Characters of The Sandman

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This is a list of characters appearing in The Sandman. This page discusses not only events which occur in The Sandman, but also some occurring in spinoffs of The Sandman and in stories The Sandman was based on.

Contents

Dreams and nightmares

These inhabitants of the Dreaming are often former gods, myths, and even ordinary human beings who later became dreams.

Cain and Abel

Cain and Abel are a pair of fictional characters in the DC Comics universe based on the Biblical Cain and Abel.

Before The Sandman

Originally they were the respective "hosts" of the EC-style horror comic anthologies House of Mystery and House of Secrets, which ran from the 1950s through the 1970s. During the 1970s, they also co-hosted the horror/humor anthology Plop!.

In 1985, the characters were revived by writer Alan Moore, who introduced them into his Swamp Thing series in issue #33, retelling the Swamp Thing's original origin story from a 1971 issue of House of Secrets. Jamie Delano also occasionally used them in a cameo role in his title Hellblazer.

However, it was Neil Gaiman's series The Sandman that more fully developed the "reinvented" characters into more mature, post-Comics Code version of the themselves, and who helped fully drag them out of obscurity.

In The Sandman

In Gaiman's Sandman universe, the biblical Cain and Abel come to live in the Dreaming at Dream's invitation. This is based on the verse in the Bible which says that Cain was sent to live in the Land of Nod.

They live as neighbours in two houses near a graveyard, Cain in the tall House of Mystery and Abel in the squat House of Secrets. According to their appearance in Swamp Thing, the difference is that a mystery may be shared, but a secret must be forgotten if one tries to tell it.

Gaiman's Cain is an aggressive, overbearing character. He is a thin, long-limbed man with an angular, drawn face, glasses, a tufty beard, and hair drawn into two points above his ears. He has been described as sounding "just like Vincent Price."

Gaiman's Abel is a nervous, stammering, kind-hearted man. Abel is somewhat similar in appearance to Cain, with a tufty beard and hair that comes to points above his ears, though his hair is black rather than brown. He is shorter and fatter than Cain, with a more open face. It is eventually learned that the only time he doesn't stutter is when he is telling a story.

Cain frequently kills Abel in a kind of macabre form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, re-enacting the first murder. In the Dreaming, Abel's death is impermanent, and he seems to recover after a few hours. Cain seems unable to control his frequent murders of Abel, and occasionally expresses remorse over them; there is a genuine bond between the two, beneath the surface contempt. Abel remains dedicated to Cain, and frequently dreams of a more harmonious relationship between the two.

Cain and Abel own a large green draconic gargoyle named Gregory. In the first appearance of the characters in Sandman, issue #2, Cain gives Abel an egg that soon hatches into another gargoyle, a small golden one. Abel is delighted and names the gargoyle "Irving," but Cain forcefully insists that the names of gargoyles must always begin with a "G." When Abel resists, Cain murders him, and after Abel revives he renames the gargoyle "Goldie," after a friend of his who "went away."

The main function of Cain and Abel throughout The Sandman is as comic relief. However, the two play significant (though not key) roles at several points in the series; it is they who take Dream in until his strength is restored following his 72-year-long imprisonment. In the fourth story arc, Season of Mists, Cain is sent to Hell to give a message to Lucifer because the Mark of Cain protects him from all harm. Cain and Abel also aid The Corinthian with the child Daniel during The Kindly Ones, the penultimate story arc of the series. Abel is also one of the victims of the Furies in this series, and is brought back to life by the new Dream (Daniel).

Corinthian

For a longer description, see also: Corinthian (comics).

The Corinthian is a fictional character in Neil Gaiman's comic book series The Sandman. His first appearance is in the second story arc, The Doll's House.

The Corinthian is a creation of Dream. His most notable physical feature is his lack of eyes; in their place, two rows of small jagged teeth line each eye socket. The Corinthian often wears sunglasses to cover this up. He is an ambitious, amoral nightmare who is fond of eating eyes with his two additional mouths, and can acquire some of the memories of the former possessors of eyes he eats. He is also able to talk out of any of his three mouths, causing a disconcerting effect.

The Corinthian departs from the dreamscape during Dream's period of captivity, and spends his time hiding out and gathering power in the real world. However, Dream eventually catches up to him shortly after saving Rose Walker from harm. Dream states that the Corinthian was his masterpiece,

"A nightmare created to be the darkness, and the fear of darkness in every human heart. A black mirror, made to reflect everything about itself that humanity will not confront."

Instead, Dream finds his creation has walked the earth for about 40 years, playing the role of a serial killer who eats the eyes of men and gathering the support of numerous other serial killers. Dream had created the Corinthian as a nightmare that would show humanity its own dark nature, but the Corinthian had done nothing more than commit gruesome murders in his forty years of freedom, doing little to inspire fear on a grander scale in the world. Dream therefore considers the Corinthian to be a failure, and "uncreates" him with no difficulty, saving only one of the Corinthian's skulls for later use. He remarks that the next time he creates the Corinthian, he "shall not be so flawed and petty."

Dream does eventually recreate the Corinthian in The Kindly Ones. The new Corinthian only shares some of his original self's memories, and seems to have a different personality. This new, seemingly gentler Corinthian helps rescue and protect Daniel just before Morpheus dies. In the process, he battles, defeats and eats the eyes of Loki, who, along with Puck, was holding the child hostage.

An exact double of the Corinthian's skull appeared in the treasure chest of Daniel Hall during his brief 'JLA' appearance, suggesting that perhaps the Corinthian was dismantled again. Either that or he has a brother.

Keen-eyed viewers may spot a brief Corinthian reference in Alice Cooper's video clip for "Gimme".

Eve

Eve is a character in Neil Gaiman's comic book series The Sandman. She is based upon the biblical Eve, the mother of humanity and wife of Adam.

Her story is a complex one, and is described in the graphic novel Fables and Reflections. She is one of the many representations in The Sandman of the triple nature of womankind (maiden, mother and crone), based on the three distinct "Eve"s in some versions of the Genesis story: the arrogant Lilith, an unnamed virgin, and Eve herself. As such, while she is an individual with her own personality, she is also one another representation of The Three, along with the Fates, Graces and Furies. This is comparable to the way the series' protagonist, Dream, is on one level a character in his own right, and on another level merely a symbol or representation of the larger concept of dreams.

Eve lives in a cave in the Dreaming, and is often accompanied by Matthew, Dream's raven. She is kind and has a maternal nature. Most of the time she appears as a black-haired woman of indeterminate age. However, her appearance also mirrors her triple nature; she sometimes shifts between being a young, attractive maiden, a middle aged mother, and an elderly crone. These changes are directly related to the distance she is from the mouth of her cave.

