Dream (comics)
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| Dream | |
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| Publication information | |
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| Publisher | DC Comics (Vertigo) |
| First appearance | The Sandman Volume 1, #1. |
| Created by | Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg |
| In story information | |
| Team affiliations | The Endless |
| Notable aliases | Morpheus, Oneiros, The Dream King, The Sandman, Lord Shaper, Kai'ckul, numerous others |
| Abilities | nigh-omnipotent aspect of dreams and reality |
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Dream is the fictional protagonist of DC Comics' Vertigo comic book series The Sandman, written by Neil Gaiman.
One of the seven Endless, inconceivably powerful beings older and greater than gods, Dream is both lord and personification of all dreams and stories, all that is not in reality (which, in turn, Dream may define by his existence). He has taken many names including Morpheus and Oneiros, and - as befits his role as lord of fiction - holds himself with a romantic and arrogant cast.
While Dream considers himself the "King of Dreams," other Endless have also been referred to by similar honorifics. Destruction has been called "Lord of Destruction." Despair has also been called "Lady of Despair" and Delirium has been referred to as "Lady Delirium."
[edit] Appearance
Morpheus usually appears as a tall thin young man with bone-white skin, black hair, and two distant stars looking out from the shadows where his eyes should be. Most often they are silver or white, but when he becomes angered, they have been known to turn red. He bears a resemblance to musician Robert Smith, with David Bowie, Bauhaus' Peter Murphy, and creator Gaiman himself also serving as visual references.
Morpheus' appearance ranges widely 'depending on who's watching'. People generally perceive him as wearing a style of dress appropriate to their region and era. He appears to be light skinned when interacting with white characters, but the people of "Tales in the Sand's" primordial African city see him as a star-eyed black man. Although he is most often seen in human form, Morpheus appears as a magnificent black cat when speaking to the lonely cat-pilgrim of "Dream of a Thousand Cats" and as a cat-headed god when addressing feline goddess Bast; DC superhero The Martian Manhunter sees Morpheus as a Martian god in the shape of a flaming alien skull and identifies him as Lord L'Zoril, but Mr. Miracle, looking at him simultaneously, sees Morpheus as a man. However in Season of Mists, he appears in the same form to all the Gods (The Egyptian Goddess Bast Comments "I much prefer you in cat form, Dream old friend"). In The Dream Hunters, which is set in ancient Japan, Morpheus appears as a Japanese man to a Buddhist monk and as a fox to a fox spirit. It is unclear whether Morpheus's appearance is determined by the expectations of onlookers or if he chooses to manifest himself in different forms. He does deliberately change the style of his clothing to be less conspicuous when he visits the waking world.
He customarily wears black, sometimes with a flame motif. In battle he wears a helmet made from the skull and backbone of a defeated enemy god. This helmet, which resembles a World War II era gas mask, is also his sigil in the galleries of the other Endless.
[edit] Speech
Morpheus's peculiar manner of speech is usually portrayed as white text in black wavy edged speech bubbles bordered in white: the text is capitalized normally in stark contrast to other characters' speech generally in block caps text.
[edit] The Dreaming
Morpheus lives in a castle at the heart of his realm, The Dreaming. Both the castle and the rest of his realm are mutable and change often, often at Morpheus' will, although the realm is itself an aspect of Morpheus, whose resistance to change (and difficulty changing) is a theme throughout the series. Dream maintains both the castle and the realm, as with all aspects of his appearance, in a half-accommodating, half-terrifying state, simultaneously acknowledging both the courtesy due to others and the attention due him as king- and indeed the pleasantness and terror of dreams themselves. It is perhaps significant that Morpheus is the only one of the Endless known to populate his realm with speaking characters - a multitude of beings, mostly dreams, live in the Dreaming - including old DC horror-comics narrators Cain and Abel, and Fiddler's Green, a sailors' dream of paradise who either is or imitates G. K. Chesterton. He recruits or creates (or re-creates) servants to perform roles he could easily carry out himself, including the reorganization of the castle and the guarding of its entrance. The most important of the Dreaming's citizens is Lucien, who was the first of Dream's ravens and is now the Librarian of the Dreaming. Dream gives Lucien the authority to manage affairs in the Dreaming on several occasions when Dream must travel outside the Dreaming. A raven named Matthew -- formerly a mortal man -- travels through the waking world on errands for Morpheus, usually as a scout or spy. This perhaps points at an essential loneliness in Morpheus' character. His realm at any moment is also full of all creatures who are dreaming at that moment, although these seldom appear in the comics panel. Several comics in DC's "Vertigo" line have been set in The Dreaming, most notably a series (chief author Alisa Kwitney) of that name.
