Morpheus

Lore & Background

Dream is the ruler of the Dreaming where people go when they dream. After the events of The Sandman: The Kindly Ones that led to Dream's death at the hands of the Furies, Daniel Hall becomes the new Dream. Dream's appearance ranges widely: people generally perceive him in a style of dress appropriate to their region and era. In the Dreaming, he is most commonly depicted wearing a black robe or a dark, flowing costume. He appears to be light-skinned when interacting with similar characters, but the people of Tales in the Sand's primordial African city see him as dark. He appears as a huge black cat when speaking to the lonely Siamese cat-pilgrim of Dream of a Thousand Cats and as a cat-headed god when addressing the Egyptian feline goddess Bast. Martian Manhunter sees Dream in the shape of a flaming Martian skull and identifies him as Lord L'Zoril; but Mister Miracle, looking at him simultaneously, sees him as a man. In Season of Mists, he appears in the same form to all the Gods (Bast comments: 'I much prefer you in cat form, Dream old friend'). In The Dream Hunters, set in ancient Japan, Dream appears as a Japanese man to a Buddhist monk and as a fox to a fox spirit. He customarily wears a billowing black cape, sometimes with a flame motif. In battle he wears a stylized skull-and-spine helmet. This 'helm' is also his sigil in the galleries of the other Endless, as well as appearing in the dreams (and at least once on the staircase wall) of Wesley Dodds. His face and physique are based on an amalgamation of Neil Gaiman in his twenties, The Cure's frontman Robert Smith, and ballet dancer Farukh Ruzimatov, with Peter Murphy as the original model. In fact, Gaiman explained that Murphy was the original model for Dream. Gaiman also stated that Sandman artist Dave McKean based Dream's face in the cover of Sandman #1 on Peter Murphy. Dream's speech is usually portrayed as white text in black, wavy-edged speech bubbles bordered in white. The text is capitalized normally (sentence case), in stark contrast to other characters' speech, generally in block caps text.

In Their Own Story

Dream is the protagonist and title character of the comic book The Sandman. The comic book grew out of a proposal by Neil Gaiman to revive DC's 1974–1976 series The Sandman, written by Joe Simon and Michael Fleisher and illustrated by Jack Kirby and Ernie Chua. Gaiman soon began constructing a treatment for a new series. Gaiman mentioned his treatment in passing to DC editor Karen Berger. When months later Berger offered Gaiman a comic title to work on, he was unsure his Sandman pitch would be accepted. Weeks later, Berger asked Gaiman if he was interested in doing a Sandman series. Gaiman recalled: 'I said, "Um ... yes. Yes, definitely. What's the catch?" Berger said: "There's only one. We'd like a new Sandman. Keep the name. But the rest is up to you."' Gaiman crafted the new character from an initial image of 'a man, young, pale and naked, imprisoned in a tiny cell, waiting until his captors passed away ... deathly thin, with long dark hair, and strange eyes'. Gaiman patterned the character's black attire on a print of a Japanese kimono as well as his own wardrobe. After the events of The Sandman: The Kindly Ones that led to Dream's death at the hands of the Furies, Daniel Hall becomes the new Dream. In the Kindly Ones saga, Lyta incorrectly believed that Daniel had been 'abducted' by Dream, and took her grievances to the Furies, with whom she destroyed much of the Dreaming. Unknown to her, Daniel was abducted by Loki and Robin Goodfellow, and retrieved by the Corinthian and Matthew. At Morpheus' citadel, Morpheus transfers his role to Daniel and allows Death to take him.

Reader's Guide

Dream of the Endless usually appears as a tall, thin man with bone-white skin, black hair, and two stars in place of eyes. Most often they are silver, blue, or white, but when he becomes angered, they have been shown to turn red. Throughout the series, Dream is referred to by various aliases, including Morpheus, Oneiros, the Shaper, the Shaper of Form, Lord of the Dreaming, Dreamweaver, the Dream King, Dream-Sneak, the Cat of Dreams, Murphy, Kai'ckul and Lord L'Zoril, who is the anthropomorphic personification of dreams. Although he is ultimately a heroic character, Dream is sometimes slow to understand humor, occasionally insensitive, often self-obsessed, and very slow to forgive a slight. He has a long history of failed amours, and is both shown and implied to have reacted harshly to the women therein. Both his mother, Night, and his siblings have commented that Dream has always wanted and always failed at finding a partner. As Mervyn Pumpkinhead remarks: 'He's gotta be the tragic figure standing out in the rain, mournin' the loss of his beloved. So down comes the rain, right on cue. In the meantime everybody gets dreams full of existential angst and wakes up feeling like hell. And we all get wet'. Near the end of the Brief Lives story arc, Desire says of Dream: 'He's stuffy, stupid, and thinks he knows everything, and there's just something about him that gets on my nerves'. There is a long-standing enmity between Dream and Desire, stemming from Desire's possible involvement in the failure of one of Dream's amours (seen in Endless Nights). It is implied that before his imprisonment he was crueler and more blind to his flaws, and much of The Sandman is focused on his desire to atone for his past behavior (e.g., helping past lovers Calliope and Nada). Dream reacts strongly to perceived insult; he banishes Nada to Hell for rejecting him and expresses outrage when Hob Gadling suggests that he seeks companionship.

Did You Know?

• Dream was named the sixth-greatest comic book character by Empire.
• Dream was named fifteenth in IGN's 100 Top Comic Book Heroes list.
• Tom Sturridge is the principal actor portraying Dream in the television series The Sandman on Netflix; Ernest Kingsley Junior portrays him in the form of Kai'ckul.
• Dream's face and physique are based on an amalgamation of Neil Gaiman in his twenties, The Cure's frontman Robert Smith, and ballet dancer Farukh Ruzimatov, with Peter Murphy as the original model.
• Dream's speech is usually portrayed as white text in black, wavy-edged speech bubbles bordered in white, capitalized normally (sentence case), in stark contrast to other characters' block caps text.