Let's all take a trip to NIGHTMARE COUNTRY

James Tynion IV announces his new project for DC Comics, set in THE SANDMAN UNIVERSE, with Lisandro Estherren on art!

Last summer, after a long and difficult few weeks weighing my options, I made the decision to step away from writing the flagship Batman title, and to not renew my DC contract. My plan was to take a good long break from all work-for-hire comics, and focus on my creator-owned projects like SOMETHING IS KILLING THE CHILDREN, NICE HOUSE ON THE LAKE, DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH, and WYND.

For a while, there was a “keep a toe in the water” option that I explored that kept me writing superhero comics, but I made the final decision that I couldn't do what I wanted to do in Gotham City if I was only half-in. Most of my ideas there required the center stage that I knew I didn’t have the bandwidth to keep managing. The better move would be to step back. I would finish my work on Batman and Joker and then step away from work-for-hire comics for the foreseeable future.

I had sent off the emails letting people know my final decision. It was really hard. I had been writing DC Comics characters for a decade, and the company still felt like home. One one hand, I knew how constrained I felt by the Superhero genre, and how much I wanted to break away from it before the last embers of love I had for it died out. On the other, I knew I’d still be doing NHOTL with DC, so it wasn’t like I was running away entirely. But still, it felt like a chapter of my life closing. The end of a long relationship that had shaped so much of my young life. I knew it was the right call. I knew in my heart that I had explored every corner of the DC Stable that I was interested in exploring.

All but one.

A couple days after making this momentous, life-changing decision, I had the following text exchange with Chris Conroy, the big boss of DC Black Label, and editor of THE NICE HOUSE ON THE LAKE.

THE SANDMAN is the reason I write comic books. Full stop.

There is NO series more important to how I see myself as a writer and a creator. You can see its DNA in each of my comic projects. There’s an ambition to THE SANDMAN that has always inspired me, the way it weaves together all of these wildly disparate influences, deeply human characters, and deeply inhuman characters into a world that crawls into your mind and lives there. The platonic ideal of a comic book series is the Sandman-sized 75 issue epic that takes the time to go down all of the different fascinating little alleyways it can find. THE SANDMAN is what taught me the value of a one-shot comic issue. It’s what taught me how close horror and comedy can exist on the page to one another. It’s what made me want to build worlds in my mind that I could explore as a writer for years.

I think I’ve told this story before, but the day I got a box of comps in the mail of BATMAN ANNUAL #1 from 2012, I sent Neil Gaiman a message. I was still on Tumblr at the time, and I knew he’d answer the occasional Tumblr “Ask” so I knew he must monitor them to some degree. I sent him this long overwrought message about how I had just gotten a box of comics from DC with my name on the cover for the first time, and how THE SANDMAN was the reason I ever pursued this business. How I wouldn’t be there if not for him, and that I just wanted to thank him for making me love comic books. His response was a short and sweet “I’m so glad!” but it meant so much to me. It was the man who built the world that made me want to write comic books welcoming me into the fold.

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.

And have I got a tale for you…

Just look at that incredible cover by Reiko Murakami!

When I started jotting down ideas about THE SANDMAN UNIVERSE: NIGHTMARE COUNTRY, I had a few key goals that I wanted to define my approach this new comic:

1. I want to write a comic book that works as an entry point to the world of THE SANDMAN, as much as it works as a continuation of the stories of the characters who live in that world. I want a comic you’ll enjoy if it’s your first time in this world. You don’t need to know anything about The Dreaming or the characters that live inside of it to enjoy this book, but if you DO know everything about The Dreaming and the characters that live inside of it, it’ll enhance your reading experience. I think my hope is, if you’re a newbie who has never tried it out, you’ll be so fascinated by the world, that you go read the original Sandman volumes in between the new issues! They are very good. I just re-read them all again last month, after having re-read them all again in the week after Chris texted me about the project.

2. 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.

3. Thematically, I’m playing with a lot of the ideas I play with in THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH and THE NICE HOUSE ON THE LAKE. There’s a feel to the current moment we’re living in that speaks directly to the collapse of idealistic dreams of what the future could be, replaced by a deep fear of what’s actually coming next. I want to play into that, and write something that fits with the horror that is living in all of our heads right now. I think THE CORINTHIAN is the ideal figure to lead us through this journey. In the original Sandman series, Morpheus said that the Corinthian was designed to be a dark mirror held up to humanity, and that’s how I want to use him here. He is a nightmare walking through contemporary America, facing people (and things that aren’t people) that are more unsettling than he is. The other reason I wanted to center THE CORINTHIAN is that he is one of the best horror images ever put inside of a comic book. Just look at him flash a couple of those smiles of his…

For more than that… you’re going to have to wait a bit.

I want you to discover this series a bit on the page. I do want to talk a minute about getting to work with the incredible LISANDRO ESTHERREN. If you’ve been reading his series, REDNECK with Donny Cates, his work with Ed Brisson on MURDERBOOK (just got my Kickstarter edition in the mail), his beautiful Boom! series with Jeff Loveness, STRANGE SKIES OVER EAST BERLIN, or his TKO Horror Short NIGHT TRAIN with Department of Truth editor Steve Foxe… You know that he’s one of the best artists around. For the last year he’s kept coming up as an artist I badly wanted to work with, and I’m thrilled he’ll be joining me on the series. We’re just at the start of our creative relationship, but I wanted to show off a couple of the terrifying sketches of a few new characters we’re building for the series.

Their names are Mr. Agony and Mr. Ecstasy. They are not very nice.

There’s also a bit in the announcements I’m very excited about… We’ll have a sequence by a guest artist in each issue showing a different nightmare. We’ve got a list of incredible artists coming your way, but I’m so damn excited to be starting out with Yanick Paquette. I cannot wait to dig more into that feature as we get closer to launch. You can read more by Borys Kit at The Hollywood Reporter, where broke the story earlier this afternoon.

I also wanted to flag this incredible exchange I saw when I was sneaking a quick peek at the teaser image going up on Twitter. Well done, DC Social Media team.

This is the only licensed project I’m working on for at least the next year.

By my file naming conventions, I’ve been going with SU:NC or just SUNC as my shorthand for the book, which feels really appropriate. So… With that in mind, Please sink into the scary side of The Dreaming with me this April. Let your local comic shop know to throw this on your pull list, today!

James Tynion IV
Brooklyn, NY (A Suburb of The Dreaming)
1.18.22