The Ringer-Verse - 'The Sandman' Season One with Marc Bernardin | House of R

Episode Date: August 5, 2022

It's a dream come true! Joanna and Mal return with writer and podcaster Marc Bernardin to discuss the first season of Netflix's 'The Sandman' (06:54). They break the season into three parts by discussing episodes 1-4 (28:04), then discuss their two favorite tales with episodes 5 and 6 (78:54), and take a look at the final arc in episodes 7-10 (02:04:15). Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Mallory Rubin Guest: Marc Bernardin Social: Jomi Adeniran Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Addition Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Call me sentimental, but to me, the most joyful moment in sports is the soccer goal. And when that goal happens at the World Cup, well, it's pretty good. I'm Brian Phillips. With the 2022 Men's World Cup approaching, I'm making a podcast called 22 goals on the Ringer Podcast Network. It's about 22 of the most fire emoji goals in the history of the tournament. We're going to have so much fun. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, Every choice matters.

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and which I must control. He's out there looking for me, isn't he? Can you imagine the damage he could do? If dreams disappear, then so will humanity. You could do without dreams for a while. I haven't had a decent unsleep in ages. You're going to reverse your nexus podcast feed for all things fandom. I'm Joanna Robinson, and joining me, I'm only fresh from a serial convention.

It's Mallory Rubin. Hi, Mallory. How you doing? Oh, boy. What a note to start. start on, Joe. It's just a dream to be here with you today, truly. I love that. I love that for you. Also joining us after an overnight shift in a 24-hour diner. It's a special guest that we have here today. It's Mark Minard and hi, Mark. How are you? Hello, Joanna. How are you? I'm practicing my dream voice. Is that cool? Because I just

now want to use it all the time. Pretty good. And just like order lattes. Do you want to give me more foam, perhaps. Well, what folks can see is that you're currently wearing like a spiky black wig on the Zoom call, right? Oh, I've been doing Neil Gaiman cosplay for the past 30 years, so I feel finally it's coming handy. We are here to talk about the Netflix series, Sandman, the Sandman, based on the Seminole aforementioned Neil Gaiman comic.

Mark is here as a special guest because I don't know. I reached out to Mark a little while ago and I said, hey, Mark, is there anything on this planet of all the content that is flying fast and furious around us that you want to come and talk to us about? And, you know, Mark's an expert in all things pop culture, storytelling, fandom, TV writer, he's a comic book author. You made a short film. He hosts a podcast like many podcasts. Mark, why did you pick Sandman? Why was Sandman the thing that you want to talk about? Well, Joanna and Mallory, I will tell you.

Sandman is the comic book that made me want to be a writer. I was a, God, I mean, I was a journalist. It was like a wanting to be fucking, ooh, can I use profanity on this stuff? Yeah. I'm just making sure. I was, you know, a young in-stained wretch, you know, thinking about like, what do I want to be when I grow up? I'm not good at very much.

And then the Sandman came along. And I, you know, I bought the floppies off the stands like every other nerd did. It was one of my very first D.C. comics. But, you know, I didn't quite get it right away because, you know, the Sandman is a very particular, you know, bottling of wine. And so it just requires a little bit more investment that I at the time was not ready to give. I circled back around to it in like the early 90s, like 93, 94, when they started coming out in the trade paperback collections and just absorb. it like, you know, the aforementioned wine. And it crystallized for me what you could do in a comic book that nobody else had

managed to do. Like Neil Gaiman built for himself this framework in which he could tell every story. And he never had to be bored by, you know, there's another guy with a cape or never had to be constrained by, oh, I got to have a cliffhanger in the end of every episode. I got to do, you know, it's, it was this, this wild bestiary for him to just run. in. And I love that. And I love the capacity he had for that. And it made me honestly want to write fiction because I wanted to write things that moved people as much as the Sandman had moved me. And I've told him this. And it gets weird every time I do it. But so, you know, and I followed

it through every permutation and perambulation of development. It's going to be a movie. He's going to be TV shows. It's not going to be anything. He's going to come back to write more comic books. And yay, there's a dreaming universe. Yay. But now that there was a show, now that there was a, we made, we did the thing, there was now Sandman that I could put in my eyes that has actors speaking and images moving. This, this was the one when you said, hey, do you want to come talk about something? Yes, I want to talk to these two wonderfully smart people about the thing that turned me into a writer. I love that. I'm so excited you're here.

I want to talk to you always. We're going to, like, here's what we're going to do today. We're going to talk about Sandman, this season of television. But it's a Netflix binge drop, which is always a little complicated in terms of how we do things here on the ring or verse. So here's what we've decided to do today. Here's the plan. We're doing three sections. So if you are only watching it bit by bit, you can press pause on a section.

We will not spoil what's coming. And then you can pick it back up when you're ready to talk about things. So here's how we're doing it. Section one, episodes one through four. section two episodes five through six and you'll see why we paired those two together when we get there and then section three episodes seven through ten we'll give you a little warning at the start of each section you'll know what we're going to talk about so that's what we're doing today you know this is a really fun week for the ringerverse we've got before we get hit with like a lot of the stuff that's coming

later on in this summer so mallory and i are doing a hype watch later this week where we're talking about the things that we're excited about that are coming up. The Midnight Boys, Pee, are, like, continuing to have their, like, fun, experimental, whatever they're doing in the little, like, break we find ourselves in. It's been really fun to listen to. And you can follow all of that if you follow the podcast, Ring or Verse. You follow us on social, on Twitter, on Instagram, on TikTok, where everywhere you want to be. But that is the plan for today.

Mallory, before I get into a little bit of comic book history, what is your history? with Neil Gaiman and Sandman. Ooh, I love Neil Gaiman. As you know, Joe, love. Always a delight to have the opportunity to talk about a Neil Gaiman's story, a Neil Gaiman world, Neil Gaiman's particular interpretation of our world

and the many strands of various storytelling worlds and how they come together inside of one of his creations. Just really an endless treasure trove. And I'm so happy to be here with both of the you today. What an unbelievable treat to have Mark with us. I was trying to remember Joe has been a part of the last, you know, year of my life where I can no longer remember anything, including my origin with stories and a precise moment in time. I know that I got Sandman, you know, I have, I don't know if you guys can, this is a podcast, so I don't know why I'm showing this is, this is on Zoom and no one

listening can see this, but, you know, the big hardbound volumes, right? And so I got those, I got those from my husband, Adam, who is also a huge gaming fan. This was probably like, I want to say 2010-ish. We were definitely still living in New York. It was pre-L.A., so that's about where I'm going to date it. And initially it was a gift for him. And he had just such a great time right away that I was like, I need to start thumbing through these. Don't I?

And then I did. So just revisiting, you know, I did not embark on a full reread ahead of the pod, though I think now I will. But just revisiting the issues in question that inspired, closely inspired, this first season, you just fall so quickly right back into the world, right? And you don't want to leave. You don't want to put it down even for a second. This is like a very quick random, not particularly relevant note.

But in general, I love to hold the paper in my hands, right? But for pod prep, I tend to go digital because you can capture images, you can grab quotes, right, move it over to our outlines, etc. One of the things that's handy with a comic is the guided view feature, basically useless for Sandman, which is gibberish. It's so fun, right? It's such a fun reminder of this, like, particular brew of stardust. Like, it cannot be contained in one neat, zoomed-in panel.

And that's part of the wonder of it. That's part of the magic of it. That's part of what was so fun to revisit here. And I think part of what is particularly interesting to keep in mind when thinking about an adaptation, what ports over neatly, what doesn't, what maybe shouldn't. And that's part of the point, right? Part of the inherent proposition of the tale in the first place. So I just am so excited to be here with you both today to talk about this television show and this beautiful graphic novel. What about you, Joe? Similar to Mark, there's like a little bit of like magic in my relationship to Neil Gaiman. And 20 years ago, in 2002, I was like a kid staying with my sister in New York for the summer. And I was an active, I will not surprise anyone, active member of a Buffy Vampire Slayer Message Board. And there was a Neil Gaiman book signing for Coraline in like the Barnes & Noble and Union Square in New York.

And it was the first book signing I'd ever been to in my life. And I went and I was like, this is amazing. Like Mark, I was like, not I can write fiction, but I was like, I want to. want to do this, which is arrange book signing. And that's what I did for the first, like, phase of my adult career is I arranged book signings. And it was always my dream to arrange a Neil Gaiman book signing. And the last book signing I ever arranged was for the ocean at the end of the lane. And it was Neil Gaiman was like the bookend of that time of my life was like inspired by him to start it. And he like went out with, with Neil, which just felt like the time to do that.

and felt like pure magic to me. And then also, at that first event at the Barnes & Noble, I got him to sign a copy of Good Omen's, which is a book that I just like absolutely love. And like he signed a copy. It was just like a trade paperback that I bought at the Barnes & Noble. He signed it for me. And he, you know, he used to do this thing when he signed Good Omen's where like he would sign very, very intentionally over his name so that if you wanted to, you could go and

find Terry Pratchett out in the world and when he was still with us and like get Terry Pratchett to sign the other part. I lent that book to my sister. She lost it. I was devastated. I was like absolutely crushed. I normally wouldn't care, but I was just like this is such like an important me. So my sister felt so guilty. She went and bought like a first edition hardback of Good Omens that had like his signature on it and gave it to me as like a make good. And I was like that more than makes up for it. I loved it. It was so beautiful. I lent it to a friend of mine. He lost it for five years. And then randomly found it again right before the Neil Gaiman book signing that I arranged. And then I got to have Neil inscribe that hard copy of Good Omen's to me. So yeah, my, like,

Neil Gaiman feels so special and magical for so many different reasons and for so many different people. And I know so many people who have weird magical stories about Neil and his influence on their lives. So I'm so glad we get to talk about all of that right now. This is so fun. I'm just going to do like zoom through a little bit of brief history and I'm going to ask you guys some questions as I do it. But just like to let folks know who don't know the impact that Sandman had on the comic book world when it debuted in 1989. Like Mark, I mean, let me just ask you, Mark. Like what's your general sense of how important Samman was when it first dropped?

I mean, it's first drop. was, you know, it was a D.C. comic at the time. There was no vertigo. So it was just a D.C. book. And, you know, I think that it was one of those, you know, I remember hearing stories about the Walking Dead where Robert Kirkman would always say, you know, what's the bestselling issue of Walking Dead? Well, it's the current issue of Walking Dead. Like, it would always just gain steam. It would always begin this rise and every issue brought new people into it. And I think that Sandman was a little bit the same way. in that it started, you know, relatively small because nobody knew what it was. And then as it began to release it, especially as it began to get collected, then it became this sort of juggernaut. I mean, Neil would refer to it as the first sexually transmitted comic book. In that, like, you know, men would have it in their house, and then women would begin to read it who would never read any other comic book

and then only ever read Sandman. That was their comic book. And then in some cases, those men or these women would break up. up with those dudes and then go and date another dude and then that dude will pick up the same. And it just became this sort of this, this chain of joy that would be passed from, you know, from relation to relation, from love to love. And it just became this New York Times bestseller, apparently the first comic book that ever made the New York Times bestseller.

And I get it. 89 is such an interesting year for comic books because that's, I mean, I think this technically dropped the very tail end of 88, but they call it an 89 comic. 89 is a summer, Batmania. Like, that's when there was a comic book slump that then became a comic book explosion. And we're going to talk about collectors later, but like comic book collecting really became a thing, right, at this time in the early 90s. And so gaming and picking up this sort of like little-known DC superhero who had had a couple iterations before and turning him into this mythological creature, inventing the concept of the endless, which are like not, quite gods. They are eternal concepts that, you know, will survive as long as living creatures

survive. Gods may come and go, but the endless are endless, you know. And I just think that I love this story you just told about, like, women who only ever read one comic book because I was talking anecdotally, I was talking to a couple friends this weekend about whether or not they were excited. And I know a bunch of women who are like, oh, yeah, I love salmon. It's the only comic book I've ever read. I'm like, that's so interesting to me. But it really, it did it, like, not that comic books needed to be legitimized, but it broke comics out of a certain demographic into, like, art school cool kids or literature nerds. And, you know, just a broader, broader range of people were reading Sandman. I love, like, that Norman Mailer called it a comic strip for intellectuals.

I'm like, I didn't know that Norman Miller had opinions about Sandman, but apparently he did. And I think that it's such a fascinating gift that Neil Gibbon. And it's a gateway drug for a lot of people into comic books. It was the thing that got me into comic books after people had tried various other titles. Finally, like, someone I loved was like, here, this is the one for you, Sandman. And it definitely got me. And the fact that it inspired Kevin Berger, Karen Berger, who shepherded Sandman in the first place, then was put in charge of Vertigo. And Vertigo, this sort of like horror, would you call it like horror?

I mean, it was one of the first imprints of a major comic book company that seemed to focus on writers more than artists. because especially in the late 80s, early 90s, it was a very artist-ascendant phase. It was very much about, especially in Marvel, your Jim Lees, your Rob Leifelds, your Todd McFarlane's, these guys who were these rock stars, their names were the ones that at the top of every comic book.

