The Sandman: The Dream Hunters (2009)

The Sandman: The Dream Hunters (2009)

Author: Neil Gaiman | Illustrator: P. Craig Russell | Page Count: 144

"In the flickering light ... the monk experienced a strange illusion – it occurred to him that a scrap of his shadow was missing, gone as if it had been torn away."

For the 20th anniversary of Sandman, Gaiman permitted an adaptation of his 1999 novella of the same name into a comic format. I didn't buy it at the time because it seemed unnecessary; the original was perfect, so why bother making it into something it wasn't meant to be? It smelt like an easy cash grab.

I relented (after three years!) and bought it because it was on sale. It turns out it's equally as good — and in places even better — than the novella and actually feels like it could be a part of the original comic book series.

It could easily be included in one of the stand-alone collections and it wouldn't feel out of place.

The obvious difference is the art. Yoshitaka Amano, who illustrated the original novella, has a unique painting style. Rather than try and compete with that, Russell presents his work in a palette of autumnal colours that he styled on ancient woodblock paintings. His lines are perfect, and his colouring non-intrusive.

He restructured small parts of the dialogue to fit the serialised format, and imbued the remainder with something it didn't have before; in short, he successfully made it into a comic that's full of grace and passion. His version of Morpheus is so damn good.

Russell has a history of doing adaptations, but this particular one is by far the most successful of the ones that I've read, to date. Even if you own the novella, I feel it's still a worthy purchase.