadot. That's GREAT casting.

Too bloody dark for its own good, I mean the shitty dark lighting struck again.

Welp, I am not a superhero comics fan and I didn't even realize that The Sandman connects with the DC Comics superheros, but here are some connections. Especially considering this, I'm impressed and happy that this show doesn't really feature BWAAHAHAHAHA villains. The corinthian is the closest to it and he's a bit too close to it for my taste. I knew The Sandman was a comic/graphic novel series, but for some reason I have always thought it is its own kind of story based in myth and magic and not a Good vs. Evil, Superhero vs. Supervillain type of thing.

Can someone explain the 'helm'/helmet? I see what the sand and the ruby were for, but what is the point of the gas mask? I assumed it was so he could breathe in the waking world, but it's not that. It seems to serve no purpose.

I guess there is no Delirium in this season. I wonder if they will try to cast someone who resembles Tori or change her appearance. It seems like they are styling many of the characters similarly to how they look in the comics. Or at least the Endless ones.

Delirium doesn't show up until Season of Mists, and this is only adapting Preludes and Nocturnes and Doll's House.

Does Tom Sturridge stay naked throughout? Any dong?

No and no.

Not having read the comic book, i liked Lucienne. I like the actress.

I had to chuckle when Charles Dance's character dies. Once again, he plays a despot who gets killed by who he perceives as the inferior son.

[quote]Can someone explain the 'helm'/helmet? I see what the sand and the ruby were for, but what is the point of the gas mask? I assumed it was so he could breathe in the waking world, but it's not that. It seems to serve no purpose.

It's basically like armor. He generally only uses it when he's in battle, and it's supposed to have been made from the skull and spine of an enemy he defeated.

The Gates of Horn and Ivory, which separate the Dreaming from the waking world, which we've seen a few times, have a similar origin.

Also great casting on Funland and Nimrod. They gave me the creeps from jump.

Okay, this show is gay as hell, but the post-coital scene with the Corinthian and Rose's friend was the dead sexiest thing. I'm glad Carl wasn't killed.

I would advise people to read the collected Sandman stories and not to watch this thing. The Sandman comics were really something. This adaptation is not.

Was Sturridge pouting a lot throughout this or are his lips always like that?

Yes, he visibly leans into the pout throughout the show. His relaxed mouth is bit wider than that.

Poor Boyd Holbrook, he was sweating up a storm at the end in those closeup shots, they really did him dirty with that heavy coat.

The last three episodes were such a drag, I really didn't care at all for Rose or her whole arc, and her housemates were overly quirky for no real reason. I wish the score was better, I can't recall a single tune from this show. Just buy a couple of decent songs and give us a badass montage or two, ffs.

All in all, I enjoyed the show. Nothing groundbreaking, but still a nice binge. My favourite parts were Matthew and the gay touches casually sprinkled throughout the season.

I'm surprised there are so many gay characters. I'm up to to the fifth diner episode. Did the comic book have them a well?

Also every other actor is black. It's like the Bridgerton of comics or what. Is this just a trendy woke thing or if this was a feature of the original too?

Not that i don't like either feature, mind you .

I LOVE this comic book series. I read them all at university, out of order as I could only grab what I could at the time, and just devoured the whole thing.

I definitely want to watch the series, though I am a bit nervous of the Diner episode. That was very disturbing for me just reading it, I'm not sure I want to see it. My favourite parts of the series come later anyway: A Game of You, Brief Lives and The Kindly Ones.

[quote]I don't see the problem with the Wanda story. She wasn't a woman from the perspective of the ancient, old-time supernatural being the Moon, but was a woman with the delightful, up to date Death at the end.

Mary me all you want, but that ending was a bit of a tear-jerker for me, when Rose sees Wanda as she always wanted to be seen, sharing private jokes with Death.

[quote]In this production Death comes across as...sweet. Kind, loving. She was NOT like that in the comic series. She was quirky and matter of fact: "I have a job to do and I do it." Sometimes she was downright callous. The comic book Death was a lot more interesting, both in character and appearance.

I partially agree with you, but also I think she was shown at least as sweet in a number of scenes. Isn't there a bit where she is complaining to Dream about how everyone is so scared of her and no one likes seeing her "and yet they enter your realm every night without fear" to which Dream replies: "And I am more terrible than you." She seems sweet with Wanda as mentioned above, and at the end of World's End where the patrons of the pub see the Wake passing before them, the main character mentions seeing Death and how looking at her made him feel like he'd seen his best friend, like she was the kind of person you could tell anything too and she would never judge you for it.

She couldn't be reasoned or bargained with, and she was doing her duty, but I dunno, she was always talking about how much she liked the people she was "picking up".

I haven't seen this series yet though, so I can't comment on whether they may have gone too far in that direction,

[quote]when Rose sees Wanda

Sorry, I meant Barbie. Had Rose on the brain.

r165 I didn't even notice the cornucopia of black actors until you pointed that out just now. It seems natural to me, just like all the gay moments. It's how things on TV and in movies should have looked like from the start, but we were robbed of it by those at the top for no reason whatsoever.

What I loved about the stories among a lot of other things is that, as others have said, Gaiman lets his characters just BE. Their gayness is just part of who they are. Even when things matter more to the plot (like Wanda being trans) it doesn't become the whole of who they are. It's proper storytelling, not just ticking a box, you know?

[quote]I didn't even notice the cornucopia of black actors until you pointed that out just now. It seems natural to me, just like all the gay moments. It's how things on TV and in movies should have looked like from the start, but we were robbed of it by those at the top for no reason whatsoever.

I'll also say that Gaiman being British, well, they've had a better handle on this for awhile now - just letting characters naturally be. In the US TV and movies have to point out race or other things like that ALL the time, whether they are doing it positively or negatively. Just letting it BE is something that still needs to be learned in the US, I think.

The brief shot I saw of Despair in one of the trailers was interesting as in the comics she is grotesque, not really human looking. Here she just looked like some depressed, overweight woman. I'll be interested to see how she's eventually played though.

r169 Unfortunately Gaiman translated to film and television has a tendency to start out strong but falters into a incomprehensible mess with attempts at comedic folly... the loss of characters, narrative and plots.

That is what worries me a bit, R171. As I mentioned earlier, my favourite parts of the story come later on in the series, and most shows aren't very good at sustaining quality.

I really want to see a fantastic Delirium!

Here you go ^^

[quote]“You may get transient grumbles, but people always grumble. The dogs bark, but the caravan marches on. Make good art.”

YES!

I really missed John Dee shooting the women who drove him. It was just a throwaway moment of total cruelty that is missing from this Sandman.

[quote]I'm surprised there are so many gay characters. I'm up to to the fifth diner episode. Did the comic book have them a well?

At the risk of triggering people by using this word, the comic has an incredibly queer sensibility. Of the characters that are featured in the series, only Judy, Hal, Chantal and Zelda, and the Corinthian are explicitly gay in the comic, as well as Desire's lack of a definite gender, but there's still a lot of coding in some of the other characters, including Gilbert and Lucifer. There are plenty of other characters that appear later in the comics as well. It's all handled very matter of factly, which looking back, is actually kind of astonishing for the early 90s.

Also, I know I complained about how they're styling the Corinthian, but Jesus, his scenes with both Rose's friend and the fake Boogieman were as hot as hell. I know the actor is straight, but WOW, did he not hold back.

Oh, and Constantine being bi, although I don't think that was established yet when that issue was first published.

[quote]I really missed John Dee shooting the women who drove him. It was just a throwaway moment of total cruelty that is missing from this Sandman.

I seem to recall in the comic that Dream treats John Dee quite sympathetically after his rampage, which I found quite disturbing at the time. But I guess it really set up what was a common theme of the series, that our sense of "morality" isn't even taken into consideration by the Endless.

Who did the original artwork in the comics?

There's not really one consistent artist for the series. With the exception of the first arc, there would often be a half-dozen different artists for each collection, sometimes even within a single issue. Sam Kieth and Mike Dringenberg are credited as developers of the series, and did most of the designs for the characters we've met so far. There are a few exceptions, because Dream is actually based on a sketch Gaiman did himself (with a healthy helping of Robert Smith), and a few of the characters (Cain, Abel, Lucienne's counterpart, and Matthew) were reworked from forgotten corners of DC's history. And then there are ones like Constantine, Lyta and Hector who were in more prominent use elsewhere.

Is this the official thread for Netflix’s adaptation?I haven’t seen any threads for the show.

Yes, this is the official thread for the show.

Dream is meant to resemble Gaiman loosely, with his hair and face shape generally and his clothes being similar to Gaiman's but drawing from other inspirations.

And when Delirium does show up, she'd better resemble Neil's friend Ellen.

Even though I'm not a fan of this person, I do think that someone akin to James Charles should have played Desire. A very pretty "boi" (without the drag-speak)...there's nothing desirous about the person playing Desire. In the comics, the artists even compared Desire to the old Nagel prints, for which Charles could pull it off.

The rest of the casting (whether gender- or race-swapped) doesn't bother me.

And I love the reviewers referring to Jed's abusive foster-father being another case of "white man bad" (as it is written!) while negatively commenting on the other changes in the writing. The one thing they didn't change is being accused of being part of the woke movement. Just a case of damned if they do, damned if they don't.

Based on current DC management, the show couldn't use any superheroes, as well as the character of John Constantine, which resulted in the changes to the Lyta Hall and Johanna Constantine characters. I think they handled the plot (future) of Lyta well.

For people who wanted a more comic-specific "24 Hours" there is a fan film on Youtube that covers it very well. Granted that the actors are amateurs and there was no real budget to speak of, it covers the material almost verbatim. Linked below

r185 Except James Charles isn't pretty. And can't act.

Both The Corinthian and John Dee seem likable on the show. John Dee not killing his driver (played by Sarah Niles) and TC not killing his trick (well, the first one played by Ben Wiggins).

Richard Fleeshman, as Ken, has a nice ass.

R188 And they should not be likeable. Well The Corinthian is a nightmare, but i hated him being the big bad of the season. It took away any agency the human characters had.

Dream is his own worst enemy, most of the time. What his his truly shitty taste in women. He does not need an 'enemy' especially not a minor nightmare FFS.

[quote][R188] And they should not be likeable. Well The Corinthian is a nightmare, but i hated him being the big bad of the season. It took away any agency the human characters had.

I actually always thought the second Corinthian was fairly likable. In the second volume of The Dreaming, he even gets banished to Earth as a mortal temporarily (while being replaced by a female Corinthian), gets a boyfriend, and has the boyfriend die, teaching him a lesson about compassion and human suffering.

I don't get the complaints about the casting of Desire. The guy looks just like this one from the comics, and according to what I read, Desire is meant to be androgynous and also can change sexes. So what's the problem? Seems like perfect casting.

The only thing I don't get is why desire is entirely cruel and malignant. It's not. We desire everything in life and it's not all bad. There would be no humanity and no love without it. Why is the character only a lascivious villain?

R190 Oh, the second one is a darling.

R191 I always thought Ruby Rose would have been the perfect Desire.

I liked the first half of the series, but the rest was pretty crap and boring.

[...]

[...]

Ferdinand Kinglsey was fuckably hot through the centuries.

Indeed, plus he somehow managed to pull off most (all?) of the different hairstyles throughout the centuries.

I feel for Death when she was white. She was a gentle, humourous, soft lady. How can a white Sandman have a black sister? Wokeness spoils everything. It's like the show ignores the original fans' feelings altogether. As always, with Hollywood. They really don't care. I might be wrong, but I don't think a black female character on a freaky fantasy (NOT sci-fi) show will NOT bring in legions of black viewers in the US. Call me crazy. Gaiman's comics were what they were. Like or leave it. Black ppl are into sc-fi and horror, not fantasy/epics/gods and humans stuff. So the black casting of a major character is just a "look how cool we are!" posture. SMH Why not just let the material speak for you, show runners? Hmm? A black woman interacting with a white man will ruin the brother-sisterness, don't you think?

Do what you want. I don't care. I refuse to feel disappointed and ignored.

My feedback is HONEST not diplomatic. Do you all want to be lied to?

Death was there when the first living thing arose. You really think the first living thing in the cosmos was a fucking homo sapiens, black or white? Plus, there's a whole discussion upthread about how Sandman was sometimes black, sometimes Martian etc., depending on whom he's appearing to.

Your whole rant might be honest, but it's also deeply revealing and embarrassing. This level of attachment to the source material is unhealthy, assuming you're not a twelve-year-old nerd.

My meemaw’s dreamcatcher was stolen, cunts!

[quote] How can a white Sandman have a black sister?

This is the sort of question I worried would be brought about by showing Morpheus as a black deity when seen by an ancient black woman in hell. That really does beg the question to me of *why* we are seeing Morpheus as white if he can be seen in different representiative forms by different people. It just got my mind wandering off into political choices and ramifications of the writer and the show's production to show him to us, as totally objective observers, in his white form.

And that does lead to questions about seeing his sister—Death, of all siblings!—as black in her objective form that is shown to us.

I do wonder if these were simply arbitrary casting choices or if thought went into why these different aspects of being (dreaming, dying) are represented by differently colored people.

As for Death in the show, I loved her, personally. I think the actress was great.

The only Sandman comic I ever read was Death: The High Cost of Living. I confess the only reason I bought it was because I mistook the cover art for being Tori Amos since I knew she and Gaiman were friends.

I only remember two things about the comic: it made me cry, and Death unexpectetly was a loving, caring, bright-spirited person who made people's loss of life more of a wondrous adventure than a devastating event. That's how I have always remembered her, anyway, and so the TV version played by the black actress is just about exactly as I interpreted the character.

The High Cost of Living was the first Sandman-related story that I ever read, and after almost 30 years, it remains my favorite comic. Kirby Howell-Baptiste was that version of Death in every single way that actually matters.

R202 Thanks for saying that. I really didn't understand why people feel like she did a poor job of representing the Death character. She must be written differently in different comics.

I don't remember particulars about it, but the spirit the actress portrayed felt exactly right as I remember the character from that comic. Both made me cry, actually.

[...]

The Corinthian appears to be universally, mesmerizingly sexy to every person he encounters in the show.

Interesting to me that DL hasn't commented on that but people have mentioned that they do think his love scenes were hot.

Does the actor fit that bill? I think he does. I don't think there is any one look or type that appeals to everyone universally. I think he's very handsome with an edge in the show but I think it was a good idea not to make him look like a male model. He's sort of everyday-sexy, which I think is ultimately hotter than a pretty young muscleman who are a dime a dozen on Instagram.

