This week marks a return to the Dreaming, the strange yet familiar world created by Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, and Mike Dringenberg in the pages of Sandman. Debuting in 1989, the series ran for 75 issues plus a one-shot special, creating an entire mythology around Dream and his family in the Endless, a group of immortals ruling over various aspects of the human experience. Sandman became not only a classic and a perennial bestseller in its collected editions, but a "gateway comic" introducing a generation of readers to what the medium was capable of. Now, Sandman Universe #1 re-introduces these concepts and characters, serving to launch four new ongoing series set in and around the Dreaming.
DC Comics has provided CBR with exclusive process pages for Sandman Universe page 9, written by Si Spurrier, illustrated by Bilquis Evely, colored by Mat Lopes, and lettered by Simon Bowland. We spoke with Evely and Lopes about creating this page, and can also share a commentary by Spurrier and Evely about how it all comes together.
Spurrier began envisioning the page as a single scene divided into panels, and provided Evely with a number of details on how it would flow together. Below is an excerpt from his script:
Something a bit special now, Bilquis. This is another GRID page - 2x4 panels. But OVERALL it forms one large splash shot, of the interior space where this dream is taking place: the palace (specifically its dancefloor). So one a single panorama divided into 8 equal panels. We’re angled slightly downards from above, so that at the TOP of the page (i.e., panels 1 and 2) is looking across at the far side of the room, while at the bottom of the page (i.e., panels 7 and 8) is right up close to us in the foreground.
The idea is that DORA and the WOMAN are DANCING together. They move THROUGH the crowd of other guests in such a way that they appear in each of our panels in turn, snaking left to right and slowly getting closer to us.
There are loads of different ways you could do this (you might even choose to dispense with panel borders altogether, though I worry it would be hard to follow the action) so I’ll shut up and just let you have fun. Bonus points if the OTHER DANCERS miraculously change into something else in each panel: businessmen... ballerinas... velociraptors... pirates... bipedal cats... cops... snowmen... doctors and nurses...
Throughout it all MATTHEW is fluttering above Dora, trying to talk to her.
I won’t add any specific notes to the individual panels unless there’s something particular worth mentioning.
From here, Evely and Lopes took Spurrier's script and transformed into this fully-realized comic book page:
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CBR: Bilquis, what is your first thought when you see a page like this in a script? How do you go about planning it?
My first thought? “Oh no, Si!!” I’m just kidding, I always love the challenge.
First off, I need to know exactly where the characters are going to be, for the sake of the storytelling and also, for the text. This is the hardest part. When I know those things, I can add the extras.
Did you know from the start you'd do it without borders?
No, I did a lot of testing before the final layout. But certainly this one worked more smoothly than the others.
How do you direct the reader's eye through a scene like this, so that Dora, the Woman, and Matthew flow from one "panel" to the next?
Basically, I planned a “zig-zag” layout with a top-down angle. Having in mind the space for the text and also that I needed to highlight Dora’s expression in the last "panel", which is very important to the next page, as Si mentioned. The first “panel” appears first on the left, the second one, after that, set on the right, on a bottom line level.
Since we don’t have borders here, I used all the extra crazy characters to frame Dora, Matthew, and the woman. And of course, trusting the magic powers of Mat Lopes and Simon Bowland as well, which helped to guide all this movement.
This scene is stuffed full of characters, some of which Si recommended and others you threw in yourself. Is there a science to which figures went into making this scene most effective, or any sort of balance you were trying to strike by placing certain characters together?
I added more crazy characters because we needed to fill all the space. Like I said, my idea was to use those extras like “frames” for the three main characters.
Mat, there's a lot going on on this page, but Dora stands out thanks to the dark red of her jacket against the warmer colors of the other characters and background elements. How does her coloring help to move the eye across the page, from one "panel" to the next?
With so much going on in this page, one of the main concerns was not to miss the most important thing happening, Dora dancing across the whole page while talking to Matthew, and still keep all the details of Bilquis' art rich and shinning as they are in black and white. So I needed to bring down the value and saturation of everyone around her, while maintaining the strong red of her jacket—keeping it very vivid, so the reader could spot them as soon as they set eyes on the page, and use this color in particular as the strongest "anchor of attention" on the page.
After that, I added some color spotlights across the room so we could get that feeling of magic and wonder of dance floors and musicals, but I was careful not to place them over our main characters, keeping their lines very visible and dark, helping the flow of the art composition.
Are there other ways you've used color to set the pace here or elsewhere in the issue?
Yes, I use these techniques all the time while coloring. Another good example in this issue is on page 21. Our main characters are in the middle of a crowd in a beautiful place with a lot of elements, but I had to make them stand out from everything else around them. So I didn't use very bright colors for everyone surrounding them—always keeping the focus primarily on the main feature of the scene.
From this page and another you'd posted on Twitter, it looks like you're working with a bit of a different palette here from what you've used on, say, Robin: Son of Batman or Moon Knight. How does this contribute to establishing the feel of the Dreaming world?
Yes, there's a big difference in the palette I use for Sandman and books like Moon Knight and Robin: Son of Batman, for example. Sandman, most of the time, has no attachment to reality. So you can go crazy with the colors as long as they serve the story we're telling.
One of the main purposes of the colorist is to communicate with the reader in an emotional, almost subliminal way, taking everything that's happening in the story, the context of every scene, and translating to colors so the readers can get the message we're trying to send even clearer. But often we are limited by barriers of the real world, such as time, geography and the way light really works. But you can break all these rules in a place that is made of dreams! That's why this is such a fun book to make and to read.
Evely and Spurrier also provided CBR with this exclusive commentary on the page, going over how the flow of the art works alongside the script, which can be seen in the final, lettered page.
