When you take on a new project in an existing company, many people like to make a clean break and start something brand new. While others like to reuse and readapt previous projects and infrastructure to build out their new vision. Both methods can be done successfully and both have their advantages and places where it makes sense to use them. For this, we’re going to look at a reuse scenario around the Netflix Show The Sandman as well it’s the comic book it’s adapted from and see how Neil Gaiman was able to take characters and ideas from DC Comics long history and place them in a brand new context.
I’ll put this right at the top. This will contain spoilers for season one of the Netflix show The Sandman, as well as its namesake comic book and several other comic books, all of which are 30+ years old. If you haven’t watched the show yet and don’t want to be spoiled, then put this down and come back after you watched the show.
To make sure I’m not confusing people, the lead character of The Sandman will be referred to as Morpheus as to distinguish him from other characters we’ll discuss who are named Sandman.
Neil Gaiman came along at a fortunate time. In the early 1980s, Alan Moore had come over from England to become one of the best known, and best loved comic book writers. This led to a “British invasion” of comic book writers and Neil Gaiman, who was friends with Alan Moore, was recruited by DC Comics to adapt an unused character from the library of DC Comics characters. After some discussion, Gaiman and DC agreed on The Sandman. Now Gaiman was a huge fan of mythology (as well as folk tales) and approached DC Comics as one huge mythology. He dug into this mythology and used it to fill out the backstory for his characters. So let’s start by bringing in all the DC historical characters and stories and then we’ll discuss how Gaiman used them.
We’re going to back to the beginning of the DC mythology with writer Gardner Fox. Fox was a one of the best known Golden Age (1938-1956) comic writers. He invented literally dozens of characters and was the first comic writer to use the multiverse in the classic Silver Age (1956-1970) comic story “Flash of Two Worlds”. One of the characters that Fox created was The Sandman. Wesley Dodds was an adventure hero who would use a sleeping gas gun to sedate criminals, while wearing a WWI style gas mask as a disguise which also prevented the gas from affecting him. The Sandman had more in common with the pulp heroes Doc Savage and The Shadow, than with Superman and Batman.
Gardener Fox also created the supervillain Doctor Destiny (John Dee in the Netflix show), an evil scientist who created the Materioptikon, a device which can create reality from dreams. He was subdued by the Justice League heroes and forced into a state where he could not dream and placed into Arkham Asylum.
Then let’s go to the 1950s where DC was trying to compete with EC Horror comics, only with stories allowed under the Comics Code Authority (CCA) in a pair of horror comics The House of Mystery and The House of Secrets. The comics were stopped in the early 1960s and then brought back in the last 1960s. The 1960s version of The House of Mystery was now hosted by Cain and The House of Secrets with Abel. They would introduce the story and then sometimes have the postscript. They were joined by their biblical mother Eve in the horror/humor book Plop. Eve also appeared in Secrets of Sinister House with her raven, Edgar Allen, who she said was a deceased human. A 1970s book Weird Mystery Tales was originally hosted by Doctor Destiny and then later Eve took over the hosting duties. The House of Secrets issue number 92 introduced the character of Swamp Thing, created by writer Len Wein and artist Bernie Wrightson.
In the early 1970s, THE big news in comics was that comic legend Jack “The King” Kirby was coming to DC Comics. Kirby co-created Captain America and, along with Stan Lee, helped create the entire Marvel Universe. Among the many, many characters Kirby helped create during his five years in DC Comics, Kirby reunited with his Captain America creator Joe Simon to create The Sandman, who, along with his two assistants Brute and Glob, was supposed to be the Sandman from folk tales who would use his sand to put people to sleep.
Now we move up to 1982 when horror writer/producer/director Wes Craven decided to make a Swamp Thing movie. To tie into the movie, DC Comics decided to have Swamp Thing creator Len Wein edit a new Swamp Thing book, Saga of the Swamp Thing. He brought on acclaimed writer Martin Pasko to write it. While writing the book, Pasko’s Hollywood career started taking off, both in live action TV as well as animation, so he left the series after issue 19. Len Wein decided to bring in a British writer, Alan Moore, who was starting to get a reputation for his amazing writing in comics such as 2000AD, Skizz, Ballad of Halo Jones and the two series he had just created for Warrior Magazine, V for Vendetta and Marvel(Miracle)man. Moore took one issue to finish off Pasko’s storyline and then started taking the comic in a complete new direction. Moore’s run on Saga of the Swamp Thing turned him into comics most well known, and well respected, writer. The only characters that Moore brought with him from Pasko’s run were the married couple Abby and Matthew Cable and a couple villains (Anton Arcane and Sunderland). In the second major storyline, Matthew Cable dies (and is possessed by Arcane in a soap opera/comic book type story) before finally and completely dying. As part of Matthew Cable dying, Abby Cable ends up in Hell and Swamp Thing needs to visit Hell and battle some demons to retrieve her.