And then came Vertigo, which seemed almost intentionally about the words. You know, let's find Neil Gamer, let's find Alan Moore, let's find these, especially this British new wave of writers who came over who cut their teeth on 2008 Dade and Judge Dred and stuff. And then she brought her, it was the British invasion of comic books, and it all seemed to take place at Vertigo.

And yeah, Karen was a visionary, and still is. I mean, she's even though Vertigo was no more. And I was always secretly hoping there would be a Vertigo title, a Vertigo production card in front of Sandman, just because, just because, just give me three block letters. But Sandman was the one that made it possible. Salmon was the out-of-the-gate blockbuster that says, oh, we can do more of these. Let's do lots of these. And let's make it the HBO for comics.

They call it for a very long time. It was a brand. It was an imprint that definitely meant something when you saw it on a comic. It absolutely meant something to you. And titles like Fables, V for Vendetta, Why the Last Man, Preacher, Transmetropolitan, which is a super weird and fun one that people should check out if they haven't. You know, these are all thanks in some part to the success, the blockbuster success of Sandman, started all of that. Also paved the way for stuff like Buffy and the X-Files on TV. Like this is like a nerd rise, an urban fantasy rise that came out of Sandman, which I just think is so fun.

But as you say, it's an author-forward time, but we will get in a lot of trouble if we don't mention. and we should, some of the artists associated here. So, like, Mike Dringenberg is hugely important to see. I'm Keith and then the Dave McKean covers, which are hugely distinctive. I can't miss them. And then, I mean, I don't want to spend too much more time here in history class because I want to talk about the show itself. But we should just say, like, briefly, this show or a version of it, as Mark alluded to earlier,

has been in development hell forever. There were so many people who wanted to. to try their hand at bringing Sandman to the screen. There's James Mangled, Eric Kripke, David Goyer, who is actually is still involved in this production. Joseph Gordon Levitt, like, all these people have tried with like movie pitches, TV pitches, all this stuff. But it's Neil himself, who is shepherding the project here at the end of things after years of like sort of some game in adaptation misfires. I don't know, Mallory, if you have any thoughts or opinions. about why Gaman has been sort of historically tricky to adapt to this screen?

You know, it probably won't surprise you to hear that I tend to like some of these adaptations maybe more than most people. Like, I really enjoyed the first season of American Gods, though I guess if I'm being honest with myself, not enough to continue with the show beyond that. I like to think that that's more about just the surge of television and how impossible it was to maintain your viewership of everything at once. But, you know, I never pass on a chance to spend time with Mr. It's just Tits and Dragons himself Ian McShane. Sign me up now and always, right? I liked good omens.

I think that in general, though, there's this like, like, tricky and maybe near and possible exact sweet spot that not that you have to hit, but that people try to or think they need to. Like on the one hand, you know, there's all this conversation embedded into the narrative, certainly in the run up to the Sandman, but in general around these stories about how unadaptable they are, how impossible they are definitionally to make and to pour it over from the page to the screen, whether that is something about a character like dream. I suspect this will be one of the through lines of our discussion today, right? What lands and what doesn't in this particular portrayal? And what can you imbue in a character on a flat, glossy page that is just

particularly difficult to translate a compelling fashion when it's a moving, breathing, speaking thing? So then where do you swing? Well, let's do something. different, but then you miss the thing that people loved about it in the first place, right? And so how do you reconcile that dissonance? I don't know what the answer to that is. Perhaps if I did know the answer to that, I would be making some of these things instead of talking about them here with you today. But I think it's an interesting prompt. And obviously, like, Gamen is involved with this adaptation, right? And so that's an interesting thing, too, because I think that on the one hand, you could say, not to jump ahead, but just like as a teaser,

that this is an incredibly faithful adaptation. You know, episode to issues broadly, obviously there are certain episodes, including some of our favorites, that contain two distinct comic book issues inside of one episode, etc. There are certainly some character switches, earlier introductions, more prominent roles,

missing characters, a number of distinctions, but broadly and strong. It's quite faithful. And in many ways, that's a thrilling thing if you love the source material. And then there are some parts of that where you can't, I think, shake the sensation watching that some more radical shifts might have helped this find a new audience. But then again, you swing right back to while at what cost. I don't know what the answer is. What do both of you think? I'm wondering, Mark, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, it's the tricky part about Sandman specifically. I mean, gaming in general, there are certain novels that are easier like Coraline is a lovely adaptation, you know, like, and it totally makes sense. You're one character, beginning, middle, end. You see what it's about.

You get to delve into worlds and ideas and those sort of filigrees in which he lives in and makes a wonderful. That makes sense. Stardust makes sense. Like Good Omens makes sense. The American Gods is its own weird, crazy, frustrating, you know, thing that I am with you, Mallory. I watched some of it and then stopped watching.

simply because my brain got sleepy. But Sandman was always the trickiest because it refuses to do the things you want television to do, which is, here's your main character. He's in every frame. He's going to go on a journey. He's going to learn some stuff, and he's going to eventually come out the other side of change person. And Sandman, the book, the first eight issues of that, refused that at almost every turn. You know, like it's about other people more than it's about.

about dream. It's about the effects of dream's absence, which is really difficult to dramatize when you're like, it's about the Sandman. Where's the Sandman? He's in a box for an episode. And so I think lots of the desires and attempts to adapt it were how do we get over the fact that these first eight issues or eight episodes are not what we'd like them to be. And some adaptations were, we're going a breeze right past it. We're going straight to season of mist. We're going straight to the most linear version of, you know, and not to spoil too much, but if you've read the books, then you know, there's a massive storyline coming in which Lucifer abdicates the throne of hell. And it's 100% easier to do because I know what that is.

We're not taking these weird, like, buggy jaunts into immortal people and, you know, let's go meet his sister and let's go do the crazy diner thing. And all of which are wonderful stories, but they're impossible to adapt. And so I think that what at some point Neil was waiting for was the ability for television to catch up to his own ambition for the comics and the power to be able to say, we're just going to do it this way. And you will just kind of surrender to it. And then we'll get to do all of the things that we want to do. And so, and these, you know, we will get to it when we get to it. But I have mixed feelings about the first chunk of the season because they are my least favorite stories in the same man can't.

that you then have to start the show with, otherwise it doesn't quite work. So I think it was just that the timing worked out for us to all be able to say, you know what, let's just do it. Let's not perambulate, let's not equivocate. Let's just get our hands dirty and try to do this thing. I think the problem is the reason that Neil Gaiman is so has such profound impact on writers and people who love story, is there's no replicating what he does. And so when people, other than Neil Gaiman, have tried to adapt, I also really enjoyed

Coraline. I actually really enjoyed StarDust, too, even though it is wildly different from the book. And I think that's key to Star Duss success is that they were like, we're going to do something so different that you're not going to miss that this isn't Neil Gaiman doing this. And Neverwhere, there's like a TV, a janky little TV adaptation of Neverwhere, you know, like come and gone. American Gods, I think, was a real turning point for. for Neil, because that was a real struggle between Neil and the various showrunners that they got

to run American Gods, where Neil wanted a more faithful adaptation, and they wanted various people, very smart TV people, wanted to make it, as Mark says, more like a linear TV show. And that conflict between creator and showrunner, I think is ultimately what doomed American gods in the end, even though I also really enjoyed a lot of season one. With good omens, Neil had much more control. And he largely did that, you know, with some help, like largely did that one himself. And then he is running this one. And we're going to get into it about, like, how much that works overall.

I feel like we, I think we all agree that there are things we love about this. And then some things where we're like, you know, all right, you know, we're building towards something. We're on a journey. And that's way better than I ever expected to say that adaptation would be, to be honest with you. Yeah, the fact that at least for me, every episode gets better than the episode before it is not often a thing you can say about a TV show. Like most don't gain steam. It's usually, the pilot is really interesting. And then episode two is, oh, now we've got to make a show.

All right. And then maybe by the end of the first season, they know what the show is that they're making. this doesn't seem to fall into that rut. Yeah, I think there is definitely momentum that builds where it peaks we might disagree on, but I think there is definitely build momentum. This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty limited time flavors.

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Where is the dream? He's away again for the moment. He's out there looking for his tools. isn't he? He will be coming back. Well, then, I better get a move on. Where are you going? Back to the waking world.

The freedom. You should try some time. Let's talk about the first section here. So we're going to talk about episodes one through four, which are Sleep of the Just and Perfect hosts and Dream a Little Dream of Me and a Hope and Hell, which cover comic issues of the exact same name. No deviation.

Four episodes television. Four issues of the comic. And basic premise here. So, you know, spoilers ahead for those four episodes in which Morpheus Lord of the Dreaming is trapped by mortals for a century. And when he escapes, he needs to go to hell and back to find his sand, his helm, and Ruby pendant. All right, Mark Hardy sort of teased his overall impression of these first four. Mallory, how did you feel about these first four episodes of television? I won't say anything specific about the later episodes because that is the structure of this podcast.

and adhering to structure will also be one of the themes of today's discussion. But I will just say that episode five was where I started to really, really get into the show. And until then, I was in and out, you know, taking some time to get a feel for the flow. You know, there are very few things that I enjoy more sincerely in this world than spending an hour of TV with Charles Dance, like very few things that I enjoy more. So that was thrilling, delightful, you know, pairing nicely with my Game of Thrones rewatch. I think that Mark's point from earlier is so crucial in terms of the other characters being maybe more unique or more interesting or more compelling to us than our protagonist than Dream and more centrally featured. I think that is

one of the thrills of reading the story. And ultimately, when you're you settle in to the rhythm of the season also is one of the thrills of the season. Like, again, I won't get into the specifics about episode five, but the things that I loved about that have nothing to do with the main character of the show, right? So it's not that I don't want to spend time with Roderick. I know you know I want to spend time with Gregory. Right? And Goldie.

delightful, wonderful. But there was like, there's an overwhelming quality to how many people you're meeting, how many moments in time you're moving between. And it's just you need that like time to find that central mooring of the story. And when one of the definitional things about the text is that that central mooring is not central and not really a mooring, it just takes a little bit of time for the show to find its pace and shape. I think also like, I'm just an easily distracted person, as you know,

and just like, once you have nothing else on the screen, no wordmark of your name, anything like that, I just settle in more fully. But that's not really a fair thing to say. It's just more again, the peek behind the curtain. So, you know, I love seeing Gwendolyn Christie, one of our absolute faves when we go down to hell. But the moving between the realms, the character sets, everything that you're introduced to. It just took me about halfway through the season to really, really, really feel like I was settling into something that I understood the shape of in full. And I think if anyone is feeling that way about episodes 1 through 4, we should say that Neil Gaiman himself called these issues awkward, ungainly, and clumsy, but that they still had things he was proud of. And so he made some changes to them for this adaptation, you know, to maybe spruce them up a bit, give some different characters, different motivations and stuff like that. But I think he was finding his footing as he was writing this. Mark and I were having a side discussion with Friend of the Pod, Jeff Jensen, about the use of DC characters early on in this run and how when Neil started this comic, he was pulling in a lot from the larger DC universe. And then later, the comic became so much more his own thing. But in these early days, characters like Constantine, which is how Neil himself also pronounces it, Constantine, Lucifer, you know, John D., Dr. Doom, like all these other characters are DC characters that he's seating in to maybe give readers, either as an edict from DC itself, or to give readers a sense of familiarity. Mark, if you... Let me ask you, actually, let me ask you this, Mark. Talk to you about Dream as a protagonist. And, like, either with your comic book brain or your TV writer brain, you know, what are some of the challenges and what are some of the joys of having someone like Dream as your protagonist?

And like either with your comic book brain or your TV writer brain, you know, what are some of the challenges and what are some of the joys of having someone like Dream as your protagonist? I mean, the comic book writer brain, you know, it's like especially given that this is just a world of characters and a world of stories. And, you know, especially, you know, as you get later into the Saman's run, Dream barely shows up in lots of episodes. Like he might be there, an extended cameo of a dude in white face, you know, in the quarter speaking in, you know, black word balloons. But, you know, the trick is, especially in the beginning, is he is incredibly inactive. He is credibly passive, you know, and, you know, you posit that and you put that forth as, I'm waiting. I'm waiting for my time to act. I'm waiting for the crack in the armor.

I'm waiting. I'm biting my time. Great. That's awesome, but it's not dramatic. And it doesn't allow an audience to connect. You know, because so much of television's character, so much of television is like, who's my person? Who am I keen into good, bad, evil, you know, male, female, neither, both, all of it.

Just who do I care about? And the show wants you to care about dream, but gives you very little connection to do so. And so as a comic reader, I know where it's going. So I'm like, okay, I know what we're doing here. We got to disabuse him of all of his power and give him a very simple quest narrative to regain his tools of office. Sure. I understand it. But if you don't know anything about this, as my wife didn't when she sat down with me, she was like, I don't get what's happening.

Why is the white dude in the box not doing anything? I'm like, yeah, but he will. It's a guy, but I don't know that. Right. And so it isn't particularly tough nut to crack where you just have to build pity. And if pity is the emotion that we're riding on, okay, we can lay tracks of pity. But they try to get you there. They try to push you there.

But at least for me, it falls just a hair short of me actually feeling for dream, especially because when you're giving him an arc where he's got to be brought low and then you grow, It's hard to pity the dude before he's brought low, where he's just like the mincing monarch of his own magical menagerie of dream and the dreaming. It was like, yeah, man, I get it. You're powerful. And you do cool stuff. And you've got a bag and a helm and a ruby. And that's all neat.