Eve originally appeared in Swamp Thing accompanied by a raven named 'Edgar Allen'. She also made a few appearances in House of Mystery and Secrets before the series ended.

Fiddler's Green

Fiddler's Green is a place in the Dreaming which all travellers (specifically sailors) apparently dream of someday finding. It sometimes likes to take human form and go wandering, using the alias Gilbert during one of these trips. His most common form is as a kind, portly man who strongly resembles G. K. Chesterton and vaguely resembles Everett True. Fiddler's Green was killed in the anthology The Kindly Ones. Dream attempted to resurrect him in The Wake, but the almost-alive Gilbert stated that "my death would have no meaning." Acquiescing, the new Dream stopped the process.

Gregory

A large green gargoyle, the pet of Cain. Gregory possesses about the same brainpower as a chimp, and communicates in several sub-intelligible 'grunts' which everyone but the readers of The Sandman can understand. He is also a good friend of Goldie, and helps Goldie put Abel back together every time Cain kills him.

Goldie

Goldie is a character in Neil Gaiman's popular The Sandman comic book series.

In The Sandman

Goldie is a pet (baby) gargoyle, given to Abel by his brother Cain in Sandman #2. Abel originally intended to name him "Irving", but Cain insisted that gargoyles' names must all begin with a "G." Cain then proceeded to murder Abel over this, after which Abel names the gargoyle Goldie, after a friend who went away.

Goldie also appears for a short scene in The Doll's House, in which he is sitting upon Abel's shoulder as Lucien asks Abel about the inhabitants of the house. He later appears throughout issue #40, "Parliament of Rooks", and briefly at the beginning of Brief Lives. He also accompanies Abel in The Kindly Ones, and is with him when he gets murdered by the Furies, crying when his owner is killed. He is later seen playing with Daniel.

After The Sandman

Goldie's life took a sharp turn in The Dreaming, a Sandman spin-off series not written by Gaiman. In "The Goldie Factor", Abel is yet again killed by Cain, and Goldie grows angry, and, after spitting acid onto Cain's boots—almost getting Abel killed again—the gargoyle leaves for the outer Dreaming.

Upon learning that Goldie is missing, Cain reveals how he found Goldie: during the years of Dream's absence, he bought a golden gargoyle egg from a door-to-door merchant. However, somehow the egg managed to get him to give it to Abel, and was "persuasive" with Cain. This is indeed admirable; the only way to force Cain to do something would be to threaten him, and most of all characters in Sandman have well avoided ever attempting so.

Cain and Abel go to Lucien to learn more, and Lucien informs them that only one person had been looking for Goldie before, a man with no arms or legs. However, in the book in his library on golden gargoyles, the page concerning what they guard had been torn out. Meanwhile, Goldie stops in at the Labyrinth Cafe, only to meet a man with no arms or legs named Tempto. Tempto recognizes Goldie's power and enlists her services.

Cain and Abel seeks the advice of Eve, who tells them that the limbless man, Tempto, was the serpent at the Garden of Eden who had tempted her into eating the forbidden fruit, thus causing her to be thrown out of Eden. In the continuing search for Goldie, Cain discovers new things about himself and his brother, such as that he had founded the first city and named it after his son, Enoch, and that when Abel dies, he becomes a completely different person, with no stutter or timid personality.

Goldie, in the company of Tempto, enters the Garden of Eden. Tempto then "corrects" the original passage from the Bible, bringing Adam back from the dead and annihilating everything except Eden. Eve, however, realizes what is happening and tries to eat the forbidden fruit by herself. Before she can do this, however, Goldie touches the trees, grows to an adult form, and returns everything to normal.

Cain and Abel reappear along with everyone else, and Tempto makes a quick escape after they try to catch him. Goldie is led by Eve to a pile of golden gargoyle bones, and Eve explains that gold gargoyles are built not to protect buildings, but to protect Creation stories, such as Genesis and the story of Prometheus. To prevent Tempto from trying the same thing again, Goldie must build a nest out of the bones of her mother and ancestors, and give birth to and raise the next guardian. There is a tearful farewell between all of the characters, and Goldie is left behind at Eden.

At the end of the story, Cain and Abel sit at home. Cain, possibly for the first time in his life, wishes to cheer Abel up, and so he gives him a present: the gold and silver apples from the tree in Eden. However, this only depresses Abel further, and so Cain grows angry and asks Abel if he wishes to be put out of his misery. Abel replies, "Muh-Maybe".

Stunned, Cain rebukes him, saying that that's not how it works, that he kills Abel because he wants to. Abel says that Cain wanted him to be happy. Cain grimaces, and plunges a knife into his brother. When Abel awakes, he notices that he isn't dead as usual. Instead, he's in the middle of the desert. He hears an "awk", and runs into the arms of a fully-grown Goldie.

Meanwhile, Cain looks over the temporarily dead Abel, and mutters: "Strange... I've never seen him look so happy and peaceful. I don't know why, but... I'm almost scared."

Lucien

Lucien is a fictional character in Neil Gaiman's comic book series The Sandman. He serves as the chief librarian in The Dreaming, and is a tall, thin, bookish man.

Lucien is the effective keeper of the Dreaming in Dream's absence, and becomes one of Dream's most faithful and trusted servants after proving his loyalty by never abandoning his post during that period. His primary function is to protect the Library, wherein are contained all the books that have ever been dreamt of, including the ones that have never been written. We learn of the titles of some of these books, a more complete list of which can be found in the Invisible Library, a listing of fictional books.

Like Cain and Abel, Lucien was originally the host of a 1970s "weird tales" comic, specifically Tales from Ghost Castle. In that series, he was portrayed as the guardian of an abandoned castle, watching over its forgotten library. In his first appearance in Preludes and Nocturnes this was retroactively revealed to be Dream's castle, deteriorating in the Dream Lord's absence. In issue 68, it was revealed that Lucien's existence in the Dreaming began as serving the role of Dream's first raven. An allusion to "Mr. Raven", the ghostly librarian in George MacDonald's novel Lilith, may be intended.

Matthew

Main Article: Matthew (DC Comics)

Matthew is a character in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman comic series. He is the raven of Dream of the Endless.

Matthew was originally Matthew Cable, a long-time supporting character in the Swamp Thing series, but because he died while asleep in the Dreaming, he was offered the chance to become a dream raven and serve Dream if he wished, and he accepted. This may also be how Dream acquired his past ravens, or at least some of them, such as Aristeas of Marmora, who returned to his life as a man for one year at one point. It has been suggested that Lucien may have been another of Dream's former ravens, and it is later revealed that he was, in fact, the first raven.

