Nightmares and daydreams have the power to terrify or excite us but good or bad, a dream is only truly dangerous when it escapes the dreamer. In DC's The Sandman saga, even the most mundane dreams can lead to disaster if they leave their realm. One such nightmare will wreak havoc in DC's next entry, The Dreaming: Waking Hours #1.
Set to continue where the previous volume of The Dreaming left off, The Dreaming: Waking Hours will follow the lord of dreams' newest creation, a nightmare named Ruin. It is in the new-born nightmare's nature to bring destruction to every dream he is part of. As DC writes in their press release, "In the form of Ruin, the nightmare of catastrophic failure, Dream was certain he’d built his next masterpiece…but Ruin can’t help but live up to his name." When Shakespearean scholar Lindy dreams of Ruin, she accidentally frees Ruin from the Dreaming and lets him loose on the physical world.
DC has made a concerted effort in recent years to expand adapt The Sandman into a full series for the streaming service.
With acclaimed writer G. Willow Wilson writing for The Dreaming: Waking Hours, DC has shown they're willing to invest as much into the talent behind the new Sandman comic books as they are in its various adaptations. Wilson is most famous for creating the current Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan, for Marvel. Her work on Ms. Marvel has earned Wilson a Hugo Award for best graphic story and numerous Eisner Award nominations. Accompanying Wilson's writing is art by a relative newcomer to comics, Nick Robles. Check out Robles' art in the preview pages below.
Though Gaiman is no longer writing The Sandman comics, Wilson is an acclaimed writer who has proven capable of writing for a wide variety of genres. Robles might be newer to the comics industry than fans might expect from a Sandman title, but his art in the preview pages captures The Dreaming's strange and abstract nature beautifully.
The Dreaming: Waking Hours will be published under DC's Black Label for mature readers on August 4th, 2020.
