It’s hard to believe, and I really don’t want to think about it, but it’s been thirty years since The Sandman came out back in 1988 from DC Comics as part of its Vertigo lineup. The publish is looking to try and recapture some of that magic with a new imprint called The Sandman Universe where we’ll get titles within that realm of material.
The imprint is kicking off with a one-shot called The Sandman Universe to establish things and then will follow with new incarnations of The Dreaming, Lucifer, and Books of Magic as well as debuting a new series with The House of Whispers.
The opening one-shot will be written by Neil Gaiman along with Nalo Hopkinson, Kat Howard, Si Spurrier and Dan Watters. It’ll feature art by Bilquis Everly and a Jae Lee cover.
“[The Sandman universe is] a huge sandbox with so many wonderful toys that nobody’s getting to play with right now,” Gamin said. “I started feeling guilty. I liked the idea of getting the toys played with again, reminding people how much fun this is, and also getting the opportunity to work with some fantastic writers. Down the line, there will be fantastic artists as well.
“For this stuff, it’s really the joy of looking back at the history of Vertigo,” he continued. “There’s always stuff I created in the Vertigo world, that spun off and went out into the world and did really well. But the natural life cycle of these things is it came, it went away. Let’s bring it all back, let’s have fun with it. So for me, the joy is just sitting with smart writers who love the material and saying, ‘Let’s go play.’”
Nalo Hopkinson will take on the writing duties for The House of Whispers that has a cover by Yanick Paquette. According to DC, Hopkinson was hand-picked by Gaiman, who told EW, “if we’re gonna do House of Whispers, if we’re going to do Erzulie and have all this voodoo lore stuff, then I want Nalo to do it because there isn’t anybody better.”
Cat Howard is coming on to tell the new tales for Tim Hunter in the Books of Magic series and Si Spurrier will take on The Dreaming. With Lucifer, Dan Watters is taking on that series to move the character into a new chapter.