[quote]pretty young muscleman who are a dime a dozen on Instagram

I have quite a bit of loose change. Where can I place my order?

I heard so many raves about the comic, I downloaded volume 1 years ago, but never got around to reading it. I started last week and holy shit am I confused. Some guy who works in a museum wants to resurrect his son, he’s betrayed, some mysterious group uses the book to end death, the group’s leader’s right hand man runs off with his mistress and a mysterious artifact, meanwhile a group of people have a sleeping disease…

With the imminent return of Lord of the Rings and A Game of Thrones prequels, I’m not sure how invested I can get in an entirely new series that clearly requires a lot of focus.

The Sandman and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina feel uncannily similar to me in a lot of ways. I read the Sabrina comics and they are *much* darker than the TV show was, as I am reading here the Sandman comics are, but it seems like the Chilling Sabrina comics were inspired in some ways by the Sandman and the Sandman TV show was influenced in some ways by the Sabrina show (but, thankfully, not made into an earnest lesson in identity definition and self-empowerment).

[...]

Yeah, Ruby Rose would have made a great Desire...not sure what they did with Despair, though. Instead of casting it per the books, they made her a neurodivergent Pinterest Frau who defends Shawn Mendes sexuality on Twitter!

[quote][R202] Thanks for saying that. I really didn't understand why people feel like she did a poor job of representing the Death character. She must be written differently in different comics.

If she is, I've completely misunderstood the character for 30+ years. She tends to be very matter-of-fact about the nature of her job ("I'm not blessed or merciful, I'm just me"), but it's also pretty clear that she enjoys doing it because she likes meeting all kinds of different people. There's a wonderful issue about Joshua Norton, the man from San Francisco that declared himself the Emperor of the United States in the late 1860s, and at the conclusion, when she comes for him, she tells him that she meets every other ruler and head of state, but that he was her favorite.

The only times I can think where there's any deviation from that is an appearance in the story where Hell is emptied of the damned, and she's so busy she skips the pleasantries, but isn't particularly rude about it. There's also a story in the Endless Nights anthology where she's depicted as pretty detached and morose, but that's also set billions of years before the present day, where she hadn't had the experiences of living as a mortal every century.

[quote]Because we had Cain and Abel in the storyline too, which was kind of stupid. Why is the framework for most series always based around fucking Christianity or Catholicism, and Bible characters!

They are not the biblical Cain and Abel, at least not in the way you're thinking. They are reworkings of two characters who served as the hosts of House of Mystery and House of Secrets, two horror comic anthologies from the 70s. Lucien(ne) also was, as was a fourth character we haven't met yet. Abel, whose trait is that he can't keep a secret, does eventually tell the story from Genesis, but it didn't occur on Earth and wasn't exactly "them."

[quote]I heard so many raves about the comic, I downloaded volume 1 years ago, but never got around to reading it. I started last week and holy shit am I confused. Some guy who works in a museum wants to resurrect his son, he’s betrayed, some mysterious group uses the book to end death, the group’s leader’s right hand man runs off with his mistress and a mysterious artifact, meanwhile a group of people have a sleeping disease…

Honestly, the story with Roderick Burgess doesn't really matter to the overall story, besides setting up that Morpheus was weakened in his time locked away and that his realm decayed. All of that is largely resolved by the end of the first collection.

The through-line for the entire series is summed up as "The King of Dreams must change or die, and makes his choice," and the stories in the various collections are largely self-contained.

[quote]were they trying to allude to the fact that she was Jesus, or Jesus adjacent?

No, although it did bother me when Dream said Lucifer was more powerful than the Endless.

Here's a page from The High Cost of Living. I'd guess this is the inspiration for the scene at the street vendor where she is given a free apple for being so cheerful, and she tries to talk Dream into taking one and loosening up. She's whimsical and has a joie de vivre.

Then maybe a big part of Death is her evolution, R211. If she was more morose eons ago and then in the High Cost of Living started to become more compassionate and fun loving toward people, but still working to shake off old habits (see attached image), then maybe the version we see in the Sandman TV show is even further evolved. Her whole point in the show so far, at least as relates to her brother, is to tell him that he should appreciate people and realize that the Endless exist because people exist and not the other way around. Morpheus registered that lesson and he later restates it and comes to understand that he has been wrong and needs to evolve, too. He is following the same character-development trajectory Death did.

[...]

Reminds me of an episode of Supernatural where all these ancient gods (Kali, Odin, Isis...) gather in a hotel and they all get offed by Lucifer. That whole show treated non-Abrahamic deities as mere monsters of the week that were taken out super easily, usually in humorous ways. That shit always bothered me.

R212 Well, if Lucifer was supposedly created by and favored by God before humanity was created, and humanity was created as a less-powerful type of being, and the Endless are manifestations that came into existence specifically to serve humanity, then it would follow that Lucifer is a superior and older being than the Endless.

However, it's interesting that it was said at least once that the Endless are greater than any god.

That is a definite paradox.

I could understand that from a human perspective, though, since we are less removed from Death and Dreams than we are from God. God is more distant, and so our relationships with desire, death, despair, et al. certainly are more familial than our relationship with a supposed god who has become an absentee father.

And R211, Neil Gaiman is effectively a pagan or he at least writes about all mythology including Christianity, and he puts them on equal footing. He certainly does not put Christian myths above and beyond others in his work overall. But he also sees the connections that exist across myths. So don't worry about him giving Christian beliefs a greater amount of power in his stories.

American Gods came after The Sandman, and the whole premise of it is that American/industrialized people are displacing and replacing, and in doing so extinguishing, immortal gods that have existed throughout our known history. Whether it's Odin or Zeus or Dionysos or Jesus Christ or YHWH, Gaiman explores how Media, Internet and other modern inventions demand our attention and change our natures to kill off the old gods by rendering them irrelevant to our lives. Like in The Sandman, in American Gods, the old gods who commanded humanity found out that they cannot exist without human beings believing in them. Like money, they do exist even though they are not actually real because of collective belief.

This is probably the basis of that paradox in The Sandman. The gods, including demons, are superior beings, but they can be killed off by humans if humans stop believing in them, and human beings can continue to exist without gods.

However, human beings cannot continue to exist without the Endless. We can sacrifice all religious faith and go on as a semblance of ourselves. We can't stop dreaming or feeling or dying. Those are truly beyond our control as long as we are human beings. So, even if gods came first and created humanity and then created those qualities that make us human, human beings *can* kill our creators but we cannot exist as who we are if we stop dreaming and loving and dying.

So the paradox actually kind of checks out. Lucifer may be more powerful overall, but Lucifer isn't immortal and invulnerable to not being believed in and the Endless are.

[quote]Neil Gaiman is effectively a pagan

He was raised as a Scientologist.

I found this scene both trite and deeply moving.

Gaiman was raised a clam? Holy shit, I didn't know that reached England back then and I always forget how old that cult is.

[quote]I found this scene both trite and deeply moving.

That's actually one of the few places where I though moving the story from the 80s/90s worked really well. In the comic, Morpheus escapes in time to meet Hob on their regular date. Having him be captive for another 30 years serves their reunion much better.

[quote]If she was more morose eons ago and then in the High Cost of Living started to become more compassionate and fun loving toward people

You're missing the point. She's ALREADY that way at the start of the series. She quotes Mary Poppins and jokes about Dick Van Dyke's terrible accent in her first appearance. High Cost of Living was published four years into the series, where they'd already established who she was.

I am surprised so many people here disliked the Rose storyline so much.

I liked it a lot.

It's the kind of story I most appreciate because although the narrative is fantastical, the elements of it are as close to real-world dynamics as we get in fictional conflicts.

Rose was an wholly good person. She never did anything wrong at all. She was wronged throughout her life. She had one big *dream*: to reunite with her brother.

The circumstances of her life and her very nature, through no fault of her own, made her destined to become a problem in others' lives.

This is a tragic situation that I think reflects a lot of lives that are tragic from beginning to end. Lots of people are fucked over by nature, nurture, chance and environment. It's really awful but it's common. Some of those people turn into monsters and some are just ground down and pulverized, commiting suicide or becoming addicts. Like stars that implode, some become massive black holes that destroy everything that gets near them and emit deadly jets of radiation, and some just implode and dissipate.

Morpheus recognized that Rose was totally decent and had only good intention. He also knew she was a danger to him, his world and her world. He was just, and in a way that seemed ill advised. His counselor advised him to nip the problem in the bud and disempower her in any way he could. He decided on a "wait and see" approach. He intervened to encourage her to make good decisions. She didn't reject him. She reacted adversely near the end and in the end she did the best thing she could have done for everyone involved.

The fiction comes in where "all's well that ends well" for her, but I found that satisfying because it gave the great grandmother both a purpose and a moving happy/tragic ending. And it was a story more about the journey than its resolution. I found Rose relatable in some ways, and I found the mercy of Morpheus—who is shown to be merciless to some others—moving and satisfying.

[quote]Gaiman was raised a clam? Holy shit, I didn't know that reached England back then and I always forget how old that cult is.

Yeah. I seem to remember that his dad was fairly high up in the cult in the UK back then, and one of his sisters still works for the them.

He does not identify as a Scientologist, and it's also worth pointing out that his family is also Jewish.

He doesn't like to discuss Scientology at all.

I don't credit Scientology specifically, but I think the bizarreness of Scientology and other cults (including Christianity, as in the case of Tori Amos) sometimes creates deep searching within people that results in brilliant artistry and imagination and insights.

I think Eyes Wide Shut, one of my favorite movies, was heavily influenced in the end by the effect of Scientology on Stanley Kubrick after the cult stole his daughter away.

Netflix spent $300 million on Stranger Things 4 and $15 million per episode or $165 million on Sandman. Most of my favorite series and movies are now on Disney plus or other streaming sites. I watched the first episode last night and was mostly underwhelmed and bored. Can't believe they constantly raise their prices and spend so much money on just a few series. I think they will lose even more subscribers in the future.

"The Sandman itself started out in the DC Universe, the comic, and then it just sort of wound up wandering off into its own place," Gaiman told Variety (opens in new tab). "Its world joined up more and more with our world and became less and less a world in which costumed crime fighters fly around and so on, which meant that by the time The Sandman finished, it had its own aesthetic which really wasn’t the DC Universe anymore."

There is so much entertainment out there and streaming platforms like Netflix need to grab the viewers' attention with high profile shows and movies to lure them into paying for a subscription and then stay to watch other, lower budgeted, entertainment.

I like HBO because it has occasional brilliant series that are nothing like anything else on TV. That's what I want.

I don't like Netflix because it's an ocean of poorly written amateurish silliness. It does have some gems swirling around, but how does one even find them among all the flotsam and jetsam?

They're two different models: quality versus quantity. I prefer quality at intermittent frequency and some people prefer a constant supply of new material, whatever that material is. Neither is necessarily better. I used to watch a lot of trash TV in high quantity when I had cable. Cutting the cord cut that addiction and now I just want some really engaging stuff when I can get it. 90 percent of what I have seen on Netflix did not engage me.

[...]

R211 I always found that 'change or die' quote ridiculous. He does choose, he does change and he still, well, ya know. The end of Brief Lives shows he has grown hugely, and yet....

Do we think Season 2 will be Seasons of The Mist' and Game Of You?

Just started this, but early scenes are making me nervous that this is some Scientology indoctrination. Gaiman’s father was one of the main individuals establishing the Scientology “church” in England. Anybody know?

Gaiman isn't a clam anymore, it's been discussed upthread. You're not going to get hypnotised into joining Sea Org overnight by simply watching this show, if that's what you're worried about.

I've read almost ever word the man has ever published. I promise, my thetans have been undisturbed.

R233 I gave up after Anansi Boys. His fiction never grabbed me. I am more of Clive Barker full horror kinda boy. But love Sandman.

Yeah, that is pretty crazy. If Gaiman is indoctrinating anyone into any beliefs system, it would be Norse mythology. He wrote a book on it.

His books incorporate myths from European, African, and Eastern mythologies. I don't know if he has included American Indian or Mesoamerican myths but he is pretty universal in his source texts. If he is drawing from Scientology at all, then it is lost in the mix. You are not going to watch and become a Xenu worshipper.

[quote][R233] I gave up after Anansi Boys.

That one is the exception. I have tried I don't know how many times over the years, and I can't get more than a few dozen pages into it before it loses me. I didn't like The Ocean at the End of the Lane either, but I did manage to finish that one.

What I really want is the sequel to Neverwhere he promised 25 years ago.

Dream was based on singer Peter Murphy of Bauhaus fame. Co-creator Sam Kieth drew different versions of Dream. Co-creator Mike Dringenberg noticed the one Gaiman picked looked like Peter Murphy. Cover artist Dave McKean drew Morpheus like Peter Murphy on the cover.

[quote]I heard so many raves about the comic, I downloaded volume 1 years ago, but never got around to reading it. I started last week and holy shit am I confused.

Honestly, you could begin with the second volume "The Doll's House" first, which more follows a traditional (for want of a better term) storyline. This was the first I read, and the first volume was one of the last I read, and I didn't feel I missed too much. The first feels very much like him still finding his feet. I think he even said the same thing, that he might recommend people beginning with The Sound of Her Wings.

It sounds like maybe the first volume was aiming for presenting itself in dream logic.

I like the CGI they do to make Sandman so thin and angular and white. I like looking at Sandman.

I love Desire in this, really perfect. The look is straight from the comics and Mason's voice and mannerisms are hypnotic.

R191. Desire is cruel because a.) Desire is selfish and borderline narcissistic - look at their realm - and b.) because the story is supposed to be told from Dream's point of view.

And Dream is a mopey, self-serious dick with a massive ego problem. So Desire comes off as capricious and manipulative (which they are) whilst also getting to raise some good points about Dream's arrogance and how he treats not only his family but humanity in general.

The show actually subtly demonstrates Dream's hypocrisies by book-ending how Dream treats humans in the first episode (refusing to even speak to them unless its on his terms) with how he claims the Endless SHOULD be treating them (claiming they exist to serve humanity when talking to Desire). Some of this is character growth of course but you can see how Desire would be put off by this holier-than-thou attitude.