But I can't pity you yet. So, yeah, it's tricky. I have some interesting casting questions here because, so Tom Sturge, like, you could not, like was critical. created in a factory, basically, to play the comic version of Morpheus of Dream, who is, you know, inspired by Robert Smith of The Cure and also what Neil Gaiman looks like in his 20s. Like, that's the design of the guy. So I do not blame, you know, there are other people cast in this series who don't look

that much like their counterparts on the page. But I understand why Neil was like, I created this really. cool guy and he looks like me. So let's find someone who kind of looked like me. I think my Tom Sturage, who I've seen in things like Pirate Radio, Far from the Madding Crowd, is not, he's, he's such a beautiful actor, but he's not an actor who I feel a spark of connection with easily is I think what I will say about him. And I think the Tom Sturge part of this show is hurt a little bit by, there was an audible version of Sandman that is ongoing that came out. I think he started in 2020, where James McAvoy is voicing dream and crushes it.

He is so good. And the audible version is really interesting because I know a lot of people who have listened to that version while reading the comic at the same time. Because the audible, you can't really connect. Like, I'm not saying that's a perfect production because you can't really connect with everything, you need some of the visuals. And it's such an interesting extreme to have the audible where you don't have quite enough and have this where you have everything is put in front you. A comic is a medium. It's something in between where you're getting these little snapshot

panels and it's up to you and your imagination to fill in. What does this face look like when it moves? Or what does this voice sound like to me? And I think that those three things are so interesting. but McAvoy imbues dream with, like, he's still the frustratingly imperious, moody, bironic kind of character that he is. But he's never strikes you as petulant and, like, a few other things that I feel like I'm getting off of Sturge's performance. And so Sturge really grew on me as the season went on, actually, and some of his later stuff really, really worked for me.

but I had a hard time at the beginning making that connection. What did you think, Mal? Yeah, same. I felt myself, like, really being drawn in to the performance over the course of the season. I'm curious, like, I have a few thoughts on this, but I'm curious if you think, like, knowing this was on Netflix as a binge drop, had any impact on the casting or anything? Because, like, if this had been a weekly rollout, then you don't,

have that certainty that, like, you're getting to that next stretch more quickly, right? So, like, needing to get the buy-in from the audience, I mean, I guess you need that to propel people forward, but also, like, not really, right? The next episode starts playing and you sit on your couch and you continue. Whereas if, like, you have a week to think about whether you care about this protagonist, that's like, it strikes me as a different calculus. And I'm just, like, I don't know, I'd be curious to know at some point if that had any bearing, not specifically on the casting, but really on anything at all,

including maybe a decision about where to start the story and there's just more peace and comfort knowing that people can push right through to the part where these concerns are really no longer relevant. I think that like to the protagonist, the protagonist discussion

and the casting discussion, it's so interesting to me because I think like, it strikes me as a pretty common thing, actually, that across stories, you as a reader or a viewer are more drawn to the sidekicks or the people who you meet along the way than you are to the central figure. Like, we are more interested in Fred and George than we are in Harry, right? But that's in part because we know from the word go what that central arc is.

And to Mark's point, I think that, like, the fact that this is such a passive start, there is something, again, I think this is about the adaptation versus like the inherent point of the story and just how complex this was to try to pull off in the first place. Because the fact that dream is unknowable, the fact that it is difficult for us to access what the motivation is and also for dream to recognize that and to start to lean into anything resembling introspection or something. awareness, right? And even the idea of change and whether a member of the endless can or should change, like that, these big questions about what it means to be human, right? And what it means to recognize the central driving forces of humanity and those relationships between each other, right? Sam has a story about stories and the stories we tell ourselves are our dreams and the stories that we tell each other are the way that we build those relationships and bridges, right? And so

if dream is only a puppeteer, then that is not compelling. Like, leaning in and placing Morpheus at the center of these creations. We'll talk about this more when we get to episode six and, like, unlocking something about that, an awareness about what that relationship and push-pull actually looks like and how it should function. And what function even means is so interesting. and like incredibly difficult to render in a neat and tidy linear arc. That's why Samman's a great story.

Gamen always works with myth, right? There are so many elements of religious myth, storytelling myth, etc. That are present in this tale. That means there's no start or end point. This is all a circle, right? And the chain is not just a series of links. it's a knot. That's why we love reading it, and that's why it is so rich and rewarding, ultimately. That's just a hard thing to establish in one episode in a pilot to get to that,

oh, this pilot was great. Now, where are we next? Prompt. And so I kind of like in a way, I think I'm like working through this in real time. I like that it's messy because I like that it's messy at the jump, because like the fact that we can get the Lucifer and, you know, it's fun to see that switch of Lucifer as the champion here in the hell episode, right? And the fact that we can get the Lucifer dream champion reality duel, there's a version of that that is like, and again, I think that episode four overall was up and down, but like there's a version of that that doesn't feel like a payoff at all, that doesn't land at all, where you have absolutely no bearing for where you are.

But by then you're actually kind of acclimated to all of the different like aspects that could feel like sensory overload but start to allow you to unlock the fact that the layers in the building,

the way that the idea of like always leveling up to the next place that your mind can take you is like the point of the story in the first place. And so I think I'd rather hang with that for four hours

and then get to settle in than to start in a more traditional, traditional TV storytelling place and lose what feels so, like, authentically the point of Sandman in the first place. I love that, Mallory. Love talking to you about everything. Love you so much. Mark, how did, um, how did, um, how did, like seeing the dire wolf get hurt, though?

I'll just, how did the, um, how did the, um, how did the storage casting work for you? And how, how does that, uh, play now? You know, I, uh, I, I, I liked it, you know, because I do think that, you know, know, as Neil has said in interviews, it was the hardest thing in the world to do was to find the guy who could be dream. And then when he just walks in looking the way he looks and having that face and that I've never seen the sun before, the whole demeanor. Like, I buy it. And I appreciate the choice to not, you know, do some digital effect on his voice to get you there.

You know, like there's a version of that that's also Ben Affleck's Batman. That just sounds like it's been pushed through a processor. So it just sounds, I'm a mother, he knows who named Martha. Like, I dug the, like,

I will just find a way to do this thing with my own natural voice. Lots of ADR, because you don't get that voice on the street. You know, like you're getting a booth somewhere and re-recording those lines. But, you know,

I liked him. I did. But there is, there is a placidity to him. that doesn't actually belie, you know, and it's part of the story. You don't get to know who dream is until much later. You don't get to know the story of NADA and Kikul and the deep love that he fucked up because he was young and dumb in the same way that everybody fucks up love because they're young and dumb.

We don't get to see any of that stuff yet. So he is just this somewhat, you know, mirror glaze of a character who doesn't let us see behind that glazed. When Mower was talking, it's funny, I was brought back to this commentary track that I listened to for the movie Robocop, which I know does not sound like it's, it's, it's, it's, it's pertinent to our conversation. Oh, the sacred text. I love it.

The sacred text. Yeah, yeah. I remember Paul Verhoeven talking about why the death of, or the, the, the assault on Peter Weller's character, Murphy, needed to be so violent. And he said, because you don't know who that is yet. Like you've seen Murphy with his like just a guy, three scenes, maybe. And so the only way to get you to feel something for him was to make that assault on him as violent as humanly possible.

You needed to see the pain. You needed to see the blood. You needed to see all of it. So you cared about him after. He needed to be, you know, he needed to be baptized in blood. There needed to be the passion. There needed to be all of that. And that was my, I guess, biggest issue with the way.

we portrayed dream in these first four episodes is they never quite got that for me. We don't know him before he's imprisoned. So I don't care that much that he's imprisoned. Our caring about him comes to other people and get to see, like here's your unity in Cades. Here's how the dreaming has begun to collapse because he's not there and how that affects the world. And I get it. But it's, It's never visceral. And Tom doesn't have much to do other than, like, glare imperiously at people walking by his glass cage. And he glares incredibly well. And sort of like fold his limbs in different shapes and just be like, yes, I have been working out.

Here's my biceps. Yes. And no, I am not seeing the sun ever. I white and perlessent and I glow. Yeah. But I like the act. You know, I did. I mean, I disliked the wigs he would wear later on.

He kept on reminding me of Noel Fielding from Great American, Great British Baking Show. Oh, my God. Yes. Every time he would put in like the long wig. He's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't do this. Oh, we're going to get to wig watch. I was waiting for someone to start talking about soggy bottoms. I'm with you. But I thought he did well at an impossible task, which is conjuring that character from the page to the screen.

There's some other. interesting changes. So a decision that they made was to set the modern day in the now, in the now now, right? So we're in like 20, 22 thereabouts. Originally, the comic is set in the late 80s, early 90s, like in the then-then, right? And that means that his imprisonment is not seven years. It's over 100 years. Like they didn't change the start point. They just changed the end point, which makes the imprisonment that much longer, which means there are some little, like, adaptive choices they make in terms of, oh, this Ruby will extend your lifespan or, you know, you know, Ethel Crips also has kept alive long, you know, the talk of expanded lifespan,

and we'll get to another character who that affects. But there's just some like little tweaks they did to pad out the timeline by 30 years. And I think that that was interesting. And I think really another really interesting moment is when um you know that baptism in blood the closest they get right is when jessamy gets shot and you see a dream giving us like uh you know he's giving tears for for jessamine and and he's shot behind the blood smear on the glass for like a long shot um and i thought that was that was an interesting um framing but also the fact that Alex Burgess, who is like given to us, presented to us as a somewhat sympathetic character, right? The young son who is abused by his father, love to watch Charles Dance wield a walking stick

in all things. But and he just, because he has fallen in love, because he has freshly fallen in love, he is too scared to let dream out in case he dies and his new love dies. You know, he's just just been released from his father. And it is also dreams frailty, dreams inability to forgive. Because he could have just said, like, sure, I won't kill you.

Let me out. And gotten out so much earlier than he does. But Dream just stands there and says nothing. And that's part of who Dream is, which is deeply flawed to his own detriment at time and time again. Not that I'm saying it's easy to forgive the son of someone who has imprisoned you

in a glass bubble. But I'm just saying, like, if it's either that or sit there for another 70 years or so, like, you know, you just say, sure, I won't kill you. Let me out. It feels as if in that case, Dream is the person who has the giant stack of books by their bedside that they never read. You know, if Dream has access to every story that's ever been told, ever and ever will be told, he'd know that forgiveness is the path to his escape. Like, have you never met people before dream if you never once encountered have you never spun a dream for a person who has to learn to forgive like or are you just the dude who works in the record engineering playing who never listens to the music like i'm just i'm just cutting these platters man i'm just slinging this wax i don't need to

know tears of a clown it's motown baby i got no time for this music i think um they're like i've heard from a bunch of different people that tell me, like people who are writers have told me that they wouldn't have started the show here. I just don't know how you started without the imprisonment because what I will say is like the whole story is about how this 100 years in a bubble traumatically impacts this person, both for the good in terms of breaking through some boundaries that he has like thrown up around himself in the thousands of years of his existence. And also for the bad in terms of, you know, flavoring his opinion of humanity. And I think you, like, the whole story is a trauma response.

And so to not have that, to not have him stripped of not just his vestments, but all agency, you have to start the story there. I don't know how you get away with not unless you put it in a flashback or something. Yeah. I mean, I agree, you know, because I do think that that's important, especially for what comes after. you know, you don't want to not be able to have the 24-7 episode because you chose to begin it in a different way. Like, I think that the fruits you get from it are worth the squeeze, but I do think there's a version of the first episode that ends with him being imprisoned and not ending with him being released. You know, that there's a little bit more head to that story that tells you more about the dream that was before he's in jail.

You know, and they do some of that work. They do some of the Corinthians, the Corinthians got about to chase the Corinthiansb. I'm about to unmake the nightmare that I made. But if there's more of that, that I think that you then get to the cliffhanger is, oh, shit, I'm in jail now. What? Yeah. Interesting. That's interesting.

First of all, I can't wait to talk about Boyd and can't believe that's never now in the first mention of the Corinthiansb. But I think that's a really interesting idea and a good point because it makes me think about, you know, one of the real hammer moments at the end of this stretch of episodes, at the end of the hell arc, when Dream gets his mic drop moment of telling Lucifer that there's no hell without heaven, right? And like, this is so often a story about context and perspective and valuing the thing that you have or striving. for something else because you know that there can be something else or that there maybe was once something else for you, right? And so like, can torment exist in a vacuum? I mean, I guess

that's a question for the philosophers, but I think that one of the things that this story posits is that it has a different bearing on you if you know, if you know what it feels like to experience pleasure or peace, right? And so if we had seen dreams, in that context first, then we immediately have that frame of reference and know that he does too. Instead, we build toward that over time, which I think is fulfilling in its own way, but it's a slower burn for sure. What power does hell have its resonance cannot dream of heaven is such a fucked up thing to say to a fallen angel? Not that Lucifer didn't deserve it, but someone who's been kicked out of heaven. Wow. All right. So yeah, let's talk about the Corinthian and Lucifer and all these other characters.