Matthew's purpose—and the purpose of the many ravens that Dream had owned previously—is debatable. Morpheus seems to keep the ravens around out of some sort of unspoken need for companionship, though he also sends them on occasional missions.

Matthew's word bubbles and font style are scratchy and uneven, probably to represent a hoarse, cawing voice, and perhaps as an indicator of his crude, smart-alec personality. Underneath his frequently irreverent manner, Matthew is actually very loyal to Dream, and he is one of the characters who takes it the hardest when Dream perishes, initially seeking release from his service, but eventually coming to terms with his loss and choosing to remain as Daniel's raven.

Mervyn Pumpkinhead

Mervyn Pumpkinhead is a character in Neil Gaiman's popular comic book series, The Sandman.

Mervyn, or Merv, as he is better known throughout the series, is Dream's jaded, street-wise, cigar-smoking janitor. As his name implies, he has a pumpkin for a head, and his overall appearance is similar to that of a scarecrow combined with a jack-o'-lantern.

Mervyn apparently drove a bus in dreams for a time during Dream's extended absence, and is first seen in Preludes and Nocturnes when Dream hitches a ride with him and chats for a while. Merv seems to be in charge of the construction, maintenance and demolition work in the Dreaming, though he sometimes complains that his job is superfluous since Dream can change any of it at will. His true function in the Dreaming may be to serve as a representative of the working class. His janitorial duties would therefore be more a part of his character than a necessary part of the upkeep of the Dreaming.

Mervyn took up arms to fight the Furies in The Kindly Ones and was killed, but he was returned to life by the new Dream in The Wake.

In a past incarnation shown in The Wake, Mervyn was seen to have had a turnip for a head instead of a pumpkin, either as a result of Dream's alterations to his servants or, more likely, due to the changing cultural dreams and myths of societies over the centuries. It is William Shakespeare who sees Mervyn with a turnip for a head, and he would probably not have known of pumpkins, an American plant. Turnips, on the other hand, were well-known in England at the time and were carved as a part of the Celtic festival that inspired Halloween. It is possible that other creatures would see other appearances, and perhaps even personalities, associated with Mervyn, and with many other residents of the Dreaming. This has at least been confirmed in the case of Dream himself.

Minor dreams

  • Brute and Glob: A pair of troublemaking nightmares who try to gain power during Dream's absence. They originally appeared in Jack Kirby's 1974 Sandman series, as sidekicks to the title character.
  • Cuckoo: A parasitic dream who lives in Barbie's dreamworld and eventually takes over there. She assumes the form of a childhood version of Barbie until she successfully escapes from Barbie's world, at which point she transforms into a beautiful black-feathered bird. (This character may or may not be a reference to the Cuckoos from fellow author Clive Barker's "Weaveworld").
  • Fashion Thing: A minor character whose form changes based on popular fads. She is based on the "Mad Mod Witch", the host of Tales of The Unexpected, another DC horror title. At the time of her first appearance in Sandman, however, she is a "Mad Yuppie Witch".
  • Ruthven: A minor character, a vampiric rabbit who is often seen in the background of the dreaming and occasionally talked to by the other characters, his speech is written in a demonic font as if his voice is very dark and powerful. He is killed by the Kindly Ones, but resurrected by Daniel in The Wake.

Gods, demigods, and major personifications

Basanos

The Basanos is a fictional character in the comic book Lucifer, a spinoff of Sandman,

The Basanos is a living Tarot deck created by the seraph Meleos to duplicate the divining power of Destiny's book. They are incredibly powerful due to the fact that they control probability, making whatever outcome they desire not only likely, but inevitable.

After escaping from Meleos, the Basanos take possession of Jill Presto, a cabaret worker. Lucifer Morningstar seeks them out for a tarot reading, which they grant.

When Lucifer creates his new universe, the Basanos move to take control of it so that they can breed (something that is impossible in The Creator's cosmos). Though initially successful in their plan, forming an alliance with Lucifer's enemies, their ability to control random chance is severely limited by Lucifer's creation, and Lucifer is able to outmaneuver them. Lucifer finally gives them an ultimatum: destroy themselves or risk letting the egg they laid in Jill Presto die. The Basanos choose death and extinguish themselves.

Basanos is Greek for touchstone. Such a touchstone may be a piece of slate used to test gold, or it may be a metaphor for torture or torment to test truthfulness. Why Meleos chose this name for his creation is unknown.

Bast

Bast, the cat-headed goddess of cats, is a fictional character from Neil Gaiman's comic book series, The Sandman.

Once a major goddess, the loss of her believers over time has significantly reduced her powers. She is quite flirtatious with Dream, and seems to have previously developed a mutual attraction with him which ultimately came to nothing. He sometimes goes to her for advice or companionship.

Bast is based on Bastet, on the Egyptian goddess of cats.

Creator

The Creator is the Sandman universe's equivalent of a supreme monotheistic God figure, and he shares many characteristics with the standard Abrahamic God, such as almost never taking a physical form (the sole exception shown is in Murder Mysteries), being a creator-deity and having unmatched power.

However, despite these indications that all the mythologies in the Sandman are ultimately subordinate to the Judeo-Christian God, Gaiman has on several occasions stated that he never intended the Creator to be any specific religion's god, just as he makes it clear in the first appearance of the abode of the angels, the Silver City, that the Silver City "is not Paradise. It is not Heaven. It is the Silver City, that is not part of the order of created things." However, the Silver City is very often referred to as "Heaven" in the Lucifer comic book series.

In that series, one of the critical turning points is the death of the Creator (or at least the Creator's abandonment of his Creation), which leads to a large number of problems, including struggles to claim the power that the Creator has abandoned, and the slow unraveling of the universe due to the disappearance of the Name of the Creator written on every atom of existence. This is an ongoing storyline in Lucifer.

Endless

Main article: Endless (comics)

The Endless are a family of seven anthropomorphic personifications of universal concepts who much of the series revolves around. They are:

Loki

Loki is a callous and deceptive trickster god who first appears in Season of Mists.

Loki is based on the Norse god Loki.

Odin

Odin appears as an old man wearing a wide-brimmed hat and cloak and carrying a staff. He is usually depicted as a dark, mysterious figure, missing one eye and accompanied with his two ravens, Hugin and Munin ("thought" and "memory"), and two wolves, Geri and Freki.

Odin is based on the Norse God Odin.

Three

The Three is an entity unique in the Sandman, something like a god and something like a dream and completely mutable in appearance, seeming to exist as a sentient concept or symbol in the form of any group of three women, particularly when they represent the Mother, the Maiden and the Crone, the three aspects of the Triple Goddess in many mythologies.

