2022 promises to be a great year for fans of DC’s epic fantasy saga The Sandman. Not only is the live-action series finally debuting on Netflix, DC Comics is reviving the Sandman Universe imprint for a new ongoing series called Nightmare Country. Rather than focus on Dream or one of his Endless siblings, this new series puts the spotlight on arguably the most terrifying figure from the original series – the eyeball-devouring serial killer known as The Corinthian.
With The Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country #1 in stores now, IGN spoke with writer James Tynion IV to learn more about how the book builds on the franchise’s legacy and the challenge of transforming such a horrifying character into a protagonist.
The Origins of Nightmare Country
DC’s announcement of Nightmare Country was a welcome but unexpected surprise. For one thing, the Sandman Universe line had essentially gone dormant in 2021, with no new books being announced following the conclusion of the crossover series Locke & Key/Sandman: Hell & Gone. For another, Tynion had recently made a heavily publicized move to digital comics publisher Substack, ending his runs on Batman and Joker.
Fortunately, this series proves that DC still has plans for the Sandman Universe line, and that Tynion isn’t entirely gone from the company [note – DC also continues to publish Tynion’s horror series The Nice House on the Lake]. As he explains, the prospect of getting to play in the Sandman toybox was simply too much to resist.
“It was honestly kind of funny because I made my decision,” Tynion tells IGN. “I let DC know that I was stepping away from Batman, stepping away from Joker, that I wasn’t going to be really to do any superhero books anytime in the near future. And a lot of that really came from a place of my creative drive. I’ve been finding myself drawn more and more to my horror work and telling the sort of stories that I’ve been able to tell in books, like Nice House on the Lake, and Department of Truth, and Something is Killing the Children.”
Tynion continues, “My Nice House editor, Chris Conroy, who also has been my editor for years at DC going all the way back to Batman Eternal and my Detective Comics run.. he reached out and was just like, ‘Hey, we’re thinking of gearing the Sandman universe back up, and I wanted to know, is that something you have any interest in?’ And my honest to God answer to that, and we were texting with each other, was just, ‘F*** you.’ Because I knew I couldn’t say no.”
“The reason I write comic books is The Sandman,” Tynion says. “That is the book that made me fall in love with everything that the comic medium can do. And it’s the toybox that I never got to play with in 10 years of working at DC. So it was too good an offer. I couldn’t say no, even though my sleep schedule may wish that I did.”
Based on Tynion’s comments, it sounds as though DC may be planning a wider relaunch of the Sandman Universe line, which has seen multiple incarnations since debuting in 2018. Tynion isn’t able to confirm whether other books may be on the way in the build-up to the Netflix series, but he did urge fans to vote with their wallets if they want to see more Sandman comics.
“The reason I write comic books is The Sandman. That is the book that made me fall in love with everything that the comic medium can do.
Revamping The Corinthian
The Corinthian plays a major role in several Sandman story arcs, particularly “The Doll’s House.” There readers learn he’s a nightmare created by Morpheus himself to serve as a twisted reflection of humanity’s darkest fears. A cold-blooded killer with extra mouths where his eyes should be, The Corinthian spends decades torturing and killing while his creator is trapped in Roderick Burgess’ estate. While the original Corinthian is eventually recaptured and destroyed, Morpheus creates a second Corinthian later in the series.
While it’s hardly surprising DC would want to spotlight The Corinthian with Boyd Holbrook portraying the character in the Netflix series, Tynion reveals he specifically gravitated to The Corinthian. It’s part of a larger plan to return The Sandman to its early roots as a more horror-centric fantasy series.
“I wanted to do a story that let me use the universe around Sandman and around The Dreaming and all the characters inside, to try to say something about what it means to be living in this country in 2022, through the lens of real human characters that feel vibrant and alive and contemporary, who stumble into these corners of dark fantasy and kind of encapsulate my love of the Sandman and a lot of that that era of Neil Gaiman’s work, which is very much like the urban fantasy horror, which is very near and dear to my heart.”
It’s certainly not easy building a story around a character with such a massive body count, but in that way Nightmare Country is no different from Mike Carey’s Lucifer spinoff series from the ’90s. Tynion confirmed that series and its portrayal of fallen angel Lucifer Morningstar is a major source of inspiration.