Also, something interesting was Dream's punishment of the serial killers in the last episode (robbing them of their dreams to show them their true selves) which is exactly what John was trying to do to humanity when he had the ruby - and which Dream criticizes him for. Of course, the serial killers deserved to see how horrible they truly were but it's an interesting parallel.

Thanks, R241. That's all valuable insight that I didn't pick up on while watching. I like your interpretation of Dream and I do see it in him subtly, but maybe the show should have made him a little less sympathetic and more overtly narcissistic.

Weren't Dream and Desire originally each other's favourite sibling, but they had a falling out along the way which resulted in Desire determined to get revenge on him? (They even roped Despair and Delirium into it at one point, I seem to recall - there is some storyline where the three of them set challenges for Dream).

R243 I have no idea but I did notice that a line of dialogue did seem to set up an opposition/alliances. Dream mentioned some of his siblings—Death, not sure who else—in such a way that made it sound like they are allied against others who have teamed up against them.

^Funny, I just searched a clip on YouTube to see how they portrayed Desire and it was that scene. Dream basically tells Desire that they, Despair and even Delirium should be careful, and asks Desire if they think they can succeed against him, Destiny and Death, so it does sound like there are two alliances of the older siblings and the younger siblings (and obviously the sibling in the middle, well, I won't spoil it for those who don't know yet).

R242. I do agree that Dream's less appealing qualities only come out in fleeting moments, most tellingly Gault (whom he quickly makes reparations to).

Next season might build on it a bit more though if they're going to have Dream confront what he did to Nada (as he did in the comics).

[quote]Weren't Dream and Desire originally each other's favourite sibling, but they had a falling out along the way which resulted in Desire determined to get revenge on him? (They even roped Despair and Delirium into it at one point, I seem to recall - there is some storyline where the three of them set challenges for Dream).

In the same story from Endless Nights that features the early, morose version of Death, we see an upbeat Dream excited to see Desire at a gathering of the Endless and the personification of stars (including the suns of Oa, Krypton, and Earth). Dream brings his girlfriend, who is an ancestor many times over to the Guardians from Green Lantern. Desire makes her fall in love with Oa's star, and the betrayal is what drives the siblings apart.

Despair challenged Dream over Joshua Norton. We initially meet him in Despair's realm, where he's down on his luck and close to suicide. The challenge involves giving him a dream that will keep him from despairing again. He is provided with a vision of being the Emperor of the United States, and even though it's completely batshit, it sustains him for the rest of his life.

Delirium does show up, but only observes that Norton does not belong to her, because even though he has a crazy dream, "his madness keeps him sane."

I do not recall at all Delirium every challenging him. With the exception of the Prodigal, the other Endless seem to view her as a nuisance, so I can't imagine the twins involving her in one of their plots. She and Dream do go on an adventure together in Brief Lives, but that only happens because Dream is mopey about another breakup.

R247 Man I've missed you VotN

In the Norton issue, Despair explicitly says something like: Desire and Delirium are with me in this.

If Desire and Despair are twins, does that mean they are always working together, or do they have issues with one another?

PS Even if it is ultimately a comic book, I hate when characters say, "MY SISTER! What do you think of this?" or "TWIN! We will do this together!"

I don't believe siblings would ever address one another that way, even over the rainbow.

If they see each other once every couple of centuries, I can imagine them addressing each other like that. Elves in the Tolkienverse have that same habit. It's just a thing that authors imagine comes with immortality, I suppose.

R251 But that was Desire and Despair and it appeared that Despair lives on the floor or Desire's living room, moping over furniture with a pained look on her face.

Ferdinand Kingsley is my new crush. He was so sexy as Hob. Does Hob show up in the comics again, meaning will we see him again on the Netflix series? I enjoyed him very much.

[quote]Ferdinand Kingsley is my new crush. He was so sexy as Hob. Does Hob show up in the comics again, meaning will we see him again on the Netflix series? I enjoyed him very much.

He should. He appears in at least three later stories, although is not the focus of any single issue.

r252 But she doesn't live there, she had to be summoned using her sigil. The Endless don't strike me as the type that can stand to live together for very long.

[...]

r256 I was talking about Despair in my post, and she is very much a woman.

So Morpheus is king of an entire empire like hell, and he has countless minions to accomplish his goals...and Death and Desire just bebop around and live inside a big shiny red heart alone?

[...]

The Endless have their own kingdoms to rule. That's a full time job, they don't have the luxury to stay in each others' company for long. Apparently, they can't be bothered to check on Dream when he was captured and held prisoner for a century. And Death seemed rather fond of Dream.

[...]

But Morphie has servant administrators, a librarian, dreams and nightmare people of his own creation to take care of the immense amount of work while he thinks, and it seems like Death just does a Santa Claus and does all the footwork for the whole planet herself. Girl's gotta learn to delegate!

Interesting that Lucifer is more powerful than the Endless, but appeared scared of Azazel and the assembled generals. Definitely doesn't have the same grip on them as Dream has on his creations. Mazikeen intrigues me, hopefully she (and her power set) is explored in later seasons.

My notion of a non-Biblically accurate Satan is the Paradise Lost version, and the Sandman version certainly is not that.

I can't quite put my finger on the character.

Morpheus created everyone who serves him, it seems, and so it would make sense that he is their creator and their potential destroyer and so they would always do his bidding.

Does the Sandman Satan have a different creation story, or do we assume the regular popular culture mishmash of the Biblical and Miltonian one applies?

In Paradise Lose, Satan fell from the heavens and was followed by other angels, and all became devils. He became their leader because of his oratory skills and his logical rhetoric. So he was one of them, formerly superior in heaven, but I could imagine he could have been overtaken by the masses of devils had they wanted to stage a coup. So I can buy that Satan would be afraid of her minions in hell.

However, she is not the Miltonian Satan. Milton's Satan would have obliterated Morpheus in the battle of imaginations.

ok, i enjoyed it. it did seem to go off track and came back together. the "cereal" convention was a bit much.

BUT how are they all related? who are their parents?

no, i did not read the comics.

[quote] The Endless are merely patterns. The Endless are ideas. The Endless are wave functions. The Endless are repeating motifs. The Endless are echoes of darkness, and nothing more... And even our existences are brief and bounded. None of us will last longer than this version of the Universe.

"Although Neil Gaiman, the creator of The Endless, has made it very clear that he prefers leaving fans to guess at the origins and mysteries of The Endless, he has filled in some clues, most of them concerning what exactly The Endless are were revealed in the Brief Lives story arc, through Destruction. It seems, after having abandoned his duty as one of The Endless he came to truly understand what The Endless are. He says that they are simply patterns, ideas, repeating motifs and make it clear that for their functions to be performed, no actual intervention is required on their part. In fact, he goes on to say The Endless have no right to interfere with the lives of mortals."

"Neil Gaiman has also added in the foreword to The Sandman: Endless Nights, that The Endless are not to be seen as gods, for gods need to be believed in to exist, The Endless will continue existing whether we believe in them or not, for they are The Endless."

...so the Endless are common attributes of all human beings. They transcend religion. Everyone doesn't have the same gods, but everyone desires and dreams and despairs and dies.

Like gods, they only exist because human beings do, but human beings don't have any way to destroy the 'endless' attributes unless we destroy ourselves altogether.

The last human being on Earth may have no religion, but they will have dreams, desires, despair, moments of delirium.

thanks

i was thinking chaos and pandora...

[quote]In the Norton issue, Despair explicitly says something like: Desire and Delirium are with me in this.

I don't have perfect recall of the issue, but I swear I don't remember that. I tried to hunt down my copy of Fables and Reflections when I got home from work, but I found every volume but that. Typical of me, really.

[quote]Death and Desire just bebop around and live inside a big shiny red heart alone?

You mean Despair, right? She has her own realm. It's a dark place with swirling mists and everywhere windows that are on the other side of mirrors of people in despair.

The only thing in Desire's realm is the Threshold, which is a giant statute of their body. It's an enormous place, but Desire mostly lives in its heart.

Oh! I realized I have the audio drama to refer to. It's not a direct translation, but it's pretty close.

"The challenge is not just mine. Desire and Delirium will stand with me on this," is her line. So it's not their challenge, they're just backing her up. We see Desire try to pull Norton away from his dream, but Delirium doesn't really do anything active. She just observes, in her typically daffy way.

Why would Dream need servants while all his siblings do their own work alone?

R247 - that's the story with the original Despair, am I right? Before she died and the second one took her place? I can't remember if there was ever a story explaining what happened there or whether it was just spoken about (similar to Delight becoming to Delirium).

Gwendoline Christie gave a good performance. The duel was interesting. I haven't read the comic so I was expecting violence but it was an intellectual game of power.

[quote][R247] - that's the story with the original Despair, am I right? Before she died and the second one took her place? I can't remember if there was ever a story explaining what happened there or whether it was just spoken about (similar to Delight becoming to Delirium).

That's the one. The first Despair was still a naked obese woman, but her scars looked more like tattoos, and she was a little nicer. If someone who convinces Rao, Krypton's star, that it would be hilarious to have life develop on a world that's inherently unstable can be said to be nice, anyway.

I can't remember where, but they do at least imply that she was murdered.

If they are endless and exist as long as human beings exist, how could despair be murdered? Even with pharmaceutical despair killers like Wellbutrin, the whole global population doesn't take them. Everyone feels despair. If the Endless are patterns and not entities, how could despair die?

The Endless aren't people, they're concepts.

Without getting into spoilers, we are told that the Endless don't die. The encarnations of them can.

"Nobody died. How can you kill an an idea? How can you kill the personification of an action?"

"Then who died? What are we mourning?"

"A point of view."

Hmmm...OK, that seems in character for Gaiman as a writer. It would also explain Morpheus's sniping that he doesn't change. I guess if he changes too much, he is no longer relevant.

collective human fears and hopes

The old Despair's funeral is shown in the comics, the first time we meet Petrefax.

I imagine Necropolis Litharge is what Heaven looks like to goths.

R275, there's a line near the end about how the one responsible for the fate of the old Despair was terrible, but it isn't explicit that whoever it was murdered her exactly.

if despair dies it leaves humanity?

In the comics Delirium does challenge Destiny in at least one conversation, so there's a bit of friction there. And in Endless Nights when she... gets lost her own madness? Dream clearly regards her state/condition as dangerous to his sanity and wellbeing if he approaches too close, though not in a way that's specifically directed at him. By and large Delirium seems quite fond of Dream, and vice versa.

As someone who never read the graphic novels or had any desire to, I went into this not having any preconceived ideas about how any of the characters should look or behave. I LOVED the actress who plays Death and she looked great. I also very much enjoyed the Rose and Lucienne actresses so I am glad all three were cast regardless of the source material. The death episode was the best one.

R284 I agree! I cried twice during the Death episode. That's the kind of story and character I love from Neil Gaiman. The gruesome diner suicide orgy did not impress me the way it did others.

I am the one who mentioned Death: The High Cost of Living above and I think the actress who played Death filled the role exactly as I expected her to be played. I was thrown that she was black for about a minute and then I thought "that's HER!"

I love Lucienne and how she was played.

I didn't even think about the actress because I was thrown by people not liking the Rose storyline but I liked both a whole lot. The actress is very good. The boy who plays her little brother has some growing to do as an actor.

Since it appears representation of different demographics was a major casting decision, it's surprising there weren't any notable Asian characters.

Especially since these are all fantasy characters representative of the whole of humanity, I think the color-conscious casting works perfectly. It's feasible that they can be siblings since they represent all human beings. (Being set only in London and New York is kinda weird, though, considering that...)

Notice how Hell plaza resembles The Vatican?

The actress playing Rose is noticeably awful--enough so that it undermines the storyline.

The actress playing Death is decent, but I think something was lost by not adhering to her look in the graphic novel--it matters that she looks like Dream's sibling--she's the first one you meet and looks the most like him. I also thought it was cool how her white face and black curly hair are kind of a play on the traditional depiction of death--the white skull is a friendly face, the hood, a mass of curls.

The gender switching of Lucifer's more annoying though.

I think we're just living in an era of crappy adaptations--because there's a notion anything more than five years old needs to be "improved", even if it's at the expense of a story's internal logic or coherence.

The British have sort of tipped over to the point of absurdity when it comes to Black actors--Blacks are 3 percent of the British population--the large number of Black actors on British television isn't just random. Meanwhile, South Asian actors and other minorities are nearly nonexistent. There's also been a big drop in actors from the working class as drama school becomes less affordable and inaccessible to the non-affluent.

[quote] The gender switching of Lucifer's more annoying though.

It shouldn't be.

Lucifer is an angel from the Bible. Angels in the Bible are never ascribed a gender. It's been investigated and debated and the verdict is: no known gender. So if you think Lucifer is supposed to be male, then that is an arbitrary determination no different than making an angel female. They're neither.

The greatest problem of assuming angels have a humanlike sex or gender is assuming that angels are humanlike at all. They are not AT ALL, except of seraphims' four animal faces, one is that of a human, but not spefically a male or female looking face.

Look at the linked pictures of angels as they are described in the Bible. Thrones, the highest order of angels that accompany God, are wheels within spinning wheels that are covered in eyes. Seraphim are giant eyeballs flanked by six wings, which they use to cover their bodies. Cherubim are not cute chubby babies with wings; they are winged beasts with four animal heads (one is human) and they are violent warriors who carry flame-throwing swords. So it doesn't make any sense to assume these things have a human penis or vagina.

As a person who has taken ayahuasca, I have to say, these creatures 100% seem to be the types of entites (particularly because of the eyeballs) seem during a DMT trip, and those entities are entirely alien and way beyond human flesh and sex or gender.

All the angels described above and pictured here are the highesr order of angels. Lower orders of angels are not as well described and they have been imagined as human beings with wings for some reason.

Now, if we agree that Gaiman is just using a contemporary imagined version of Lucifer (a high-level angel) and skipping over the actual description of angels from the Bible, then his fallen angel comes from Milton's Paradise Lost. Milton describes Satan as a beautiful light being as Lucifer before the fall and after the fall as powerfully wicked and beautiful in a new, hellish way.

So Gaiman has already diverted from both the Bible and Paradise Lost (which really built out Lucifer/Satan's persona and personality in popular imagination, which is why this is relevant). Because if Lucifer were an angel from the Bible, they'd look super freaky, more like a Throne angel (eyeballs on spinning wheels). If he were the one from Paradise Lost, then he'd be Lucifer in heaven but Satan after the fall. He wouldn't rule over hell as Lucifer.

