#Recoloured Sandman

[writing-for-life]

Michael Zulli: Death, Dream and Hob

Now, I know fandom bends over backwards to make this about Dreamling and often slots its meaning in during/after The Wake (or at least hinting at it because of the meeting with Death), but I honestly can’t see it?

I personally believe we need to step back a bit here and consider that this was painted long before the TV show, and Dreamling wasn’t really a thing (at least not in these epic proportions, plus it was always fanon, not canon), hence we can’t really do art analysis through that lens.

If you just put the 1689 meeting (also drawn by Zulli) right next to it, it becomes, at least to me, so blatantly obvious that it is set in the same timeframe. Hob wears nearly identical clothes, so does Dream (also, some of the original comics have been recoloured).

The woman at the table next to them holding the mask? Hm, there’s a famous artwork by Colleen Doran in which Death holds a mask, and she definitely seems to be listening in here. Which she might, considering the conversation Dream and Hob had in 1689. Could obviously also just be a random person covering up smallpox scars 🤣

In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think it matters so much whether Hob already met Death or not and would recognise her, it’s the symbolism of talking to her at this point more than anything.

So would it be totally outlandish to think the missing glass is also for Eleanor? Hence the red roses as well, because Zulli hardly ever uses red roses for Dream apart from one exception (he does so for Daniel though)—they tend to be blue and always hold connotations to grief, I wrote about this before. Or better: Symbolic for all those who aren’t at the table with him? And that’s why Death is there? Both for those she has taken, but also because this is very obviously the point where Hob is at his lowest and might rethink. 

I think we really have to think about where Hob is in his life here and not erase Eleanor and his kids again. “To absent friends AND lost loves”, right?

And I can’t look at that angel holding the table and not get references to pregnancy/childbirth (Eleanor and the second baby died during childbirth).

As for the raven looking away/pointing away from the table: Foreboding? Because apart from being Dream’s ravens, ravens were also associated with Apollo, who was also the god of prophecy and an oracle himself. That’s why Apollo himself eventually released Orpheus from his existence as one—long story (plus, Aristeas, who was also Dream’s raven, was Apollo’s raven in Greek mythology. Plus Apollo was also Orpheus’ father in some retellings. It’s all interwoven, but I feel the foreboding is a significant thing here for exactly that reason).

And foreboding-foreboding, of course Death and Hob meet again, and by that time, Morpheus will be gone, and the missing glass is also for himself.

I wrote about Zulli and his symbolism a few times, it’s all linked in my pinned post, but the ruins are one of the less subtle references:

[neil-gaiman]

Hi, I am a french reader, I just discovered Sandman, which I love, and I have a question about the colors in the restored publication of the serie. In the original publications, the colors were flashy and psychedelic but in the new ones, they are more "realistic", less wild in a sense. Is there a reason for this change ? Were you unsatisfied with the coloring of the first publications ?

It was a combination of things:

The biggest one was the very white glossy paper in the books was very different to the newsprint that the colouring was designed for. The original colouring was a lot more restrained, because it sank into and was absorbed into newsprint. It became "flashy, psychedelic and wild" because it wasn't meant to look like that.

Part of it was that the early colouring, especially in the Sam Kieth issues, especially once it was printed much heavier than intended, hid art details.

Part of it was consistency. We were going to have to recolour the early issues from scratch, to make the colour suitable for modern printing, and to create digital versions of the art. (Basically Sandman colouring was pre-digital until issue 49. I'm fairly sure that Worlds' End on were done on computers, although Danny Vozzo was still colouring by hand, with "Android Images" doing the color separations, and they were done for whiter paper, so they weren't going to need to be recoloured.) So it seemed wiser to let Danny Vozzo go in and just... colour it. He'd coloured over 50 issues of Sandman, and he knew what he was doing.