In The Sandman

The Three repeatedly appear throughout The Sandman for many different reasons and fulfilling different functions at different points in the story. Their first appearance is in The Sandman #2, where they appear as the three witches from the DC horror anthology The Witching Hour. They later take many different forms over the course of the series, and the "three women" symbol remains an extremely common one, often blurring the lines between when characters are supposed to be merely themselves and when they are supposed to be representations of the Three.

The Three represent the female principle, prophecy, and mystery, and they are often a vaguely menacing and enigmatic presence in the series. As a three-in-one mystical being, they can be seen as contrasting with the commonly-used triple-male Trinity, a symbol based in Christianity rather than in superstition and witchcraft. Indeed, legend and mythology play a much larger role throughout the series than religion does, though some segments suggest a supreme monotheistic God at work behind the scenes.

Common incarnations of the Three include the Erinyes (Furies) in their vengeful aspect and the Moirae (Fates) or Weird Sisters in their divinatory aspect. They also sometimes subtly appear in the form of other characters (such as Eve) or groups of characters.

After The Sandman

The Three later appeared in a graphic novel named Witchcraft, in which one of their priestesses in ancient Rome, Ursula, is set upon and raped by barbarians. She is then reincarnated three times, followed by the witches, and raped again three times by reincarnations of the barbarian leader until the modern age, when she comes back as his mother-in-law.

The Three eventually decide on a suitable punishment for the barbarian: that he would be reincarnated as each of the priestesses he had raped, in order, with the exception of Ursula. He would never know what was happening until the moment of death, at which point it would start all over again.

The Three are satisfied, and in the end tell Ursula that her grandchild will be beautiful, demonstrating a rare instance of apparent empathy.

Minor gods

  • Ishtar: An exotic dancer who happens to be the goddess Ishtar. She is revealed to be a former lover of Destruction, and kills herself after speaking with Morpheus when the latter traveled with Delirium in search of his lost brother.
  • Thor: The Norse god Thor, a ridiculously muscular and dim-witted drunkard who likes to brag about how big he can make his hammer grow.

Angels, fallen angels, and devils

Duma

Duma is a fallen angel from the DC Vertigo series The Sandman.

Before The Sandman

Duma's name means "silence", and he is based on the angel Duma from Jewish mythology. In those tales, he is the angel of silence and death's stillness. According to these same stories, he is the guardian of Egypt and the prince of vindication. Based on this, one could speculate that he was the angel who killed the firstborn Egyptians in Moses' time. Some sources also name him a "Prince of Hell," which would mean that at some unknown point in time he displeased God and fell from grace.

The Zohar, a book of Jewish mysticism, describes his position in Hell as such that he had "tens of thousands of angels of destruction" under him, and that he was "chief of demons in Gehinnon with 12,000 myriads of attendants, all charged with the punishment of the souls of sinners."

Dumah is also the name given to the guardian of the 14th gate, through which the goddess Ishtar passed on her journey to the underworld in Babylonian mythology. Dumah may or may not be related to Duma.

In The Sandman

It is unknown how much of Duma's background from Jewish mythology was actually incorporated into the character by Gaiman. Many theories and interpretations have been put forward, but nothing is concrete.

In Season of Mists, we find that Lucifer has closed down Hell in frustration, handing off the key to the bemused Dream. Eventually, after much squabbling between various gods, Duma and Remiel receive a message saying that they are to watch over Hell. Remiel immediately rejects it, but Duma silently accepts the key, and the guilt-stricken Remiel joins him in ruling Hell. Remiel subsequently attempts to redesign Hell, transforming it from a place of punishment to a place of rehabilitation for lost souls, but Duma's interest in these changes is unknown, as is his true opinion on many things.

After The Sandman

Following the end of the The Sandman series, Remiel and Duma lose ownership of Hell in a complex sequence of events in the Lucifer spin-off series. Duma eventually allies with Lucifer and Elaine Belloc in the battle to save creation. It is he who persuades Hell's new ruler Christopher Rudd to bring his army to Heaven's aid at the Battle of Armageddon plain.

Azazel

Azazel is a former ruler of Hell, reigning for a time alongside Lucifer and Beelzebub. He appears as a twisting, torn mass of black flame, like a window into space, filled with numerous eyes and mouths.

He was cast out after Lucifer abandoned Hell, and made the mistake of threatening and attacking Dream to try to gain ownership of it. Dream keeps him in a bottle in a chest of trinkets and mementos.

He is based on the demon Azazel.

Beelzebub

Along With Lucifer and Azazel, Beelzebub was the third King of Hell. He often appears as either a gigantic green fly, or a short green man with giant fly eyes instead of arms. His constant buzzing slurs his speech (e.g, 'Bbbbut nooo. Itzzz a Triummmvirate.') He is based on the Demon Beelzebub.

A character also named "Beelzebub" had a four-page appearance in Good Omens, a novel co-written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. He appeared as a ten-foot man wreathed in red flames.

Choronzon

Choronzon is a former duke of Hell who served under Beelzebub. He has pink skin and two mouths, one under the other.

He had possession of Dream's helm, but lost it in a challenge. He later reappeared briefly as one of Azazel's tactics to gain ownership of Hell.

He is based on the demon Choronzon.

Lucifer

Main article: Lucifer (DC Comics)

Lucifer is the Miltonian former ruler of Hell, a charming, intelligent, and utterly ruthless fallen angel.

He is one of the most powerful beings in existence, said at one point to be surpassed only by his Creator. However, with the events in the Lucifer series, it is possible that Lucifer is now the most powerful being of all, not counting the Creator who was seen outside of creation watching everything.

He is based on the fallen angel Lucifer.

Neil Gaiman also used the character Lucifer in his short story 'Murder Mysteries'. In this format, Lucifer was a captain of the Silver City, with Azazel as his protege.

From the book, "Hanging out with the Dream King" (a book consisting of interviews with Gaiman's collaborators), one of Gaiman's artists, Kelley Jones, states that Lucifer is based on David Bowie, image-wise. In the interview, Jones states the following:

"...Neil was adamant that the Devil was David Bowie. He just said, 'He is. You must draw David Bowie. Find David Bowie, or I'll send you David Bowie. Because if it isn't David Bowie, you're going to have to redo it until it is David Bowie.' So I said, 'Okay, it's David Bowie.'..."

Mazikeen

Mazikeen is a fictional character from Neil Gaiman's Sandman mythos. The name "Mazikeen" comes from that of a shapeshifting demon of Jewish mythology.