Milton did write all angels and all fallen angels as male *except* Sin, who Satan gave birth to from his forehead while leaving hell.

And Milton, a Puritan, wrote in Paradise Lost that angels (all male) have sex with one another. It's actually somewhat explicit. Since they are not made of solid flesh, they penetrate one another and fully mix their beings and enjoy all the sensations that human beings do with their flesh.

So all this said...there is no consistency at all in how angels are depicted today and what they are supposed to look like if they are being drawn from Judeo-Christian or Islamic traditions. They wouldn't look human at all. They'd look like eyeballs and masses of wings (which are not specified as being like birds' wings with feathers...they could be like insect wings, bat wings, who knows?).

So Gaiman making Lucifer a large, masculine woman? Why not? It's not any less accurate than making Lucifer a man would be. Lucifer doesn't rule over hell, anyway. In the Bible, Lucifer is in heaven attending God as the Morning Star, and Satan is an angel who serves God on Earth by tormenting human beings to test their faith in God.

Angel sex, according to Milton:

[quote] (Adam asks Raphael) Bear with me then, if lawful what I ask: Love not the heavenly Spirits, and how their love Express they? by looks only? or do they mix Irradiance, virtual or immediate touch?

Raphael answers:

[quote] To whom the Angel, with a smile that glowed Celestial rosy red, Love's proper hue, Answered. Let it suffice thee that thou knowest Us happy, and without love no happiness. Whatever pure thou in the body enjoyest, (And pure thou wert created) we enjoy In eminence; and obstacle find none Of membrane, joint, or limb, exclusive bars; Easier than air with air, if Spirits embrace, Total they mix, union of pure with pure Desiring, nor restrained conveyance need, As flesh to mix with flesh, or soul with soul....

R263. Lucifer didn't create Azazel or most of the demons. Dream creates most of his servants himself.

And he dos so because, unlike most of the Endless, he actually has visitors to his realm - the sleepers who dream every night. They need dreams and nightmares to interact with, as well as props and settings to play out their night-time adventures.

Desire, Destiny and the others don't tend to have visitors, although Death takes many of the dead to the Sunless Lands. If I remember right Despair has a number of mirrors she uses to view those in states of despair. Delirium might have strange creatures created from her madness, though I doubt they're friendly even to her. Otherwise, their realms are their own and they don't need subjects.

Does Desire ever leave her heart-shaped home, or do they just drape themselves over furniture and make a variety of devilish grins 24/7?

I don't think it's a bother to have Lucifer played by a female. From memory, the art in the comics generally depicted Lucifer as looking pretty androgynous in a David Bowie way (actually, I'm certain some of the art of Lucifer was based on Bowie). I'm not sure how I feel about Gwendoline Christie playing the part based on her particular looks, but I haven't watched the whole series yet, so I can't comment too much.

Hehe, R291. S/he definitely leaves his/her domain on a number of occasions. The one that sticks in my mind is at the beginning of Brief Lives, she bumps into Delirium in some kind of fetish club as Delirium is having a bit of a breakdown and wanting to find Death. You see Desire at work, creating passion (that will eventually lead to heartache) in the patrons.

They also had to leave their realm to rape and impregnate Unity Kincade.

Got a sister named Desire.

Teach me about them old worlds, big brother.

Ha! R295, I had that song in my head the other day after reading this thread.

And also:

I used to have demons in my room at night.

Desire, Despair, Desire, so many monsters

Oh, but now...

👀

I'm reminded of back in the days of newsgroups (remember them?). I remember going to one that was talking about Sandman, this would've been in the early 00s. And they printed some interview with Gaiman where he was talking his picks for an adaptation of the Sandman comics. I remember he chose:

Destiny - Sean Connery

Death - Winona Ryder (around the time of Edward Scissorhands)

Dream - John Hurt

Destruction - Brian Blessed

Desire - Annie Lennox (around the time of Sweet Dreams)

Despair - "someone in a lot of rubber and makeup" or something like that, and

Delirium - Tori Amos "but she couldn't do the nastier side of the character" or something like that.

"Desire’s look was inspired by the young Annie Lennox and the slick prints of Patrick Nagel…"

No More I Love Yous was written and recorded and released in 1986 by a British duo and covered in 1995.

The Sandman ran from 1989 until 1997.

It's conceivable that the song inspired Gaiman to pair Desire and Despair as dark entities, and he thought Annie Lennox looked like an androgynous representation of Desire and then Lennox learned that and covered the song.

Gaiman is British and he seems to get around among celebs and particularly musicians since he married one. I'd guess he knows Annie at least casually.

[quote]It's conceivable that the song inspired Gaiman to pair Desire and Despair as dark entities, and he thought Annie Lennox looked like an androgynous representation of Desire and then Lennox learned that and covered the song.

Fascinating! Thanks for that!

I love his use of music throughout the series. In the first volume, where Dream goes to look for his pouch, there are songs playing everywhere he goes referencing dreams, dreaming etc. When he finds the woman who has his pouch, I got a real kick out of her singing: "See the sun set in the hand of the man." That was a cool little reference by one of my faves.

Gods and monsters are often paired.

The Endless seem to be aspects of being that human beings are vulnerable to being corrupted and turned into monsters by. They don't make us monsters if we can manage our relationships with them, but they can drive us to become monsters if we don't keep them at arm's length.

By comparison, dogs feel all these moods—desire, dreaming, despair, they can even become delirious. But I have never heard of a dog turning into a monster as a result of any of these things. They can have violent outbursts but those seem to be exclusively when they feel threatened and are protecting themselves or someone else, and that is reasonable and quite different than becoming monstrous, for example, because they desire a snack and it is withheld from them. However, plenty of human beings do become monsters just because they want something. A dog can be humping another dog or a blanket and be pulled off during the act they want to engage in and they don't become monstrous. Many human beings would simply because they are totally overtaken by what they want (but don't need) in the moment.

So in a way, these things are pretty unique to our way of being. Other animals may demonstrate greed when they have abundant resources, but accumulating things doesn't seem to corrupt their nature the way it does to people.

I totally missed that, R300.

I definitely thought of the aboriginal 'Dreaming' and when I heard that term used in the Sandman, and I was sort of looking for similar attributes but don't really see them. The Sandman version of The Dreaming seems more of a Western fantasy/fable/horror landscape than a trippy Australian aboriginal version, which is pretty psychedelic.

Delirium's realm is the psychedelic one.

Since the show has made reference to worlds being destroyed and remade and the Endless live across all human time, I'd love to see them travel among the worlds some Native American cultures believe in. The Hopi believe that there have been four worlds so far and we live in the fourth. Basically, humanity has fucked it up every time and end up destroying the fabric of our world and the world is destroyed and then rebooted, based on a different fundamental material. This seems perfectly suited to Sandman and I'd love to see depictions of different worlds. They could go totally wild with the whole environment and culture and still show universal and timeless human feeling.

I've just started the serie and i really really wanted to like it ( even thouh i don't know the comics) but the tokenism is so distracting.

It's like every servant and lover is black, and it makes no sense to see so many black characters in the UK in the 1920 or in the 1600 or in the 1800, and it's not about diversity because i don't see any south east asians characters( and it would make more sense since it's in UK and asians is the biggest minority group ). This said i don't find any problem in Death being black, they are deities and apparently they morph race so it makes sense.

Also every character seem to be gay, it felt like one of those tumblr fetishistic fancomic.

Boyd holbrook looked really uncomfortable and stiff during the gay intimacy scenes. It's why gay or bi actors should play gay/bi roles.

Netflix series produced in Britain. UK has been clear about quotas. BBC is super clear. A series must be MULTICULTI.

Netflix is doing a hamfisted job with all minor characters - servants, assistants, lovers (as mentioned above) - being black or POC.

I don't mind it in a comic book context at all, however. As this is not a REAL story about the REAL past.

Some handsome PAKIS would be welcome.

The sandman actor is pretty fug in real life, Hollywood magic can make anyone hot.

You're projecting, R306; he did fine (and was hot). Your argument is stupid. You wouldn't want the reverse side of it to be true. I had no idea of the sexual proclivities of any of the actors in real life, nor did I need to. That's why it is called "acting."

The thing is that Sandman was diverse, but do a straight adaptation isn't good enough these days. There are several characters where race really doesn't matter, but the Sandman clunked it up further by messing up with the iconic look of Death and making her look unrelated to Dream. Yes, both can be any race, but the showrunners adhered to the look of one and ignored the other and it plays havoc with the internal consistency.

In the case of Rose, yeah, she could be Black, but not if it means picking an inexperienced inadequate actress. Given the whole wealthy heiress thing with Unity, she actually should be white, but South Asian might have been doable.

R309 Then he's not very good at it is he rose, he clearly looked uncomfortable even slightly disgusted. And I'm projecting? Lol yeah wanting actual gay actors to get roles instead of wooden bland straight actors for gay roles is a projection. Fo.

This notion that the Endless have to look similar...AS IF THEY ARE GENETICALLY RELATED...baffles me.

R312, It shouldn't, because it's right there in the comics and it's a visual representation of the link between sleep and death. They're siblings--why do you think that is? They're the children of Time and Night.

^Kinda like Hypnos and Thanatos in Greek mythology. I hadn't thought of it like that before.

Well they both wear alot of black, and death is all black....

Except, as has been repeatedly explained, the Endless are NOT gods; the Endless were NOT sexually produced like the Greek gods; and Death and Dream were established in the comics to appear differently to different people decades ago (in other words, no standard appearance).

To me, Death appears as Death. Apparently to racists she appears only as Black woman.

Really liked the episode where dream visits the man every 100 years. Wonder how Joanna became immortal though.

Comic Death was one of the most popular characters and her appearance iconic and distinctive. Nothing is really gained by the change, though the actress is fine.

[quote]Wonder how Joanna became immortal though.

She isn't. The Johanna Constantine of the 18th Century is an ancestor.

R316, except it does say in the comics that they're children of Time and Night and that they *are* siblings and that they do look alike.

You're falling back on a double standard here--the actors should like the characters they're depicting except when the actors are Black, in which case, there's a special dispensation.

You're the one with a double standard, not me. You want Death played by a Black woman with none of the facial markings or hair? Fine. But then Dream should also be black and his iconic look also ignored.

What's really been said is that the main white guy matters, which is pretty typical of adaptations these days--with a big exception going to Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, which was diversity and inclusion done right.

Tom Sturridge seems so gay. Is he just one of those Brits or is he going to come out at some point?

[quote] But then Dream should also be black and his iconic look also ignored.

This does not follow. There is no requirement that Dream and Death look geneticially-related. Why should there be? Who made that rule?

[quote] it does say in the comics that they're children of Time and Night

The concepts Time and Night. Not the Greek gods who represent Time and Night. There is an enormous difference.

People who are hung up on skin color not matching up with their ideas of personified facets of being should just not try to watch the show. If it's all about race to you, welp, you're racist and you're just never going to see beyond that. So move on.

The only qualm I have about the casting is that Patton Oswalt's voice breaks my immersion every time I hear it coming out of that CGI raven.

[...]

Couple things:

1) That's literally what happens in the comic. If you need to clutch your pearls, clutch them in the direction of Neil Gaiman in 1990.

2) Desire is not trans, they are something between male and female. The comic referred to them using "it" as a pronoun, but that's been modernized to "they" within the last few years. I'll get the smelling salts.

3) The entire point of Desire's plot was to get Morpheus to kill Rose and mark himself for death, because one of the few things the Endless are not permitted to do is to kill members of their family. He can't do anything to harm them.

[...]

hermaphrodites are a thing...

Some people see Desire as male, some people see Desire as female based on...wait for it...whatever they desire.

You're raging because a story that's over 30 years old is "woke." Clearly, this story isn't for you. Wait until they get to the actual trans character.

The Corinthian is Morpheus's creation, so is his to dispose of. Desire is his sibling, an entity beyond the gods, who is not his to dispose of. Anyway, the Corinthian gets recreated later in the run and is still appearing in comics today.

[...]

Miss Thing has clearly stated her boundaries.

[...]

annoying. ff them.

This show is ruined by their needs to satisfy the minority quota.

Black? Check LGBT? Check More women than men? Check

Female Lucifer is so fucking stupid.

True hermaphroditism is defined by the presence of both ovarian and testicular tissues, either separately or, more commonly, together as ovotestis. True hermaphroditism is very rare except in Southern Africa, where it is the most common intersex condition.

And what of people with XY chromosomes that have androgen insensitivity. They appear completely phenotypically female.

[...]

R322, they look alike, which they do in the graphic novel, to emphasize their symbolic connection. Death's original look also is a spin on the iconic depiction of death--pale face instead of skull, cloud of ringlets instead of black cape. But she retains the traditional black and white coloring of Death.

People who actually read graphic novels know this and the deviation from this depiction when there was, simultaneously, an attempt to make Dream look as much like the graphic novel depiction as possible.

And since the Endless are anthropomorphized, the rules about humanity apply--siblings bear a family resemblance--and this is shown in the graphic novels.

The show goes halfway--some things are very faithful and other things were thrown out. Since Death is a popular and iconic character, ignoring her look for this year's fashion in diversity is jarring and doesn't make for a better show.

People have waited decades for a Sandman adaptation--while this is substantially better than the misbegotten Wheel of Time--there were changes made that have nothing to do with making a good adaptation. At least the women playing Death and Constantine can act, but Rose is awful and Gwen Christie doesn't work as Lucifer. She's a limited actress.

In an interview about the series, Gaiman said that the reason no movie was ever made of the title is that it couldn't be made into a movie, and he said that he kept telling the producers and studios that but they kept him at arm's length.

He said that the series has to be an anthology big-budget TV show or it would not work. He said that when The Sandman was recorded for Audible, it immediately became their number one and it outsold Harry Potter and he realized "there's an audience for this right now."

He (rather immodestly but also correctly) said that when the comics came out, they were far ahead of their time and so they only appealed to a niche audience of a niche comic book medium, and as he watched more well-made TV series that don't follow old rules and then he saw how popular the Sandman audiobook is, he decided that the time is right. He was approached by a producer and he said yes, if I can be involved, and they told him he has to be involved. So he got to take the reins and make the show as it should be made, and he knows since it is his creation.

He said he didn't try to copy the books. He wanted to make the TV show as he would write the comic books today. He said not a lot would change, and he found himself very surprised that almost everything from the original comics stands up over time and doesn't require any kind of updating. But he obviously felt that the cast needed diversification. I personally think the cast is excellent, and I think anyone who creates characters and worlds has the absolute right to recreate them in any way they want.