In my blog in 2006, I was asked:

Dear Neil, the new coloring for the new Absolute Sandman looks great. I have a couple of questions regarding it: 1) Who's supervising the new coloring, and who's doing the coloring? 2) Were the new reproductions made from the orignal inks/art? 3) Do you feel that the new coloring better represents your original vision, the artist's original vision? is it a matter of technology? 4) will the Absulote Sandman be your "Artist's definitive version" in terms of coloring? and I replied: 1) Danny Vozzo is doing Sandmans 1-8, 17 and 18. Lee Loughridge is doing The Doll's House (9-16). It's being supervised by Karen Berger, Absolute editor Scott Nybakken, and me. And I'm signing off on every panel. 2) No. Most of that stuff was sold 17 years ago. We got a few pages, although the most useful thing was a cache we found in my attic of photocopies I was sent for proofing purposes, and some of the artists had clean photocopies of some pages. There are only a couple of pages now, in Sandman 16, where the black line leaves something to be desired. I bet the originals will surface as soon as Absolute Sandman Volume 1 comes out. 3) Yes, to all three. The original technology means that with every new printing on cleaner paper with sharper inks, it looks worse. There was never the time or the money to fix anything in the old days, and stuff simply went out as it was, sometimes to the detriment of the story. As things went on, we got to computerise the colour, and the technology gradually made things better. Compare Preludes and Nocturnes to The Kindly Ones, just from a standpoint of colour and you'll see what I mean. 4) I very much hope so. Maybe in 30 years the technology will have advanced to the point where we have to do it again, but probably it won't.

....

I hope that helps. If you want to see the artwork uncoloured, it's in The Annotated Sandman...

[sic-vita]

The Sandman | the unchanging nature of Lord Morpheus 

We all change, sir. Even you, perhaps. One day. 

[a-wild-things-rambles]

I posted 3,096 times in 2022

That's 3,096 more posts than 2021!

453 posts created (15%)

2,643 posts reblogged (85%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@brutaliakhoa

@salzundhonig

@tumblingxelian

@nonius-the-ninth

@aaaaaarrrghhhhhh

I tagged 1,578 of my posts in 2022

Only 49% of my posts had no tags

#thebirdspeaks - 130 posts

#poetry - 126 posts

#thebirdreads - 89 posts

#violence - 85 posts

#thebirdwrites - 77 posts

#the sandman - 72 posts

#jason todd - 60 posts

#thebirdarts - 59 posts

#nature of stories - 59 posts

#thebirdwillwright - 48 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#never even realized how lost i was without her. but i always was. just some lost soldier who forgot he ever had a home… until she gave me on

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

See the full post

88 notes - Posted September 18, 2022

#4

the one and only Talia al Ghul!!! Im so proud of the piece! plus bonus pink version!

massive thanks to @gooseyalghul-gumdrops​ for there Talia pallet. it was a lifesaver! There amazing recolours of Talia is what inspired me to finally do a proper Talia piece!

108 notes - Posted August 27, 2022

#3

small brain: dick grayson is bad at cooking

big brain: jason get fussy about cooking so dick pretends to be bad at it to rile him up cause jasons scowl is so cute

huge brain: dick now associates cooking w Jason so rarely cooks with others after his baby brothers death because its hard for him to cook alone let alone with someone else

massive brain: dick associated cooking with his mother and father and his family at halys circus so he avoided it but learnt to love it again through cooking with Jason

ginormous brain: damian enlists him to help cook some dishes Damian misses and damian helps dick get over cooking with out Jason and it become their thing

im runing out of size measurements for brains: Damian figures out why dick has complicated feeling to do with cooking and makes jason join them, and now all three do it together as brothers

168 notes - Posted October 21, 2022

#2

this work is inspired by @finalgirljasontodd​ ‘s amazing fic household autopsy , more specifically the line:

“And as they curl up against Gotham’s sodden ribs, she realises he’s as familiar with this way of living as she is. They both know how to pick at a city’s carcass”

please read the whole fic its amazing!!

under the cut is the progress and some ramblings and other pieces also inspired by the fic

See the full post

177 notes - Posted September 26, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

im normal about this im ok about this im normal about this(lying)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

258 notes - Posted September 16, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[omniversecomicsguide]

Mysterio and his Sinister Friends... See the MYSTERIO READING ORDER (1964-2015) for more of Quentin's team-ups!