As I said before, there's a blend of original characters that Neil Gaiman creates here, like the Corinthian, and some characters on loan from elsewhere in the DCverse. We're going to talk about John D. played by the great David Thuleas in our next section a bit more. So I think we can just sort of bookmark him for now. I love seeing Kane and Abel here. I thought it was like a delightful deployment of these are – this is one of the oldest stories, but also – Kane and Abel were like horror comic hosts in the DC comic universe. And so he's just like, he's just not like, Neil Gibbon being like, let's do the Bible. It's him being like, let's use these weird little DC characters over here and have them kill each other constantly.

But I want to talk about Constantine. Constantine. Joanna Constantine. I love of Joanna, always. but we've seen John Constantine played by Keanu Reeves or Matt Ryan in a number of, you know, Constantine had his own show and then he's been over on the Aeroverse, all that sort of stuff. This is a gender swap. Not NFL quarterback.

Maddie Ice Matt Ryan, right? Just to be clear. So I always feel compelled to clarify. It's like, that guy's talented. Jenna Coleman who's playing Constantine here is, you know, A lot of people know her from her work on Doctor Who as Clara, one of the doctor's companions. That's almost certainly where Neil Gaiman wrote an episode of Doctor Who that she's in. So that's almost certainly like his main association with her.

Her introduction here feels almost like a backdoor pilot to me. But that's also kind of how it feels in the comic as well. But Mark, how does this change in the character work for you? You know, it's funny because Lady Joanna Constable, Time was already a character in Neil Gaiman's Sandeman stories. And so, you know, and we will get to her as well a bit later. So the gender swapping of Constantine was never, like,

any of the changes that this production is made, you know, led by Alan Heinberg, who's the showrunner of record, and then Neil Gaiman and David Goyer all developed it together. None of the casting changes, none of the gender swapping, none of it actually bothered at all. You know, like I love the books. The books, you know, as Alan Moore will always say, my books are always on the shelf,

and if I want to visit them, I can go read them anytime I choose. And so the versions you remember as a young man when you first read these stories are always there for you. And so now we get this new version. And yes, I'm here for the Joanna Constantine Mysteries. Like, give me that CBS show, which we'll never get because CBS doesn't do that. But, you know, and it does remind me,

me so much of what is apparently Neil's love of Dr. Who, which is not just the casting of Joanna Coleman, but the capacity for stories to be linked, like Doctor Who's an anthology that's loosely connected by a giant season-long quest or a bad guy or whatever. And Sandman, when it's great, also functions that way as well. When it's dream may or may not be a character that functions largely or even in tiny ways in the story, but it's about this particular universe that we're building. And so this is a Joanna Constantine story in which Dream is a supporting character of. And I loved it. Like, more of this.

Like, there suddenly was this energy on the screen that for everything that Tom Sturge is doing, dream is not that guy. And so suddenly there's this, this rhyiness. I mean, she's doing a lot. she's certainly, you know, taking her, she's taking her moment on the stage and she's wailing a guitar solo for a good 40 minutes. And I can't be mad at it. But I would also watch a ton more of it. I want to hear from you on this.

I know you're a Constantine head. I mean, what I will say, the gender swap doesn't bother me at all. And I like, I like Jenna. I've always liked her. I like her a lot. If I would like, what I like about John Constantine is that he always looks like he rakes of cigarette smoke and just like disheveled. And the white coat is almost the thing that bothered me the most. So Constantine has this like iconic trench coat.

And I can understand how maybe they didn't want to quite do the trench coat. The trench coat was obviously like adopted and stolen by a character over on Supernatural very famously. So, like, Constantine's own look has sort of been stolen by another very popular TV character. But, you know, if she's going to be this, like, queer person who breaks hearts anyway, I think there's a version of her that could still be, like, a woman and feminine, but a little closer to the dishevel detective look of... It's like the white coat, really, honestly. And maybe how shiny and glossy your hair is. Like I just wanted a little bit more rough and tumble. I look like I don't sleep sort of rumpled vibe to her.

What do you think, Mallory? I thought her hair looked resplendent. It was beautiful. It was beautiful. I loved Joanna. I really do actually hope this is a backdoor pilot. You know, I love a backdoor pilot. I just, what's wrong with me?

I'm just so caught up in the IP machine. It keeps spinning. and there I am waiting for the next thing to drop. So I was quite taken and intrigued. And, you know, that's one of the things, right, when you introduced this many different characters this early and were with them for really quite a short while. Who are you thinking about when you leave?

And Joanna was definitely one of the characters who was on my mind at the end of the entire experience, along with Gregory. It's because you too also love Joanna's. understand. Yeah, I do. It's true. But I do hear you, Joanna, that like, there's a version of this Constantine that's more broken than Joanna Constantine is. Like, she's 100% on her shit all the time. And, like, there's never a moment where you think she's going to fail because she's unflappable because her hair is perfect, her clothes are perfect, and she can do whatever she's going to do without

any worry about it. Whereas John Constantine was always on the edge of spinning into just oblivion, like, and was broken in ways. that manifested on the outside and then ate him up from the inside. And, you know, I never got that feeling from this constantine. I enjoyed my time with her quite a bit. But, you know, I do hope that there was a version of we do a 1986 story. And then you get the version of John Constantine that, like, if there needs to be Constantine in every millennium, then we get the one that looks the most like sting.

In that episode, in that Constantine episode, we also get a lot of Matthew the Raven, who's introduced earlier in the show than he is in the comics. And I think partially it's one of those like TV, Combook to TV adaptations where you need to give your main character someone to talk to. So they're not just like we're bubbling in their own head the way that they can in a comic book. Voice by Pat and Oswald here. Speaking of that Doctor Who, you know, reference that you mentioned earlier, Mark, I had a big feeling about that around Matthew the Raven because Joanna Constantine says, my grand said Dream always has a Raven, not anymore. And then he says, not anymore, right? And that is such a strong doctor companion vibe where like whenever the doctor loses one of his companions as, you know, Dream loses Jessamy in the first episode, he's dangerous. He's dangerous. He's dangerous. by himself and the TARDIS. And everyone's like, where's your companion guy? Like, you can't travel the universe by yourself.

It's not good for you. And so that felt like such a Doctor Who moment where she's like, that's your raven, right? You should always have a raven, right? The doctor should never travel alone. The Patton Oswald voice is really interesting. This is a voice by Andy Circus in the Audubal. Just like, Andy Circus has never done a voice role incorrectly. How is Patton's approach to this sitting with you, Mark?

I mean, it's very much Patten Oswald doing a Raven. And I like Patent Oswald and I like his voice work. I mean, you know, Remy is one of my favorite characters in a Pixar movie, so I'm here for Patton Oswald. That said, there's a version of that casting that could be a little bit less calling attention to itself. You know, I never don't think it's not Patton Oswald as a Raven. and and you know which hey I admitted fan of Patent Oswald but I it just it becomes that thing where it's like is that

pardon Oswald the minute I do that I'm not quite in the fiction that they want me to be and so like Phil Lamar would have been great as a raven and would not have known it was Philhar the whole time and would have been like Philomar did that that's great that's amazing I love how many times I'm watching an animated thing and I'm like, that was Phil Lamar? What can't get a guy not do? Like, finally the person who is like a consummate profession who can disappear into the role of a raven as opposed to, you know, Patton, God bless him, will always be Pat and Oswald during the Raven. Mal? Yeah, it's funny that you say that because that was actually a time that I paused and said, wait, that's Pat Maliswold, isn't it?

and then opened IMDB to confirm because it was like, so just it really kind of stopped, stopped me in my tracks. You know, in terms of Matthew's earlier introduction, ahead of when we would expect, I liked the earlier inclusion, you know, both as a Ravens fan. Just love Ravens as creatures and, you know,

gearing up for football season here. But I thought it was, and I'm trying to be careful not to say anything from future episodes. So I'll just keep this broad. But I thought that it was helpful to be able to put a connection to dream and places dream wasn't. And also kind of interesting to in tandem. in parallel, see how dream warms to Matthew and allows Matthew to assume and occupy this role, but then how Matthew forges relationships with other characters, both in the dreaming and the waking. And that was kind of a cool and fun thing to get ahead of schedule that ultimately, I think,

served to connect the plot threads even when people were in very, like, disparate locations. All right. I'm going to follow to, like, I think I've been a little critical. of some casting stuff. Let me just express my unabashed love for the choice of Gwendolyn Christie as Lucifer. I just think this is just inspired casting. Lucifer on the page in this comic originally

is an androgynous, Bowie-esque figure. But more importantly than any of that, Gwendolyn Christie brings this like simpering politeness with menace on a leash just under the surface to her role here, just every line read sent chills down my spine. I absolutely loved her in all of this. Mark, how does this particular double work for you? I concur.

No, I think there's a, there is this plumminess to her that, like, Like, she's squeezing every bit out of each line for every just teaspoon of juice she gets out of it. And she slurps it like a chant. And so, and her wardrobe, like, every time she just shows up, like, in a robe, like, she's never, like, fully dressed until she has to go to war. But, like, otherwise, like, look at my red satin robe. And look at my little white chemise. And, like, everything seems to be, like, taking her away from other stuff that she doesn't want to be dealing with. with because I don't like being the monarch of hell.

It kind of sucks, really. But I will, I will do my appointed tasks and I will, I will perform this, the, the duties of my station. I don't want to be here. Like, and even the point where, like, she doesn't like Morpheus at all. And yet still kind of likes when Morpheus comes to call because it's, all right, this is new today. Where have you, where have you been?

I don't know my bringer. I was occupied. It's just, it's all so much fun. It's like, and then the, the throwdown that they get to have, which, yes, was not, it was Etrigan. I think it was Corns on. I think I remember correctly, right? Was that Corns on? Which they introduced towards the tail line, right?

So, not to go too far ahead. But, but yeah, just it's, it reminds me of the things that it's such a specific choice because you could make that war huge. I mean, especially on the comic book page, that could have been, you know, a giant clash of swords. It could have been dragons versus dreams versus hippogriffs versus whatever. It could have been this massive conflagration of mythological, demonic beasties. But it's a war of words because that's the story Neil wants to tell, because that's how he likes telling stories. It's presented in the comic is almost like a poetry slam, almost. Yeah, I mean, it's a magician's battle, a classic of the genre.

People might know it best from like T. White did it in sort of the stone. And then Disney, of course, did it in their sword and the stone, right? The battle between Merlin and Madam Mim, the sheepshifter showdown. Puss and Boots has a version of it, right? Like it's an iconic of the genre. But I love how it plays out here. And I love, it's, Lucifer pulls the same move that Merlin pulls, which is, I'm a bacterium, right?

But Dream has a few more moves beyond that, that Mim could not take on, but Dream has some ideas there. I also, I mean, like, in hell here, I want to talk about this Nata moment that we get between Nata and Kikul, where, first of all, we learn that Dream appears differently to different people, right? He's not just a goth. He can be other things. But we get this tease of something that we may or may not, I mean, I'm sure they probably will,

but they didn't do it in the chronological order. It appears in the comics. Give us an answer to this not a question of like, what did this woman who dream loves do that is so awful that he doomed her to thousands of years of torment in hell? Without that answer, which again comes a little earlier in the comics. Mallory, how does that play out for you? What does this do to our ability to connect with Dream to see him be this cruel to someone? Interesting question. So I think that part of what makes that cruelty feel quite central is that it is not only venom, right?

We hear, yes, I do still love you, but I'm not ready to forgive. And there's something actually more terrible about that, right, about your capacity to do that to somebody who you do actually hold deep feelings toward and that that is in fact why you were doing that to a person. You know, dream often feels very separate from human beings as a member of the endless as the dream king. But that right there, that's what people do to each other all the time, right? you hurt the people that you love and care about the most. And so I liked, I mean, that prologue, that opening of volume two is like stunning and gorgeous. And so I hope that we get that tale in full in season two of this show. But I liked getting just a little nod.

It almost felt like a promise of what was to come. But I would be curious to know how like that landed for people who don't have that frame of reference from the comic. Yeah. I mean, I think that this first season is doing a lot, especially towards the end of it, but even here, to tee us up for what season two is going to be, you know, which does seem, you know, with a lot of other things in there, because every one of these arcs is full of these little wonderful cul-de-sacs of joy. But the Lucifer v. Morpheus showdown and what ultimately is going to take part in that, and it does seem like

and not a Kikul's story is integral to that particular tale. So I do appreciate the teeing up things we're going to get later in depth, especially when it comes to hell. One of my favorite of the titles of the comic book, title of the episode title of the issue, this idea that like, you know, dreams trump card in the showdown is hope and lose for simpers at him, you know, what power can dream. have in hell, you know, sort of thing. And the way that Nata exemplifies that, because, like, this is her hope of liberation, right?

And then almost his hope of, am I over this yet? You know that feeling where you're, like, really want to be over something? And you're just not. And you're like, can I get to the emotionally involved place? And dreams, like, no, it's been a few thousand years and I'm still not over it, whatever it is that we can't talk about yet. But that hope and the cruelty of Etrigan to bring him by the cage there as a torment, specifically designed that very personal hell for Morpheus. Let me hold up a deep moment of pain for you.