The only thing that stands out to me because the color-conscious casting is so conspicuous (that's all accidental alliteration, I assure you) is that it seems to be conscious of everyone except Asian/Eastern people, which is glaring because of the obvious attention to diversity...

He also said (SPOILER, not really but maybe enough that people will yell about it, so, SPOILER) that Dream is not a a hero. He's not there to save the world. He's not there to defeat villains. And that is a primary reason no one could make a movie of The Sandman even without his involvement. Everyone who had the rights thought Dream was going to be a superhero who vanquishes nightmares or something, and they found out that the character isn't really a character. He is a representation of an idea. So Dream is an unconventional leading figure, and Gaiman said his whole reason for being is to allow people to dream, and so that is what we see: The dreams of people and the nightmares of people. So the presence of Dream is not that he intervenes with people's lives or that he does great things; it's that he is always carrying the audience from person to person.

And he contradicted that pretty blatantly by saying that the narrative of the arc of The Sandman is entirely about how Dream evolves and changes as a character. He said that that is the point: He's always been the same since the beginning of the time, and the traumatic 100-year abduction changed him in ways that he could never have dreamed about himself, that he can't understand, and it changed him for the better. So he said the start of the story is Dream's abduction and being held in captivity because that's the beginning of Dream's change.

I saw an article that was promoted on Facebook yesterday in which Neil Gaiman said that the Sandman series made him cry. In the article, he said that he watched the finished show and he cried during the Death episode when Death took someone, and he said he thought that was amazing, that he had written the story himself so long ago, and he knew the story, and he had thought about the story throughout all the years in between, and the show still brought him to tears. And then, he cried again during the episode when Dream called Hob his friend.

I cried at the same two moments of the same episode! It's my favorite episode, and I really like the portrayal of Death a lot. The actress seems charismatic to me, but I think I also just respond favorably to the notion of Death kindly ushering people away from their lives while they are going about their business. It's heartbreaking to think about how it happens to everyone (Remember the end of Six Feet Under?) and thinking about that makes me emotionally vulnerable, and then for Death to be such a sweet-looking, sweet-natured person who comes along like a new friend is really moving to me.

The gay character comes back as a woman right? A lesbian woman. Meh. Hope they'd cast a better male actor to keep playing the only gay character. And the tranny character is hideous. They look like a 60 year old vegas granny. Why not cast attractive actors?

Adaption have always been like this, either they get an update to adjust to the audience's more progressive tastes and sensibilities or to give the viewers something unexpected and new, who'd go "meh, the original source, and my imaginations (when it's a book), is way better".

At this point, it's like complaining that water is wet. Adaptions are never a direct word-by-word, comic book picture by comic book picture transferred to the screen.

Lucifer isn't female they're androgynous since angel's have no gender.

And Desire is every gender because one would never be enough for Desire. Even 'them' as a pronoun isn't accurate since Desire would want every pronoun - it's in their nature.

We're talking about a story about the anthropomorphic personification of dreams, destinies, desires and death. 'Reality' doesn't apply to any of these characters, especially regarding the reality of hermaphrodites. Minge's complaint is like saying a story about Horus is unrealistic because nobody in real life has a bird head.

I like the serial structure of the series and the episode. Death was interesting. Though I like a Mr. Reaper central-casting death as well.

I watched an interview last night in which Gaiman said Lucifer in the comic was neither male nor female and that Lucifer is an angel and angels are sexless. So, he said, using a human actor to play Lucifer means that "we had to give Lucifer a sex change either way, technically, since he's neither." He said they auditioned men and women for the role and Gwen won out because she is imposing and intimidating looking and also could deliver lines in a warm and sweet way, and that is what to Gaiman makes Lucifer the scariest and most powerful of all.

He said the only character whose sex he changed intentionally was Lucienne. He wanted Lucienne to be a woman this time around.

He said the John/Johanna Constantine change had nothing to do with sex. He said they found the actress to play Johanna, who he thought was just an incredible actor, and because the narrative connects a person and their ancestor over hundreds of years, they decided using the same actress to represent both roles would make it easier for the viewer to understand their relationship; otherwise, with so much going on, a lot of people may not have connected that relationship. So it was a practical matter.

Also, the actor who was cast as Desire slid into Gaiman's DMs and asked how he can audition for the role. Gaiman looked up his acting reel and thought he was made for the role.

The Morpheus actor and the Desire actor were huge Sandman fans before the series.

R346 Honestly, the Johanna thing annoys me since I would loved to have seen Matt Ryan reprise his Constantine role.

But obviously the rights to Constantine don't rest with Gaiman and I believe it was mentioned that there is a Hellblazer movie or TV show in the works at WB so John was off-limits. I suspect that was the main reason they replaced John with Johanna.

We're unlikely to see the Dead Boy Detectives in the hypothetical next season. Apparently, they were developing an HBOMax series around them, although with everything there going tits up, who knows?

How did Gaiman manage to get those other properties to appear in his comics? Was the Sandman originally part of the Marvel / DC universe?

Yes. Cain, Abel, Lucien(ne), Dream's elder brother Destiny, and the Three-In-One are all characters from DC's 70s horror comics. The first issue of the comic drops a brief mention of the Golden Age Sandman Wesley Dodds (who would be revived as well in the very pulp/noir Sandman Mystery Theater a few years later). John Dee is Doctor Destiny, a Green Lantern villain, and he's not imprisoned in Buffalo, he's at Arkham Asylum and is buddies with the Scarecrow. John Constantine had a big presence in Swamp Thing. And while on the trail of his ruby, Morpheus goes to the Justice League International and interacts with Mister Miracle and Martian Manhunter.

Lyta and Hector were the children of the Earth-2 Wonder Woman and Hawkman/Hawkgirl respectively.

As the series went on, it established itself as its own thing, and so it, as well as Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, Peter Milligan's Hellblazer, and Grant Morrison's Animal Man and Doom Patrol, were shifted into the new Vertigo mature readers imprint. Of course, they've since killed off the line and shifted reprints and future projects under the current DC Black Label, but I'm not salty about that or anything.

The reverse is also true. Dream--well, an aspect of him--appeared in Justice League briefly in the late 90s, and Death has made several appearances, perhaps most notably in an issue of Action Comics called "Death Comes to Metropolis" where she and Lex Luthor have a conversation about the recent Blackest Night event.

And no. I didn't have to look any of that up.

That's really helpful info, R351. Sandman is the ONLY comic I've ever read, so I didn't know any of that, though I did suspect it in some parts. It's also true that Element Girl from that standalone story early on was a character from elsewhere too, yes?

Yes, element Girl is a minor DC property, the female equivalent of better-known Metamorpho. It was one of the most touching Sandman standalones, and will be a shame to lose it. (not R351)

That's correct. I only didn't mention her because we haven't (and probably won't) met her yet.

I feel like there's some character I'm missing, but I can't think of who.

We do see Superman and Batman briefly in the final arc.

[quote]I feel like there's some character I'm missing, but I can't think of who.

Oh, Prez Rickard, a character from a cracked-out, very short-lived series from the 70s called Prez: First Teen President, who shows up in a story told in Sandman's version of the Canterbury Tales.

And Eve, again not the Biblical Eve, who was, like her "sons" host of a 70s horror comic.

Matthew the Raven is also an established DC character, no?

He was Matthew Cable, a secret agent from both Swamp Thing and Doom Patrol in the 70s as well. As he died in the Dreaming (eg, while asleep) he could be resurrected as a dream.

Too bad most people won’t bother picking up the source material which is fantastic and was way ahead of its time. It’s a shame they had to woke it up because it had gay and a major gender fluid character in it already.The actress playing Death was adequate but really not at all like she was depicted in the books and that was disappointing.,although she is “Death “ she had a humor and lightness to her in the books that is missing despite her heavy goth appearance. Sturridge looks the part but I find him a very boring uninteresting actor who oddly enough keeps getting chance after chance.

In a lot of ways, Morpheus was kind of the least interesting character in his own stories.

Should the series move ahead, I think the next canonically gay character we meet is Cluracan, in Season of Mists. If anyone can think of any lithe British 20-somethings...

If he could do the accent, I'd even suggest Tim-o-tay, except I think he'd look too much like Tom Sturridge.

Aiden Turner plays Cluracan in the Audible version and I wouldn't object to a live-action reprise.

The first episode was a complete bore. Does it get better?

[quote]Aiden Turner plays Cluracan in the Audible version and I wouldn't object to a live-action reprise.

In my mind, he's more of a twink. Sebastian Croft is kind of in the ballpark.

Aiden Turner just needs to bend over my desk.

[quote] The first episode was a complete bore. Does it get better?

No. Go watch Golden Girls reruns.

[quote] It’s a shame they had to woke it up

The series was "woke" before "woke" was invented in the Republican National Committee meetings to allow racists to complain about Black people without using the N-word.

I want dream to hook up with a guy, hopefully they woke it up even more!

Death is just like the comic book Death. Someone did a side-by-side comparison of one scene and Dream's and Death's words are taken vermatim from the comic, even emphasizing the same bolded/spoken words.

R362 It doesn't. I gave up during ep5. It's boring as fuck and ruined by woke diversity casting.

If you think it's "ruined by diversity casting,' then you definitely should turn it off and not think about it again.

I really enjoyed the show at first. Episode 6 was a phenomenal episode of television I thought.

After episode 6 the quality seemed to take a nose dive which makes me sad.

Episode six was my favorite, as well.

I liked the opening couple of episodes. I found the story intriguing. I was surprised 'our hero' was just trapped in glass naked without saying a word for so long. I have never seen a story like that before. He was kept a mystery.

I liked the Rose episodes. I guess I am the only one. I was glad that a few episodes were dedicated to one storyline and set of people. It allowed me to invest more emotionally in them.

I didn't like the diner episode nearly as much. It was chaotic and dark and the characters felt less human to me, I guess because we mostly saw them only for their base desires. (Shouldn't Desire have played a role with driving them to do all that rather than Dream's ruby?) Anyway, it was too conveniently sexual and violent, and the violence was too graphic for my preference.

I'm conflicted about Dream's "tools." They all ultimately seemed powerless since he created them and he survived without them just fine and he reabsorbed them. I actually like the idea of that but it seems futile at the same time.

[quote]I liked the Rose episodes. I guess I am the only one. I was glad that a few episodes were dedicated to one storyline and set of people. It allowed me to invest more emotionally in them.

Which is fine in theory, but for me the execution fell short. The level of acting talent and writing wasn't good enough to make it work. For genre stuff like this you need to be able to elevate it. Without that it can feel you are watching some Berlanti CW show.

I enjoyed the later episodes too, more thanks to Boyd Holbrook than anyone else. But "The Sound of Her Wings" was the definite highlight of the season to me.

The only one of the racial changes and genderflips that bothered me was Johnna Constantine, (I'm a big fan of Matt Ryan's portrayal of John). But at least I understand why that was necessary. I do wish they'd been able to find a better child actor for Jed though, that boy was awful.

For the sake of clarity...

R254 Hob does have another solo story, when he goes to the Olde Worlde Fair, (he is not impressed),

R316 In Overture we do meet the parents of the Endless, Father Time and Mother Night. Nop idea if they fucked though.

R319 Indeed, Wanda will be interesting for the rewrites. Dreams about fear of surgery, being told by the Moon he cannot follow his path, as he is a man. All will be rewritten.

R342 Hal is just doing drag, I think. I do remember him taking off the wig when Rose goes to visit him. He seems to have become a Joan Rivers type comic.

R348 I believe John went as Gaiman did not create him.

[quote][R319] Indeed, Wanda will be interesting for the rewrites. Dreams about fear of surgery, being told by the Moon he cannot follow his path, as he is a man. All will be rewritten.

The only thing that was rewritten in the Audible drama was one small change to Thessaly's line about needing menstrual blood. "Hazel's pregnant, Wanda's a man..." became "Hazel's pregnant, Wanda doesn't.."

The entire point of the moon is that she's an asshole for not recognizing Wanda as a woman. There's nothing to rewrite.

R374 But Wanda is not a women and she does not menstruate.

You can like or dislike trans people, but the story very clearly views Wanda as a woman.

[quote]I enjoyed the later episodes too, more thanks to Boyd Holbrook than anyone else.

I agree Boyd Holbrook is great. But so much of that plotline rests on the shoulders of the actors who play Lyta and Rose and I don't think they are quite up to the task.

When you took at the plotline with John Dee a lot of what makes it work is David Thewlis. Without him anchoring it that diner episode doesn't work.

And this is a guess a minor nitpick but so Rose's great grandmother is supposed to be 112? Lol.

R377 Fuck, I hated Lyta in the comics. That entire Kindly Ones storyline, her journey, was soooooo tiresome.

I still have to watch episodes 7 - 10. Adored Dolls House.

The story is ambiguous. Some supernatural powers don't see Wanda as a woman (the Moon), but some do - Death accepts her internal self image. This seems a reasonable compromise. and was there from the start in the story.

[quote]But obviously the rights to Constantine don't rest with Gaiman and I believe it was mentioned that there is a Hellblazer movie or TV show in the works at WB so John was off-limits. I suspect that was the main reason they replaced John with Johanna.

Main-ish. John has been used a lot over the past couple of decades. They were aware that John was going to be used on another HBO Max series and they knew all the weight that would come from using the character in a context that wasn't related to his other appearances. The way they talked about it, it doesn't seem like they even bothered to ask.

Neil has pointed out, though, that he didn't think about using him by the time he was pitching the series. He figured 1789 Johanna was just going to be played by whatever actress they cast as a modern Johanna embracing the sprit of the series being as diverse as possible. Adding another woman, he felt, gave it balance.

[quote]The story is ambiguous. Some supernatural powers don't see Wanda as a woman (the Moon), but some do - Death accepts her internal self image. This seems a reasonable compromise. and was there from the start in the story.

But it's not ambiguous. One of the last images of the story is Barbie writing "Wanda" on her tombstone in big letters as a fuck you.

Agree with the conclusion or not, but Sandman treats Wanda as a woman.

R381 Oh let us not turn this thread into a tranny thread. The only reason Wanda has to stay and care for comatose Barbie is because he has a cock. That is clearly in the writing.

[quote]And this is a guess a minor nitpick but so Rose's great grandmother is supposed to be 112? Lol.