MORE: Mysterio Reading Order - - - Artists: Erik Larsen, Walter Simonson & Chris Sotomayor

From: Amazing Spider-Man #337 (recoloured for the Spider-Man: Sinister Six Premiere HC back cover)

Featuring: Vulture, Doctor Octopus, Mysterio, Sandman, Electro, Hobgoblin & Spider-Man - - - Mysterio’s relationship with the Sinister Six is a serious love/hate thing. When Dr Octopus is in charge, it’s easy to hate getting screwed over by him all the time!

[commonpigeon]

I can see why the recolouring of sandman was controversial :/ parts of it look better but it kind of loses its character

[lesbianrobotwizard]

How did you edit those sandman pictures?

Honestly I had no idea what I was doing I would just colour select the darkest part of the image (which was usually dreams clothes) and colour in the eyes, then I’d blur it out and recolour the eyes until it didn’t look super jarring

For the irises I would colour select the lightest part of the image, lighten it just a bit more and do kind of the same thing on a smaller scale

[paper-lioness]

Hi lovely! Um, I just wanted to contact you and ask about your Mister Sandman recolours of Peacy's mesh. Since the Cats & Dogs pack, I've been having all kinds of trouble with tons of my beds and have had to purge quite a few of them. I'm only just now getting to your recolours and am finding that as soon as I place the mattress down in Buy Mode, it instantly disappears into thin air. I apologise in advance if someone has already contacted you; I love your recolours so I had to ask!!

Howdy, friend!

Have you re-downloaded Peacy’s stuff?  The Cats and Dogs patch broke ALL CC beds, chairs and tables (and some other stuff but that’s the big thing).  My understanding (and I just tested this out to be sure) is that my recolors (and any others you have) will work as long as the originals have been fixed.

Go to @peacemaker-ic‘s page and re-download all of his stuff–not only is it fixed for the Cats and Dogs patch, but he’s done some little tweaks and improvements here and there, and somehow his stuff is even better than before.

I strongly recommend having Sims 4 Studio, if you can.  Even if you don’t create CC and have no intention of ever doing so, Sims 4 Studio often puts out what is known as “batch fixes,” where it fixes ALL of the CC in your entire folder when an EA patch messes things up.  Just one click!  If you have any other CC bedding, it will fix all of them, too! You don’t have to purge anything!  You can also use it to delete swatches on items if you don’t like some of them, just to help keep your mods folder a wee bit smaller.

Download Sims 4 Studio Here

[talariis-a]

( Headcanon ) O. verwatch verse - Skins

Okay, this one was really fun to think about. His basic skin would be his normal layout like in TF2, as you can see here. A simple red shirt, black backpack over one shoulder, dog tags, a dark grey baseball cap, a one sided orange headset baseball pants, white socks and black runner shoes. the weapons would look the same as well, except that the baseball bat would be the Sandman. The basic skin recolours would all be named in only 3 letters, following the RED / BLU rule. BLU would be the outfit in a blue colour scheme, GRN would be in green, YLW in yellow and PRP in purple. Weapon details wouldn’t change much except the colour of the baseball. His epic skins would be a 60′s Milkman outfit and a Victorian Newspaper boy outfit. Weapon wise, the colour scheme of the sawn off shotgun would match with the skin ( black and white for the milkman, probably has a cow drawn on it, and steampunk-y for the newspaper boy one ). Now, his two first legendary skins are based off the Original and the Classic Scout, from Team Fortress Classic. The original Scout skin would be a hollywood like cowboy outfit; easy to differenciate from McCree, since Scout’s skin wouldn’t have the coat or the large cowboy hat. The original Scout would be exactly the one you could see in this picture on the very left, with the ginger moustache. The last legendary skin would be a reference to the first concept of TF2: a space skin. Since TF2 was supposed to be about aliens and all, he’d have a really cool space related skin. Special event skins would be: A zombie skin for Halloween, an Elf skin, like the one from the TF2 comics, for Christmas and a football Skin for the Olympics, American themed of course.