[edit] Dream and mythology
The Sandman Special #1 implies that Morpheus is one and the same as the Greek deity of that name (In DC comics continuity, another version of this god, clearly not Dream, appears in George Pérez's Wonder Woman #11 (December 1987) - what relation this figure, an old man dressed in purple vaguely resembling Agatha Harkness, has to this aspect of Dream is unclear). Morpheus is the father of Greek hero Orpheus by the muse Calliope, and once-patron of Aristeas of Marmora, taking the role given in legend to Apollo, with whom he is often confused.
[edit] In DC Continuity
Since the creation of the Vertigo imprint (itself largely inspired by the success of DC Comics' increasingly mature titles such as Swamp Thing, Watchmen, Hellblazer and Sandman), DC's horror/occult characters such as Morpheus have drifted progressively further away both from DC continuity and from each other. Dream originally began as a mainstream DC character able to interact with DC superheroes, and Gaiman's versions of Dream have appeared in DC superhero titles written by Keith Giffen and by Grant Morrison, as well as in Gaiman's own Books of Magic series and in a Rick Veitch-authored issue of Swamp Thing (where he meets Matthew Cable). Morpheus also appears briefly during Kevin Smith's run on Green Arrow in a flashback showing him in Alexander Burgess' basement, still imprisoned in Roderick Burgess' glass globe prison.
[edit] Personality
Dream is a noble, tragic hero, very much in the traditional style of heroes of Greek tragedy. He is sometimes slow when dealing with humor, occasionally insensitive, often self-obsessed, and is very slow to forgive or forget a slight. As Mervyn Pumpkinhead remarks, after the end of one of Morpheus' invariably disastrous romances, "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 fulla 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."
On the other hand, Morpheus is consistently aware of his responsibilities, both those to other people and those that go with his territory. This trait makes him both dependable and fair-minded. It is implied that before his imprisonment he was in some ways crueler and more blind to his flaws. Much of the Sandman series is focused on Morpheus' desire to atone for his past behavior, e.g. helping past lovers Caliope and Nada. It is perhaps his changing and moving forward that makes his character the way it is. Morpheus shares a close, reciprocal bond of dependence and trust with his elder sister, Death. He consistently strives for understanding of himself and of the other Endless, but is ultimately defeated by his most tragic flaw, his inability to accept change. As Lucien remarks in The Wake when asked (by Matthew, the raven) "Why did it happen? Why did he let it happen?", "Charitably...I think...sometimes, perhaps, one must change or die. And in the end, there were, perhaps, limits to how much he could let himself change."
[edit] Aspects of Dream
It is known that the Endless have many aspects, one of which is the personification active at any one time, and if one aspect dies, another replaces it.
This has happened once before with an incarnation of his sister, Despair.
It has been thought that Morpheus is an aspect of dream, but it is only a name. The aspect of Dream that dies at the hands of "The Kindly Ones" is the entirety of the Dream of the Endless that is present in most of the series.
Some of the Endless can change only so much, and in order to change enough another aspect with another personal philosophy and "point of view" must replace the older "viewpoint." Endless like Destruction, who abandoned his responsibilities and realm, and Delirium, who was once Delight are able to drastically change their attitudes, functions, and sense of self. It could be speculated that the rigid Destiny would not be so flexible.
One character at Morpheus' wake, perplexed by the question of who exactly has died, is told by Abel that the purpose of the wake is to mourn "a p-p-point of view". The other Endless remain personified by the same aspect throughout the series and are simply referred to by their generic names, except in the Sandman Special #1. In this issue, they are called by Greek versions of their names. Death: Teleute, Despair: Aponoia, Delirium: Mania, Desire: Epithumia, Destruction: Olethros, Destiny: Potmos.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Bender, Hy (1999), The Sandman Companion, New York: Vertigo DC Comics, ISBN 1563896443
- Dream at the Comic Book DB
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