Morpheus is the Lord of Dreams. As our story begins, he has been magically captured by an occult group. A pale, skinny man clad in black — he’s the quintessence of goth — Morpheus escapes, but his kingdom, the Dreaming, a kind of geographical expression of our collective unconsciousnesses, has fallen into disrepair, and he must restore it to its former glory.
Melancholy and occasionally very ruthless, Morpheus is one of the Endless, a pantheon of beings that includes Death, Despair, Destruction, and various other eternal principles that begin with D. In writing Sandman Neil Gaiman merrily pillaged the world’s mythologies, and those of his own brain, to produce a rich, literary and often beautiful mix of horror and philosophy. Has any comic begotten as many goth tattoos as Sandman? Unlikely.