Neil Gaiman explains why now is the perfect time to adapt The Sandman

With a recent audiobook dramatization and an upcoming live-action Netflix adaptation, The Sandman is having a moment. After years of failed attempts to bring Neil Gaiman’s seminal comic to other mediums, it’s finally getting the treatment it deserves, and looking at early reviews of Audible’s take on the series, it’s clear that fans in for the journey.

Audible boasts a stellar cast for its adaptation, including James McAvoy (Dream) as the titular Morpheus. Other stars include Kat Dennings (Death), Andy Serkis (Matthew), Tom Egerton (John Constantine) and Michael Sheen (Lucifer). Add creator Neil Gaiman into the mix as the narrator and you have one hell of a cast.

This isn’t Gaiman’s first foray into the world of audio dramas. The writer has had a lot of his work adapted this way over the years. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Gaiman shared his thoughts on the process, and how adapting novels differs from adapting comics. “The biggest difference is they are made up of words, while comics have pictures,” he said. “Having said that, comics are weirdly close to audio drama. They sort of work in very similar ways. One of the first adaptations of my stuff I ever did was taking the graphic novel Signal to Noise, which I did with Dave McKean, and doing it for BBC in the mid-’90s. We’re proud of what we’ve done.”

And then there are the changes that come with any adaptation. The Sandman audio drama stays pretty close to the source text, but adding voices can change the way you look at certain stories. “I can read Sandman #6, ’24 Hours,’ without flinching. I know every line of it,” Gaiman said. “But listening to it was chilling. I wouldn’t have thought that ’24 Hours’ could affect me again. But this version was so dark and so creepy, it made me wish it would end differently.”

In many ways, the mastermind behind the creation of the audiobook is Dirk Maggs, who has worked with Gaiman before. In 2016 he co-directed the audiobook version of Gaiman’s novel Stardust, and gave the same treatment to Anansi Boys in 2017. So when it came to make Audible’s The Sandman, both he and Gaiman came at it with a lot of experience already under their belts.

"One of the things I was able to do was give Dirk Maggs, who did all of the heavy lifting on this, the original scripts for Sandman. I had to go into long-forgotten parts of my computer and wander down dusty corridors with cyber cobwebs to find files in Word Perfect 4.1 format, and translate them out of Word Perfect and send them over to Dirk. What was great about that was Dirk got to take instructions I had written 30 years ago for artists to tell them what to draw, and take lines from that to me as the narrator."

One great reason to make an audiobook version of The Sandman is so visually impaired people could experience the magic of the comic. “For years and years, people who have vision issues have told me how much they wish they could read Sandman,” Gaiman said. “Audio drama is incredibly inclusive. I do love that we’re bringing the books to people who otherwise would not be able to read them.”

And of course, there’s more to come. After the audiobook comes the Netflix drama, and Gaiman sounds excited about all of it. “It’s always like revisiting an old friend and it’s always wonderful. I forget how well I know Sandman, and how well I know this work,” he said. “Writing Sandman was always an adventure, and always a delight. That’s how I feel with everything I get from Dirk Maggs on the Audible adaptation, and everything I get from Allan Heinberg on the Netflix adaptation. I’m so lucky!”

Adapting Sandman was never a straight forward task, with many proposals either turned down by Gaiman or never moving on to the next stage in development for whatever reason. “There have been lots of attempts over the years to make bad Sandman movies and things,” he recalls. “All I would do is explain to people that I would rather that no Sandman movie was made than a bad one.”

And now, that patience is paying off. “I feel like now I’m in the best of all possible worlds, where I get to have adaptations made that are faithful either literally or spiritually. We get to make magic.”

Audible has officially released its almost 11-hour Sandman audio drama. You can buy it here.

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels