Sandman Pin-up #104 Morpheus Endless Nights Miguelanxo Prado Heart of the Star

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.Morpheus usually appears as a tall, thin man with bone-white skin, black hair, and two distant stars looking out from the shadows where his eyes should be. Most often they are silver, blue, or white, but when he becomes angered, they have been known to turn red. Morpheus’ appearance ranges widely “depending on who’s watching.” People generally perceive him as wearing a style of dress appropriate to their region and era. In the Dreaming, he is often seen wearing a grey t-shirt and dark pants. He appears to be light skinned when interacting with white characters, but the people of Tales in the Sand’s primordial African city see him as a star-eyed black man. Although he is most often seen in human form, Morpheus appears as a huge black cat when speaking to the lonely cat-pilgrim of Dream of a Thousand Cats and as a cat-headed god when addressing the Egyptian feline goddess Bast. The Martian Manhunter sees Morpheus as a Martian god in the shape of a flaming alien skull and identifies him as Lord L’Zoril, but Mister Miracle, looking at him simultaneously, sees Morpheus as a man. However in Season of Mists, he appears in the same form to all the Gods (Bast comments, “I much prefer you in cat form, Dream old friend”). In The Dream Hunters, which is set in ancient Japan, Morpheus appears as a Japanese man to a Buddhist monk and as a fox to a fox spirit. It is unclear whether Morpheus’ appearance is determined by the expectations of onlookers or if he chooses to manifest himself in different forms. He does deliberately change the style of his clothing to be less conspicuous when he visits the waking world. He customarily wears a billowing black cape, sometimes with a flame motif. In battle he wears a helm made from the skull and backbone of a defeated enemy god. This helm, which resembles a World War II-era gas mask, is also his sigil in the galleries of the other Endless, as well as appearing in the dreams (and at least once on the staircase wall) of Wesley Dodds. His face and physique is based on the amalgamation of Neil Gaiman in his twenties, The Cure’s frontman Robert Smith and ballet dancer Farukh Ruzimatov. Dream’s face and appearance is also based on Bauhaus frontman Peter Murphy. In fact, Gaiman explained that Murphy was the original model for Morpheus. Gaiman also stated that Sandman artist, Dave McKean, based Dream’s face in the cover of Sandman #1 on Peter Murphy.Miguelanxo Prado is a Galician comic book creator. He was born in A Coruña, Spain in 1958.

Near mint condition.