Not so minor. If she fell asleep in 1916 at the age of 12, she's be 118. As much as I liked the actress, it took me right out of it.

I can't believe they didn't have some throwaway line to try to explain it r383. Seems like that obvious conundrum had to have come up in the writers room.

Even just have her say something that the sleeping sickness caused her to age more slowly. It would be a dumb explanation, but it's a fantasy show. I'd have bought it.

[quote]Not so minor. If she fell asleep in 1916 at the age of 12, she's be 118. As much as I liked the actress, it took me right out of it.

That's the result of them changing the story from that role being played by Rose's mother to Rose's Great-Grandmother and not really thinking it through.

They could have just said either the sleeping sickness as you mentioned or maybe her time with Desire did something. Everything had to fall into place so that Rose would be born at the right time.

If the series had been left in the 90s instead of the 2020s, the great grandma would have been young enough to believe her age.

There is no point making it a period piece r387. Dream is released in the "present" our present is just different than the time period of the graphic novel. In a magical setting it's not hard to flub those things, but it's unfortunate the winters didn't even bother to address it.

R388 The 80s setting would make it a period piece?

Yes. We need to face facts that we're old now.

Even if we still look 24.

R390 Indeed. it seems so strange people loving something that has been apart of me for decades. And seeing how far the world has grown. For good and bad. I am fascinated to see how they will intersperse the one off stories into the narrative. Because we need Shakespeare and Calliope before we go to Hell.

First just hope for Netflix to announce season 2. They should but god you never know with Netflix these days, they have their algorithm they follow and are more likely to cut shows down as we all know.

R392 If they do Seasons and Game of You with needed one off eps, they will need a longer season 2. Then some of the Volume 5 stories will have been told, apart from the stories of my Orpheus, (so like his Father), and then when hit Brief Lives, and a race to the end. If they do green light a Season 2, would be cruel to not finish it. But, la de da, Netflix are such cunts.

I enjoyed the first half of the season. The dream vortex plot took over the second half and the characters were random and together with the plot, not interesting enough to sustain many episodes. John Cameron Mitchell is so mannered as an actor and why did he have so many production numbers, which were quite terrible nightmares.

R394 I have not watched the back half yet, and one does not realize at the time, but all these characters come back. Especially Lyta and Rose. So, at time, it seems very forced. But, I have not watched the back half yet.

[quote]Right now you can watch “A Dream of A Thousand Cats / Calliope,” a brand new. surprise bonus episode of “The Sandman,” featuring guest stars Sandra Oh, Michael Shannon, James McAvoy, David Tennant, the great Derek Jacobi, and many more.

thank you for the news

A surprise episode? I love that idea. Great way to take the edge off the hangover of loss after bingeing on a series.

Yeah, I'm watching the episode right now. It makes perfect sense to cover Calliope and Dream of a Thousand Cats like this. And Thousand Cats is great for reinforcing the idea that dreams shape reality.

I've never read the comics, but we got really into this show the first couple of episodes. Then suddenly, it became a WB show. Some little girl running around looking for her lost brother, and the "Sandman", (who's a pretty nasty, cunty bitch himself with few redeeming qualities) guiding her around. Suddenly, everything's all about this girl and her brother. And the overly sugary sweet 'grandmama' black lady who talks and acts like she's doing a parody of Downton Abby... (seriously, that lady's acting is pretty bad). I was struggling with the last episode and if they keep it up with the "family is most important" nonsense, I'm out. I was hoping for darker, gotic, interesting. I also kind of fell in love with the Sandman's immortal friend, who he meets up with every hundred years, and was really hoping we'd see more of him. I suppose it was too much to hope they'd be love interests. Oh, and the short scenes with the high-camp tranny playing an Alexis Carrington-style villainess..... I just dunno about that. Something tells me I'm gonna punt my Netflix subscription again very soon. I only started it back to watch this but it really is working out to be like something you'd see on Hallmark or Disney channel.

"Dream of a Thousand Cats" is one of my favorite issues of the comic -- and I thought there was no way they could adapt it. I never thought of using animation.

Cat people are gonna love the bonus episode but also hate it because it features [TRIGGER WARNING] a brutal disposal of newborn kittens.

Calliope was nice as well, I loved Michaela Coel's I May Destroy You playing in the background because that show also deals with consent and an author unable to finish their book despite getting an advance.

I will never not have a soft spot for Arthur Darvill, he's exactly my type.

Mindfucking me a bit, Arthur Darvill plays Shakespeare in the Audible drama. And James McAvoy is Morpheus, so it was weird to see/hear them in the story doing other things.

Bebe Neuwirth voices the cat, and I think Sandra Oh is a downgrade there.

Do not remember Dream being quite so swoony drippy around Calliope.

I think that's partly a consequence of needing to soften him for contemporary storytelling standards, and partly because the show is centered on him in a way that the comic kind of isn't. I know the title is "The Sandman," but he's not the primary focus of at least half of the comic: Doll's House is really Rose's story, Brief Lives is equal parts Delirium's, Game of You is Barbie's, he's barely in World's End or the other story story collections, and the final arc ultimate...spoilers...

R405 True. I always loved how he rarely turned up, he can be so grumpy. Wonder who will get to play Delirium. She does fuck all in Seasons of Mists, but do adore her. When does Destruction turn up, in a flashback I think, walking in Olde Worlde England, right before he quits.....is that Brief Lives?

I'm only halfway through this series - the cast really elevates the very average writing and questionable CGi. Kirby Howell-Baptiste and Tom Sturridge have wonderful chemistry as Death and Dream and the actor playing Desire is a lot of fun. And I'm glad they changed the ending of Rebecca's story with John Dee. If you know, you know.

Think this guy gets lost half way through.

R407 I missed the cruelty of her fate.

R408 it works in the books, but as we got to know her and like her and empathize with her in live action as the episode went on, I think it would have been far, far too dark. They toned down the diner scene a lot too.

[quote]I'm only halfway through this series - the cast really elevates the very average writing and questionable CGi.

Exactly. The first 6 episodes succeed because the acting talent is pretty high. That's the problem with the last four some people are having, without the acting talent to elevate it the show suffers. Casting is so important for this series if they want it to feel like a prestige series.

R410 I still have yet to watch Dolls House as well. Is such an easy story to fuck up, as Game of You will be.

R410 oh no... I've only got the last 4 to go. But then I'll admit that Rose and her little brother were the least interesting storyline for me from the books, too.

[quote]I will never not have a soft spot for Arthur Darvill, he's exactly my type.

You and me both, buddy! It was always so mad to me how he was referred to as unattractive in Doctor Who, I was like: are they crazy? he is exactly my type.

Wish he'd do a nude scene or three, would love to see his bum.

R412. Yeah, the story is a good introduction to the conflict between Desire and Dream, as well as hinting at the ancient rules they have to abide by.

But the story itself is pretty dull, especially in the TV version where Rose is reduced to a flat character obsessed with finding her brother. She needed a bit more dimension.

OK, I’m finally caught up with the end of the series and most of the bonus episode. Some questions and thoughts:

I already don’t like Paton Oswald, his humor, his personality, his looks, I find him repugnant, I just do, sorry. Now, I also know I don’t like his voice and that it is very grating. Also, the sound engineering was off, when he spoke it was overly loud from other characters talking and felt like it was coming from an overhead speaker, there was no directional sense it was coming from the bird. And it felt like he was constantly undermining what the character was saying by trying to sneak in humor like he was comic relief. The technology to switch a voice in a narrative can’t come soon enough for me, and I hope they recast going forward and work out the sound engineering problems so it doesn’t come off like it’s recorded from a zoom call.

Jenna Colman was fantastic, I’ve only heard her name as the last possible Mrs. Madden before he switch to twinks, but she’s lovely and charismatic and not a bad actress. I wish she had been in the first season more and that they flesh out her role in the second.

What was going on with Rose’s hair and why wasn’t it ever explained? I assumed there would be some Medusa like thing that would happen with the rainbow dreads, but it never came. It was such a glaring and unusual element to leave unexplained.

I love JCM, but why was he performing Lypsinka’s act, I just checked, John Epperson is still alive and I hope he was paid off or sues them. It’s like they used the idea of drag queens circa 1990 and not present day like the show was set. It would have been more fun as a wink and a nod for him to be doing Hedwig, if you’re going to have him play a character. Singing Gypsy in 50s garb isn’t anything like what drag looks like today. Hell, if you want diversity, having RuPaul would have been perfect. And as much as I love John singing, it would have made more sense if he’s doing period drag to have been lip syncing instead, but maybe that’s the line they didn’t want to go over from fully stealing from John Epperson?

My favorite parts were the guy who was given mortality, and he proved them wrong that he would enjoy it, but they seemed to have fudged the meeting dates a bit. Was part of it that Dream was incarcerated and missed directly after the blow up that he may or may not have gone to and the incarceration in the end make him long and want the friendship? The other favorite was the diner and the Grand Guignol of it all. I thought they all were excellent especially David.

Did they ever explain what that giant sculpture body building was that they just randomly inserted into the series every once in awhile?

And what was that part about about Lucienne finding a book in the library all about?

[quote] And what was that part about about Lucienne finding a book in the library all about?

Do you mean Unity Kinkade's life story the grandmother of Rose Walker?

R416 But she was dead, how could she write her life story, which was what 90% sleeping?

r417, Really? Unity had a very specific purpose. A purpose which was documented in that book.

[quote]Did they ever explain what that giant sculpture body building was that they just randomly inserted into the series every once in awhile?

It wasn't randomly inserted, they showed it to us whenever Desire's scene came up. She lives inside that structure.

R419 Oh, I didn’t get that, I didn’t make that connection, I assumed they lived some place looking like Dream or Lucifer. I thought it was more like some weird Statue of Liberty.

Lucienne's role as the librarian, Desire's home (called 'the threshold') and other questions you ask are clearly explained throughout the series. I'm not picking on you, but you may want to rewatch and pay closer attention to the story and dialogue and not so much time thinking about the raven or about Rose's hair. And I expect the explanation of Rose's hair is that she's a black woman and has hair growing out of her head and chooses to style it in the way you see. It shouldn't be a big distraction to you. It's just hair.

Does it have a gay storyline, and do the gays get to kiss and have sex like the lesbians?

[quote] I missed the cruelty of her fate.

Rosemary being killed by John Dee is too cruel this time around.

Allowing her to live

1. Shocks readers who thought they knew what was going to happen.

2. Helps set up John Dee being allowed to live by Dream.

3. Makes him more nuanced and not just a cold blooded killer.

4. Reinforces the theme, "A Hope in Hell."

[quote]Does it have a gay storyline, and do the gays get to kiss and have sex like the lesbians?

Gays do get to kiss and have sex.

R423 But, it was so good when Morpheus allowed John to live. It showed the Endless have a different view of right and wrong.

[quote]Helps set up John Dee being allowed to live by Dream

Dream allows Dee to live in the comics, too. He realizes the damage the ruby did to Dee's mind and returns him "home" to Arkham Asylum. He even grants him a "sound and restful" sleep - without dreams.

^I kinda hated that in the comic, because of the really, truly terrible things Dee did. But it did show how the Endless exist completely outside of our human notions of morality.

I liked the random cat episode as much as I didn't love the diner episode. It was so interesting. Neil Gaiman at his best. He is a little bit hit or miss for me, bit he tends to hit and miss within his projects rather than with them and so I always find his stuff worthwhile. I love the imagination of the cat story and how self-contained and brief it is. I love anthropomorphization. I think it's an important way to empathize with nonhuman beings, and this episode does that with a lot of sweet grace.

So does this imply we should be getting the other two stories from that collection as bonus eps sometime too? Those were the two stories in that compilation that I enjoyed the most.

Hos one off stories, (Ramadan, Calliope, Dream of A Thousand Cats, how Orpheus went to hell), are often perfect stories.

R428 They may not film the superhero in misery story, (Facade),as it is too attached to DC lore. I ADORE Midsummers, but they had to tell the Calliope story before Seasons of Mists, as I think his son is mentioned.

Not likely, R428. Gaiman said in a new EW interview that the first season was always conceived and pitched as 11 episodes, with the final one released as a surprise weeks after the whole first season is released. He said they pitched it to all networks as that package and Netflix is the one that bought it.

Ahh damn. Thanks guys, I think you're right with what you say. I just preferred those two stories to the first two personally and would've liked to have seen it. I would've been fascinated with them portraying how Element Girl would fashion faces and other parts of her appearance and then have her body fall apart. I also just like any story with Death.

I did like the extra episode. The cat one was a fun little thought experiment with nice animation, and the one with the trapped muse was more in line with the quality in the first 6 episodes. Nice acting.

Gods, or variations of them, usually do have a different moral code and show mercy to those who committed atrocious crimes while punishing those much, much harder who dared to insult the Gods personally.

Rosemary's survival was fine in my opinion. It helped show that the Dee character was a step away from being an insane maniac as in the comics. Here he actually has comprehensible motives one can sympathize with.

I like the added depth to the character.

R434 But, he is an insane maniac.

Our general opinion about good vs. bad has changed drastically. It's all about multi-layered characters going through gray areas of mind and conflict. The anti-hero vs. the villain with a tragic origin story.

The cut & dry "good vs. evil" no longer applies, it's up to interpretation these days.

The Calliope actress was very good. I realized while watching her that I was really interpreting her as a different kind of being who was being held captive and I found her quite moving. I read afterward that the producers are very happy with her chemistry with the Morpheus actor and plan to make more of the relationship if Netflix will allow them to keep the show going. Calliope, Death and the librarian are great.

I am not sure Calliope sees Dream in the present, again.

Kinda OT, I know Desire and Despair forget, but does Dream also forget the events in Overture?

[quote]It showed the Endless have a different view of right and wrong.

It's one of those things: I get why people wanted the death to remain as it was written ... but I get why Neil changed his mind.

It gives John Dee more depth. He's much less of an insane maniac here overall and apparently that's how Neil wants it to be. If he could rewrite everything all over again, and technically he is pulling the strings, this is how he'd do it. He felt it was a change that needed to be made so there it is.

There's a marked difference between Dream at the beginning of the season and the end to the point where other characters are pointing it out and Tom/The Actor is doing a fantastic job of lightening him slightly up. I can see Dream having the final scene with John Dee that he did at the end of the season but certainly not at the start.

