In Dreams

“THE SANDMAN IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ADAPT.”

That’s long been the received wisdom on Neil Gaiman’s legendary comic book. Of course, we live in an age where seemingly impossible-to-adapt works are, in fact, being faithfully adapted with some regularity. Zack Snyder made his by-the-book version of Watchmen in 2009. Ben Wheatley delivered a pretty accurate take on JG Ballard’s High-Rise in 2015. And last year Denis Villeneuve’s Dune was released to massive acclaim and enough box office receipts to satisfy Baron Vladimir Harkonnen himself.

Still, none of those were . Created by Gaiman along with artists Sam Kieth and Mike Dringenberg, the DC Comics series wove mythology, religion, folklore, urban legends and pulp horror into a single grand tapestry. Over 75 issues between 1989 and 1996 it told the story of Dream of the Endless, an immortal being who rules over the world of the unconscious. When a group of occultists try to imprison his sister Death on Earth, they capture him instead and hold him prisoner for decades. He eventually escapes but the consequences of his protracted absence from the is less a single story, more an exploration of the nature of storytelling itself.