Sandman

Back in 2005, Brian Michael Bendis and David Finch teamed up on New Avengers, which spun out of the events of "Avengers Disassembled." The book's first arc introduced an all-new Avengers team --- the first of about eleventy dozen Avengers roster shake-ups in the last decade. "Breakout" served as a reason to get the new team together, but also showcased some of Marvel's most forgotten supercriminals, and it also provided the inspiration for Hasbro's Marvel Legends San Diego Comic-Con exclusive this summer. With The Raft superprison serving as the foundation, the Marvel Legends team crafted a well-made, well-rounded box set focused almost entirely on some of Marvel's notable big bads, and a few that would like never have gotten figures in the standard retail line. Of course Spider-Man is there to keep them all in check, as best he can anyway. We all remember how well it worked when he was the first through the door back in the comic.

Colleen Doran was born on July 24, 1964, and she was an artistic prodigy from her earliest years, winning a Disney art contest at five and finding a place at an ad agency at fifteen. She had already begun work on the saga that would most define her comics career, A Distant Soil, when she was twelve.

Welcome to Cast Party, the feature that imagines a world with even more live action comic book adaptations than we currently have, and comes up with arguably the best casting suggestions you’re ever going to find for the movies and shows we wish could exist. This week we’re looking at one of the most important comics of my teenage years, Neil Gaiman's Sandman. There's been talk for years and years about adapting Sandman, with Joseph Gordon Levitt long attached to the project, but it's clearly proving a difficult task. As usual, I'm not concerned with what's actually happening. I'm thinking about what I'd like to see.

Do you like the idea of superjails? Not massive incarceration systems in the real world; the kind that host the worst of the worst supervillains in comic books. If the answer is "yes," then boy do we have the San Diego Comic-Con exclusive for you. Next week, Hasbro will offer up a box set of 6" Marvel Legends themed around characters imprisoned in one of Marvel's most infamous hoosegows, The Raft. Six figures will be included, though only five would actually qualify as big bads... with the final figure mostly being a nuisance for J. Jonah Jameson. Spider-Man's been busy this year, particularly with the Marvel Legends brand. Peter's already seen a handful of figures release in different forms through his waves of the Hasbro figure series, but he'll be appearing here yet again. If this year wasn't already packed with so many, it might not be such a letdown --- there are dozens of other heroes that could have been included in a set like this, particularly given the villain roster --- but he's been so populous, you have to wonder why he's back again. That said, the villains are excellent choices for an exclusive like this.

Welcome to Cast Party, the feature that imagines a world with even more live action comic book adaptations than we currently have, and comes up with arguably the best casting suggestions you’re ever going to find for the movies and shows we wish could exist. This week we're turning to one of my very favorite comics of the '90s: Sandman Mystery Theatre. The original creative team was Matt Wagner and Guy Davis, taking inspiration from the original Sandman comics by Gardner Fox and Bert Christman. There's a new collection out of the first 12 issues, so this seems like the perfect time to revisit it.

A hero is defined by their villains, and the world of superhero comic books is filled with some of the scariest and silliest bad guys around. Rogues' Gallery aims to settle the score and determine who is the true arch-nemesis for some of favorite superheroes, and we need your help to do it! In our first installment, we want to know who is the ultimate Spider-Man bad guy. Which villain strikes fear into the heart of Peter Parker in a way no-one else can?

Everyone loves comic book trivia, but with 75 years of superhero comics behind us right now, there’s always some new obscure fact to learn. That’s why ComicsAlliance is going deep into the minutiae of your favorite names in comics in our continuing video series. You think you know comics? Well, here’s a few things you might not know! This week we're taking a look at every college freshman's favorite comics writer, Neil Gaiman.

The Sandman film based on Neil Gaiman’s beloved graphic novel series has a new writer attached in Eric Heisserer. However, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has announced that he’s no longer involved with the production.

Superhero movies are a dominant force in modern blockbuster cinema, but with so many heroes appearing on our screens it can be tough to keep up with the release calendar. To help make it a little easier for superhero fans to know which weekends to keep free over the next few years, designer Dylan Todd has created this infographic featuring all the upcoming releases from Marvel Studios, Fox, Sony, Warner Bros and more, starring characters from the DC Universe, the Marvel Universe, the X-Men books, Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Valiant Universe, and more.

Making its debut on November 29, 1988, author Neil Gaiman's The Sandman ran for seventy-five issues, and by its conclusion in 1996, it had sucked in several audiences that typically didn't read comics, including academics, bibliophiles, and even comics' hardest get; women. What is it about The Sandman that makes it such a crossover success?