And also a dark mirror to yourself of how you have not evolved in any way beyond who you were when you did this. I just love that tease. And yeah, I think there are a lot of seeds that we will watch flower. and blossom as we go along. I want to talk about the Corinthian, but I know we're going to talk about him much more later, but just to say that they brought him in earlier, and I never am upset to see Boyd at all in anything he does in this season. If it means we got to see the Corinthian in a boater hat, what a joy for all of us in the way

in which he's pulling strings throughout is a big adaptive change for the comic, but I think it works really well. But I want to get us out of the section into the next one, but I cannot do that until I give Mallory moment to talk about poor Gregory. Mallory, this was what you texted me first and foremost on brand. Oh, man. Yeah. So painfully on brand. I mean, yeah, it was the first note I said to Joe about my viewing experience. And I didn't even use an emoji. I went old school, emoticon, you know, kept it classic. Just a little frowny face feeling really sad. That was painful and like harrowing but also beautiful.

I was really touched and moved and quite sad to see Gregory go and dream absorb that power. And I thought it was an interesting choice because obviously in the comics, there's the handing over of the letters, right? And so that changed that early in the story, you just know that viewers at home are going to be like, yeah, this, yeah, like this gargoyle is. is awesome. I'm in. I love a magical creature, right? And then to immediately have to say goodbye to see Dream ask that of Gregory. And on the one hand, it builds your respect for Dream because there's that, well, I'm not here to ask you, Cain and Abel. I'm here to ask Gregory if Gregory

will make that choice. And so that's like a helpful thing. But then also you resent that he would ask it at all. But then Gregory does make the sacrifice. And I could talk about, Gregory all day. I'm excited to talk about Goldie more in the future. All in all, I was really in on the Cain and Abel and Gregory and Goldie stretch. We get some of that highly meta discussion of story and the nature of story and the way that the stories that you hear throughout your life inform the way that you think about relationships in the world and the choices people make. And then the lies, but also the dreams, the hopes, right? It all connects to that idea of hope and needing to be able to believe that a better, a better future is possible all connects to

each other. So it was very sad to see Gregory go. All right. Before we head in the next section, Mark, is there anything you want to say about Gregory or Goldie or Abel or anyone else in the first section here? I was so tempted, but I won't say it because I have nothing but a respect for people in the world of love that Gregory's. But, so I'm not going to say, fuck that dragon. But I won't. Because I think that what's more important about it is it's the beginning of us dealing with the way the show sees death, which will be personified later on, which is, you know, this we'll talk about later. But the idea that death does not have to be sad, even when it's sad.

The idea that death doesn't have to be the end, even when it feels like it's the end. And the idea that Morpheus as a character is not entirely cruel, even when he does things that feel cruel. There's always this empathy when he's doing an act like that, even when he's unmaking other characters later on, even when he's imprisoning other characters later on. There's always this sense of, I don't want to have to be doing this, but this is my job as the monarch of the dreaming to do these things. And I'm sorry, Gregory, but I need to call on your service one last time to go and take that hill. By the way, that hill's about to be destroyed by a bunch of artillery fire, but you've got to take that hill on me. So it's like, I know it's bad, Gregory, but I need the you to do what I need to save everybody. Yeah.

There is something very, like, gentle about it that allows for you to. And then ultimately, like, the generosity of thinking about. Gregory when he finds the egg later to bring them and that leads to Goldie, right? And the, the embrace, the recognition of the need, but also the welcoming embrace that Gregory greets that moment with. I agree completely does set the stage for episode six and some of the larger themes of the story quite nicely. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tramphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start.

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It's not because you want to see whether or not I'm ready to seek death. I don't think I'll ever seek death. By now you know that about me. So, I think you're here for something else. And what might that be? Friendship. I think you're lonely. You dare.

No, look, I'm not saying... You dare. Suggest one such as I might need your companionship. Let's talk about episode five and six. All right. So here we are, part two of a three-part thing, an hour into the podcast, classic on brand for us. Okay. So death and destruction is part two. This is episodes five and six titled 24-7 and the sound of her wings, which cover the issues 24 hours, sound and fury, the sound of her wings and men of good fortune in which a mentally unstable John D. He holds a diner hostage with the help of Doreen's Ruby, and it's absolutely disgusting. Did I mention this is a horror comic? Dream gets the Ruby back, hangs out with his favorite sister death, and makes friends over the centuries with a human named Hobgadling. Sounder Wings is, like, the issue of Sandman.

It's the most, like, if you see a panel out there somewhere, it's probably from this issue. This is the issue where Neil Gaiman's like, oh, hey, I think I got the hang of this. Everyone's like, yeah, you really did. And his conception of death as a bubbly gossip. Girl, inspired by a model he knew named Cinnamon Hadley, is such a key game and moving out of I'm going to take some of these DC characters and make them in my own into I'm going to create something wholly new and iconically mine that is going to become its own cultural impact. We're going to talk about both of these episodes because 24-7 is also a very, very

very, very important episode of the season. This is when Mallory hopped on board when things got super disgusting. Overall impressions of these two, Mark, how are you feeling overall about these two? Yeah, this for me is when, A, the comic book became what it is, or at least what it would mean to me going forward.

And I think it's similarly, you know, a bit where the show finds its footing in its most assured way. I think the John D stuff is, harrowing and uncomfortable, you know, the idea that, that I think as Maloney's alluded to, lies are stories too, and all stories have import. And lies are the lubrication that lets the world move on its path. And without it, you know, this is the sad effect.

If I had one criticism of this episode, it's that I've never seen a diner that was lit this way. But I thought that was kind of cool. So, like, as the story goes on, the second time I watched it through, I really enjoyed the way in which the red glow ebbs and flows, because they've got, like, a couple panes of red glass in with, like, yellow glass. And so they shot it so that when the character was talking clearly under the influence of Ruby, there's a red glow reflecting on their face, but it all comes from a natural source. So there's the red panes of glass, there's the like red open sign, you know, that's over by the booth. And then in the kitchen, it's like the heat lamp on the counter. There's like a red light source naturally occurring for all of these red blows to bask on their face.

Absolutely not overall a natural diner design. I've also never seen a diner that looks that clean, but, you know, at least at the beginning. But I loved those little. Yeah. Like, I just, I just would have wanted it to get there. You know, like, the minute we show up in this diner, like, there's one light bulb that's on, and everything else feels like dark and green and yellowy and whatever. It's like, no, no, no, I get it. But the arc of that story is how the horror descends on this place because of John D.

And so as the ruby is taking effect, then you get to, you just get to help tell that story visually as opposed to, oh, I walked into a horror diner. I expect bad things to happen in the horror diner. because look at this. That said, like, all of the casting choices are really strong and smart. You know, David Phyllis, my God, like he doesn't have, he, it's not even like he has a ton to do because there's a lot of him just sitting and looking at people. And, you know, having a couple of interactions with Bet, asking her about her dreams to be a writer and, you know, talking about, you know, just I wanted, I don't want, I hate it when people lied to me.

And so I don't want any more lies, no more lies. And then how that manifest is all super great. And just the tiny drops of those horror beats are so expertly done. I mean, it's a bottle show, right? It's six characters in a diner. It's an old Twilight Zone episode, you know, which will the real Martian please stand up? Except they're also hacking each other to pits with cleavers. And it's beautifully gory.

I just thought this was a sensational hour of TV. really, really incredible. I love David Dullis, always, and it was a treat. Obviously, he's in the story before this episode, in a harrowing fashion with Rosemary and that car ride and with his mother previously when he receives the amulet from her and goes in the pursuit of the Ruby. The diner sequence, that bottle episode quality that Mark just spoke to, because Dream enters again at the end of this episode, right?

This closing act of episode five for this showdown, the ultimate destruction of the Ruby, the recognition that John D cannot see beyond the next logical move, just as he cannot see truly the nature of humanity or the role of, you know, we will lies. Well, of course, this has a certain horrible, connotation, but if you flip it just a little, if you just change that one degree, then it can be aspiration. And isn't that a better way to think about it? Maybe that's the better world that he's

trying to build, right? And so, like, there's a part of this episode. And, you know, Jono's, like, I'm not actually a horror genre fan and I'm, in fact, quite a coward when it comes to horror stories. But not only does that not bother me at all here, I just thought this was so adeptly and disturbingly rendered little touches like what you're hearing. And of course, this is a part of this comic issue as well. But what you're glimpsing on the TV, right? The news reports in the sense that this really like disturbing acknowledgement that this is not just happening here in this contained space. Like this isn't a petri dish for John Dee's will. This is spreading and sprawling and is already uncontained across the globe. This idea. This idea,

idea that like if you stripped people of the compulsion to lie, to tell themselves a fiction, to make other people try to feel good, to tell people the things that you think you need to say in order to like exist in society abide by social norms, just get to the next part of your day, that everybody would just want to like fuck each other or kill each other? Maybe. I mean, it's like pretty grim, right? Quite bleak. But it feels true enough that you actually like opt in fully as you're watching that unfurl. And then, of course, you build toward that moment where Dream can say and John has to confront that, like, that is not actually humanity. That is not actually what it means to be a person and to try to make it through the day or through your life.

If it is sitting at that table trying to express to another person why you want a certain thing. Like that is central and foundational to existing, right? And I just loved, loved, loved this episode. I think six, which we'll talk about in a minute, was superior even to this and was like truly sublime. And these two were my favorite in the entire season. But I just thought this was great. I really hope that we get Phyllis who, you know, he's awesome.

Playing Lupin, but also what he's tapping into here is what he does in Fargo season three, which is this like primal, terrifying thing that he can do. I like the update to his motivation because I, you know, in the comics it's a simple, I'm going to, I just kind of want to just watch the world burn. And here connecting it to his relationship with his mother, I thought Julie Richardson did a great job with Ethel Cripps, like connecting to being brought up by a mother and his fixation on lies and the damage of lies. And I think I like the idea that, you know, these are also just dreams, like dreams we tell it, dreams we weave for ourselves, all that sort of stuff.

There is also the damaging, the slightly damaging storytellers because, like, bet as someone who aspires to be a storyteller, that's wonderful. also some of these stories that she's making, like, here's this perfect couple that I created, aren't they great together? Or initially when she's trying to connect, you know, a gay woman in her, in her sphere with a young man and ignoring her sexuality. Like, there are certain lies here or ignoring the reality of what Marsh is doing. Like, there are certain lies that are destructive or damaging. But I like, I love dreams. Spin on it all at the end of things. Also, I love that you, I'm glad you brought up Rosemary because that's a massive adaptive change for John D here in the comics that ride ends with him shooting Rosemary in the face.

And like, for those of us who know that, watching the show, he reaches into his coat and you're like, Jesus Christ. Not the cool, cool therapist from Ted Lassau. Oh, my God. Protect her. And then he gives her the amulet instead, like the exact opposite, right? And so I think Gamen wanted to further complicate a character who is a, you know, a super villain on loan out of Arkham Asylum in the comics. But instead make him something much more nuanced and complicated here. I'm really glad you mentioned that, Joe, because it makes me think of, you know, one of the central moments in the episode is the exchange that he has with Bet about like the nature of endings in stories.

And she says it like, oh, I must write fiction because all my stories have happy. endings and he says, well, that's because you know when to stop. That idea that all stories end in death, even though this version of the character just made a different choice so that that wasn't the case actually in his interaction with Rosemary. And then like you build toward dreams decision to not kill John, right? And to kind of grapple with the fact that he, these tools, this tool to Ruby became to be in his possession and it shouldn't have. And it would have been too much for him or anyone. And that doesn't absolve him of his culpability. But it's never simple inside of the story,

right? And to add extra complexity in a tale where that's already true, I think is pretty fascinating. And that is also at play with like with the the presentation of death as this like looming thing that is in the, that exchange, the opposite of a happy ending, but like to connect it to what Mark was saying earlier about Gregory, right, this LART and to build into the, to transition into the next episode that we're going to talk about, like this recognition that that doesn't have to be the case, right? And that the way that humanity struggles with that is like a core aspect of being. So I thought that that was cool, like, even though these are very isolated stories, here, like they still on a thematic level, like, really connect in terms of that larger idea.

I will say that stylistically, I did miss the conceit from the comic book of you would check in every hour, the 24 hours, 24 pages. And I just remember my favorite was always like hour 16, games in the dark. And it was just like a black panel in somebody like screaming, you know, that feeling that we were in this chapter story. And that every chapter was this increasingly maddening nightmare within this diner. I always dug. And I think there's something, and this is not just my desire to see more nudity on screen,

but the length they went to show is the violence. And then they pulled so short on showing us the lust. Like if this is supposed to be the two versions of the twin dragons of the human conditions. I almost wanted them to be pulpier with the lust version to go as far as they were going to go. And I do think, if I remember correctly, and it's been a minute since I read this particular book, but the stuff with Marsh and Betts Sun, I don't remember it in the book being quite so whitewashed as, oh, these are just two consenting adults who want to have sex. Like I remember Marsh was like a bad dude. It's like a prison assignation. Yeah.

Yeah. So like... Yeah, it wasn't like, he's 21. Age of consent. You know, like that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. I think that's really fair. I mean, yeah, if we have to watch like bloody, bloody stumps of fingers and all that sort of stuff like that, like that.