In The Sandman

Mazikeen first appeared in The Sandman, where she was Lucifer's consort while he reigned in Hell. At the time, half of her face was normal, but the other half was horribly misshapen and skeletal, causing her speech to be nearly unintelligible. (Gaiman wrote Mazikeen's dialogue by trying to speak using only half of his mouth, and writing down phonetically what came out.)

When Lucifer resigned, Mazikeen left Hell and ended up following her master, becoming part of the staff at the "Lux" (Latin for light), an elite Los Angeles bar that Lucifer had opened and played piano at. To conceal her demonic nature, she covered the deformed half of her face with a white mask and rarely spoke.

After The Sandman

In the ongoing comic book series Lucifer, Mazikeen is a devoted ally of Lucifer Morningstar and the war leader of the Lilim, a race descended from Lilith. A fearsome warrior and a respected leader, Mazikeen is a prominent character in the Lucifer comics. She has the appearance of a human female with long black hair.

In Lucifer, Mazikeen's face was turned fully human when she was resuscitated by the Basanos following the destruction of the Lux in a fire. This was because the vessel of the Basanos, Jill Presto, did not realize that Mazikeen's face was naturally deformed, and assumed that it was burned in the fire.

When Lucifer refused to assist her in restoring her face to its former state, she defected to her family, the Lilim-in-Exile. As their war leader, she led their army against Lucifer's cosmos, allying herself briefly with the Basanos. However, this was a ruse; after a desperate gamble, she bought Lucifer enough time to destroy the Basanos and regain control of his creation. Lucifer then accepted her into his service once more and made the Lilim-in-Exile the standing army of his universe.

Remiel

Remiel is an angelic character in the comic book series The Sandman based on the angel Remiel. He first appears in Season of Mists.

In The Sandman

Remiel, along with Duma, is sent to observe when Dream is given the key to Hell. Dream ends up offering the key to Remiel and Duma, making them the new rulers of Hell, but Remiel refuses to accept it, wishing to return to the Silver City. In doing so, Remiel disobeys the Creator, and as a result can never return to the Silver City anyway. Duma accepts the key, however, and the two angels descend to Hell to rule over the countless sinners and demons there. Whether Remiel is a fallen angel or not (he is described as having tripped or stumbled more than fallen), and whether he truly has the free will to ultimately disobey the Creator's wishes, is left somewhat ambiguous.

While reigning in Hell, Remiel attempts to organize the domain into a great soul-cleansing machine.

After The Sandman

Following the end of the Sandman series, Remiel and Duma lose ownership of Hell in a complex sequence of events in the Lucifer spin-off series.

Minor angels and demons

Immortals, witches, and long-lived humans

Hob Gadling

Main article: Hob Gadling

Robert "Hob" Gadling is a human who was granted immortality and meets with Dream once every hundred years.

The manner in which he becomes immortal is complex and abstract. Hob's forever life began in a pub sometime in the dark ages when he simply declared that he "had decided never to die." Death agrees, at Dream's request, to forego her responsibilties in Gadling's case. Whether Death does this out of respect for her brother's whim or Gadling's conviction is a matter of unsettled contestation.

In The Wake, Death meets Gadling at a Renaissance Fair; out of respect for her late brother Dream she offers to end his six-hundred-year life, but Gadling refuses.

Orpheus

Orpheus is the son of Dream in The Sandman. He is based on the Orpheus of Greek mythology

After travelling through Hades, losing his beloved (twice), and being torn apart by the Bacchante (the beloved of Dionysos), as in the legend, Orpheus spent a long time travelling around the world as a disembodied head. Johanna Constantine helped him through France. He was eventually 'put out of misery' by his father, an event which fulfilled the prophecy of Desire, Dream's sibling, that he would spill family blood and trigger a sequence of events leading to his destruction.

Thessaly

Thessaly is a fictional character in the Sandman comic book series. Neil Gaiman named this character after the land of witches, Thessaly, in Greece. Later in the series, Thessaly changes her name to Larissa, which is the capital of Thessaly. Larissa was actually the local fountain nymph, after whom the town was named.

Thessaly is the last of the millennia-old witches of Thessaly. She makes her first appearance in A Game of You, in which she is shown to be an amoral, cold-blooded, proud, and ruthless character, though not a malicious one. She proves extremely willing to mercilessly hunt down and kill anyone who threatens her, and she seems to be concerned primarily with her own advancement and survival.

When the Cuckoo of "The Land" of Barbie's dreams threatens to kill Barbie, Thessaly and Barbie's friends venture into Barbie's dreams to save her. However, Thessaly is driven more by her pride and her own self-preservation than by any desire to help Barbie. She ends up being tricked by the Cuckoo and is almost trapped forever in a desolate archipelago of the Dreaming along with Barbie's friends until Barbie wishes for their safe return to the waking world.

Thessaly returns in the later volumes, where she is Dream's lover for a time, but this relationship ends unhappily for both and is never actually shown in the series. When it is alluded to in Brief Lives Thessaly is never mentioned by name, so only in The Kindly Ones is this romance revealed. Also in The Kindly Ones, Thessaly provides Lyta Hall with protection and sanctuary from Dream, who is being targeted for death by the Furies, using Hall as a vessel.

Strangely, after Dream's death, Thessaly's attitude changes entirely, and when Lyta wakes up, Thessaly very calmly advises her to leave, suggesting that many people will be more than happy to murder Lyta for her part in Morpheus' destruction—including Thessaly herself. In The Wake, Thessaly expresses some remorse for her actions.

Thessaly also is the star of two spin-off comic series, The Thessaliad and Thessaly, Witch for Hire written by Bill Willingham. In the spin-offs, Thessaly (under that name) and her companion, a ghost named Fetch, first set out to tackle various gods of the underworld who want her dead. Later she is unwillingly pressured into a monster-killing contract.

Minor immortals

  • Mad Hettie: A London tramp born in 1741. At the time of Sandman #3, she was 247 years old. She appears frequently in other DC comics such as Hellblazer. She also had a large role in Death: The High Cost of Living.

Later, Hettie worked in the series The Dreaming, in which it was discovered that she had dealings with Destiny, Johanna Constantine and President Thomas Jefferson.

Fair folk

Inhabitants of Faerie.

Cluracan

The Cluracan is a supernatural being, of the faerie folk, in Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic.

A shapeshifter, the Cluracan is brother to Nuala, the Dream King's fairy servant. An amoral, bisexual rogue, Cluracan features in Season of Mists, Worlds' End, The Kindly Ones, and The Wake. He is strongly reminiscent of the "trickster" archetype also associated with Loki.

The Cluracan is based on a drunken leprechaun of Irish mythology, the Cluricaun.

Nuala

Nuala is a character in the comic book series The Sandman, by Neil Gaiman.

