Comic Book Herald

A Comic Book Reading Order Guide For Beginners & Fans

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Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman: The Stories Within Us

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They say if you want to bore someone, tell them about your dreams.

But for Neil Gaiman, the world of dreams was everything to his hugely popular comic The Sandman, gaining a legion of fans since it began in 1989.

The Sandman follows Morpheus, the lord of dreams and one of the 7 members of The Endless – an eternal family who each embody an aspect of life and have existed since the universe began. They are, alliteratively, Dream, Death, Destiny, Despair, Desire, Delirium, and Destruction. The story begins with Morpheus escaping from a 70-year imprisonment and quickly trying to rebuild his kingdom of The Dreaming, that amorphous realm of the subconscious from which all our dreams come from, which has fallen into disrepair in his absence. [Read more…] about Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman: The Stories Within Us

Sandman Universe Reading Order!

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Neil Gaiman’s work writing Sandman (co-created by Mike Dringenberg and Sam Keith) is a towering achievement in comics, defining the 90’s Vertigo aesthetic and welcoming in a new generation of readers. The first issue was published in early 1989, and the series ran for 75 issues (plus a handful of specials and short stories) until 1996.

While the initial recommendations are easy – Sandman is my *second* favorite comic book series of all time, and the first 10 volumes of collected editions are absolutely the best starting place – once you get past the core series, there’s a whole Sandman Universe that is significantly more challenging to follow. [Read more…] about Sandman Universe Reading Order!