Like, why is the sex and soft focus in the background between two fully clothed people in a booth? I think that's a very fair point. I think also, I mean, we should mention we neglected. mention them in the first part. We should mention them here. The fates, which are going to be an ongoing important part of the story. And I love their use here when we have the three women and they're sort of like rapid cut with the fates who we met in part one. And, you know, these, obviously these creatures of myth and how scary they are even while they're offering like guidance and help, how terrifying they are. But, you know, to your point,

in the myth when the fate snip your thread, it's almost dispassionate. It's not as compassionate as what we get from death in the next episode when she's speaking to a baby and says, yep, sorry, that's your time, right? But it's just sort of like your thread snipped. What else are you going to do? The face snip is your thread. That's all the thread you get. That's it.

It's done. So I'm glad they're here. I'm very scared of them. I like them very much. Anything else we want to say about the diner before moving on to everyone's best friend in the world? Death. Incredibly played by Kirby Howell Bastille, who is an actress who's like never, never unwelcome. Always fantastic.

A different spin on this character, the like bubbly, perky goth thing is not really what she's doing here. But it just feels much more grounded and genuine and still so warm and still a surprise version of death. I think especially in that like Apple exchange, you know, you just get this real sense of her sweetness and her love for humanity. Mark, I saw you, I think, tweeting about this episode. Talk to me about its impact on you. Yeah, I mean, this episode is now broken me in three separate mediums. You know, it broke me on the page. It broke me in the audible rendition where Kat Dennings is playing death. And then it broke me here because it's a story that could be grim, is grim.

You know, the things that happen in it are not even to say monstrous, but it's, we're just watching a bunch of people die. is the narrative of this episode. But the way in which Neil and the producers and the writers have recontextualized the act of death and the character of death as this, you know, like a nurse who's like making her rounds, stopping at each room, checking the chart, now's the time, now's the time. And the way, you know, this is the episode that makes the first five episodes mandatory, which is death needs to be this person to meet dream at this point in his narrative, who doesn't understand his role anymore, who doesn't know who he's supposed to be, who's done these things that he thought were his plot.

And now he's completed that, but now he's left hollow and empty, which I imagine has been much of his existence. up until this point, which is I do the things I'm supposed to do. I take care of the dreaming. I inspire dreams. I create nightmares as it ever was. And now he's at this place in his endless life where he's finding himself up against a choice. And to see dreams version of that story, and to see her how she understood the truth of her existence. And that's how she spent so much of her time, you know, hating herself because of what she had to do and then finding the grace within it to then be this person who is there for people, who's the last hand that they hold

before they go off into the Great Unknown, is just this glorious, wonderful refashioning of what everyone on the planet sees as their worst moment. I just think it's beautiful, you know, And I think that Kirby conjures this vision of death that is less playground friend and is more, you know, just tender caregiver who understands that what you need at that moment

is not, you know, wailing tears. It is not, you know, let's go and play jacks in the park. It's, it's, I'm going to hold your hand and I'm just going to watch you go and I'm going to tell you what you need to know and I'm going to take you where you need to go.

You know, I, yeah, this remains one of my favorite issues of the book, and it was my favorite issue of a favorite episode of the show. When she says now is when you get to find out, right? Like, yes. You know, again, I thought that this episode was absolutely sensational. I have no doubt it will be the one from this season that I returned to most often. I thought that, Mark, what you just said was absolutely beautiful

and yet you captured it perfectly. The two halves of this episode, death and dream, and then the hub and dream plot, those are not the same issue of the comic. They're not even consecutive issues of the comic, right? And to put those together here and to create this adjacency between this really, like, lyrical and poetic and lovely embrace of moving on, moving forward in all of the different ways that we do in our lives. and then to go into a story about a character who refuses to do that in like a less deftly told version of this

could, I think, have felt like inverted or backwards or like it in some way thwarted the takeaway, but it was exactly the opposite, right? Because this was the episode where we really, well, I'll speak for myself, where I really, like, began to care about this version of dream. I mean, it's that old screenwriting trick where, like, if you get a character that I care about to care about you, it's like the fact that death cares about Dream makes me care about Dream more, right? Well, but also, like, obviously, like the story with Hobb stretches back in time, right? And we get this little mention, this acknowledgement, this question from death to Dream. And even though those lessons are ones that in many ways have been like embedding themselves inside of Dream for some time, it is this conversation with death that really unlocks it and builds toward that eventual meeting. And so you have like just the first half of this episode with death is just so gorgeous and like contained on its own would still have been the best part of the season, right?

Like you have that absolutely stunning sequence where where dream is saying, you know, I find myself wondering about humanity. Their attitude toward your gift is so strange. Like this this actual disconnect. for character like Morpheus, for a member of the endless, like why do people fear death? And then you build toward like the actual answer, right? There's an exchange between death and dream where death explains that it's not about quest, right?

Our purpose is our function. And I need them as much as they need me. This is clarifying. This connects something. Dream literally says in response, you've taught me something I'd forgotten. Thank you. But the reason that.

that this is like a perfect episode of television and really expertly executed is because you understand that well before that moment. You have that tiny, quick, organic little bridge crossing. Quite literally, they are walking across a bridge and death takes off her shoes, right, and says, it's good to touch the earth with your bare feet. Like, perfection, right? What more do you need to know and to understand how these characters will ultimately be able to embrace the idea of what it means to be a human, to dig your toes into something and feel yourself rooted and grounded in your surroundings and the experience, like to feel the weight of it and the heft of it and to try to understand why you would want to hold on to that and how hard it is to move beyond

that, but also then what a gift it is to have a moment like that at the end where those wings, right? The sound of the beating wings could be a sound of terror. That could be the most menacing thing in the world. But that's not what we get. It's this like rhythmic, gentle, guiding fan, like blowing you forward into whatever's next. And that's for you to glimpse and discover on your own. So this was just like an incredible hour of TV. Also, I thought, The Hobb stuff was awesome. I mean, we were talking more about death as we should, but I just loved the Hobbs. We're going to talk about Hobbs in a second.

But I think also the choice that the episode makes, which not every TV creator would be able to resist, is to not show us to adhere to the sound of her wings rather than showing us her take flight, you know, to. And like, the beauty of this, like, leaving Hobb aside for a second, the beauty of this interaction between Drew's and death is like visually there's a lot of challenges in adapting the art of Sandman to the screen. And the first four episodes, especially like the Hellscape or when we're in the dreaming, there's a lot of heavy digital effect work, a lot of greed screen background, all that sort of stuff. To know that you can capture the spirit of this comic with a walk-and-talk of two actors just walking around on a sunny day, walking in and out of houses without any digital effect

other than the shadow of her wings on the wall in the other room that's so powerful to know that yeah this is a visual medium and yeah sometimes you're going to want it

to splash out in big ways but at its core it's these concepts these conversations these deep thoughts that Neil Gaiman has about

what does make dream worse than death? I was thinking about that like whether or not we agree with him, like, let's entertain the idea. And is it because, like, a nightmare is, it's not just a hell. It's your personal. It's a hell of your own making that you've created and trapped inside your own head. Right. Like that's, how is that not worse than anything else? A torture someone else could advise for you is the thing that you create out of your own personal demons that exist inside of you, that idea of dream being worse than death. And of course, not every death is hell. Of most deaths aren't hell. necessarily, like, by the rules of this universe. And I do like that the way that the show keeps saying, especially since we get several people of the Jewish faith in this season, keep saying heaven if you believe in it, or hell if you believe in something like that, you know, like being respectful of the, like, active beliefs of various faiths and stuff like that.

Mark, like, what is the idea in this sequence that most sticks with it? with you at the end of it all. It's, I was just thinking about this. It's when the gentleman playing violin is playing this Schubert piece, and then they walk in and death says, well, keep going, by all means. And he says, there is no more. He never finished it.

You know, the idea that life is an unfinished symphony, because death always interrupts it. Because there is always more song that could have been sung. but we'll never get to hear it. And so that little couplet, you know, that's the moment that broke me. Because that's the nature of life. That's the nature of existence. That's the nature of wanting to make things.

You know, that's the nature of story. You know, John D. alludes to it, you know, that every story ends in death. If you followed it to its logical conclusion, but nobody ever does. You know, and the idea that every piece of music, could go further, except for either the intent of the creator of set piece of music or the circumstances around that person's life. You know, and it's, it is for many reasons this story that makes Sandman find its footing, you know, to understand what it is.

That, you know, and we have seen quite a bit of spectacle before this, to your point, Joanna, that we've seen the dreaming unmake and remake itself. We've seen him try to conjure new libraries. We've seen the gates of hell. We've seen, you know, all of that, you know, digital wonder. But it is just two people in a park talking. It is just three people in a room having a conversation. It is just picking up a baby.

And then the sound of that crying is not there anymore. You know, it is just these little tiny moments, these intimacies that should not be in a comic book story except fundamentally make this comic book. story what it is. You know, the fact that the other part of this couplet, the hobgaddling story, is just two people in bars. You know, we are never seeing the slave ships that crash. We're never seeing, you know, the queen show up at his house for dinner. We're never seeing all of these things of resplendent wonder. We're just seeing two people talking about life and what it means to keep living. And the potential for hope down the road that whatever comes

comes will be better than what came. I think that this is what Sandman can do while it's also doing that other stuff. It can just take these moments and sit down and tell you a story. You know, I remember I went to an evening with Neil Gaven, a reading that is this tour that he just went on. And he began by reading a story. They were chivalry out of a collection. And he said, it's always interesting doing readings like this because people don't know how to respond because it's been so long since adults were told a story. Nobody's read us a story since we were children. And so we don't know if we're supposed to applaud or if we're supposed to laugh at the funny parts or whatever because we're so used to a stand-up comedy. It was used to whatever.

I'm just reading the story and the ability for a show to just tell you a story and for you to just sit there and take it and ingest it and process it and move on without the bells and whistles we're so used to. It's a magical thing when a show can do that, when it knows itself well enough that it can just do that. Let's talk about, I was beautiful, by the way. Let's talk about Hobgadling. Gentlemen of Good Fortune, which is this issue, the comic, comes like in the midst of the dollhouse story that we're going to talk about in the final section of this podcast as almost like enough of something completely different, which as Mark alludes to is like ingreasingly what Sandman becomes. And I believe in the Audible version, they also moved it up. So like the move

is something that Gaman has had on his mind where he's just like, this doesn't belong here. Let's move it elsewhere. And I should say that like preludes of nocturns, which is the first collected edition and the dollhouse, which is the second, I have an edition of the dollhouse. That is it has a recap of what happens in preludes and nocturns, and then it has sound of her wings, which is the end of preludes and nocturns, and then it has the dollhouse. And that's just sort of like yada, yada, yada, yada, the first four episodes of this Netflix show. Then we're going to give you the death issue, which is a classic. Now here we go into the dollhouse. And I thought that's such an interesting publication choice.

It's not every edition, but that's like an edition that I have. But I have gadling played by Ferdinand Kingsley, who's Ben Kingsley's son, if his face looked at all familiar to you. Also, Ferdinand is the best name for a human I've ever heard. Is, yeah, there's a few things I love about this. First of all, the almost a heartbreakingly sweet humanity of the fact that Dream changes his clothing over the centuries. Like, he's not just wearing the late 80s gothic coat.

Like, he goes with the fashion. That's such a weird little human touch for an endless year. And then also that hobgatling himself is not any paragon of virtue or, like, he's just a guy and not always a great guy. And this is the guy. But in terms of the power of storytelling, which is always a. on our mind. Death, as Mark alluded to, death reshapes her story.

She's like, I've decided to change, change what my short story is. I'm not this horrible thing that comes. I'm the, the gentle caregiver. In Hobgadling's story here, we get, first of all, a bunch of different storytellers.

We see Jeffrey Chaucer. We see William Shakespeare. Like, that's on their mind, the idea of, like, legacy and stories over the centuries and all that sort of thing. Also, very populous storytellers, William Shakespeare, and Jeffrey Chaucer. These aren't, like, the high-flown poets. These are the populace of their time.

So for Neil Game and the comic book writer to be like, here's some guys that were just, like, of the people and look at their legacy. But also, I think what's most important about the hobgadling thing is that it's not just the stories we tell or the stories we tell over and over again in bars. is one of the most fun things about the issue is that the chatter in the bar at the opening of the issue is the same as the chatter in the bar at the closing of the issue, even though centuries have passed. They're still talking about poll taxes

and other things. It's the same conversation. But it's the stories that we know about each other. Like Hobb and Dream aren't like best pals who have had many adventures together, but they know each other and they know each other's stories. They know at least the time that Lady Joanna Constantine tried to crash their party or whatever.

And there's so much power in someone who's known you for so long, someone who knows all of your stories, someone who knows your history. Like you can make new friends that, you know, maybe connect to you more viscerally on certain things. But there's that old, like, childhood friend, or maybe it's your family who just knows all your stories going all the way back. And how much power that kind of story has, which I think is what makes the hobgadling so power. I don't know why I connect to that, this story so much, but it is just like, it gets me as emotional as the death stuff. And I love that they paired it together. Strength after strength here. You know what I mean?