Moore included a retelling of the original Swamp Thing story in The Saga of the Swamp Thing issue number 33, in which Abby Cable has a dream where she meets Cain and Abel in their Houses of Mystery and Secrets. She gets told the original Swamp Thing story with a postscript where, predictably, Cain kills Abel. The reason for the origin being retold is that Swamp Thing needs to learn more about himself. Swamp Thing needed a guide to help on his journey of self discovery and the artists told Moore that they wanted to draw Sting. So, John Constantine was created as a mysterious magical man who seems to know more about Swamp Thing than Swamp Thing himself does. Among the stories in this journey is The Bogeyman, a serial killer in Louisiana who can remember the eyes of every victim based off their number in his killing.
Meanwhile, over in another corner of DC Comics, Simon and Kirby’s Sandman was brought back and said to be Garrett Sanford, a psychology professor who found himself trapped in a dream dimension. This new series of stories also introduced Hippolyta (Lyta) Trevor, the daughter of Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor. She was a hero known as Fury. Later it was told that Sanford committed suicide and was replaced as Sandman by Hector Hall. Hall was the child of the Golden Age Hawkman and Hawkgirl and a superhero who had gone by The Silver Scarab. He had married Lyta Hall before being cast into the dreaming and made the new Sandman by Brute and Glob.
And now we have all our DC mythology pieces in place and Neil Gaiman was ready to start Sandman in January of 1989. He started pulling all the pieces we’ve discussed above and put them together in a brand new way. When I am talking about what Gaiman put into Sandman, I’m mainly going to be referring to the comic (which was fairly faithfully adapted by Netflix) while pointing out places where the TV show did it slightly differently. There are a number of reasons why the show changed things. Some were intellectual property rights (they didn’t have the rights for John Constantine, some were due to not wanting to use superheroes and some were because Gaiman wanted to do things differently.
Let’s start with the beginning, Morpheus is a brand new character, loosely based on the Greek and European character that controls dreams, who is captured by the wizard, Roderick Burgess (a Aleister Crowley pastiche), who steals his helm, gem and bag of sand. The helm, if you squint and look sideways, is inspired by Wesley Dodd’s gas mask. In the comic it is said that Wesley Dodd is motivated goes out to fight crime due to the universe trying to replace Morpheus.
The gem, helm and bag of sand were stolen from Roderick Burgess by his mistress, and John Dee’s mother, Ethel. In the show we see at this time that Morpheus has a raven, similar to Eve’s, which is his familiar. After he is freed, we see Cain and Abel in the Dreaming. We are also introduced to Morpheus’ new raven Matthew (the previously deceased Matthew Cable). As part of Morpheus goal of getting his helm gem and sand back, we are introduced to Lucifer (bringing in more biblical characters) and a fight with a demon in Hell (similar to Swamp Thing’s battle), John Constantine (replaced in the TV show with Johanna Constantine) and John Dee (Doctor Destiny).
In the next storyline, we meet Rose Walker who is, among other things, looking for her brother Jeb. Jeb has been disconnected from the dreaming by Brute and Glob (Gault in the TV show) and that disconnected dreaming is where Brute and Glob are working with Hector Hall, as Sandman, and his pregnant wife Lyta. In the TV show, Lyta is a friend of Rose who travels with her on her journey, who meets up with her deceased husband Hector in her dreams. The climax of the storyline happens in a serial killer convention, where a zine writer has stolen the invitation of The Bogeyman.
So we can see that Gaiman has brought in biblical characters, some via DC Horror and Alan Moore, John (Johanna) Constantine, several previous versions of Sandman and several other heroes and villains from DC comics history. Yet he has weaved them together in a way that you don’t need to know the source material of any of them to understand the story. You can enjoy this version of Cain and Abel without knowing of their previous DC horror roots. Constantine is given enough of an introduction to understand his (her) role. Doctor Destiny is tied into the Morpheus mythos is a way that you don’t need to know his super villain past. Matthew can can help Morpheus with having to read his previous appearances as a human. But if you do know, they add some extra depth and delight.
Gaiman has taken a dozen characters and devices throughout DC Comics history and transformed them into his own story in such a way that it doesn’t interfere with any of their previous escapades. You can enjoy Doctor Destiny fighting the Justice League with Materioptikon without knowing how it is powered. You can read the Matthew Cable saga without knowing he later became a raven. And Lyta Hall’s previous super hero career doesn’t impact her dreaming role with her husband.
Gaiman has always had an interest in mythology and he mines the DC Universe mythology to build up his story. We’ll see in future seasons of The Sandman, assuming it’s renewed, that he will start bringing in more and more mythologies and tying them into Morpheus (such as Morpheus’ relationship with Calliope).
When you are looking to build out an idea, start by looking at what you (and your company) already have. How can you reuse and recycle existing ideas to help build out your idea and make it stronger. There’s no need to invent if you can repurpose and reuse.