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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. With a romantic and indeed arrogant cast - as befits his role as lord of fiction - Dream is the only one of the Endless who has taken on the title of King as "the King of Dreams", a role whose qualities, dangers, and duties, serve as one of the primary themes of ''The Sandman''.

Contents

Appearance

Speech

The Dreaming

Dream and mythology

In DC Continuity

Personality

Aspects of Dream

References

See also

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. He bears some resemblance to musician Robert Smith with David Bowie, Bauhaus' Peter Murphy, and Gaiman himself also serving as visual references.
Aptly enough for a king of Dreams (as also for a comics character whose title was constantly changing artists), Morpheus' appearance ranges widely 'depending on who's watching': His style (though not quality) of dress generally matches that of his viewers, as does his race (while generally shown interacting with white characters, the people of "Tales in the Sand's" primordial African city (whose queen he seeks as consort) see him as a star-eyed black wanderer). Far older than humanity, he is not reliably human: he appears as a magnificent 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, resembling a flaming alien skull, but Mr. Miracle, looking at him simultaneously, sees him in his more customary human form. It is unclear whether Morpheus' appearance owes more to his onlookers' beliefs in how he should appear or to how he feels like appearing, but rule-bound as he is (and set as he is as lord over those very expectations) there may not be much difference. In one popular sequence ("The Parliament of Rooks") we see Dream and his elder sister Death drawn as cartoon children, accompanying a bedtime story told about Dream to a young child; Dream does not himself appear in this form (in which artist Jill Thompson depicts him to us) but only in a story told by one of his subjects: unless again, Dream being himself a story, this is not a significant difference.
He customarily wears black, at times with a motif of flames (if not actual ones) dancing in the fabric (his regal vestments at times vary the black with purple, blue, or orange). He has a gas-mask-like helmet made from the skull and backbone of a defeated enemy god, which he wears in battle; this is also his sigil in the galleries of the other Endless. His everyday attire, more perhaps than his regal vestments, tends to vary according to the time period he finds himself in. As befits a king with an oft-noted romantic streak, a good deal of personal vanity seems consistently to factor into his choice of appearance, balanced with consideration for (and/or condescension to) the sensibilities of those to whom he appears.

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.

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. 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.

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 Aristaeus of Marmora, taking the role given in legend to Apollo, with whom he is often confused.

In DC Continuity

Since the creation of the Vertigo imprint (itself largely inspired by the success of 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.

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 '' 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 crueller and more blind to his flaws. 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 '' 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."

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. One particular aspect of Dream is the central character of the series, so referring to this aspect of Dream as Morpheus differentiates him from Dream as a whole. When the aspect known as Morpheus dies at the end of '', the ninth collection of issues in the series, he is replaced by a new aspect, which came to gestation in the land of dreaming, called Daniel. This is a tricky concept, encapsulated in the tenth and final collection, ''. 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.

References

★

See also

★ The Endless

★ Characters of ''The Sandman''

★ Daniel