Nearly at the end of episode two. Wonderful stuff.
But I had almost forgotten about the Corinthian from the original GNs.
Or rather, I had forgotten his nightmare feature - was he the origin of the teeth-eyes memes we see all the time now?
Enough has been changed that, while you may know the general outline of what has to happen if you’ve read the comic, how it gets there can still surprise you.
Characters have been dropped, or merged, or changed, but if you step back and think about it, there are reasons, and I can’t think of an instance where the change is worse.
The Corinthian is obviously the inspiration, though it wasn’t consciously so to begin with. I’m a big fan of Gaiman—just somehow had not read The Sandman until people pointed out where I got the eye-mouth thing from.
Again, a good example of conservatives missing the point. Much like accusing Star Trek of going “woke” when it always has been, Sandman was progressive back then and it’s about time it got an update. I’m glad he included the context for when it was written in the UK as many coming new to this from a younger generation may have no idea.
These comics were published around the same time (1988) that Section 28 came into effect in Britain - a truly dystopian law that forbade “the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship” or any kind of ‘promotion’ of homosexuality by any local authorities - it was deliberately vague in order to empower bigots and scare advocates.
This is the context in which Sandman was published. And it was still - beautifully, wonderfully and deliberately - queer as fuck.
I’m really looking forward to the next one as well. “24/7” isn’t as grim just for the sake of it as it is in the comic.
What I am really liking about it, and that I had forgotten, is that Sandman isn’t really about Morpheus, it is instead a study on what it is to be human.