Nuala is a faerie gift to Dream at the end of Season of Mists. She is beautiful initially, but Dream takes her faerie glamour away, leaving a small, brown-haired, plain-looking girl in place of the beautiful blonde faerie woman.

From this point on, Nuala takes on the housekeeping duties of the Dreaming, only stopping when her brother The Cluracan brings her back to Faerie in The Kindly Ones. When she leaves, Dream granted her with a boon as a reward for her years of servitude, allowing her to call on him if she needs to. Nuala had been nursing a crush on Dream for some time, so she finally calls him, asking him to love her. Dream is unable to do this, but he says that he can at least "send you a dream of my love," to which Nuala responds: "I already have that, my lord."

Superficially as a result of Nuala's summoning Dream when he and the Dreaming are at their most vulnerable, Dream is killed by the Furies, though it is suggested that Dream could still have escaped his fate if he'd truly wished to, and many factors certainly contributed to the situation ending as it did.

Oberon

Oberon is a character in the comic book series The Sandman and The Books of Magic. He is seen for the first time in Sandman #19 as Auberon of Dom-Daniel, and again in several issues of The Books of Magic and in the Books of Faerie miniseries.

The character is implied to be the inspiration for the Oberon of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Titania

Titania is a character in Neil Gaiman's comic book series The Sandman. She is also known as Mab.

In The Sandman

Titania is the queen of the fay; she first appears in issue #19.

The character is implied to be the inspiration for Shakespeare's Titania in the play A Midsummer Night's Dream.

After The Sandman

Titania is also a major character in the comic book The Books of Magic, of which the first four issues were written by Gaiman.

In this series, it is revealed that she is not a fay, but a human girl who crossed over into the fay realm and was then adopted by the current queen of the fay. She appears to be a fay due to an enchanted circlet she stole when the last queen was transformed into a tree by her husband. She is also the most powerful human sorceress alive, which simply aids in her deception.

Puck

Puck is a brown-furred trickster and hobgoblin appearing several times in The Sandman. The Puck aids the Norse God Loki in kidnapping Daniel, playing a small role in the death of the Sandman and Daniel's subsequent assuming of the title.

The character is implied to be the inspiration for the Puck of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Mortals

Alex Burgess

Alex Burgess is a fictional character from Neil Gaiman's comic book series, The Sandman.

He is the son of Roderick Burgess, mother unknown (but probably Ethel Cripps, and therefore half-brother of Doctor Destiny). He is taught by his father, and takes part in his rituals. Upon Roderick Burgess' death, Alex inherits his estate, including his magical order. He keeps Dream imprisoned, as his father did, trying to bargain for power and immortality in exchange for his release. The Order enjoys a resurgence in popularity in the 1960s, but by the 1970s it is in the decline again. Alex passes ownership of the Order on to his boyfriend, Paul McGuire (formerly a gardener at the estate), and becomes obsessed with his prisoner and with his father. Finally, in 1988, Dream's guards fall asleep, and Dream escapes. He puts Alex into a nightmare of "eternal waking;" in which he is forever dreaming he is waking up, and each waking degenerates into another horrible nightmare. This nightmare lasts for years, ending only with Dream's death in the ninth collection in the series, The Kindly Ones.

Alex is quite tall and near-sighted. He has brown hair which he wears in a variety of styles throughout his life, but by old age he is bald and has come to resemble his father very closely. His relationship with McGuire is deep and heartfelt, but his obsessions with his father and with Dream eventually come to rule his life. In The Wake, he appears again as the child that we see on his first appearance.

Alex is in many ways a tragic figure, perhaps the first statement of the theme that Desire explores in The Wake : "The bonds of family bind both ways." Had Alex not been born the son of his father, inheriting the imprisoned Dream, his life might have been much happier. However, he is finally able to find some measure of fulfillment in his old age, following Dream's death.

His name almost certainly derives from Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, the protagonist of which is named Alex.

Roderick Burgess

Roderick Burgess is a fictional character from Neil Gaiman's comic book series, The Sandman.

Roderick Burgess (1863-1947) was the Lord Magus of The Order of the Ancient Mysteries. Born Morris Burgess Brocklesby and known also as The Daemon King, his magical fraternity was based in "Fawney Rig" in Sussex, and was initially funded by his inherited industrial wealth. Burgess is a magician rather in the vein of the real Aleister Crowley, and within the DC world is Crowley's rival.

The series begins with Burgess' attempt to capture and bind Death, which fails, capturing Dream instead. Burgess keeps Dream trapped in a glass globe for the rest of his (Burgess') life, attempting to bargain with Dream, but Dream remains silent. Burgess dies of old age still attempting to get a response out of Morpheus. His order passes on to his son, Alex.

Burgess is a bald-headed, slightly pot-bellied man with a large hook nose and something of the look of a gypsy about him. He is ultimately self-centred; his sole purpose for the Order is to bring money and power to himself, and he is consumed by his desire to achieve immortality. His relationship with his son is only briefly touched on, though it is implied that it is unhealthy, with Burgess pushing his son to spend his life pursuing his father's dreams.

Johanna Constantine

Lady Johanna Constantine is an 18th century supernatural adventuress. Dream encounters her several times, once to ask her to recover the head of his son, Orpheus. On an earlier occasion she disrupted what she believed to be a meeting between the Devil and the Wandering Jew, but was actually between Dream and Hob Gadling. Gadling mentioned knowing an Elizabethan sorcerer named Jack Constantine, presumably an earlier ancestor.

After The Sandman

In middle age, Johanna Constantine was charged by persons unknown with the key to a box containing the sigil of America, allegedly created by Destiny.

This was stolen and hidden in the future by the wanderer, Mad Hettie. Hettie both blackmailed ('I knows about you and ther little Corsican') and bribed Johanna for her silence, promising her that she would live to age 99.

This Johanna performed successfully, dying by getting out of her wheelchair, while listening to the singing of her old companion, Orpheus.

Johanna is presumably intended as an ancestor of John Constantine, although this has not been explicitly stated.

John Constantine

Main article: John Constantine

John Constantine is a con man and magician who accompanies Dream on a quest to find his pouch of sand.

John Constantine has his own series, John Constantine: Hellblazer, which occasionally has guest appearances by Cain and Abel. He is also prominently featured in another series, Swamp Thing, from which he originated.

Ethel Cripps

Also known as Ethel Dee, Ethel Cripps is the mother of John Dee. She was the mistress of Roderick Burgess until she fled with Ruthven Sykes.

Her last joy was her son, John Dee, who she tracked down for ten years. She discovered that he had become a living corpse. Despairing, she killed herself by removing the one thing keeping her alive- an amulet in the shape of an eye which granted its user protection.

