SANDMAN ENDLESS NIGHTS SPECIAL EDITION COMIC BOOK!
Written by Neil Gaiman!
With an incredible cover designed by DAVE MCKEAN.
Aslo includes a FRANK QUITELY pinup of the entire ENDLESS FAMILY, as well as a behind the scenes look at Miguelanxo Prado's sketchbook.
THIS VERSION IS LONG OUT OF PRINT.
Never sold in any mass market retail outlets. It was only available to purchase through comic book specialty shops.
Dream - The Heart of a Star
Art by Miguelanxo Prado
In the far distant past, Dream and his new romantic interest Killalla of the Glow travel to a meeting of astronomical phenomena. The mortal Killalla is astonished to learn that the beings with which she is mingling and chit-chatting with rather comfortably are, in fact, the very stars, galaxies, and dimensions which comprise her universe. After an encounter with her world's own sun, Sto-Oa, Killalla and the star fall in love, possibly thanks to Desire's powers, as the distraught and heartbroken Dream watches on.
This story showcases a number of things mentioned in The Sandman series but never before illustrated. Here, Death is a cold unmerciful character and Delight has not yet become Delirium. The roots of Dream's conflicts with Desire (in the beginning of this story, they are very close) are illustrated for the first time, as are the roots of the rules forbidding the Endless from becoming romantically involved with mortals. The first aspect of Despair also appears in the story, being quite different in appearance and more sociable than her latter aspect.
In addition, other DC comics characters and beings are suggested in the story. The character Killalla is from the planet Oa (Although technically, at this point in time, she should be from planet Maltus), and is an ancestor of the Guardians of the Universe, who go on to form the Green Lantern Corps. Her power to manipulate green energy can be seen as an evolution towards the creation of the Green Lantern's power. Despair has a conversation with a red giant star named Rao about the creation of life on an unstable world and the possibility of a lone survivor to continually mourn the destruction of that world. This is an allusion to the history of Superman; Rao is the red giant sun around which Superman's homeworld of Krypton once orbited, as well as the Kryptonian God. (The colors of the stars in the story follow the DC Universe's standards, not the actual star life cycle.)
The story is narrated by the Sun, depicted within the comic as a very young and clumsy star known by his Latin name Sol. He is telling the tale to the Earth at a time when she is still sleeping and has no life on her. Dream converses with Sol about the possibility of life on one of his planets. Sol expresses an interest in them resembling Killalla, setting the stage for our own existence as well as providing a possible reason why Dream seems to favor Earth as opposed to any other planet in the universe.
Neil Gaiman wrote the award-winning graphic novel series The Sandman, and with Terry Pratchett, the award-winning novel Good Omens. His first book for children, The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, illustrated by Dave McKean, hasn't yet won any awards, but was one of Newsweek's Best Children's Books of 1997. Angels & Visitations, a small press story collection, was nominated for a World Fantasy Award and won the International Horror Critics Guild Award for Best Collection, despite not having any horror in it. Well, hardly any.Born in England, he now makes his home in America, in a big dark house of uncertain location where he grows exotic pumpkins and accumulates computers and cats. He is currently at work turning his first novel Neverwhere into a film for Jim Henson films.
Asked why he likes comics more than other forms of storytelling Gaiman said “One of the joys of comics has always been the knowledge that it was, in many ways, untouched ground. It was virgin territory. When I was working on Sandman, I felt a lot of the time that I was actually picking up a machete and heading out into the jungle. I got to write in places and do things that nobody had ever done before. When I’m writing novels I’m painfully aware that I’m working in a medium that people have been writing absolutely jaw-droppingly brilliant things for, you know, three-four thousand years now. You know, you can go back. We have things like The Golden Ass. And you go, well, I don’t know that I’m as good as that and that’s two and a half thousand years old. But with comics I felt like — I can do stuff nobody has ever done. I can do stuff nobody has ever thought of. And I could and it was enormously fun.”
HARD TO FIND COLLECTORS ITEM FEATURING THE COLLABORATION BETWEEN TWO INCREDIBLE TALENTS!!!
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