[rbb-archived-blog]

( Headcanon ) O. verwatch verse - Skins

Okay, this one was really fun to think about. His basic skin would be his normal layout like in TF2, as you can see here. A simple red shirt, black backpack over one shoulder, dog tags, a dark grey baseball cap, a one sided orange headset baseball pants, white socks and black runner shoes. the weapons would look the same as well, except that the baseball bat would be the Sandman. The basic skin recolours would all be named in only 3 letters, following the RED / BLU rule. BLU would be the outfit in a blue colour scheme, GRN would be in green, YLW in yellow and PRP in purple. Weapon details wouldn’t change much except the colour of the baseball. His epic skins would be a 60′s Milkman outfit and a Victorian Newspaper boy outfit. Weapon wise, the colour scheme of the sawn off shotgun would match with the skin ( black and white for the milkman, probably has a cow drawn on it, and steampunk-y for the newspaper boy one ). Now, his two first legendary skins are based off the Original and the Classic Scout, from Team Fortress Classic. The original Scout skin would be a hollywood like cowboy outfit; easy to differenciate from McCree, since Scout’s skin wouldn’t have the coat or the large cowboy hat. The original Scout would be exactly the one you could see in this picture on the very left, with the ginger moustache.  The last legendary skin would be a reference to the first concept of TF2: a space skin. Since TF2 was supposed to be about aliens and all, he’d have a really cool space related skin. Special event skins would be: A zombie skin for Halloween, an Elf skin, like the one from the TF2 comics, for Christmas and a football Skin for the Olympics, American themed of course.

[writing-for-life]

A Midummer Night’s Dream (Sandman #19) Gets Remastered

Or Shall We Say Recoloured?

More Info:

How nice would it be if we also got an episode (somewhere, something something Netflix…)?

[thebrokenquilldotcom]

Book Review - The Sandman Volume 1: Preludes and Nocturnes (Issues 1-8)

Book Review – The Sandman Volume 1: Preludes and Nocturnes (Issues 1-8)

Image via Barnes and Noble This book can be found here on Goodreads and here on Amazon This book features the following topics/genres – Graphic Novel/Fantasy/Horror Publisher’s release date: Original date January – August 1989 and reprinted and recoloured 19 October 2019 (Amazon) It’s not often that you feel like you are seeing something miraculous for the first time when you read something.…

[auressea]

love how you picked out the iridescent hues... The Dreaming is like being inside a soap bubble!

The Sandman | Morpheus repairing his realm

I made this realm once, Lucienne. I will make it again.

My sand, my helm, my ruby. They were taken from me. By my captors. And then taken from them. I know not where. Nor what I am without them.

[omniversecomicsguide]

The NEW WARRIORS READING ORDER (1972-1989) includes all of Rich Rider’s appearances before joining the team (as well as Firestar, Namorita and the rest!)

- - -

MORE: New Warriors Reading Order (part 1)

- - - Artists: Rich Buckler, Joe Sinnott & Thomas Mason From: Nova Classic vol.2 tpb (featuring the recoloured cover of Nova 13) Featuring: Nova, Sandman & Crimebuster

[omniversecomicsguide]

Mysterio and his Sinister Friends... MYSTERIO READING ORDER (1964-2015) features the appearances of Mysterio (along with the Sinister Six) all in chronological order! MORE: http://bit.ly/MysterioReadingOrder

- - - Artists: Erik Larsen & Walter Simonson From: Amazing Spider-Man #337 Colours: Chris Sotomayor (recolouring the piece for the Spider-Man: Sinister Six Premiere HC back cover, 2009) Featuring: Vulture, Doctor Octopus, Mysterio, Sandman, Electro, Hobgoblin & Spider-Man

[ungoliantschilde]

…I wish I could send this question and response to Barry Windsor-Smith and achieve a positive outcome. Most of ya’ll are not gonna get what I’m talking about. Neil probably does.

*sigh* Barry’s main argument with Marvel since the 1990s is that they reprint his work on “slick” paper.

In the early-mid 1990s, the X-Titles sold in comic book stores were published with the word “deluxe” in the indica box. That basically means that they were published on a different quality of paper than the other issues. The artists working in the industry at that time were primarily established veterans, and their coloring approaches were very specifically chosen based on the knowledge that the work would be published -up until the mid 1990s- on newsprint. Literally, the paper used for newspapers.

