Giantrobo

Nice From what I just recently learned of Morpheus' siblings, all but Destiny were created by Gaiman. Apparently Destiny was already in the DC universe since the 70's created by Marv Wolfman and Bernie Wrightson and was the narrator in Weird Mystery Tales.

Giantrobo

That would be awesome. Getting this bonus ep feels very British TV anyway so it would fit.

story

A brilliant surprise! Great choices, too, for excellent stories and to present them away from the overall narrative as their own thing, which in many ways they are (though Calliope appears later in the story, obviously).

You called it!!!

cultshock

Yep, I remember seeing Destiny in a few comics back in the day. I thought it was ingenious the way Gaiman could take existing DC characters and weave them into his story and have it all make perfect sense, including previous incarnations of the superhero versions of Sandman. Unfortunately due to not being able to use other DC characters on the show, we likely won't be see Wesley Dodds' Sandman, and Hector and Lyta Hall had their superhero connections removed.

Jay G.

Not to mention that John Dee had his supervillain connection removed. We've already missed the first appearance of Wesley Dodds' Sandman, as well as the Martian Manhunter and The Scarecrow.

The comic drifted away from that over time, and I think Gaiman now prefers Sandman to exist in its own universe. See his explanation here:
https://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/...ed-to-me-since

Josh-da-man

On the subject of DC characters, they also didn't include Etrigan's cameo from issue number four. I was sort of hoping they would replace Squatterbloat with him.

cultshock

Oh yeah, I forgot about John Dee/Doctor Destiny. I was already guessing that we weren't going to get the scene of Dream visiting the JLA headquarters and meeting Martian Manhunter, but that would have been crazy. The Prez and Element Girl stories were great (especially the latter), sad that we won't be seeing those either.



I was kinda disappointed that Squatterbloat looked way different from the comics. Not surprised that they didn't include Etrigan, are there any current plans to do anything with him? I always loved the character and it would be cool to see a live action version of him somewhere.

story

Episode 11 has a wonderful voice cameo from Neil Gaiman as the dead raven!

Josh-da-man

Just watched the new episode.

"Dream of a Thousand Cats" was nice. I wouldn't mind seeing more animated entries adapted from the shorts, with varied animation styles.

I had thought that "Calliope" was probably one of the single-issue shorts that could have been cast out, but, lordy, was there a LOT of foreshadowing and set-up in this, even moreso than the original comic. (Even though a lot of the dialog was taken verbatim from the source issue.)

Josh-da-man

I wouldn't mind seeing a Christmas special, but I don't think there any Christmas (or Yule or Saturnlia) themed stories; there are those three short-short stories from the Vertigo Winter's Edge anthologies, but they're kind of slight and probably not "a very special episode" material. Two of them featured Desire, drawn by John Bolton and Michael Zulli, and the third was a Death drawn by Jeffrey Katherine Jones.

I wouldn't object to Neil cooking up something new for us to leave under the tree, like a Krampus tale, or something with Charles Dickens. Or both in another split-story like Cats and Calliope.

Josh-da-man

They could do the Element Girl one; just swap out her for some other mythical being who can't die but is tired of being alive.

Giantrobo

I,Claudius!

Rip Hunter from Legends of Tomorrow!!

Cusm

I feel the same way, just love Matt Ryan and I always want more Constantine, shame the show was on NBC and not somewhere it would have got more than one season. Saying that I really like Jenna Coleman so this was not a deal breaker. I really like Tom Ellis as Lucifer, but agree with the showrunner he would not have been a good fit for the angle they went with Lucifer on this series. I really enjoyed this one, I was a casual fan of the comics, once I discovered Morphius was visually based on Peter Murphy and Robert Smith I bought a couple of different copies, so I did not have certain expectations of the show. I really like Death in the show, but teenage me would have loved to see the original goth girl death.

Cellar Door

Just finished this and really loved it. I've been reading the comics at a very leisurely pace, so I read the issues covered by this season a couple of years ago, but I still have roughly the last half of the comic series left to read. From what I recall of those first books, this show is quite faithful to them, with a few character tweaks like Johanna Constantine as discussed in this thread.

