DC Characters Eliminated From The Sandman: What They Are and Why

DC Characters Eliminated From The Sandman

Although The Sandman was born as a Vertigo comic series, and therefore by extension is a DC product, readers who have followed the TV series The Sandman will have noticed that the latter does not contain references to that universe. Nor do the DC characters appear who instead, even if in some cases fleetingly, enter the scene between the pages of the comics dedicated to Dream of the Eternals. Let's find out which DC characters have been eliminated from The Sandman, thus helping in a certain sense to cut ties with this universe, and what is the explanation given by Neil Gaiman regarding this decision.

DC characters eliminated from The Sandman

Wesley Dodds aka the first Sandman Hector Hall aka the third Sandman John Constantine DC characters eliminated from The Sandman: Etrigan Doctor Destiny The Scarecrow Mister Miracle Martian Manhunter

Wesley Dodds aka the first Sandman

The universe knows that there is a missing person and slowly tries to replace him. Wesley Dodds' nightmares have been over ever since he started going out at night. He puts the bad guys to sleep with gas, then splashes them with sand. And that's how the police find them in the morning ... The idea came to him in his sleep. He no longer dreams of the man with the strange helmet. No more burning eyes. It's all right. Wesley Dodds sleeps the sleep of the righteous.





Perhaps not everyone knows, however, that the man referred to in the fleeting strips that portray him is the one who was the first Sandman in the DC universe. Appeared in the comic pages in 1939 by Gardner Fox and Bert Christman, Wesley Dodds was in fact the first character to whom this name was attributed, for the use he made of sand as a component to subsequently stun criminals with a special soporific gas and capture them. A reference to the Sandman from folklore legends, who provided children with sleep by sprinkling their eyes with sand. Dodds is instead, among the pages of Sandman, a tribute to the one who was the first of many.

Hector Hall alias the third Sandman

In the DC universe, Hector Hall was a superhero with different abilities, as well as many names. He was in fact Silver Scarab and Doctor Fate and has played in the pages of I nfinity Inc., Sandman and JSA since 1983. This Sandman was a sort of sorcerer, able to manipulate the magic of Chaos and Order, but not alone. Hall was able to fly thanks to his costume, but also to have superhuman strength, while as a Sandman he could access the dreams of others or move through the Dream Stream, dividing himself between dream and material reality.

John Constantine

DC character absent in The Sandman, but not quite. The Dream of the live action series carries out the same research with the help of Johanna Constantine, the gender swap version of John, as well as the great-granddaughter of that Johanna Constantine that Neil Gaiman has included in his comics as a late 18th century woman with multiple talents . Same story, same background relating to a tormented past due to frequent nightmares, same relationship of (temporary) collaboration with Morpheus, however we are not here in the presence of the wizard similar to a wanderer with a threadbare trench coat and a perpetually tired look, but rather of an elegant woman who knows her stuff and earns a living from her occult business.

DC characters deleted from The Sandman: Etrigan

DC character created by Jack Kirby in 1972 and first appearing in The Demon comic, Etrigan is literally a demon from hell. Don't be fooled by this, however, as Etrigan has found himself on several occasions fighting side-by-side with humans and allying with them, often by virtue of his connection to the human Jason Blood, a knight linked to the demon so much that the latter is evoked to occupy the body.





In the pages of Sandman, in particular within the story A Hope in Hell, Etrigan gives the welcome to Morpheus at the gates of Hell and lead him to the presence of his lord, Lucifer. Etrigan is another of the deleted characters from The Sandman, but instead we can see how Dream is being welcomed into Hell by another demon featured in the comic: Squatterbloat, which in the live action series has a more humanoid than demonic aspect.

Doctor Destiny

In the case of Doctor Destiny, how much can we talk about absence and how much instead of omission? In fact, in the TV series The Sandman there is the one who in the DC universe is the Doctor Destiny, super villain among the recurring enemies of the Justice League. However in the live action version he is not presented as a villain accustomed to diabolical plans, but rather it is implied that he is a murderer and for this he is serving his detention at the Arkham psychiatric hospital: his name is John Dee, played by David Thewlis.




