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Comics Legend Neil Gaiman Returns To Sandman With New Prequel

British novelist/comics writer Neil Gaiman recently announced at San Diego Comic Con that he’ll be returning to his acclaimed queer-friendly comic-book series, Sandman, with a new prequel.
Beloved by comic-book nerds and literary aficionados alike, Sandman follows the endeavors of Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, and his supernatural family, the Endless.  The series is notable for its preponderance of queer characters, including gay faerie Cluracan, spooky lesbians Hazel and Foxglove, and the androgynous, Annie Lennox-inspired Desire.

The as-yet unnamed new miniseries will take place prior to the very first issue of DC Comics’ original Sandman, series, and reveals the events leading up to Morpheus’s imprisonment. It’s the first time Gaiman has touched the character since the original comic’s conclusion in 1996, having mostly focused on novels like Stardust, American Gods and Coraline. He also married queer-fave musician Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls at the beginning of last year.

Gaiman has also incorporated gay elements into  the 1996 GLAAD Best Comic award-winning Death: The Time of Your Life and Murder Mysteries, a grim tale of gay angels illustrated by out artist P. Craig Russell. In a 2007 interview, Gaiman told Queerty contributor Lawrence Ferber, “For more or less as long as I can remember I’ve had a huge gay, lesbian and transgender following.” He says he’s compelled to include LGBT characters because, “these were all my friends and people I knew and didn’t see any reflection of them in the comics I was reading, so I put them into my comics.”

The new Sandman series will arrive sometime in 2013, which isn’t nearly soon enough.

 

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