Though Dream spares Dee, he is not so forgiving of Alex Burgess who he sentences to eternal sleep. In the comics, it is eternal [italic]waking[/italic], wherein Alex wakes from one nightmare only to find himself in another (and another and another and another....)

Instead of making Dee insane, the series softens his character and his motive. He does not want to "save the world" in the comics; he just wants to see it burn.

Neil is not writing the show and, though one might assume that he signed off on the changes, I think it is wrong to say that "apparently that's how Neil wants it to be". (I can see some changes being made for expediencies stake, for example.) I believe the comics are, and should remain, canon.

R440 Neil is lead executive producer and he has been doing a lot of interviews about the show. He either has almost total creative control or else he is just straightforwardly lying, confidently, like a con artist.

He has described rationales for a lot of the changes and he seems to take credit/responsibility for them himself. He wanted to update certain aspects of characters. He says those that have changed have been changed based on how he would write them today versus when he created them. He has articulated why Death is portrayed as Death is, why Morpheus is as he is, and so on.

And, people have made side by side comparisons and have shown that many scenes' dialogue and artwork is exactly the same as the original comics.

So although episodes have been credited to authors who are not Neil, they are using dialogue Neil wrote.

And even beyond that, Neil evidently is practically directing. (Actually, now that I think about it, it sounds like he is overstepping the exec producer role...)

In an interview with the Morpheus actor, Neil said that he snapped at him to "STOP BEING BATMAN!" because he was doing a Batman-esque voice. The actor said "that was my first day!"

And Neil said it was imperative to him that Morpheus speak with a very specific rhythm and cadence that demonstrates he is not a human being but something other. He said a primary reason the actor who plays Morpheus was cast is that he is a classically trained actor and he knows how to modulate rhythm and cadence according to direction while still embodying the character.

So it seems like of all things, Sandman is Gaiman's most personal passion project and it appears that every facet of the series is under his direction. He co-cast every character. Many actors were cast because they had worked with Gaiman in the past. He directed how Morpheus should act and how he should speak. His writing for the comics is being used verbatim in the show. This is his show.

R438. I'm pretty sure Dream remembers the events of Overture.

As for Dee, I suspect that part of the change is also because Dr. Destiny is actually a DC character and utterly insane because of his inability to dream. So Gaiman adapted the existing character for the comic.

This new iteration of Dee might me more in line with what he originally intended, if he hadn't been utilizing an existing character. Or Gaiman might have changed his sensibilities since he wrote the first few issues, which let's be honest were a little hit and miss to start off with.

[quote]Neil is not writing the show and, though one might assume that he signed off on the changes, I think it is wrong to say that "apparently that's how Neil wants it to be".

I listened to a podcast interview with Allan Heinberg. He said he met Neil at a Japanese restaurant after he was chosen to write the show and that Neil immediately told him he needed to make whatever changes it took to make the material work for TV. He's not fussy in the slightest in that regard. So while technically you can't fully say "that's how Neil wants it to be", he's not an idiot and knew that adjustments were always on the table if this thing was to ever get adapted.

Well, with Alex Burgess it was personal, R440. And he does revisit his decision later on.

WHITE GAY CIS MALE DOES NOT GET TO COMMIT BLACK HAIR GENOCIDE IN THIS THREAD!!

Here's 5 minutes of the magical episode 6, The Sound of Her Wings. (If you prefer not to know anything about it, don't click on it.)

Watching paint dry is more interesting than this. What a snoozefest.

R448 meh, i do wonder what non fans, viewers with no idea what the story is, how they are finding this adaptation.

R447 Magical.....you sound weak.

[quote] i do wonder what non fans, viewers with no idea what the story is, how they are finding this adaptation.

As someone not familiar with the story or the graphic novels, I loved it. It's magical.

The Sound of Her Wings was by far the best episode but I did love the Cereal Convention parts. I was disappointed in the one about the ageless friend though.

R450 Cool.

I wish Gaiman would shut the fuck up ATM. Every day he is somewhere pushing renewal, blowing his horn, and the latest is if Netflix does not renew, the rights revert to him and he can shop it elsewhere. Dude, we know this is the best thing you will ever write, (his crap novels since prove that), just chill the fuck out, let it lie for awhile, and see what happens.

Thanks to Terry Pratchett, Good Omens is the best thing he ever wrote. The Sandman is just the best thing he'll ever write *all by himself.*

I have found it interesting reviews who bemoan the fact it seems to be all about world building rather than story. I agree. To me, the story did not start moving forward until Book 6, Brief Lives. Everything before that felt like world building, and was only with Brief Lives , (Thessely rejects him, he is bored), that the story actually, finally starts moving forward.

And from there, the story becomes an endless roller coaster ride.

[quote]Every day he is somewhere pushing renewal, blowing his horn, and the latest is if Netflix does not renew, the rights revert to him and he can shop it elsewhere.

It's actually nice to see how much he cares.

[quote]So while technically you can't fully say "that's how Neil wants it to be", he's not an idiot and knew that adjustments were always on the table if this thing was to ever get adapted

Adapt the series how you need to does not = but if I don't like something I won't speak up.

From every interview, twitter response and comment from the people involved Neil did not sit back and just "let" the show happen. He sits all day and discusses changes and rationales. There were points in history he didn't want a project made from it. He begged DC not to do it. He has rejected big names that wanted to be involved. He held out so long because he wanted it to be done "right."

It's never they decided, it's always we decided.

I know that people want to think that he wasn't okay with some of these changes because it gives them a good excuse to be cross with "wokeism" or whatever but there's zero reason to think he wasn't. He's said before this is the show he envisioned. So I'll take him at his word for it.

DC Entertainment posted on FB yesterday that Netflix is already working on season two of The Sandman.

IGN posted today that it may not be renewed for season two.

I bought the first two volumes of the comic books. I reac the first story and it's almost exactly like the TV show except that the Sandman is barely shown and when he is shown, he looks like a haggard old stickman with Tina Turner hair, not like a meaty naked heartthrob.

Based on the images in the first comic, Michael Richards in white grease paint would have been the perfect looking Morpheus.

Neil Gaiman tried to sell The Sandman to George R. R. Martin decades ago and he said NOPE.

He never shuts up.

I feel so sorry for the kids he had with the equally insufferable Amanda Palmer.

R459 Ha, I loved when he broke lockdown to fly the fuck around the world to get away from the cunt supreme.

[quote]In the Norton issue, Despair explicitly says something like: Desire and Delirium are with me in this.

I finally found my copy of Fables and Reflections.

After Despair claims that Desire and Delirium "will stand with me on this," Del shows up and when Morpheus asks her about the challenge, she said "Oh, yeah, she said something about that." So she doesn't really care.

Another day, yet another story.

R461. She's Delirium. She might have been deadly serious at the time but it's probably surprising she even remembered 5 minutes after.

Netflix bases renewals not only how many people watch it, but how many people finish the series. So you can have a show in the top 10 for two weeks with critical acclaim, but if people don't finish it, you're doomed.

If they do pick it up, I wonder how Marv is going to look.

Marv? Or is it Merv? It's been decades since I've read the comics.

Neil says Michael Jackson begged him to be cast as the Sandman.

I never read the comics and have never seen any of Neil gaimans content before. I thought that visually Netflix sandman looked great but it was BORING. it felt like it wanted to be a different but equally boring show each episode (really starting with diner episode) and then half way through Morpheus would appear and speak in this emotionless but nonetheless amplified voice and you would think something was surely going to happen but no nothing does. I put it one notch above"man who fell to earth" in terms of engagement, which sucked only slightly more.

R467 Neil is an unusual storyteller. Most of his work wanders along a lot of territory with a lot of diversions. He and Tori Amos are very close friends and her often-meandering, emotional, mythology-imbued songs are pretty comparable to his writing. I think it's a style and a perspective people either appreciate or don't.

I like Stardust a lot, but it seems overlong to me and it follows along a plot trajectory of a star (played by Claire Danes) who falls from heaven and is captured by a witch, with romantic adventures ensuing, and then randomly follows a pirate played by Robert DeNiro who captains an airship and turns out to be a crossdresser, and that diversion has tested my patience every time I've watched the movie.

My father read Anansi Boys and liked it a lot, and he gave it to his sister in law who said it was boring and made no sense.

Then my dad read Neil's book on Norse Mythology expecting an adventure/fantasy story and reported back to me "it reads like a textbook. I thought he was a novelist. I expected fiction."

I found The Sandman to be...not boring, exactly, but slow moving for sure, and I liked some episodes and scenes much more than others.

In my MFA creative writing program, my thesis director said "writers are usually idea writers or character writers, and most people prefer idea books or character books, not both."

Neil Gaiman is an idea writer and his writing reflects what another instructor told me about my writing: "You can't resist chasing shiny objects." Neil's characters can have lively personalities and say pithy and profound things, but the strength of his writing is the ideas he pursues. His approach isn't intellectual or overtly philosophical and so I think people read/watch his stories thinking they are supposed to be focused on character, but that is not really the focus. If you watch the first season of American Gods, which is excellent, you'll probably appreciate the brilliant ideas. The showrunner of seasons that followed switched the focus to the adventures and action sans ideas, and those are big failures. The Sandman isn't really a character himself. He's a representation of an idea.

But seriously, by what extent is Neil’s meandering writing style and flights of the fantastic imbued and informed by a decade plus of probably only having accesses to L.Ron Hubbard SciFi and Fantasy novels to read growing up as the only material in the house of Britain’s number one man in charge of building the cult in the UK? That’s had to have had a profound effect on him and worthy of a few PhDs?

It’s like an unethical thought experiment, sequestering a child in a house with only books by Dickens to see what his novels written as an adult might be like. He may no longer be a Scientologist, but like any writer who grew up in a controlling conservative Christian household or an orthodox Jewish household, their work is going to be greatly informed by those religious texts they were inundated by in their youth and early adulthood.

No one really knows what Netflix bases their renewals on R464, but the prevailing opinion is immediate, fast, and extremely heavy continuous engagement. The show was budgeted at 15 mil an episode, one of the most expensive Netflix shows ever. There needs to be OVERWHELMING engagement by the MAJORITY of the Netflix audience, and the hemming and hawing and Netflix radio silence and the begging of the creators online for more engagement means that there are indicators that the show is too slow and that it is only reaching a niche. This was intended as a mainstream show, not niche. It has to have engagement at Bridgerton levels to justify its existence, and it most definitely has not had that.

I would be surprised if it gets a full renewal. And it won’t go to another streaming service.

r470- one of my friends was involved (very high up ) with Archive 41, which was in the top 10 for 2 weeks, had pretty good critical acclaim, and it was still not renewed for S2. He told me it was because of the lack of interest in finishing the series.

Archive 41 dragged on. Four episodes of content dragged out to eight.

I loved Archive 81. I wish it had been renewed.

Re The Sandman, I have no clue what Netflix execs plan, but they may be looking beyond viewers to determine the payoff of this one. DC, Marvel, Disney, and fantasy productions make enormous amounts of money from merchandising. If Netflix gets into the buisiness of churning out plastic things tied to the series and those catch on, that would be a major additional revenue source and also build viewer interest and loyalty, particularly among children, teens and nerdy adults who are obsessive about such things.

To wit.

R473. Archive 81 was good until the last two episodes. Those really ruined it for me.

[quote]one of my friends was involved (very high up ) with Archive 41, which was in the top 10 for 2 weeks, had pretty good critical acclaim, and it was still not renewed for S2.

Did anyone read that article from the creator of The Babysitter's Club?

She mentioned that the show had numbers that were way bigger than HBO's shows. It had better numbers than Succession.

But, as you said, Netflix cares about completion rates and whether or not it's driving growth for the platform in other parts of the world.

(And this was just a kid's series.)

It really comes down to:

[quote]They want people to watch it a certain way, and they want shows that people will watch that way — not shows that people want to watch in their own way.

And that's why Netflix will kill a show.

It doesn't matter how many people watch Sandman if the show isn't driving people to the platform AND they're not watching the show in the right way.

I can kind of see the logic to it a little. If 20 million people watch the first few episodes but only 4 million make it to the end, you're going to end up with one million for season 2.

On the other hand, there are lots of old TV shows such ad Seinfeld and Cheers and many more that started off with small audiences, built them gradually and then became juggernauts three or four seasons in. Networks don't give productions chances like that any longer.

I'm not a commercial marketing person but it seems any kind of comic book/fantasy/sci-fi property has huge potential these days to sell.

I was thinking about the new Lord of the Rings on Amazon. How can they possibly recoup a half billion spent on eight episodes? I feel like it must be a multifaceted and long-term investment in the Amazon brand, in bringing in shoppers, in selling all kinds of merchandise and possibly producing spinoff movies that could be sold unlike the TV show. Maybe they have a plan to create an LOTR version of the 'Marvel universe.'

Obsessive nerdy fantasy fans seem to be the sole audience of all movie studios today and all studios care about is making money, so there is money in it.

The Lord of the Rings franchise is massive so I'm sure many people, myself included, will be curious to watch it but they aren't going to recoup half a billion dollars. But Amazon's business model doesn't depend on the success of any one product or offering. They play the long game, and often invest huge amounts up front on something that in the long run will pay off when they can use it for a bunch of other things like they did with AWS and their shipping fleet/warehousing. Apple is doing the same, keeping shows that almost no one watches but that they spend lavish amounts of money on, to build the service in the long run.

Netflix has a completely different and much more short term business model.

[quote]I was thinking about the new Lord of the Rings on Amazon. How can they possibly recoup a half billion spent on eight episodes? I feel like it must be a multifaceted and long-term investment in the Amazon brand, in bringing in shoppers, in selling all kinds of merchandise and possibly producing spinoff movies that could be sold unlike the TV show. Maybe they have a plan to create an LOTR version of the 'Marvel universe.'

You nailed it. It will bring in subscribers (some of whom will take advantage of Amazon Prime and buy other things), and they can create merchandise related to it. They also, if reviews are any indication, did a fantastic job and one reviewer said it made Game of Thrones latest series sets/outfits look boring in comparison. That was the goal: to have their own Game of Thrones style show. It's a passion project, in a way, for Bezos.

Amazon really makes its money from Amazon Web Services like their cloud storage. In 2020 13 billion of their 21 billion net income came from that alone. It has been consistent every year. That is their bread and butter. If they can get people to that then they're doing well.

[quote]Obsessive nerdy fantasy fans seem to be the sole audience of all movie studios today and all studios care about is making money, so there is money in it.

