The Sandman
Overview
The Sandman is a comic book series written by Neil Gaiman and published by DC Comics. It tells the story of Dream of the Endless, who rules over the realm of dreams. The Endless are anthropomorphic personifications of various metaphysical entities, such as Destiny, Death, Desire, Despair, Delirium (formerly Delight) and Destruction. The original series ran for 75 issues from January 1989 to March 1996.
Seasons
Season 1
Dream has been imprisoned for 72 years by The Order of the Ancient Mysteries. Upon escaping, he must reclaim his objects of power while still in a weakened state, confronting an addict to his dream powder, the legions of Hell, and an escaped madman.
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Season 2
As part of a manhood ritual, an old man in the desert tells a younger man an ancient story, detailing the tragic love between Dream and Queen Nada. Fearing the consequences of loving an immortal, Nada spurns Dream. In anger, Dream sends Nada to Hell, where she remains to the present day. Meanwhile, Dream's sibling Desire calls upon its twin, Despair, to inform her there is a new dream vortex. The two of them allude to a scheme against Dream.
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Season 3
Like the sixth (Fables and Reflections), and the eighth (Worlds' End) collections, Dream Country consists of short stories that do not have a common storyline running through them, though it has been argued that most Sandman stories are not entirely self-contained and are part of a larger story arc that encompasses the entire series.
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Season 4
Desire angers Dream by taunting him about his intolerant treatment of a former lover, whose story formed the prologue to the second collection, The Doll's House. Death angers him further by agreeing with Desire, but Dream's immense respect for Death leads him to seriously consider her assessment as he would not for Desire. He eventually cedes to her wisdom in the matter and leaves his realm to travel to Hell, where he imprisoned his lover, Nada, some 10,000 years previously.
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Season 5
The central character of A Game of You is Barbie, introduced as a resident of the house where Rose Walker stayed during the events of The Doll's House, wherein Barbie dreamed a vivid dream of herself as a princess of a fantasy realm. As A Game of You opens, Barbie, who no longer dreams, but lives in an apartment block with her best friend, Wanda, the lesbian couple, Hazel McNamara and Foxglove; the witch, Thessaly; and a quiet man named George.
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Season 6
Like the third (Dream Country) and eight (Worlds' End) collections, Fables and Reflections is a collection of short one-issue stories. Most of the stories do not contribute directly to the overall story arc of the series on a textual level but rather comment on its themes and provide subtext. The most conspicuous exception is the story "Orpheus", originally printed as the one-shot Sandman Special, which is central to the main story of the series.
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Season 7
The story revolves around Delirium's wish to reconcile with her brother Destruction. To this end, she first contacts Desire and Despair, each of whom refuses to accompany her on her quest; and finally persuades Dream. According to her list, they consult people who knew Destruction; but each time these people are destroyed (such as a 15,000-year-old lawyer killed by part of a building falling on him), or driven into hiding (such as the Alder Man, who changes himself into a bear and has his shadow assume his appearance).
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Season 8
Like the third (Dream Country) and sixth (Fables and Reflections) collections, Worlds' End is a volume of predominantly single-issue short stories, often only obliquely related to the principal story of the series. The issues in Worlds' End were written and published in sequence, using a frame narrative.
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Season 9
The Kindly Ones belongs with the second collection, The Doll's House, and the seventh, Brief Lives, in that it finishes off a story that mostly originated in these collections; but includes elements of Season of Mists and the story of Orpheus, told mostly in Fables and Reflections. The most structurally ambitious of the collections, The Kindly Ones is a single storyline written as a Greek tragedy, with Morpheus as its doomed hero and an aspect of the triad of witches, the Erinyes, as the Greek chorus. It pulls together various threads left dangling throughout the series, notably the grudges against Morpheus of several characters: Hippolyta Hall, the witches themselves, the Norse god Loki, and the witch Thessaly. The Kindly Ones also continues several other stories, including that of Cluracan of Faerie and his sister Nuala, that of the Corinthian, and that of Rose Walker and her former landlord Hal.
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Season 10
The Wake serves as an epilogue to the main story of the series. The volume centers on a ceremonial gathering in the Dreaming. During this gathering, various figures reflect on the past, share memories, and consider what the future might hold for the realm of dreams and its inhabitants.
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Season 11
Combines Death: The High Cost of Living (1993), and Death: The Time of Your Life (1996). To be read before The Wake.
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Season 12
Alternately haunting, bittersweet, erotic and nightmarish, the seven stories in this book -- one for each of the Endless siblings, each illustrated by a different artist -- reveal strange secrets and surprising truths about the Endless.
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Season 13
Overture tells the tale of the great cosmic event that weakened Dream of the Endless enough so that he was susceptible to capture by simple hedge magic in Sleep of the Just.
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