Neil Gaiman's New 'Sandman' Prequel Looks Awesome

Comic fans rejoice! The return of Morpheus is imminent. Yesterday, the New York Times revealed one of the covers of Neil Gaiman’s new Sandman prequel, The Sandman: Overture. The first issue of the six-part mini-series will be released on October 30 of this year.

The cover depicts Dream, the protagonist of the Sandman series, in his gas mask-style helmet concocted from the bones of a dead god, hovering over what looks like a hallucinogenic garden on fire. The artwork was done by J.H. Williams III, a two-time Eisner award winner who has worked on a stack of impressive titles, including Alan Moore’s Promethea, Warren Ellis’ Desolation Jones, and the current storyline of Batwoman.

When asked last week at a signing event in San Francisco what it was like working with Williams, Gaiman responded “intimidating.” He went on to describe how Williams was able to draw even the most seemingly impossible images, like “what Morpheus would look like as a flower.”

Fans have been craving this sort of update since July of last year, when Gaiman announced via prerecorded video at San Diego Comic Con that a new Sandman series was on the way in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the comic’s publication. Little information has been publicized on the new series since then.

Sandman was a breakthrough in the world of comics. It won multiple Eisner awards and is one of the few graphic novels (if that term doesn’t irk you) to have ever crept its way onto the New York Times bestseller list.  As a result of its success, Neil Gaiman has become a prolific name in fantasy and comics. This year alone, he wrote his second episode of Doctor Who, published his “accidental book” The Ocean at the End of the Lane, released a children’s book called Chu’s Day about a sneezy panda, and will release another children’s book in the fall called Fortunately, the Milk.

But the story of Dream is also important for individual readers. It’s a gateway drug for those seeking a portal into the world of comics. When I first read it, I was eighteen and had this visceral feeling that I might be one of those comic book people, but I wasn’t sure. A friend let me borrow his Sandman trade paperbacks and, once I started in on Preludes and Nocturnes, I didn’t see anyone for a week—I just sprawled out on my couch, consuming them as quickly as I could, letting this new form of storytelling bore happy holes into what I thought a story could and should be.  This appears to be a pretty typical narrative, one that usually culminates in a healthy respect for and obsessive love of comics.

All in all, Sandman is an important piece of literature and this surreal cover serves as a reminder to binge read all your Sandman before Halloween. Or go out and buy an issue or two if you don’t have any. Maybe make a Google Calendar alert if you have to. But make sure you get it done, because this is going to be great.