According to the chronicles, CC of the early 90s, it was enough to kick a chair for a British screenwriter to seem like he wanted to be the new Alan Moore. Under the protection of the formidable publisher Karen Berger, this fifth (nicknamed ‘vertigo generation’, by the sub-label which will host it from 1993) was full of memorable personalities eager to break taboos, but only one of its members had been singled out by the author of watchmen as his beloved disciple.
And that the above, Neil Gaiman by name, he didn’t look like a badass, like Garth Ennis (The boys) or polydrug with fried brains (Grant Morrison, are you there?), but more like a sensitive young man who listened The treatment in the privacy of his cell. To top it off, he hadn’t even done his military service in the magazine. 2000 AD, as the canons commanded, but he worked as a music journalist until Moore himself gave him the alternative.
Despite all this, no one would have dared to deny that it had been Sand seller, the collection that put Gaiman on the map in 1989, this tectonic shift (for creators and fans alike) never would have happened.
explain what he did Sand seller so special is something that is still difficult today. But it would be better if those responsible for the Netflix adaptation (among them, David Goyer -The black Knight- and a Gaiman who, in addition to supervising the whole, signs the scenario of an episode) understood it well, because, if the show disappoints, it will be a sad epilogue to three decades of projects to be born.
Adapting the comic strip, in the form of film or series, has been a chimera for authors as disparate as terry gilliam (the option preferred by the author in his time), Roger Avary, James Mangold or a Joseph Gordon-Levitt who aspired not only to make it into a movie, but also to dress in mourning like its main character, Dream of the Eternals (Morpheus for friends, if I had any). But, in 2016, the latter was also wasted.
At the time, millions of fans would have (us) said that Sand seller It was different. Not only for being on the fringes of the DC Universe, cameos aside, but also for its erudition bordering on wacky, its references to “alternative” rock (especially postpunk, division of joy a Siouxsie and the Banshees)the abundance of female and LGBT characters, the plots that mixed drama with terror and, above all, its determination to keep us following a very questionable protagonist.
a handful of powder
As seen in the trailers, the series will share its triggering incident with the comic: following a shit from the treacherous wizard Roderick Burgess (Charles Danse), Dream (Tom Sturridge, nailed to the paper character) will be withdrawn from circulation between 1916 and today. Something that will leave the world in a very bad state, because if the being who monitors our unconscious lives is not there to do his job, disasters are to be expected.
Once released from his captivity, the protagonist will fight to restore his dream kingdom and take revenge on his enemies, while we appreciate that he is a cruel and egocentric subject whose model could well be that one. “king of a rainy land” of Baudelaire’s poem.
But, if Sueño is a pearl, the characters that surround him are equal: among his subjects, loyal or in rebellion, there are creatures like the Corinth (Boyd Hollbrook), a nightmare on the run whose favorite dish is the eyes of handsome boys. Likewise, in the protagonist’s diary, there are names like that of the very Lucifer (Gwendoline Christie). And, among his family… well, those deserve a separate mention.
Sister Death (with a capital letter)
already said Matthew (the patient crow, with the VO voice of Patton Oswalt, who acts as Dream’s henchman): At Eternals family gatherings, awkward silences are the silver lining. Clans formed by embodiments of abstract concepts, that’s what they have, and just look Despair (Donna Preston) and his penchant for self-harm, or its twin Desire (Mason Alexander Park)a pathological liar with the heart of centipede, to prove it.
Fortunately Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) is here to bring some good humor to the set, something that has already made it a reader favorite: thousands of T-shirts (black, of course) with the caption “What would you think of life if Death were your older sister?” » They saw it in the 90s.
And here in his casting options is where the Sandman reminds us that some fans’ stubbornness is beyond repair. Because the fact that Howell-Baptiste is Afro-British, or the non-binary Park gender, provoked a flood of insults on social networks, it doesn’t matter that Desire is fluid in the comics or that it’s superfluous to speculate on the ethnicity of someone destined, in their words, to lower the shutters and clean the tables when the universe kicks in in the bucket.
More article with the metamorphosis of Lucian (the librarian who keeps all the novels ever written, including yours) in Lucienne (Vivienne Acheampong), among other decisions.
I don’t give a damn about the job. I spent 30 years successfully battling bad Sandman movies.
I don’t care about people who don’t understand/read Sandman complaining about non-binary desire or that death isn’t white enough. Watch the show, make up your mind. https://t.co/KcNzap8Kt4
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) May 29, 2021
Looking at it on the bright side, so many tantrums resulted in several huge outbursts on the writer’s Twitter. Without going any further, to a cenutrio who accused him of “I do not care” his job, Gaiman told him: “I don’t give a damn about the job: I spent 30 years preventing bad films from being made. The ones I don’t care about are the ones who haven’t read Sand seller and they complain about a non-binary wish or that death isn’t white enough.
And, when another topic threw Christie’s choice as Lucifer in her face, he replied, “I have no problem with a sexless, penisless character falling into a fabulous actress who, thankfully, doesn’t doesn’t have a penis either.” Tracatra.
If this proves anything, it’s that during his long years in the limelight (first as a comic book writer and now as an award-winning novelist), Gaiman has shown that behind his image as kind and cultured gentleman beats an ego like a piano. Something which, on television, has played against him many times.
hunt Bryan Fuller of American Gods, Gaiman sent the show into a tailspin, while good omens suffered from excessive verbiage despite the interpretations david holding there Michael Sheen. It will be necessary to see if the influence of the author is a ballast for Sand seller, or whether its ten volumes manage to succeed in the audiovisual industry after making thumbnail history. Even the sweetest dreams often turn into nightmares, and Morpheus knows that better than anyone.
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