I was initially afraid that I wouldn't buy Dream as portrayed by an actual person because his depiction in the books is so otherworldly much of the time, but it worked pretty well. The actor plays it fairly restrained (appropriately), so that helps.

Loved seeing the whole Corinthian and Cereal Convention storyline put to screen. The episode with Death was also pretty cool. Gave me 'Dead Like Me' flashbacks (I know that came later).

DJariya

Gaiman is not 100% confident they will get a second season because of cost

Jay G.

I saw Neil Gaiman speak at the 92nd St Y in NYC last night. He was interviewed by Josh Horowitz, who is going to put the interview on his Happy Sad Confused podcast. The 92Y may also post it onto Youtube at some point.

He seemed a bit more optimistic about a second season, although it's not a guarantee. He did joke that "House Of The Dragon" will probably become the new hotness, and people will forget about The Sandman.

He stated that the decision to change John Constantine into Johanne was done on their own to increase the size of the Johanne roll and attract bigger-name actresses to it, and reduce the number of rolls to cast by one, well before they found out there was a moratorium on using John Constantine due to a possible Constantine TV show. Josh asked about the possibility of a Johanne Constantine spin-off show, and Neil said he'd love to do it, but it's unlikely as long as there's a John Constantine show being kicked around.

He also explained that the intention from the beginning was to always release the season as episodes 1-10, as episode 10 is a natural end point for the season, and to drop episode 11 later. However, the original plan was to drop episode 11 a full year later, as they think it'll take 2 years to make season 2, so it was intended to remind people The Sandman existed. Also, they thought the animation would take a lot longer than it did. So when the animation was completed sooner, they decided they didn't want to wait a full year to release it. Also, Neil said he was particularly bad about keeping the secret, tweeting about "casting the cats" earlier this year, and name-dropping Derek Jacobi at Comic-con before adding "...is not in Sandman, but is someone I would like to see in a future season" to recover.

csant

Never having read the comics. I absolutely enjoyed the hell out of this and look forward to more. I do hope it is picked up and cast was fantastic and nothing was boring. I was intrigue by the story and side stories.

chowderhead

i liked the show. beautiful cgi effect and interesting story. I liked the 1st half tone more but episode 6 was great with his sibling and the Hobs storyline. I hope it gets more seasons to flesh out his story and the other endless siblings.

d2cheer

That is where I am. I am through 5 I think and it is not really doing anything for me but will stick it out. The diner episode dragged quite a bit. I dont really get the point of it all. He lost his stuff now found it and things happen. To me it does not really seem to be going anywhere. The acting form me seems a bit flakey as well.

story

Just like the comic book, I keep finding myself returning the favorite issues episodes to experience them again.

I wonder how much of that is happening with this series and how much that happens overall.

Gunde

Very disappointed in this show. Silly and boring at the same time and it takes itself way to serious.
The "battle" in episode 4 really made me laugh, for the wrong reasons. So dumb.
That's it for me.

fujishig

I know I'm really slow watching stuff like this but just got to the "middle" episode adapting some of my favorite material from early in the run and it was predictably fantastic. Even without seeing the "Doll's House" episodes (though I am surprised they kept Lyta Hall) I'm hoping that it gets picked up.

gmanca

This show is amazing, it should have way more hype than it does. Obviously the diner episode was a bottle one but it ended well.

still need to finish the last episode.

Josh-da-man

Is it strange that Netflix still hasn't renewed this? It's been about three months. Seems like they renew/cancel stuff more quickly than that. (Cowboy Bebop and Jupiter's Legacy say hi!)

In the grand scheme of things, I wonder if Netflix cancelling Sandman wouldn't be a good thing so it could find a home at a streamer with deep pockets who are willing to keep a prestige series going without obsessing over viewership metrics, like Amazon Prime of Apple TV+. That way we wouldn't have to go through this every season while Netflix weights the production costs against how quickly people are watching the series and if it's adding enough new subscriptions to the service.

fujishig

The problem is, I don't think Amazon Prime or Apple TV+ have "rescued" shows like this, where the first season would be on a competitor, have they? They would assuredly redo it completely which would mean years and years in development (again).

I mean if HBO Max wasn't going through whatever it is they're doing, they'd be a natural landing place but not under the current regime, no way.