Comic Book films replaced Action Films at the box office. While I like a realistic drama on occasion, and I am tired of comic movies and TV series: I get it. People want a complete escape.

Thanks for sharing R476 - that was a really interesting read.

Jeff Bezos is also a personal fan of Lord of the Rings which played a big part in why his company is willing to spend so much money on that show. This is a passion project.

I get it. If I was worth over 100 billion dollars Gullermo del Toro would be able to get financing for his [italic]At the Mountains of Madness[/italic] adaptation. And under a pseudonym I'd find out if it's possible to make Philip José Farmer's [italic]A Feast Unknown[/italic] as a live action film.

R364 Not quite. Very few black people were in the original comic when compared to the TV show. Relative to other minorities there is an extreme overepresentation of blacks in the show. To the exclusion of many Asians(the exception being East Indians),Hispanics and Native Americans. If Game of Tou's adaptation doesn't include one Hispanic that would be insane. In the real NYC there are millions of Hispanics,in Gaiman's NYC there will only be whites and blacks!

At least they kept the GLBT angle from the comic. I'll give them credit for that. There needs to be more of that in shows for sure.

No second season announcement. Doesn’t bode well.

Not sure what the scope is in A Game of You. Wanda is baked in as Mid-Western white and Thessaly is an ancient Thessalian witch, so you are left with the two lesbians and horrible George upstairs. And the homeless lady, but she's black to begin with.

I'm not sure that Wanda has to be white. There is plenty of transphobia in communities of color as well.

The original comic did have a tendency to treat black women terribly (Nada, Ruby, Carla). Gaiman even wrote a line the Corinthian referencing it and Gaiman specifically added a black woman that he didn't kill terribly near the end of the story. It is interesting to see that they cast more black women in prominent roles based on the history of the comic.

[quote]No second season announcement. Doesn’t bode well.

Apparently, the Writer's Guild website has listings for the writing staff of a Season 2. So maybe it's happening.

Agree with this...I also miss the cruelty.

DC Entertainment posted this to its FB account on August 19. I doubt they would make the announcement if it weren't true. I suppose in theory they might do it to build public pressure, but it would make the company look rather dumb to have to back track if Netflix were to cancel after this announcement.

[quote] Thanks to Charbel for the heads up that it appears The Sandman has been quietly renewed by Netflix for a 2nd Season. There appears in the WGA Directory a section already for Season 2. We'll update this post when we get some official news.

I think overall the series suffered from the same problem that the first two Harry Potter films did. Everything had to be a big CGI set piece, and if you are watching on a small screen, it seems to amplify how fake it all is and everything just starts to look the same.

I was surprised that the episodes from A Doll's House (my favorite of the Sandman stories) didn't translate to the screen as well as the earlier ones. Well, I knew "The Sound of Her Wings" was golden regardless, but the others worked out to be nicely cinematic.

No way will they make a horrible white family into a horrible black one, R487. Zero chance. That's not how Hollywood diversity works.

I am always in favor of casting any actor for any role. Lars Von Trier opened me up to it since he casts people from different countries with different accents as nuclear family members and somehow makes it work in his strange movies.

The inclusive casting in the Sandman is glaring, though, and it made me notice that they really wanted to be representative of all of humanity, or so it seemed anyway, until I noticed the lack of East Asian actors. Sandra Oh did play the prophet cat, but there were no human beings of Asian descent on the screen. I am guessing they'll correct for that in season two.

One interesting side effect of diversity initiatives is that the more diverse a body of people become, exclusions become so much more obvious. Like, an all white or all black or all Asian or all Latin cast just seems like a cast, but a cast that is everybody but black or everyone but Asian seems intentionally exclusive.

r495- I work in the industry, and it's been becoming like that with crew as well. It's becoming exclusive instead of inclusive.

R495. Hopefully they do cast a few more East Asian actors for season 2. Cain and Abel seemed South Asian though, so there's that.

R495 The exclusion of Hispanics is quite bizarre. In this day and age,you'd think that someone at DC or Netflix would have said something. The excuse that Bauman is British is a complete copout. Voter and Feinberg who developed the show with Gaiman are Americans. Gaiman's casting choices were quite prejudiced towards some minorities and not others.If you are going to be diverse really be diverse and don't forget Hispanic,Asian or Native American people for season 2.

Hopefully they'll do the Japanese story "The Dream Hunters", which was beautifully illustrated.

American Gods was more inclusive with Mexican Jesus and Whiskey Jack.

Ah I forgot to link one of the images:

Neil Gaiman is English and some other producers are British. The cast seems largely British.

I kind of assume Hispanic and certainly Native American, and East Asian, representation is considered among inclusivity efforts in the US, but in the UK, it's probably more black, Indian and Middle Eastern? There probably are very few American Indian people in the UK, and I don't know how many Central or South American people there are, but certainly nowhere near the share we have in the US. This might be a case of diversity in the UK being lost in translation to the US.

R501 I think the poster was making the point that it seems for many producers now, diversity means black, and black only, at the expense at actual diverse casting.

I would agree. I'm not some dumb racist that gets upset about casting actors who aren't white, but I felt like this series was missing a lot of Asian/Indian actors that I think the UK would have. Diversity did seem to only mean black.

R503 Long time reader here. I did not care about the colour of the actors, more they dropped the ball on the characters. The Cain and Abel were too similar. Cain is foxy, cunning and a cunt. Abel is chunky, sloppy and cuddly. They looked to similar and acted as such.

Wasn't Lucien one of the first ravens, originally? Homers' raven? The actor was just not enough the John Gielgud in Arthur type English character. Stuffy, officious and all knowing.

Death was not perky enough. Death, and especially Dee Dee, the character from The High Cost of Living, when Death becomes mortal for a day, are really fun, and kinda wacky and human. She was too heavy. No joy.

Lucifer.....Gods, I need a drink.

Generally speaking diversity does equal black in most casting contexts, outside projects about the Raj or whatever. I've been shouted at here and elsewhere for mildly suggesting that the first non-white Doctor Who should really be Asian, as an acknowledgment of its British cultural context . I've even been explicitly told here that Asians don't count for diversity purposes.

^The last time I saw Doctor Who, The Master was Asian - and he was HOT!

The Master has also been a woman. Either of the actors would be better than Jodie or probably what we are getting next.

I like Christie in Game of Thrones but hee nose job is distracting here and as it was on that show. (Same with Lena Headey’s cigarette lip lines).

Lyra was extremely irritating. It was like watching a Pollyanna Nigella Lawson.

[quote] Pollyanna Nigella Lawson

Haha! That is perfect. Yes, it did feel like that.

R507 - honestly, I think the show has done a better job casting The Master than The Doctor a lot of the time.

The final volume of the audio drama has released.

Newcomers include KJ Apa as Prez Rickard and David Harewood as Destruction.

I'm not a Tolkien fanboy but I am growing more impressed as the Amazon series goes on, and I am struck by how directly Tolkien's writing was regurgitated by George R R Martin and Neil Gaiman. Already, Game of Thrones seems like a less sophisticated repackaging of the Lord of the Rings lore, and I was shocked when a star fell from the sky in human form at the beginning of Rings of Power. That's the whole basis of the Neil Gaiman movie/book Stardust.

I shouldn't be surprised Gaiman borrows from Tolkien...he and Tori Amos are good friends, and I know Amos is deeply inspired by Led Zeppelin, who were inspired by Tolkien, and Tori even gave her daughter the middle name Lórien after Lothlórien, the realm of the elves (I think?) in LOTR. But I thought Gaiman was almost wholly inventive, not derivative, so I am surprised.

I was assuming the third audio volume was the final one, but I'm really hoping it isn't, because this is "The Song of Orpheus," Brief Lives, and World's End, with a few stories that were printed in various Vertigo anthology comics, and have only of late been printed with the main story. KJ Apa, whose main asset is his body, did surprisingly well.

R513 Weren't all the one offs printed in Fables and Reflections?

"Fear of Falling" is. The other two, which are Desire stories, are only in the more recent Sandman: The Deluxe Edition.

Oh wow, he really likes reissuing with barely anything new, but just knows collectors will have to have them. Desire stories any good?

[quote]Oh wow, he really likes reissuing with barely anything new, but just knows collectors will have to have them.

That's on DC, not him.

[quote]Desire stories any good?

Not really.

Good Omens Season 2 will be interesting, without the input of Terry.

I'm a bit dubious about that, as I've not seen Neil demonstrate much of a flair for humor in his solo work.

Crazy how this show still hasn't been renewed.

FINALLY RENEWED

Netflix was silent about the leaked news of the renewal, but now:

YAY!

At least Gaiman can chill the fuck out now.

Based on your suggestions, I purchased the Audible versions of Vol 1, 2, and 3. Holy shit, the 24 Hours episode was dynamic!

So, season 2 will be Season of the Mist, and Game of You? And some of the short stories, maybe?

A Game of You isn't my favorite either. I loved Brief Lives and the Kindly Ones the most. I hope the show doesn't get canceled before it reaches those story arcs.

Also, I hope there will be some original stories not from the comics. I loved the comics in high school, but the setting lends itself to stories about literally anything set in any time and any place. The story potential is limitless, and they don't have to stick to just the comics.

R527 All the Lyta stuff in Kindly Ones did my head in. But, what an end. Brief Lives is so good. Will be interesting to see who plays Thessaly, what a bitch witch. I always loved Worlds End, the human stories really resonated. The problem with Game of You is how rewritten will Wanda be....all the fear of surgery dreams will be gone. And what will the Moon say now about her not walking the path....

New stories would rock, I always thought American Gods was just all his left over ideas for Gods unused in Sandman thrown in a blender. And did not work. So, could easily see Media in a new Sandman story.

[quote]Will be interesting to see who plays Thessaly, what a bitch witch.

Emma Corrin voices her in the Audible. I can see that translating to live action.

Too pretty, Thessaly is a train wreck. Aubrey Plaza...is that her name?

Not featured on many Best of the Year lists.

Finally watched Dolls House. Awful. And stupid. Lucien would not lie, or keep information from Dream. the very idea is ridiculous. How Lyta, ( the wanker) gets pregnant now is stupid. And all the talk of change. Change. Change. Which is a major theme in the comics, we realize with book 7, Brief Lives. But to start bashing it in the second story is just dumb.

it is like Gaiman never read his own stories. or, as I actually believe, he is a minor talent when it comes to adapting.

[quote] It's Death, it's not a human, who cares if it's white or black or purple? Do its powers stem from its melanin levels? If not, who gives a shit.

A lot of people care, you silly twat. In this version Death is COMPLETELY changed. Her looks and everything about her has changed. She's not the same character as the one in the comics. The changes do nothing to improve the character or make her more interesting. The changes are made to please the woke. That's pretty fucked up and stupid.

[quote] it is like Gaiman never read his own stories. or, as I actually believe, he is a minor talent when it comes to adapting.

r532 It was to be expected.

R533. Her looks have definitely changed, true.

But isn't her personality pretty much intact? She's always been the most "human" of all the Endless with that sort of cheery and compassionate demeanor.

Cackling at r533 replying to my comment in impotent rage almost a year later. And still not even attempting to address my question whether her powers stem from her melanin levels.

Stay angry, gramps.

R536 My question is does Death (Dee Dee) being black add anything to the character? She was written as looking like a typical white goth girl, but was fun. And the only sibling that actually cared about Dream, and pulled him up for being a dick to Nada, and various other choices he made.

Does the Corinthian come back?

[quote] Stay angry, gramps.

Oh go fuck yourself, you little shithead clod. And why should anybody "address" your stupid question? Why would anybody give a flying fart about "whether her powers stem from her melanin levels?" You sound like a pathetic comic book geek. Only those poor souls would give a shit about Death's "melanin levels."

R538 Yes, in book 8, The Kindly Ones. But he is nice now. Oh, and he cameos with Destruction in the short story collection. And turns up at the start of Overture.

Thanks R540!

R541 My pleasure, he is a great character, in the comics. in Kindly Ones he has a very nice adventure with a mainstay of English literature with a 500 year history, and it is amazing. And so very cruel. So when I say he has gone nice, I mean in the way a nightmare is nice. Not very.

I have posted a bit on this thread, as I fucking love Sandman. I started reading it with Book 4, Seasons of Mist, and after that followed it monthly. It was a piece of art that was perfect for the time, and the writing and callbacks and use of characters and themes was breathtaking. And then Gaiman started writing fiction and it all went wrong for him. American Gods feels like a tossed salad of ideas he had left over from Sandman, thought lets throw this shit together. And it was awful. Tried to do Anasi Boys...pass.

I have always felt that Sandman was that one out of a box perfect time, perfect story things. And the changes in the TV series, (making characters black, so many, for little to no reason), and changing the sex of characters, has added nothing, and betrays the original. I am dying to see, as I have said before, how he handles Wanda now. Because her nightmares of having the sex surgery is actually a real truism for the transsexual community at that time, and the Moon not letting him use her path to the Dream World, as he was a bloke, will be totally changed now. The moon is a terf. LOL

Season 2 has started filming.

Orpheus already?

This show is so cursed – first it took forever to get it renewed, then it finally started shooting, and now it's on pause again due to the strike. Given how CG-intensive it is, I don't think we'll be seeing the second season next year.

Well, I can at least report that the Audible adaptation is moving ahead. It's possible there are going to two more volumes based on something Gaiman said on his BlueSky after recording his narration.

The plan is to keep going as long as Audible wants, up to and including Overture.

Dead Boy Detectives drops this week. Are they the ones from the comic, the dead boys at the Boarding School being tortured whilst Hell is closed...

Yes, Paine and Rowland. And Death will at least be making a cameo.

R548 They seem much older, and as Seasons of the Mist has not been adapted yet, how can they tell that story here...

Thanks for replying, just even more questions. lol

[quote][R548] They seem much older, and as Seasons of the Mist has not been adapted yet, how can they tell that story here...

I mean, Dead Boy Detectives (the series) is a spinoff of Doom Patrol, even if they recast. Ty Tennant and Bash Croft are both in their early 20s, so Jordan Revri and George Rextrew aren't that much older.

I don't know if "Season of Mists" or any of the following appearances ever establishes how old they were when they died, but they're supposed to be like 11 or 12, so if they're making the show with the intention of more than one or two seasons, it makes sense to age them up so you don't wonder how ghosts are aging.

DBD thread