Sandman Pin-up #103 Delirium Going Inside by Bill Sienkiewicz Hello, Doggie!

Description

These pin-ups are art from one of the Sandman Calendars. The Sandman is a British-American comic book series written by Neil Gaiman and published by DC Comics. Artists include Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Jill Thompson, Shawn McManus, Marc Hempel and Michael Zulli, lettering by Todd Klein, and covers by Dave McKean. Beginning with issue #47, it was placed under the imprint Vertigo. It tells the story of Dream (of the Endless), who rules over the world of dreams. It ran for 75 issues from January 1989 until March 1996, with Gaiman’s contract stipulating that the series would end when he left it.

The main character of The Sandman is Dream, also known as Morpheus and other names, who is one of the seven Endless. The other Endless are Destiny, Death, Desire, Despair, Delirium who was once Delight, and Destruction who turned his back on his duties. Each of the brothers and sisters inhabit and are the anthropomorphic personifications of their concepts. The Sandman is a story about stories and how Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, is captured and subsequently learns that sometimes change is inevitable.

The Sandman was one of Vertigo’s flagship titles, and is available as a series of ten trade paperbacks. Critically acclaimed, The Sandman was one of the first few graphic novels ever to be on the New York Times Best Seller list, along with Maus, Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns. It was one of five graphic novels to make Entertainment Weekly’s “100 best reads from 1983 to 2008”, ranking at 46. Norman Mailer described the series as “a comic strip for intellectuals.”

In a Q&A panel at Comic-Con 2007, Gaiman remarked, “I’d rather see no Sandman movie made than a bad Sandman movie. But I feel like the time for a Sandman movie is coming soon. We need someone who has the same obsession with the source material as Peter Jackson had with Lord of the Rings or Sam Raimi had with Spider-Man.”. That same year, he also stated that he could imagine Terry Gilliam as a director for the adaptation : “I would always give anything to Terry Gilliam, forever, so if Terry Gilliam ever wants to do Sandman then as far as I’m concerned Terry Gilliam should do Sandman…” In 2013, DC Chief Diane Nelson says that a Sandman film will be as rich as the Harry Potter universe. It has been announced that David S. Goyer will be producing an adaptation of the graphic novel, alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Neil Gaiman. Jack Thorne has been hired to write the script. It was announced that the film will be out in Christmas 2016.

The Sandman’s main character is Dream, the Lord of Dreams (also known, to various characters throughout the series, as Morpheus, Oneiros, the Shaper, the Shaper of Form, Lord of the Dreaming, the Dream King, Dream-Sneak, Dream Cat, Murphy, Kai’ckul, and Lord L’Zoril), who is essentially the anthropomorphic personification of dreams.Delirium, known to the Greek culture as Maniae, is the youngest of the Endless, yet still older than the rest of existence. She is usually quite short, and thin, and looks no older than a fourteen-year-old human girl. One of her eyes is silver-flecked blue, and the other is green. Her hair changes style and color constantly, as do her clothes. Her shadow never reflects her shape, and is tangible, like velvet. She is said to smell of sweat, late nights, sour wine, and old leather. Her sigil in the galleries of the other Endless is a multicolored, abstract swirl. Her realm is a chaotic, constantly changing mass of colors and strange objects and shapes, and contains a sundial with the inscription “Tempus Frangit” (“time breaks,” a Latin pun on the phrase “Tempus Fugit”, “time flees”.) Delirium travels with a “guardian” of sorts, a dog named Barnabas, on indefinite loan from her brother Destruction. At one point Delirium briefly appears as hundreds of colorful fish similar to Morpheus appearing as a cat or fox.

First incarnated as Delight, she transformed into Delirium for reasons even Destiny does not know. She can be seen as a very young Delight in Endless Nights, a collection of stories about the Endless; a statue of her as Delight can be seen in Destiny’s garden in Brief Lives, and her official portrait in Destiny’s gallery depicts her as Delight, not Delirium, in Season of Mists. She is scatterbrained and easily distracted; she often forgets the thread of her conversations, and comes out with offbeat and seemingly inconsequential observations. Todd Klein, the series’ letterer, draws her speech as letters which do not quite match in height or line up neatly, against a multi-colored background, sometimes the background color will match the mood she is in (red for anger, blue and green for calm, etc.). Very occasionally she is able, with an effort, to become more controlled in thought and speech, at which point her speech is drawn more neatly and the background fades to near-white. This effort, as she says later, causes her pain. Her speech as Delight in Endless Nights takes the same form, with somewhat orderly lettering and a faint rainbow background. Delirium’s personality is often very ecstatic, responding jubilantly to almost any action such as reacting with joy at being held in the mouth of Wyvern the Dragon. Delirium is quick to anger when treated rudely, such as driving a police officer insane for chastising her reckless driving, to threatening to curse Mazikeen into being a half-faced demon madly in love with her boss and making it so, that it has always been like this.

The other Endless (particularly Death and Destruction) seem to be fond of Delirium, to varying degrees, and protective of her. She in turn is affectionate towards them, particularly Destruction. It is implied in Brief Lives that her relationship with Dream was originally much worse, as she was often frightened of him. Dream in turn regarded his sister as a nuisance, however, the events of Brief Lives change their relationship, as he admits that he likes Delirium and is upset when she is unhappy. Delirium in turn grows affectionate of Dream and desperately tries to save Dream in The Kindly Ones by trying to persuade him to join her on her quest to find Barnabas.

The most commonly recognized source of inspiration for Delirium is that of Neil’s personal friend and well-known musician Tori Amos (“…Neil believes I’m more Delirium than Tori, and Death taught me to accept that…”). However, in The Sandman Companion, Gaiman stated specifically that he did not meet Tori Amos until several years after the Delirium character had been created. In that book Gaiman listed the immediate inspirations as postmodern feminist writer Kathy Acker, artist Jill Thompson, and parts of himself. He later admitted that “Delirium was created before I met Tori, but they steal shamelessly from each other.”Boleslav Felix Robert “Bill” Sienkiewicz (pronounced sin-KEV-itch) (born May 3, 1958) is an Eisner Award-winning American artist and writer best known for his comic book work, primarily for Marvel Comics’ The New Mutants and Elektra: Assassin. Sienkiewicz often utilizes oil painting, collage, mimeograph and other forms generally uncommon in comic books.

Near mint condition.