John Dee is, in the comic version of Sandman, an inmate at the same facility, but for the crimes committed as Doctor Destiny: a a scary-looking and unscrupulous character, who for his misdeeds has none other than the Scarecrow as his cellmate. In Sandman, however, a modification is made to his past, by Neil Gaiman: while in the DC universe Doctor Destiny is the one who forged the ruby ​​that allows you to manipulate dreams, also called Materioptikon, in Sandman this gem was instead created by Dream and then later modified by Destiny to be used for its evil purposes.

The Scarecrow

As mentioned, also one of the worst Batman's enemies peeps through the pages of Sandman: the Scarecrow, aka Jonathan Crane. Even the Scarecrow is in fact a guest of the Arkham psychiatric hospital and has a brief dialogue with John Dee, or Doctor Destiny: on this occasion, we see Crane pretend to have hanged himself, only to reveal that it is an "April Fool ”Who intends to play against the guards. During his exchange with John Dee, the super villain obsessed with other people's fears also mentions Joker. In the TV series the Scarecrow is another of the characters eliminated from The Sandman, as John Dee has a dialogue inside the hospital only with his mother, Ethel Cripps.

Mister Miracle

Just a page away from the meeting between the Scarecrow and Doctor Destiny, we see another character from the DC universe: Mister Miracle, or Scott Free. In the story entitled Travelers, we witness the nightmare of little Scott Free while he is on the planet Apokolips ruled by the tyrannical regime of Darkseid.





Inside his terrible nightmare, Scott relives the worst images of his childhood on Apokolips and is terrified of them, until he is gently awakened by Morpheus, who has come to ask for his help in finding the ruby ​​that was stolen from him. Scott Free is in this case, once again, a character created from the mind of Kirby in 1979 who was also a member of the Justice League, recently relaunched by DC Comics through new stories written by Tom King and drawn by Mitch Gerads.

Martian Manhunter

Mister Miracle does not know where the Dream ruby ​​is, but he knows someone who can give him this information: his name is Martian Manhunter and he is a another of the deleted characters from The Sandman. On this occasion, Mister Miracle takes Dream to the home of Martian Manhunter, whose real name is J'onn J'onzz and is the last surviving Martian of his kind.





The latter prostrates himself in the presence of Morpheus, recognizing in him an ancient god who protects dreams, also known among the Martians with the name L'Zoril. It is therefore Martian Manhunter who indicates to Morpheus where to find the ruby, which the JLA was in possession of for a certain period after defeating Doctor Destiny: it is located in a warehouse, in a town north of Gotham.

Because The Sandman does not contain references to the DC universe

Although, as we have seen, Sandman repeatedly refers to elements belonging to the DC universe, the Netflix live action series seems to be totally unrelated and The Rather, Sandman appears to be set in a universe of its own. Regarding this, some have speculated that this could be attributable to the fact that it was not acquired by platforms such as HBO Max or CW, or the streaming channels on which DC products travel. In fact, as revealed by Neil Gaiman in an interview with Variety, The Sandman does not contain references to the DC universe because an attempt has been made to make it more like comics in their progress towards a more independent footprint, detached from the material of the label. comics.

Sandman himself, as a comic, started out in the DC universe and then ended up finding his place. His world has increasingly merged with ours and has become less and less of a world where costumed crime fighters fly around and so on. This means that by the time Sandman finished he had acquired an aesthetic of him that was no longer the same as the DC universe. We didn't want a TV show for which you had to read a lot of comics published in 1988 and 1989 to understand what was going on.

A decision that seems more and more clear-cut in light of the casting choices made regarding the characters of Lucifer and John Constantine: the former is in fact played by Gwendoline Christie, and not by that Tom Ellis who took the role of Lucifer in the Netflix series of the same name; the second, as we have seen, is instead played by Jenna Coleman, thus breaking away from the TV series Constantine which starred Matt Ryan in the role of the magician.