Mel? Yeah, I agree. I thought that this was also awesome. Shout out Ferdinand Kingsley, one of the best sips of whiskey that I've ever seen on TV. Just like incredible. My God. I think that Joe, what you're mentioning there about, like, what it really, what friendship really means, but also what it really means to know somebody is so essential to why this really, like, is an incredibly gripping. Only half, half episode of TV here.

Because one of the through lines is Hobb actually repeatedly saying, you don't tell me anything about yourself. I share and I share. I tell you about the chimneys and how the smoke's no longer bothering my eyes. You won't tell me anything about who you are or what you've been through, right? And yet, the organic shared experience of just passing time together and building a ritual together, right? And like what the rhythm that you find with another person comes to mean. to you. And like I love that.

And you know, Joe, you had like a note in our outline about how changing the timeline of the story changes the end point here because dream can't make the visit, right? Like, you have this exchange after these ups and downs, this rise to fortune, this, this, this lowering and loss of family members, loss of the material, right? All of these different things. Confronting hubris, staying in one place for too long, getting greedy, getting cocky, all of the things that would happen to you if you lived for this long, right?

All of the things that you would strive for. And Dream is waiting for this moment of, okay, it's too much. I don't want it anymore. I have no one to share it with. And it is a genuine and great surprise, particularly on the heels of the I have hated every minute of the last 80 years, well, I'm still not ready to pack it up.

Of course I want to keep living. Like, life is definitionally full of possibility. And Hob is at least not the character who has gotten to the point yet of saying maybe death is too, right? And then what is essential, though, is that it is not just about dream as some like voyeur or gawker who is simply observing this other person's rather fixed amid the change. perspective, it's that dream has to confront something, too. And I'm like, I'm really glad you mentioned the outfits because Dream is so interested, so intrigued to hear Hobb describe what has changed. But Dream himself is changing and just isn't even thinking about it that way in those

concrete terms. Well, why is your hair different? Well, why is what you're wearing different? Because you are evolving to fit the context of the scene you're walking through. And so to shift from this affront, like how dare you imply? How very dare you? Frankly, how dare you imply that we are friends? Because what does that mean? It means I need you, right? And it means I need someone else at all, ever, for anything.

And then, of course, dream is not there. And so Hobb has to wrestle and grapple. What does it mean? Maybe we're not friends. And to not give up, right? to make sure that he's still there waiting and believes that Dream will walk back in one day and he does just like amazing. It's really an incredible thing to get us to care that deeply about this relationship in 20 minutes.

Like that's a marvel. That is a marvel. And you don't even need a line like the friend line that Dream utters to understand what has unfolded and what lesson our central figure has learned. but we get it. And it is the fact that that lesson, the larger lessons across this episode, what death has taught dream,

what Hobb has taught dream, what dream is recognizing about humanity and thus about Morpheus himself, like these characters cannot be as interesting as they ultimately are if they are completely separate, right? You have to lean into what it means to be human, even if you are the ruler of the dream world because the dream world is filled

with the things that humans long for. And so it's all one big blend of stardust out in the cosmos. I just, I loved this episode. I could end the podcast here, frankly, though we still haven't talked about Boyd. Mark, how many years would you wait for me to show up to the pub to meet with you? To the bar of TCA's?

At the Langham Hotel in Pasadena. At the Langham Hotel, Pasadena. I would wait an eternity for you, Joe. It's funny, there's an episode, it has one of my favorite titles of an episode ever because I don't understand what it means. It's for a Battlestar Galactic episode called Islanded in a stream of stars. Oh, yeah.

And I still could not tell you how that relates to whatever happened in that episode of Battlestar. but the idea that it relates to these two individuals in this story, who are both people for whom have no connections because they can't, other than for Dream to his siblings, who he almost never sees, except for occasionally bouncing into death. But then again, time means nothing to him, so much as it has meant nothing to us for the last three years.

But Dream is the only person that Hob Gatling can rely on, because everybody else will die. I mean, it is the vampire story. It's the Highlander story. It's the folly of immortality. The idea that at some point you will love something and it will fade and you will remain. And so what does that mean? And how does one go on if that's their existence?

And so it's fundamentally clear why Hobb needs Morpheus. Because he is the only reference point he has in this existence of, oh, you'll be there for me, whether or not you know it, but I can rely on the count on the next hundred years. I will bounce into this dude and I'll tell some stories. And the idea that we are following with dream and understanding what he doesn't, which is you similarly need Hop Gatling, because he's the one person in all the world, in all of the universe, who you don't know, really. He has new things for you, unlike your siblings who you've known since forever. And they will betray

even backstab you and whatever. But, you know, like, we all know our brothers and sisters, but that's the family we're born into. They're not the family we made. And Hobgadling is literally the only family he's ever made. And, and yeah, I mean, I also have those friends that I speak to once a year, maybe. But when I speak to them, it's as if time hadn't passed at all. Yeah.

You know, and it is not for lack of love. It is not for lack of connection. It is just simply the way our friendships has metastews. catastrophized over the decades. Well, yeah, I went to high school with you, but now we're both grown-ass people, and we have things to do. And if you catch me in the car, we will talk for two hours. And then I will speak to you next fall, you know.

And so to watch Dream begin to understand that he has that relationship with somebody and the resentment of it and then the embracing of it at the end of it is just, it's lyrical and it's lovely and it's wonderful and it feels the closest to a one-to-one adaptation from the comics into the TV show that we'll get because it's literally 25 pages long and like that's all you need. Thank you for mentioning Highlander. It did remind me actually a lot of Highlanders. So thank you so much. And also there was like when he says how very dare you and sort draws himself up and all of his like black clad imperiousness, that is such a vampire moment to me. Like this is like such a vampire moment.

The, we do want to move on to the final section. This has already been a long conversation. But something that I want, I just want to just retread really quickly that thing that Mallory said about the timeline change in the ending of the story. Because in this comes out in this comic comes out in 89, right? And so as you notice, the centuries pass, it's 1589, 49, 1489, it's 1689, 1789. So in the comics, basically Morpheus high-tails it right out of the bubble into his 1989 assignation. And in this, he misses it.

And so Hobb has to figure out whether or not he should take his word that he'll never see him again, right? Or that they're not friends or wait for him. And I think that's such an interesting choice to keep the start time the same. So, I mean, it might just because of the way that William Shakespeare and Jeffrey Chaucer had to line up or something like that. I don't know why he kept the start time the same so that he had to do this different thing at the end. But I think this thing at the end makes it so much stronger. And to have his decision to go see Hobb be not just inspired by, again, that trauma in the bubble that he experiences for a century, but also with that conversation with his sister. So.

I also love the idea that we don't get to see it, but it's Hobgadling who drew in graffiti the new place sign. And leading Morpheus from what he thought he was going to go. So we can find his way to the new part. Not only that, but like I completely made this up in my own head. And when I rewatched the episode, I was like, oh, that's not necessarily true. But I made it up that like Hobb opened the new pub around the corner that he owns it. And it's just like. Yeah.

I thought that was my feeling, too. Okay. Yeah. That he like insisted that there would be a place. Yeah. That he just made sure that Morpheus would be able to find him. Yeah. And he was just like sitting there in his pub, like doing some pub business.

And he's just there every day in case Morpheus coming by. That's the story I tell myself. Can I ask you a question? Shoot. What's your name? Have you ever noticed how people only ever use your name when you're in trouble? Jed. We need to talk, Jed.

Get in here, Jed. You sound like my uncle Barnaby. Exactly. All right, we're going to head into the final part, so, you know, get yourself ready. Press pause if you haven't finished, but the rest of the conversation is for the rest of the show. Episode 7 through 10, the doll's house, playing house, collectors, and lost hearts, which cover issues the dollhouse moving in, playing house, collectors into the night and lost hearts. In which a young woman named Rose Walker goes searching for her little brother Jed meets an eccentric found family in a house in Florida. Rose's status as a dream vortex has made her a subject of interest to both dreams, sibling, desire, and the nightmare at Corinthian.

Rose's friend Lita is seduced into the dreaming in order to spend time with her dead husband, Hector. Everything converges at a serial killer convention where Unity Kincaid, whom we met in episode one, sacrificed herself to save her great-granddaughter, as opposed to her granddaughter in the comic Rose. I do feel like we're going to have to blow through this a little faster than I would want to just because of timing-wise. but maybe we could let's, Mallory, tell me your favorite part about these last episodes. Oh boy. Well, let's talk about the Corinthian

for a minute here because we haven't yet. All day every day. What an unbelievable performance. Boyd Holbrook. This was deranged, but also measured in the best possible way and I loved it. I would watch

Boyd's Corinthian try to fuck a table and I'd that he probably has, you know? That's my summation. Can I just tell you one comment I saw on Reddit, which was asking, do you think his eye mouths moan when he has sex along with his mouth-mouth? Mallorne, what do you think? I'm going to say yes.

There's a really funny moment in the audible version because Riz Ahmed plays the Corinthian in the audible. There's a funny moment at the very end when he takes off his sunglasses and they triple his voice. So you hear like three little voices talk instead of just a one, Just the mouth mouth. Just the mouth mouth. Mark. How deep do you think the sockets in his head go?

Oh, like, are there a little eye esophagi? Is that your question? You know, like, I'm just, it's unclear if we're going to talk about sex with a Corinthian. Precisely how functional those eye mouths. No, I think it's a question we're asking. I think there have to be two esophaguses guys. like throats, two throats that attach to the main throat, if you're going to be chomping eyeballs with your eye mouths

or doing other things with your eye mouths, you know? Do not threaten me with a good time. How does the expanded Corinthian stuff work for humor? I mean, awesome. You know, it's a, he was always a magnetic character on the page, but good Lord. Boyd is giving it his all. I mean, there's this sort of like serpentine feel to it.

There's a bit of like Mick Jagger to this guy who was just like sex incarnate, like hunger incarnate, you know, who wants what he wants and wants it for a fairly good reason, which is I love my time here. I love what I've done here. You know, I always love the conceit of, you know, this has been the Corinthian century. And which ties into the, you know, the chronology of the prevalence of serial killers, especially in America, you know, was tied directly into the Corinthians presence there. And so the idea that this guy's just been stalking the shadows, and in some cases not shadows at all, more like convertibles for a century, is just, it's a fascinating idea. And, yeah, like, Boyd, every time he smiles, you know, it looks like a comic book page. It looks like a pal.

Yeah. It's a very teeth forward performance because I was, I went in, I was like looking at, I sent one snippet to Mallory, but I was looking at Boyd interviews to see like how much the accent is, like, because he's, he's a Southern guy, but like, he's still, like, dialing up the Southern accent for the, you know, it's not cartoonish, but it is prevalent. And then he doesn't talk, he doesn't talk that way, like, he's just exposing his teeth more as he talks and it's very subtle, but it works. And then with the sunglasses that change over the centuries, it's just, and the way that they thread him through from the beginning, rather than

bringing him in at the end, I thought was so smart. This is just like a hugely successful iteration of a comic book character, one of the best things I've ever seen. So good. Yeah. I will never forget how delighted I was as a young person reading these issues, specifically against the collector's issue, and figuring out what serial convention was and how clever I thought that was. Like, this, like, this is awesome. This is my favorite idea ever. It is awful. But I love a good wordplay.

You know, like, it's one of the reasons why, you know, those early Harry Potter novels were so magical to me is because just all of the wordplay, all of the diagonally. I get it. That took me. So serial convention. Ali took me so long, and I'm so embarrassed by how long day and Alan took me. Like, I usually can pick that stuff up, but that one took me years, and I felt really embarrassed. I did at least figure it out on my own, and no one had to tell me, but I was just like, oh, no, the whole time. It's right there?

Yeah. Let's also talk about, so the Doll's House, I just want to really quickly talk about the, like, the, the odd assemblage of characters that Rose Walker meets when she goes to Florida. We will see at least one of them is, well, several of them are important later, but one of them is like very important later in Sandman storytelling. But I just love what they're doing here, which is very much Tales of the City. Like if you've read or seen them in a series of Tales of the City, it's about a young woman who comes to San Francisco and just is immediately embraced in this warm queer family on Barbary Lane in San Francisco. And so honestly, this should be in San Francisco, but British people have a weird thing with Florida. Florida. It's a whole thing. Like, if you've ever talked to a British person... I mean, Americans have a weird thing. True, but, like, British people... It's a whole... I was, like,

looking at travel articles about this. They, like, because it's, like, closer to them and there's a Disney world there, a lot of them vacate in Florida. It's a whole thing, which is my theory as to why this section is set in Florida. But shout to to John Cameron Mitchell, who has worked with Neil Gaiman in the past, who is very famously, Hedwig, showing up perfect casting as Hal. I loved all of the songs from Gypsy, all of the drag sequences, all of the dream sequences. I love the way the dream worlds all blend together with these characters. Anything you guys want to say, especially about that section of the story?

I think it's always adorable when somebody tries to double America in London. like I never really bought that any of that was Florida and that's fine. Like I sure, maybe that's a suburban, you know, tract house that that Rose lived in. Probably not. That's neither New Jersey nor is it Florida. But yeah, I mean, the Rose Walker stuff, it is very not going to say simple to adapt, but it lays out very clearly. Like, you know what Ruth's, Ruth, what Rose's plan is. You know her, you know, you know how it's going to work.

