Neil Gaiman on why The Sandman isn’t part of the DC Universe anymore
By Ashley Hurst
Netflix’s long-awaited adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s seminal comic book The Sandman is finally here, and it’s making waves. The show has already reached the elusive #1 spot on the streamer in 89 countries, and is continuing to climb. It’s a perfect adaptation of Gaiman’s seminal comic series, but it does do away with one plot element from the page: the TV show almost entirely separates itself from the larger DC universe.
If you’re new to The Sandman, you may not realize that the original story is set in the same world as DC’s iconic heroes. While Gaiman slowly moved his comic series away from the mainstream DC continuity as it went on, there are still plenty of connections. For instance, John Dee is locked away in Arkham Asylum in the books. While he’s there, we also see Martian Manhunter. Hell, even the Justice League of America makes a cameo appearance at one point. In one of the final issues, we even get a cameo from Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent. John Constantine plays a fairly big role.
On the show, there’s no trace of any of that stuff. Perhaps Netflix wanted to leave out superheroes to appeal to a wider audience. Or possibly they simply didn’t have the rights to use certain characters.
The Justice League isn’t going to show up in The Sandman
“‘The Sandman’ itself started out in the DC Universe, the comic, and then it just sort of wound up wandering off into its own place,” Gaiman told Variety. “Its world joined up more and more with our world and became less and less a world in which costumed crime fighters fly around and so on, which meant that by the time ‘The Sandman’ finished, it had its own aesthetic which really wasn’t the DC Universe anymore.”
"We didn’t want a TV show where you felt that you had to have read a whole bunch of comics published in 1988 and 1989 to understand what was going on."
The wider DC connections in the comics were definitely of their time. The Justice League of America that shows up in the comics disbanded in 1996. If they were to show up in the Netflix series, it would confuse everyone. So for clarity: “No, we’re not bringing in the Justice League of 1988.”
The Sandman is currently streaming on Netflix!
Next. The Sandman: All episodes reviewed and explained. dark
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