Once dead, this and the Sandman's Ruby was entrusted to her son after stealing it from Ruthven Sykes, who had stolen it from Roderick Burgess, who had stolen it from Dream.

Doctor Dee

Main article: Doctor Destiny

John Dee, a.k.a. Doctor Destiny, is a DC Comics villain whose powers were derived from his use of Dream's Ruby. His name is almost certainly a reference to the real-life John Dee. He was incarcerated in Arkham Asylum, with other Batman villains such as The Scarecrow and The Joker, until freed by the amulet given to him by his mother, Ethel Dee, former mistress to Roderick Burgess.

John originally named himself 'Doctor Destiny' to protect his mother's surname, but after her death changed it back. The Ruby had drained away his mental and physical state until he was no longer able to sleep or dream without it. This had the unpleasant effect of turning him into a browned, living corpse.

Being able to control dreams, he used the ruby to bring out the 'darkness' and 'bestiality' of many people across the world. He had no purpose in doing this. To quote: 'I think I'll dismember the world and then I'll dance in the wreckage.'

While doing this, over a period of 24 hours he focused the energy of the ruby on several people in a cafe, one of them a friend of Rose Walker. He used them as puppets, horribly having them murder and degrade each other as if toys, until all were dead.

Dee's last ever battle was in the realm of dreams, in which Dream, aka the Sandman, double-bluffed him into destroying the ruby, which Dee believed to be Dream's life. It was actually only the energies, and so Dream instead became even more powerful than before.

Dee's final end is in the cell next to a friend of his, Doctor Crane, the Scarecrow. He is now able to sleep.

At the latest reports, he as not yet woken up.

Wesley Dodds

Main article: The Sandman (DC Comics Golden Age)

Wesley Dodds, a.k.a. Sandman, is the original costumed crimefighter who used the name. According to Gaiman, he was merely filling a hole in the universe in a similar way to a process of evolution, in which animals fill up a niche- for instance, what should fly.

Foxglove

Foxglove is a fictional character from the Sandman series, a lesbian musician who first appears in A Game of You.

In The Sandman

She is mentioned in Preludes and Nocturnes as the girlfriend of Judy, one of the patrons at the diner who dies in the story concerning John Dee, titled 24 Hours.

In A Game of You, Foxglove is going out with Hazel, and the two help Thessaly rescue Barbie.

After The Sandman

In Death: The Time of Your Life, Foxglove has become a pop superstar. She is raising a child with Hazel, but he falls out of a window and dies, leading Hazel to make a deal with death. However, even in the world of the Endless there's no such thing as a free lunch, and another character's life has to be sacrificed for the child's.

Daniel Hall

Main article: Daniel (DC Comics)

Daniel is the son of Lyta Hall, and the successor to the role of Dream of the Endless.

Lyta Hall

Main article: Fury (DC Comics)

Hippolyta "Lyta" Hall is a major character in The Sandman, the mother of Daniel.

John Hathaway

John Hathaway is the senior curator of the Royal Museum. He steals the Magdalene Grimoire from the museum's collection to aid Roderick Burgess in his attempt to gain immortality after his son, Edmund, dies. He commits suicide in 1920 using a dagger from the museum after a stocktake reveals his theft. His suicide note, implicating Roderick Burgess in a multitude of crimes, is never found.

Hazel

Hazel is Foxglove's lover. She appears in A Game of You and is a major character in Death: The Time of Your Life.

She has a son, Alvie, from her one heterosexual encounter. It is likely that Alvie is named after Wanda (see below).

Unity Kinkaid

Unity Kinkaid is a fictional character from Neil Gaiman's comic book series, The Sandman.

Unity first appears as one of the victims of the sleepy sickness that follows Dream's capture in the first collection of issues in the series, Preludes and Nocturnes. Following his capture, she sleeps until he escapes. While asleep, she is raped and gives birth to a daughter, Miranda Walker.

It is later learned that the father of this child was Desire. Unity was supposed to be a "vortex of Dream," a special entity that appears only very rarely, with the ability to connect the dreams of other beings, a dangerous ability that can eventually cause the destruction of The Dreaming. The only time Dream is allowed to take a human life is to kill a vortex. Desire's intervention confuses the issue, and eventually Unity's granddaughter, Rose Walker, becomes the vortex. Desire does this so that Dream will be forced to kill a person of family blood, thus bringing the vengeance of the Furies on him.

However, just before Dream can kill Rose, Unity appears, explaining that she should have been the vortex, and asks for Rose's heart. The heart is a red glass one (remniscient of the green heart-shaped piece of glass that appears in the opening tale of this series). Taking the heart, Unity becomes the vortex, and dies.

Unity is of medium height, with reddish-brown hair that she wears long and loose in the self-image she uses in the final dream-meeting between herself, Rose, and Dream; as the old woman we meet at the start of The Doll's House, she has grey hair and wears a curiously old-fashioned dress. She seems kind, and smiles a lot.

Prez Rickard

Main article: Prez

Prez Rickard appears in a single issue as the ideal President.

Ruthven Sykes

Ruthven Sykes is a bespectacled Afro-Caribbean man with short hair.

He is Roderick Burgess' second-in-command of the Order of the Ancient Mysteries until November 1930, when he steals a number of treasures (including Dream's helmet, ruby and pouch of sand) and £200,000 in cash from the order and flees to San Francisco with Roderick's mistress, Ethel Cripps. In December 1930, he trades the Helmet with the demon Choronzon for an amulet that looks like an eyeball on a chain. This amulet protects him from the magicks of Burgess until 1936, when Ethel Cripps leaves him, taking the amulet with her. He is then killed.

Jed Walker

Jed Walker is a DC Comics character.

Originally called Jed Paulsen, he appeared in Jack Kirby and Joe Simon's short lived series The Sandman, where he was protected from nightmare monsters by the titular hero. He lived with his grandfather, Ezra Paulsen, and, after his grandfather's death, with a tyrannical aunt and uncle.

Neil Gaiman's revisionist version of The Sandman showed the somewhat Cinderella-like tyranny of Jed's guardians as genuinely abusive behaviour. It also explained that his personal dreamscape was being used by the "Sandman"'s supposed assistants in an attempt to take over the Dreaming. The power of Jed's dreams is presumably connected to his being the brother of Rose Walker and the grandson of Unity Kinkaid and Desire.

Rose Walker

Rose Walker is a fictional character from the Sandman series written by Neil Gaiman. She makes her first appearance in issue #10, part one of The Doll's House story arc. She is a young blonde with red- and purple-dyed streaks in her hair. In later issues, she is shown as having red hair with a blonde streak.