I'm looking for my brother, Jed, here I am. I'm in Florida. I didn't find him. Oh, now I found them. And now, and I'm going to go here and I got to follow him. And where am I following them to? Follow them to a convention of serial killers. And oh, my God, that's crazy.

Like, plot-wise, it's very clear. You know, probably the easiest of all of this stuff to adapt. But it's the casting for me works incredibly well in this section. I mean, to your point, John Cameron Mitchell is great. I mean, I will gladly see Stephen Frye do everything. And so to watch him as Gilbert, who I missed a lot of the whom's, whom. But, you know, as Gilbert slash Fiddler's Green, it's just fantastic. And, yeah, once you get to that serial convention, it's on rails.

And it's scary and it's awful and it's mundane. Like the thing that I always loved about it was how mundane it was, how average it was, how much like a convention it was. And there is definitely some knowing, I've been to a lot of comic book conventions, says Neil Gaiman. And so here's what they feel like and would if it was actually about serial killing. And the more snippets we got of that world, the more just lovely and horrifying it was because it's just like us. Mal, anything you want to say? Yeah, I think that, Mark, it's a great point about the clear arc here because it is such a point of contrast and a distinction from the first half of this season and like everything we talked about being challenging there. You have not only a clearer sense by this point as a viewer and as a storyteller of who dream is, but you have now this new central figure, this new protagonist to chart the second half of this season with Rose, our dream vort.

text. I loved the stretch where Rose, as the, you know, as we, as we learn, the borders between the realms are thinning and weakening. And when Rose is making her way through the dreams of everybody in the house, like, I loved that stretch because I think that, again, some of these episodes feel like very separate and distinct. very much like the, you know, this is this one issue of the comic, as we talked about earlier. But I do think the season succeeded in connecting on a thematic level across these episodes and arcs. And so something like what we were just talking about with Hobb and Dream and the idea of

friendship and what it really means to know someone else is very present here in this house with this found family, right? And like you realize, and Rose does too, as she's making her way through their dreams, you don't really know anything about these people and what their fears are and what they're longing for, what they're yearning for. And that's okay, right? It's like that doesn't mean that you don't care about each other and that you can't forge something meaningful with each other.

It is like the most kind of intimate violation to peer into somebody's dreams. in that way and like see their most unvarnished sense of self or the thing that they're pining for the most or that they're the most afraid of. And some of those glimpses that we get feel like very connected to and like a natural continuation of or of a piece with what we've already seen in the waking.

And some of it is like, oh my God, look at this magical fantasy land that Barbie is craft. for herself. How interesting, right? And it's this kind of real, like, revelation in a way. And I love that blend. So I thought that stretch was just so cool. And because Rose is a character who you quickly come to trust, it feels okay, more okay than it would with almost any other character as she makes her way through this journey, like, in part because it is not something she is seeking out or intending as a violation, right? But in part because we know that. that these deep, deep-seated truths are in good hands with her. And it's just a step on our journey to find her brother, which is her, like, her main reason for being there. On the storytelling front, I just want to pick out a few things.

Number one, the fact that this found family, this is, like, a very queer thing to do in general, but, like, the fact that this found family, including Ken and Barbie, are all people who have, like, crafted a story about themselves for themselves, you know, that, like, Hal has created this, like, drag persona. or Zelda and Chantal are like, here's our spider gothiness. There's like this camp and this drag to all of these characters. Gilbert has made himself into, you know,

G.K. Chesterton, into a man. And then Ken and Barbie are like, were these, I mean, it was the late 80s, so like Neil was taking a lot of shots at yuppies, but like were this perfect, like yuppie confection? And then, of course, that extra layer, when you go into the dreaming and you find out that, like, Ken is dreaming about exactly what you think he would.

And then Barbie has this really interesting, rich interior life with Martin Tenbones, one of my favorite characters. Like, I love all of that. And then in terms of the convention and the Corinthian, the Corinthian is, like, the ultimate story gotten out of control. I think a lot about Zach Snyder and when I think about this. Like, the story got out of control and the best. bad fans in terms of like, if Neil Gaiman is talking about fandom at this convention, what he's talking about are like the fans who will take your story and they'll willfully misinterpret it and they will glom onto. That's not what the Corinthian was made for.

The Corinthian was made to reflect the fears of humanity so that they can then face those fears in the real life, right? But the Corinthian gets twisted into this other thing completely. And these fans who are there, who are essentially Morpheus story fans, they just don't know it, have glommed onto the wrong end of the stick. And it's this twisted version of what happens when a story you tell gets out of control. And that's what the Corinthian reads as, to me, the ultimate story out of control. And I just love how, like, no matter where you look in the Sandman, be at a serial killer convention or a weird little Airbnb in Florida,

you can find Neil plumbing at the various corners of what it means to tell stories, to dream, to be an author, to be a reader, all this sort of stuff. I just, I'm a big fan. Anything else we want to say about Dream vortex? I mean, we haven't talked about Desire, Desire, Dream Sibling, who hates Dream and is out to get him, and we'll find out more about that later,

but has devised this trap, wherein trying to trap Dream into Kinslaying, which would be a huge violation of the endless code, which I'm sure is written out somewhere, in the endless HR department. But, you know, more to come, I suppose, with desire. I mean, it was such a not necessarily, necessarily necessary part of this story to introduce that part of it.

Right. Like all that does is spin forward into story. And to a soon degree, it kind of complicates what this was, which is, yeah, no, every thousand years is a dream vortex. I get it. Does a dream vortex need to be seated by a member of the endless? Or did that just happen to be a thing that happened this time? Like, well, I don't know.

And it's also like brushed under the rug by the end. it's like did me need to complicate it that much you know and and i did i kept finding myself like i liked mason alexander park his desire i mean i think i think they're doing a thing that's that's actually really really interesting but desire's realm felt like a garage somewhere whereas like the dreaming feels like this massive glorious eternal place full of adventure and Fiddler's Greens and dragons and giant, you know, lynxes and whatever. And Desire's realm is literally, it's like the chamber of a heart. I get it.

Okay. So I agree with you that the visual of the concept doesn't land perfectly for me. But what I will say is when you listen to the audible version and Neil Gaiman is doing the bits and pieces of narration in the audible version, and you hear Neil Gaiman say, for desire lives in the heart. And you're like, oh, I'm buying it. I'm buying it, Neil. You just have to say it and I'll buy it.

But, yeah, if you just look at it, it doesn't have the same power. I agree. Instead, it just looks like a really interesting finish club somewhere. Like, in so old, like, no, you sure. No, I 100% believe that place exists. Now, does an immortal being live there that I don't know. Anything else do you want to say, Mal, about any of this? I mean, I guess it's worth talking just for a second about the closing sequence with Lucifer.

Sure. And what that sets up. A true thrill to be back with Gwendolyn Christie at the end here. And, you know, in the fourth issue, which inspires the fourth episode, we learn that hell is ruled by a triumvirate, right? And so here at the end, to get a glimpse of another key. player on the scene. I thought that was, yeah, like an intriguing choice. Like, you leave hell and it's like, oh my God, it just can't be it. This can't be all the time that we're going to get with Gwendolyn Christie's Lucifer. Impossible. And it is impossible. We get more right here,

thankfully, and the promise of more to come. So that was exciting. I think also we were remiss and not mentioning Lida Hall, who is a very important figure going forward. This is a matter. This is a massive adaptive change and actually like one I didn't really like because I really like the way that the Hector-Lida dream dome stuff works on the page where like it's much more Lita sort of being trapped in this kind of Wanda Vision-esque 1950s. Oh, I used to be Lita Hall, by the way, Wonder Woman's daughter. Lita Trevor Hall, right? She's Steve Trevor and Wonder Woman's daughter, depending on which age of the comics. You're reading Lida short for Hopalita. Like, that's who she is. I love that they cast Ruzaine Jamal, who looks like she could be related to Galgadot. Like, I thought that was really good casting. But that whole sequence in the comics is,

like, Hector, who is one of the original Sandman superheroes. He's, like, doing dumb superhero stuff, and she's trapped as his sort of, like, 1950s pregnant wife. And then Jed is also there, and there's a character's Brut and Glob. It's great on the page. Read it. It allows Morpheus to be really, like,

like funny and call Hector Little Ghost and all sorts of stuff like that. But at the end he does claim this unborn child as his own, which is a very Goblin King, Fay, thing to do. And we'll see more of that. But the line that I was really missing from the comics is Lettis says, over my dead body,

you spooky bastard is what she says to Morpius. And I was missing that here. So that's a future-leaning thing. Anything else in the future-leaning that you want to touch on, Mark, that gets you excited for the future of Sandman? I mean, nothing more than we've already talked about.

I mean, the season of mist stuff is what seems like it's coming down the pike and more Nata, which I'm all here for. And I can't wait to get to the Midsummer Night's Dream episode. I can't wait to fingers crossed. We get as far as Ramadan, which is maybe my single favorite issue of the comic book ever, which is, you know, it's the episode, the issue of the Sandman. that made it, that made them change the rules, I think, for the World Fantasy Awards. It was midsummer.

It was midsummer. It was midsummer. Which they were like, this won this award. Now we will never allow them to nominate a comic book again to win this award because this issue won it. And so those one-offs, those glorious, amazing, just, you know, I've got this idea and I've built a cage that can contain it. So I'm going to indulge this idea issues. always among my favorites. Kaliope, I'm curious to see what they do about that, which is troublesome and problematic for all of the reasons. But I think that this show can probably lean into all

of that and find a way to navigate those waters and make it work. Or update it. You know, like, there's some updates to Rose Walker's story where like instead of being attacked and nearly sexually assaulted twice, they like just give her a lot more agency. Like she's just a lot more active in her story than she is as a vortex that draws everything to her on the page. So I think, I think Neil and his various collaborators are not going to be precious about updating what needs to be updated when it comes to stuff like that. Right. But I also do think, you know, and who knows how they're going to do it, but I'm always sensitive to let's let bad guys be bad guys and do awful bad guy things. And so figuring out how to re-contextualize what it means to be evil in this day and age is always interesting. And it's always an evolving conversation.

And so I'm curious to see where they land. Okay. It would not be a Ring orverse episode without a Secret Scroll Watch moment. So last but certainly not least before we go, we got to pick a secret scroll. It's something we do on every single episode of the Ring Reverse. I have done for a while to prep for the Secret Invasion storyline in Marvel. who among the various characters that we meet over this entire season of television might be a secret scroll. I'll start.

I'm happy to start. I'm going to give it to fucking Ken. Ken is a scroll. There I said it with his man bun and everything. Interesting. Interesting. Mark, you got one? I'm going with Funland.

Oh, boy. Yeah. Yes. To your point. Let bad evil people be bad and evil. Like, I think fun land works really well the way that they used. Yeah. He's awful.

And horrifying. And all of those things that make him awful and horrifying remain. But yeah, he's totally a scroll. Mallory Rubin. So you can scroll. I'm pivoting in real time. My first pick was going to be Franklin's. footy mate, you know,

the buses who's tossing the soccer ball into oncoming traffic. I'm going, I'm switching to the cartoonist at the inn who, uh, who draws Hobb and dream together, setting into, uh, you know, setting setting key events into motion.

That feels like classic scroll bullshit. All right. You know. Love, love, you don't just observe. laugh. Fear and metal. Love some classic scroll bullshit. All right.

Mark, where can folks find more of your great insights and opinions if they want them? If you're looking for me on the social medias, on the social medes, I am at Mark Bernardin on The Places, Twitter, Facebook. Oh, God, no. Instagram. Twitter and Instagram. Your great Insta follower. I think I have a TikTok account that I've never posted anything that is in a repo. from somebody else because I'm just not embracing that technology just yet.

And I do have a podcast that I do with frightening irregularity with Kevin Smith called Fat Man Beyond, which we're doing an episode tomorrow night to talk about or whenever, whenever this pod drops, it's going to be out already to talk about the current insanity happening in Hollywood as well as more Sandman chat. Amazing. All right. Well, if you want to know what Warner Brothers is up to, please do tune in to that podcast. Hopefully Warner Brothers makes more seasons of Sandman. This is a Warner Brothers television event, even if it is at Netflix.

So that is something to bear in mind. Hopefully we'll be back. I do wonder if the guys at HBO are now like, we shouldn't have let this go. Oh, I bet. Maybe you should have kept this in the house. Yeah, I'm sure. That does it for us. As I said, Mallory and I will be back later this week with our hype meter.

talk about the things coming up that we're really excited about the Midnight Boys. We'll be back doing something fun this week. Can't wait to hear what it is. Always a treat. Always a pleasure. Thanks as always to the great Steve Allman for making us sound so beautiful on this podcast for making our voices sound so rich and delightful, especially Mark's Morpheus impression. Thanks, of course, to Arjuna Ramqqbal for additional production work. Keep dreaming.

And we'll see you later this week. Bye. What's the difference between butter and butter made from real California dairy? It's the real California farm families behind it. Real people. Real care. Real intention. Why? Because real matters. So whether you're pouring milk, melting cheese, or just grabbing one more spoonful of yogurt. Keep it real. Look for the seal. Real California milk by real California farm families. You can't reason with the sun.

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