Melvin and all the other nightmares wish you a Happy Halloween

    When I created Sandman and the Dreaming realm, which frontiers are constantly moving, I've considered it should be inhabited also by a few habitual nightmares that would remain in collective unconscious of dreamers characters.

    I was signing under the pesudonym of Sam Keith during that period due to provoked temporary memory loss and I have created Sandman and all its characters in a quich hand unfinished drawing style. 

    I created Lobo during the same period; from high school to beggining of design college (my first comic characters and strips are all from childhood years; some scripts and most characters are in partnership with Dave Gibbons), and wrote Sandman's sagas scripts with main dialogs, later filled by Neil Gaiman, but only at college I knew it was already being published, wthout permission, while I was still writing it, and had already forgotten about it then.

    They used some of my artworks and drawing style for Lobo's publication, with pencil and ink by Simon Bizley following my Sam Keith style, but originally this style was also intended for drawing some of the Sandman's sagas too.

    From the beggining, I was intending it to have a different artist from the art and design college I was going to apply to yet for each saga, but developed that quick Keith style for drawing it fast directly on ink while I'd search for new drawers or wait for them to finish some art.

    Corinto was based on a real nightmare and, as in Sandman I'm constantly emulating dream field's situations, he should have the kind of name that people from dreams sometimes have; of something that is not a person's name, but of something else.

    The myth of Cain and Abel would remain in Christians' subconscious minds in the series and those two employees from The Dreaming should endlessly re-enact Abel's gory murder by Cain. Both would have pet gargoyles, whose name always start with the letter G, and although Goldie is female, she should be drawn with a dick without further explanation, an inconsistency dreamers not always notice.

    I am particularly proud of Melvin, a look-alike of Jack Lantern folklore figure, but dressed in a farmer outfit and having a countryman's accent and a name that resembles Merlin's, the kind of association due to the magic subject link that you can only notice after you'd wake up.

    Reality in Sandman in not less scary that in dreams because there are witchcraft that calls for John Constantine's (Gibbons/Gillian) help and witches all around.

    Danzel, mother and old lady are always switching and merging from one to another in their sinister Hecatae motion choreo. 

    Thessaly, whose current name is short for thessalian, originary from Thessalia; Sandman series' forgotten place, which was located somewhere near Greece is today, is centuries old.

    That witch pass for an unsuspectedly ordinary girl, but is badass as fuck and has performed the reanimation and interrogation of the ripped off face of a dead man in dark magic ritual witnessed by her frightened female neighbours.

    She had an affair with Sandman himself and their breakup was responsible for the bad weather in dreams for a while. If dreamers around the world dreamt of rain that was because Sandman has been depressed about the sudden end of their relationship.

Wish you a Happy Halloween,

Terry Gillian

© Lobo, Sandman, The Dreaming and its characters are creation and intellectual property of Terry Gillian.