When she first appears, Rose is apparently asleep on an airplane and her mother Miranda says to her, "Wake up..." She and her mother are traveling to England to see a woman named Unity Kinkaid.

On the plane Rose, has a dream in which she sees Dream and Lucien, who are talking about a "dream vortex," something that can bring about the end of the Dreaming itself. Dream states the vortex is a person—in fact, it is Rose herself.

Rose and her mother learn that Unity Kinkaid is actually Miranda's mother (and so Rose's grandmother). Unity was a victim of the "sleepy sickness" that resulted from Dream's capture, waking up only after Dream was finally freed. During her long period of unconsciousness, she had somehow managed to conceive and give birth to Rose's mother. Now that Unity has awakened, she wants to get to know her lost family.

But one family member is still missing: Rose's brother, Jed. Rose sets out to find him, and this leads her to Florida, where she finds a place to stay in a large house near Cape Canaveral. The house is populated by the crossdressing landlord Hal; the eerily perfect couple of Ken and Barbie; the mysterious and odd gentleman named Gilbert; and the pair of Chantal and Zelda, known as the Spider Women.

With the help of Gilbert and Dream, Rose is able to find Jed and save him from a convention of serial killers. However, Rose has started to develop her "dream vortex" powers, so Dream decides to slay her. Unity appears in Rose's dream and asks her granddaughter to give her (Rose's) heart to her. Rose complies, and Unity takes in Rose's heart and then dies. Since the dream vortex then vanishes, Dream lets Rose live.

Dream learns that his sibling Desire had conceived Rose's mother on sleeping Unity, thus making Rose Desire's granddaughter. This means that if Dream had killed her, he would have spilled the blood of his kin, which would have made him a potential target of the Furies, as Desire had hoped.

Much later in the series, in The Kindly Ones, the reader gets to see how Rose is affected by not having a heart. She doesn't age—she's nearly 26, but still looks like a teenager. She also feels hollow, empty. She can't seem to understand why people would fall in love with her. She apparently never falls in love herself, or gets her heart broken, having no heart to break. At one point, she describes herself as "a cold bitch-on-wheels."

However, she is still perfectly capable of compassion, kindness and emotion in this state. She makes daily visits to her dying friend Zelda in the hospital, even paying for the medical costs. On one visit, the delirious Zelda gives Rose a message from her dead grandmother, Unity: if Rose will go to her, she'll give Rose back her heart.

So once again Rose travels to England, where she apparently falls in love—for the first time in The Sandman—with an Englishman named Jack Holdaway. However, it is revealed that he is involved in a homosexual relationship (of which Rose was unaware), and Rose is crushed, forsaking love. Later, Rose wanders into the basement room where Dream had once been kept prisoner, and there she meets up with her "grandfather," Desire of the Endless, who gives Rose back her heart. Subsequently, it is revealed that Jack Holdaway, Rose's object of desire, killed himself over his lover's reaction to the affair (as evidenced by the headline of a newspaper read by Alex Burgess' nurse in "The Kindly Ones," as well as Paul's mentioning Jack's death as "one of those grand gestures that went horridly wrong.")

Rose's story is a kind of rite-of-passage tale. Rose does not age (i.e., grow up) until she learns to open herself up, allowing herself to get hurt and in the process giving herself the capacity to truly love and be loved.

Rose appears briefly in The Wake, in which she meets and talks with her brother Jed in the Dreaming during Dream's funeral.

Historical figures

  • Caesar Augustus: The first emperor of Rome. In The Sandman he is revealed to carry psychological scars from being continually raped by his uncle, Julius Caesar. Dream gives him a way to deal with it without the gods finding out.
  • Joshua A. Norton: An English-American believing himself to be Emperor of the United States in "Three Septembers and a January." Dream gives him his delusion as part of a challenge with Despair, who tries to make him fall into her realm by making his life increasingly difficult. In the end however, he remains delusional but happy as he dies.
  • Marco Polo: The famous 13th-century explorer and trader. He is lost in a part of the dreaming that connects to the real world, and encounters Dream there, shortly after he had escaped from his prison. Marco offers him water in return for a passage home.
  • William Shakespeare: The famous 16th-century English playwright. Dream gives him the inspiration for many of his plays in exchange for Shakespeare writing two plays for him: A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest.

Minor mortals

  • Daniel Bustamonte: A victim of the 'sleepy sickness' that results from Dream's capture. He falls asleep in 1926, then wakes up sometime before 1955, staying awake much of the time but unable to speak. He recovers fully on September 14, 1988 when Dream escapes.
  • Francis "Chas" Chandler: a cab driver and friend of Constantine's who drives him and Dream to Rachel's father's house so that Dream can retrieve his pouch. Chas takes his nickname from Jimi Hendrix's manager, and is a recurring character in the comic Hellblazer.
  • Compton - Roderick Burgess' butler.
  • Nurse Edwards: The caretaker of Alex Burgess at the time he is put under Dream's curse.
  • Ernie and Frederick: Two of the men guarding Dream when he escapes from his imprisonment.
  • Doctor "Piggy" Huntoon: A Doctor in Arkham Asylum and former schoolmate of Constantine's. He used to perform electro-shock therapy on Constantine, back when he was institutionalised.
  • Leigh: A man who works in "Easy Diner," an American-style diner in London.
  • Ellie Marsten: A victim of the 'sleepy sickness' that occurs during Dream's capture. She sleeps continuously for decades, awaking only four or five times a year, and recovers in an insane asylum on September 14, 1988 when Morpheus escapes. Her waking memory is basically founded on the book Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll. Present whereabouts unknown.
  • Rachel: An ex-girlfriend of Constantine's who stole Dream's pouch of sand from Constantine and became addicted to its effects.
  • Stefan Wasserman: A victim of the 'sleepy sickness' that results from Dream's capture. Joins army during first world war at 14, and goes over the trenches shortly before he catches the sickness. Commits suicide in 1918 at age 16 because he cannot sleep. He was inhabited by the dormant spirit of the Corinthian.
  • The Scarecrow: In a cameo, the Arkham inmate attempts to dissuade his friend Doctor Destiny from escaping (albeit not forcefully), saying Arkham is a better home for their kind than the outside world.
  • Wanda: A male-to-female transsexual (or shemale) featured in A Game Of You who is Barbie's best friend. She dies in the freak storm caused by Thessaly's magic and is buried as Alvin (her parents dress her as a man), though Barbie rectifies this by crossing out Alvin on her gravestone with lipstick and writing Wanda. Wanda is later seen in Barbie's dream as a real, proper woman, and waves goodbye to Barbie with Death.