Today, the world of The Sandman created by Neil Gaiman (and the many talented artists who worked on the original Sandman series) returned to DC’s Vertigo Comics imprint in Sandman Universe #1, a book that sets up four new series spinning out from concepts and characters introduced in Gaiman’s original Sandman run: Lucifer, House of Mystery, The Dreaming and Books of Magic.
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However, while the four vignettes featured in Sandman Universe #1 laid down some solid groundwork for the series to come, nothing speaks to the Sandman legacy as much as that final page reveal.
SPOILERS for Sandman Universe #1 follow.
From the very opening pages of Sandman Universe #1, it is clear that something is not right in the Dreaming, the realm of Dream of the Endless, known as Daniel in his current incarnation. Lucien’s library of stories never told is suddenly losing books, some of the few constants in the shifting landscape of the Dreaming have begun to change, and an unexplained crack in its reality has manifested just outside of Dream’s castle. However, Dream isn’t home and so, desperate for help, Lucien sends Dream’s raven, Matthew, out to find their lost lord.
It is Matthew’s journey that serves as the framing device for the four shorter scenes that introduce the idea behind the new Sandman Universe line of ongoing comics. Eventually, Matthew does find Daniel, but he doesn’t know it. The reader sees Daniel standing out in the open on a busy city street, the rain pointedly not landing on him, but Daniel makes Matthew forget before he even registers that he saw the Dream Lord, and Matthew returns home empty-handed.
Upon his return, Matthew finds Lucien in Dream’s gallery where the sigils of the members of the Endless family hang. Lucien stares at the helmet that serves as Dream’s own sigil, which has fallen to the ground, its frame shattered. Lucien believes that Daniel has quit.
This moment could potentially have ramifications — not just for the Sandman Universe, but for the DC Universe in its entirety, and also calls back to several themes and plot threads from the original Sandman series.
Following in his Brother’s Footsteps
If Daniel truly has abdicated his role among the Endless, he is not the first in his family to do so. That distinction belongs to Destruction, who abdicated his realm and responsibilities sometime around the 17th century at the dawn of the age of reason. Destruction knew even then that this new interest in science among humans would eventually lead to the creation of the atomic bomb, and Destruction refused to be responsible for that.
In the Sandman volume Brief Lives, Delirium convinces Dream to help track down Destruction. They succeed and Destruction and Dream argue about their differing paths. Dream believes nothing is more important than his responsibilities as one of the Endless, while Destruction points out that things are still being destroyed even without him in his realm, he just refuses to play a conscious role in it.
Instead, Destruction deliberately tries to subvert his own nature by attempting acts of creation, like writing poetry. While Destruction and Dream fail to find much common ground in this argument, Destruction’s point about the necessity of self-reflection and change sticks with Dream.
Morpheus Captured
This is also not the first time that Dream has been away from the Dreaming. The Sandman began when Dream, then also called Morpheus, was captured and imprisoned by a human who studied magic.
The results of Dream’s absence could be felt not just in the Dreaming, which Morpheus found largely deserted and destitute upon his return, but in the realm of the living, where a strange sleeping sickness began taking hold of humans around the world.
While the effects of Daniel’s absence are clearly being felt within the Dreaming, it is unclear if and how his sabbatical will manifest itself in the mortal plane of the DC Universe.
Change or Die
In the introduction to The Sandman: Endless Nights, the volume collecting a series of one-shots about the Endless written after the original Sandman series ended, Neil Gaiman was asked to tell the story of The Sandman in 25 words or less.
“The Lord of Dreams learns that one must change or die, and makes his decision,” was Gaiman’s answer. The important thing here is that, by the end, he has actually chosen both.
Morpheus’s time spent in forced captivity, the fact the world went on without him even if things weren’t quite perfect, and Destruction’s message about the importance of change all stuck with Morpheus. But at the same time, he was too dedicated to his mission and purpose as the Lord of Dreams to actually walk away from it, and he was too set in his ways to change.
Over the course of the series, Dream realizes this and — and these are MAJOR SPOILERS for The Sandman coming if you still haven’t read the original series — he dies in order to change. Morpheus meets a tragic end at the conclusion of The Sandman, but it is tragic partly because it is an end of his own creation. It is very easy to read in between the lines of The Sandman and see where Morpheus may have been plotting his own downfall all along.
But as the personification of the very concept of dreaming, Dream did not end with Morpheus. Daniel was born to take his place, and by becoming Daniel — a much lighter, more optimistic, and flexible version of Dream — Morpheus ultimately did manage to change.
An Uncertain Future
Sandman Universe #1 reveals just how different Daniel really is. There have been clues over the years. For example, there have been a couple of instances where Daniel has intervened in the affairs of superheroes, most recently during the events of Dark Nights: Metal, which is something Morpheus would never have done.
However, walking away from his duties in the Dreaming is something that Morpheus could never do. Morpheus literally died first. The fact that Daniel could so casually, apparently, leave that role behind shows just how unlike his former self Daniel really is. And that could have huge repercussions in the future.
It is unclear exactly where and when this storyline will be followed up on. Perhaps it will be in all four of the new Sandman Universe series, but The Dreaming seems the most likely to be directly impacted by it given that it is a series set in the realm Daniel just walked away from.
Sandman Universe #1 is on sale now.
