Neil Gaiman will write a new Sandman mini-series set to debut in November 2013, drawn by current Batwoman artist J. H. Williams, and we cannot be more excited!
The announcement was made by video (which you can watch above) during Thursday night’s Vertigo panel at the 2012 San Diego Comic Con. The mini-series will tell what Gaiman considers the last significant untold story in the Sandman saga: How Morpheus came to be trapped at the beginning of the series.
Gaiman elaborates in the video on how the seeds for this story can be found in bits throughout Sandman‘s run. The most telling clue is revealed on a single panel in the “Brief Lives” arc, where the following is written on a page in Destiny’s book:
The Dream King is returning in triumph, of a kind. From a far galaxy, tired beyond reckoning and tried beyond all endurance. His triumph is short-lived. From the darkness voices call to him, and he awaits in a glass prison in a deep cellar.
The story will explain what Morpheus was doing before Sandman #1 and will hit shelves exactly 25 years after that first issue was released. “It was one of the few stories, after finishing Sandman, that I felt I had failed to tell,” Gaiman says in the video.
For the moment, we have but one question: Far galaxy?!?
Stubby the Rocket is the mascot and often random voice of the Tor.com staff and will save you Morpheus! But please don’t reward Stubby because your rewards are kind of as bad as your punishments.
I’m pretty excited!
Squee?
Squee!
But…but…now that “Sandman Box” that is coming won’t be the complete set!
;)
Excellent! I too was a big fan of Williams’ work on Promethea, and I can hardly imagine an artist better-suited to such a project.
I remember hearing Neil talk about this story, at the Worldcon in Montreal in 2009 — they’d had this idea for the 20th anniversary, but…well, let’s just say that they couldn’t come to an agreement on the business side of the deal. I’m glad to hear that DC has come to its senses.
*faints*
OH BOY OH BOY CLAP MY HAND SAY YEAH!!!
*Barney Gumble voice* INJECT IT INTO MY VEINS.
I wonder how much money they offered Gaiman for this. Or if they just revealed they had blackmail pictures of his wife. :)
Michael @7: As a fan of Amanda Palmer, I’m having some trouble imagining how anyone could effectively blackmail her with pictures of any kind; she’d probably just use them in her next video.
Holy crap on a cracker !!!
Now this is good news….bring it on !
“Far galaxy?”
You mean, like, Jar Jar Binks is a nightmare or something?
@8. EliBishop- Haha, yeah, that’s probably the truth
I’m very excited to see this. Much more than “Before Watchmen”.
what about the sad black haired girl with the scar on her face? always wanted to know who she was, seemed like she was someone important in morpheus’s past
The sad black-haired girl, Alianora….she was the one great love of the dream kind that was never detailed in any of the novels (not that I know of, anyway…). She had her part as the original princess of The Land, I think, but that’s her only “screentime” that I can really remember. She was referenced in The Kindly Ones, when Morpheus said something about her fortelling that he would receive his scars in his own time, like the one he had left on her face and her heart. I would love to know exactly what happened…