Issue Description

Despair calls her brother Dream into a contest, initially he refuses but she provokes him, the contest is to see if he can pull "Joshua Abraham Norton" from her realm before their elder sister comes for him. Reluctantly he does accept the challenge, and to do so he gives Joshua a dream, and Joshua proclaims himself Emperor of these United States. When Death comes to inquire of her brother what he is doing, he tells her he has given Joshua the one thing most men strive for but never achieve, he has made him a King.

Next we see Joshua dressed an Emperor and eating with Samuel Clemens (better known as Mark Twain), who implicitly accepts Joshua's Imperial status. While the two men are dining together, Delirium comes to Dream about a challenge she seems to remember. She tells her brother that she is pleased to see him and he tells her that perhaps he is pleased to see her too. They talk about how Joshua should be in her realm, but eventually she comes to the conclusion that his madness is what keeps him sane and she too departs as her sister Despair had done before.

As expected, another year passes and once again Norton is tested, this time when he goes to a bar (the Cobweb Palace) and a dead man, the King of Pain, comes to him and offers him to be a real Emperor, to have anything and everything he ever wanted, including women, all the women he could ever want. Yet Joshua retains his dignity and refuses the offers, saying he is content ruling his city of St. Francis, that he has all he needs. Back at the carriage outside, Pain tells Desire of his failure and she asks Dream how he did it, how he resisted her, and he tells her that Joshua has his dignity, after all, he is an Emperor. Finally he leaves, telling her of how her lack of subtlety disappointed him, and than the two part ways.

Finally the story ends, with the death of Joshua Abraham Norton, Despair comes to see his corpse lying in the gutter, regretting that he did not return to her, that although he was one of the most pitiful of men and he died in a gutter, that he never despaired. Dream comes to the man as well, giving Despair a statuette of the man as a gift, to remind her of the lesson she learned from all this. Finally, Death comes and she and Joshua walk off into the night, with her telling him that of all the Kings, and Emperors, and Heads of State she has met in her time, he is probably her favorite.

The Sandman (1989)

Publisher

Vertigo

Volume Description

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The award-winning Sandman follows the return of Dream, the personification of hopes and dreams, to his domain after being trapped and held prisoner for 70 years and his quest to regain the powers he once possessed. It also follows his family, known as the Endless.

The concept of The Sandman emerged from Neil Gaiman's idea to revive Jack Kirby's 1970's Sandman series after his Black Orchid mini series at DC Editor Karen Berger suggested he keep the Sandman name but create the rest of the series entirely from scratch. Using ideas he had of a character that lived in dreams, Gaiman created the character of Morpheus, a literal take on the folklore concept of the Sandman and a personification of dreaming itself. With this, Gaiman revived several dormant DC horror and mystery characters and populated his world of The Dreaming with them. The series soon evolved beyond its DC Universe horror origins and became one of the most critically acclaimed fantasy comic series of all time, regularly outselling its superhero counterparts toward its end and introducing comics to whole new audiences outside of the comics mainstream. The collected editions have been reprinted numerous times and remain best sellers for DC/Vertigo.

The series was originally a DC book, but was one of the original titles moved onto the new Vertigo label with issue #47. Gaiman ended the series at 75 issues, but the run also included The Sandman Special (1991).

Spin-Offs

The series proved so popular that numerous spin-off titles were written, both by Gaiman and those that emerged after Gaiman's initial series ended. They include:

The Dead Boy Detectives (Original Graphic Novel)Dead Boy Detectives (Ongoing Series)Death: The Time of Your Life (Mini-Series)Death: The High Cost of Living (Mini-Series)Death: At Death's Door (Original Graphic Novel)Delirium's Party: A Little Endless Storybook (Original Graphic Novel)Destiny: A Chronicle of Deaths Foretold (Mini-Series)The Dreaming (Ongoing Series) The Dreaming Special (One Shot)The Girl Who Would Be Death (Mini-Series)God Save the Queen (Original Graphic Novel)House of Mystery (Ongoing Series) House of Mystery Halloween Annual (Annual)Mythos: The Final Tour (mini-series)Little Endless Storybook (Original Graphic Novel)Lucifer (Ongoing Series)Sandman: Book of Dreams (Prose Anthology)The Sandman: The Dream Hunters (Illustrated Novella)The Sandman: The Dream Hunters (Mini-Series)The Sandman: Endless Nights (Original Graphic Novel)Sandman Midnight Theater (One-Shot )The Sandman: Overture (Prequel Mini-Series)The Sandman Presents: Bast (Mini-Series)The Corinthian: Death in Venice (Mini-Series)The Dead Boy Detectives (Mini-Series)Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Dreams but Were Afraid to Ask (One-Shot)The Furies (Original Graphic Novel)Lucifer (Mini-Series)Love Street (Mini-Series)Merv Pumpkinhead, Agent of DREAM (One-Shot)Petrefax (Mini-Series)The Thessaliad (Mini-Series)Thessaly: Witch for Hire (Mini-Series)WitchCraft (Mini-Series)WitchCraft: La Terreur (Mini-Series)

*ongoing series are in bold

Trade Paperbacks/Hardcovers

The entirety of the Sandman series collected, albeit out of chronological order, in both soft and hardcover formats. The most recent printings have had their interior art recolored. (This recoloring originally premiered in the Absolute Editions years earlier and was approved by Gaiman.)

Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes (#01-08)Vol. 2: The Doll's House (#09-16)Vol. 3: Dream Country (#17-20)Vol. 4: Season of Mists (#21-28)Vol. 5: A Game of You (#32-37)Vol. 6: Fables & Reflections (#29-31, 38-40, 50, Sandman Special #1, and "Fear of Falling" from Vertigo Preview #1)Vol. 7: Brief Lives (#41-49)Vol. 8: World's End (#51-56)Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones (#57-69 and "The Castle" from Vertigo Jam #1)Vol. 10: The Wake (#70-75)Absolute Editions

Oversized hardcover re-releases that re-colored and collected the entire series chronologically for the first time. Comes packaged in a special slipcase.

Absolute Sandman Vol. 1 (#01-20)Absolute Sandman Vol. 2 (#21-39)Absolute Sandman Vol. 3 (#40-56, Sandman Special #1 and "Fear of Falling" from Vertigo Preview #1)Absolute Sandman Vol. 4 (#57-75 and "The Castle" from Vertigo Jam #1)Absolute Sandman Vol. 5 (The Sandman: Endless Nights, The Sandman: Dream Hunters (Illustrated Novella), The Sandman: Dream Hunters (Comic Adaptation), Sandman Midnight Theatre)Annotated Editions

The original series collected and accompanied by page-by-page annotations by Leslie S. Klinger.

The Annotated Sandman Vol. 1 (#01-20)The Annotated Sandman Vol. 2 (#21-39)The Annotated Sandman Vol. 3 (#40-56, Sandman Special #1 and "How They Met Themselves" from Vertigo: Winter's Edge #3)Omnibuses

Massive oversized collections of the original series.

Vol. 1 (#1-37 and The Sandman Special #1Vol. 2 (#38-75 and stories from Vertigo Jam #1 and Vertigo: Winter’s Edge #3

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