“That’s one of, I think, the best examples of a spinoff series ever done in comics,” Tynion says. “It plays with the core pieces of the mythology, but builds its own mythology, you know? And Nightmare Country also stays true to that kind of core principle, even though the Corinthian is a very central character here. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s the central figure whose head we’re inside of issue to issue. It was the same thing in the Sandman. Morpheus is a character you pick up on the emotional journey he’s going through, a lot of times, through the characters that surround him, more so than him actually expressing the way he feels.”
Tynion continues, “So that was the kind of guiding notion here is that I wanted to put the humans upfront and center and allow them to like encounter the Corinthian. He is a scary figure to encounter and a very, very dangerous character. And he’s not one that I’m interested in humanizing too much, because he is not human, and he is not someone you want to hold a lot of sympathy for. He has killed a tremendous number of people, especially the last time he was free of The Dreaming.”
In lieu of creating a kinder, gentler Corinthian, Tynion introduces a new human protagonist in issue #1 named Flynn. A skilled artist haunted by images of a grotesque figure with three mouths, Flynn will find herself swept up in The Corinthian’s world much in the same way Lucifer was joined by Elaine Belloc in his spinoff series.
“We’re going to learn over the course of the first few issues here that there are people who are seeing this figure in their waking life called the Smiling Man, who also has mouths for eyes,” Tynion teases. “And that’s going to lead the Corinthian down a mystery that’s going to take him all over the country. And this is because the most important thing to know about the Smiling Man is he is not a nightmare. And the idea of this nightmare figure that does not come from nightmare, that does not come from The Dreaming is going to be one of the central questions of this whole run in this series.”
Tynion also confirms Nightmare Country is meant to be an ongoing series rather than a single story focused on The Corinthian. While the ultimate scope of the book is up in the air right now, Tynion has years’ worth of ideas to explore as he expands on the Sandman mythos.
“I know the ending of the story. It is meant to be an ongoing series. I’m not sure that I’m chasing a 75-issue run with this one, but… I have a few years of story that I’m looking to tell and a bunch of different avenues I want to drive down in that time. And as the series moves forward, we’ll get to see more and more corners of the Sandman Universe as these characters interact with it, from different angles.”
The Art of Nightmare Country
This new series certainly makes a strong visual impression in issue #1. Lisandro Estherren (Redneck) is the series’ regular, bringing a surreal, stylized aesthetic that, in some ways, hearkens back to the early Sandman comics illustrated by Sam Keith and Mike Dringenberg, while also creating a distinctly modern look and tone.
“I’ve been a huge fan of Lisandro’s for a really, really long time,” Tynion says. “And once we started kicking around ideas of who might be the right artist to tackle this story, he was right at the top of my list. I think that the work that Lisandro and Patricio [Angel] are doing here in the art and colors of the series really, really help capture the contemporary feel that I wanted to go for with the book.”
One of my big touchstones in approaching all of this is that I didn’t want to just try to do the nostalgic thing and make this really feel I was just trying to recapture the feeling of reading The Sandman,” Tynion adds. “I wanted this book to have a visual aesthetic entirely its own. But Lisandro’s work has this great dreamy quality to it, especially when paired with Patricio’s colors. Once the art started rolling in, I was just completely taken aback by how perfect it looked.”
Issue #1 also boasts several pages by Wonder Woman: Earth One artist Yannick Paquette. Each issue of the series will feature an interlude segment drawn by a different guest artist, with every tale shedding light on a different piece of The Corinthian’s bloody history.
“These little nightmare sequences are going to explore a bit of who the Corinthian is and his relationship to the larger mythology of Sandman and his history, “Tynion says. “In each of them, we’re going to see little terrifying interludes of horrifying things that the Corinthian has done, either in nightmares, or in real life, when the previous iteration of him was walking the world. And to do that, I wanted to bring in some of the best horror artists that are working today. That was one of the original parts of my pitch – ‘Okay, how can we use this as a showcase to sort of really use the horror iconography of the Corinthian?’ Which I think is just one of the best horror images ever to exist in comics. And really explore that from a bunch of different angles, under a bunch of different pens.”
The Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country #1 is available in print and digital forms now.
Netflix has revealed an impressive cast for the live-action series, with Tom Sturridge taking the lead role as Dream. We got our first look at the upcoming show back in 2021, with Netflix unveiling posters for each of the main characters. A recent glimpse of Gwendoline Christie’s Lucifer was also unveiled.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
