Sandman Pin-up #106 Despair by Barron Storey Skullcap

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.Despair is the twin sister of Desire. She is squat, flabby and pale-skinned, with black hair, gray eyes, and pointed teeth. Her voice is little more than a whisper, and she has no odor, but her shadow smells musky and pungent, like the skin of a snake. She does not wear clothes. On a finger of her left hand she wears a ring with a hook attached to it, with which she habitually carves her flesh. The hook is her sigil in the galleries of the other characters. Her realm is a gray space in which floats a white fog and countless mirrors, which are connected to mirrors in the human world, through which she looks on those who are in despair. The only other inhabitants of her realm are her pet rats.

Despair sometimes acts together with Desire when it is plotting against the elder Endless, most notably when Despair takes on a challenge with Morpheus over the life of Joshua Abraham Norton, seemingly at Desire’s bidding. She is less distanced from the family than Desire, though, and seems to have some feeling at least for Delirium, and also seems to miss Destruction so much that she is able to manipulate Dream into feeling guilty over Destruction’s abandoning of his duty. She does not say much, and consequently appears brusque, but her speech at Morpheus’ wake in The Wake reveals her sympathy and feeling for him.

Late in the series, it is revealed that the Despair we see is not the first Despair, but a second aspect. The original Despair is seen in Endless Nights during Dream’s story. She is depicted much the same way she is now, fat, flabby, and unclothed, but taller and with red tattoos all over her body, and more talkative. It is also revealed in Brief Lives that, like Daniel Hall, she was originally someone else who took up the mantle of the first Despair upon her death. In Worlds’ End, we see that the Old Necropolis was destroyed because the inhabitants laughed at the other Endless for wanting the first Despair’s cerements. The only hint to the manner of the first Despair’s death is given by Daniel in his conversation with Lyta Hall during The Wake: “The person who was responsible for the death of the first Despair will take the rest of eternity to die. Only then will his pain cease… And he had better cause for what he did than you.”Barron Storey (born 1940, Dallas, TX) is an American illustrator, graphic novelist, and educator. He is famous for his accomplishments as an illustrator and fine artist, as well as for his career as a teacher. Storey has taught illustration since the 1970s and currently is on the faculty of California College of the Arts in San Francisco. He has also taught at San Jose State University and Pixar Studios. He trained at Art Center in Los Angeles and under Robert Weaver at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Near mint condition.