Older issues of comics lose value based on how much “bleed” happened between the pages. Let’s say a splash page had a lot of red in it from an explosion. The pages before and after that splash might have a slightly pink hue to them, depending on the humidity of where the comic book was stored by the owner. That affects the value. That “bleed” effect could be used positively. Vibrant colors were absorbed by the paper much differently. The coloring process of comic books was absolutely turned on it’s head when companies moved away from using newsprint.

And then… The reprints. Reprints of comic books from the 1960s-late 1980s generally look like absolute shit compared to how they were published. The colors are waaaay too lurid. Neil’s examples above are very good indicators.

Now, to my original point. Neil - your answer to this question is some of the best advice I have seen on this site for young creators. Take note: materials and media changes constantly. The technology changes daily.

You can fight it, like Barry Windsor-Smith. Your contemporaries and fans that saw you in your prime will laude your efforts and heap praise on you. But you won’t stay relevant. Eventually there will be articles written online titled “whatever happened to Barry Windsor-Smith?”

Well done, Mr. Gaiman. I just bought the 3 omnibuses (shouldn’t it be “omnibi”?) of Sandman, specifically because my fiancé said she wants to read it before the show.

Hi, I am a french reader, I just discovered Sandman, which I love, and I have a question about the colors in the restored publication of the serie. In the original publications, the colors were flashy and psychedelic but in the new ones, they are more "realistic", less wild in a sense. Is there a reason for this change ? Were you unsatisfied with the coloring of the first publications ?

It was a combination of things:

The biggest one was the very white glossy paper in the books was very different to the newsprint that the colouring was designed for. The original colouring was a lot more restrained, because it sank into and was absorbed into newsprint. It became "flashy, psychedelic and wild" because it wasn't meant to look like that.

Part of it was that the early colouring, especially in the Sam Kieth issues, especially once it was printed much heavier than intended, hid art details.

Part of it was consistency. We were going to have to recolour the early issues from scratch, to make the colour suitable for modern printing, and to create digital versions of the art. (Basically Sandman colouring was pre-digital until issue 49. I'm fairly sure that Worlds' End on were done on computers, although Danny Vozzo was still colouring by hand, with "Android Images" doing the color separations, and they were done for whiter paper, so they weren't going to need to be recoloured.) So it seemed wiser to let Danny Vozzo go in and just... colour it. He'd coloured over 50 issues of Sandman, and he knew what he was doing.

In my blog in 2006, I was asked:

Dear Neil, the new coloring for the new Absolute Sandman looks great. I have a couple of questions regarding it: 1) Who's supervising the new coloring, and who's doing the coloring? 2) Were the new reproductions made from the orignal inks/art? 3) Do you feel that the new coloring better represents your original vision, the artist's original vision? is it a matter of technology? 4) will the Absulote Sandman be your "Artist's definitive version" in terms of coloring? and I replied: 1) Danny Vozzo is doing Sandmans 1-8, 17 and 18. Lee Loughridge is doing The Doll's House (9-16). It's being supervised by Karen Berger, Absolute editor Scott Nybakken, and me. And I'm signing off on every panel. 2) No. Most of that stuff was sold 17 years ago. We got a few pages, although the most useful thing was a cache we found in my attic of photocopies I was sent for proofing purposes, and some of the artists had clean photocopies of some pages. There are only a couple of pages now, in Sandman 16, where the black line leaves something to be desired. I bet the originals will surface as soon as Absolute Sandman Volume 1 comes out. 3) Yes, to all three. The original technology means that with every new printing on cleaner paper with sharper inks, it looks worse. There was never the time or the money to fix anything in the old days, and stuff simply went out as it was, sometimes to the detriment of the story. As things went on, we got to computerise the colour, and the technology gradually made things better. Compare Preludes and Nocturnes to The Kindly Ones, just from a standpoint of colour and you'll see what I mean. 4) I very much hope so. Maybe in 30 years the technology will have advanced to the point where we have to do it again, but probably it won't.

....

I hope that helps. If you want to see the artwork uncoloured, it's in The Annotated Sandman...