Posted in: Comics, DC Comics | Tagged: corinthian, james tynion iv, sandman

James Tynion IV Will Be Leading DC's New Sandman Presents?

Published Fri, 21 Jan 2022 07:27:08 -0600

On his Substack, James Tynion IV has revealed that this was how editor Chris Conroy persuaded James Tynion IV to come back to work-for-hire after he had left Batman, on new Sandman books.

The THR article only had James Tynion IV writing The Corinthian story Nightmare Country. This posits him as more of a showrunner role, writing the Corinthian but also shaping the rest of the line with other writers and artists. Tynion also talked about some of his history with Sandman. And how Chris Conroy totally took advantage of it

My first job in comic books was working as an editorial intern in the offices of VERTIGO, because of what Sandman meant to me. My first instinct when I held one of my own comics in my hand was to reach out to Neil, because of how much Sandman meant to me. Hell, when I started gearing up on JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK (not knowing that THE SANDMAN UNIVERSE was about to be announced) part of my pitch for what would end up being the Anthology-inspired seventh issue was to try and get Cain and Abel to "host" it. When I wrote my internal document about the function of magic in the DCU, The Dreaming was a key part of it. This world and its characters have NEVER stopped living in my head.

It has never stopped being wildly important to me.

Chris knew how much Sandman meant to me. We had spoken about the series at length over the many years we've worked together. Which is why he knew I couldn't say no to the opportunity. And why I bent heaven and earth to fit this into my writing schedule. I knew I had a story I wanted to tell. That's why I responded the way I did. The second this was on the table, I knew I had to make it happen even though it would be a tremendous amount of work to do it right, and Chris was very very mean to put me through that (but also very wonderful).

Here we are, just one day shy of six months later.

As for the kind of book we are getting;

The last few rounds of The Sandman Universe comics have focused a bit more on the fantasy aspects of the property, and have lived a lot inside of dreams (which made a lot of sense for a book called "THE DREAMING"). It will surprise literally no one that my favorite parts of the Sandman comics are the ones most steeped in horror, and the ones set more fully in the real world, with the fantastical elements interacting with very human characters living their very human lives. The arc that most directly influences my approach to this series is "THE DOLL'S HOUSE." To me, the scariest comic book issues that Neil Gaiman ever wrote were the ones set at the Cereal Convention. That's what I want to capture here. This is a story about human people living human lives that briefly intersect with the impossible and dangerous. Some of the impossible and dangerous is fantastic, some of it is human. All of it is meant to be scary.

Ah yes, I remember that one…