Along with Alan Moore’s Watchman and Frank Miller’s Sin City, Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman is one of the most popular, as well as the most critically acclaimed, comic book series of all time. With a distinct lack of burly men in tights and voluptuous women in neon spandex jumpsuits, The Sandman was in the vanguard of titles published in the late 1980s and early 1990s that sought to break away from the traditional conception of comics through darker, more relevant storylines and so to appeal to a wider, more sophisticated audience. The Sandman follows Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, as he escapes into the modern world after spending seventy years in captivity. Having avenged himself on his captors, Morpheus sets about rebuilding his dream kingdom. As Neil Gaiman has summarised, “The Lord of Dreams realises that one must change or die, and makes his decision”.

Having run for seventy-five issues, The Sandman concluded in 1996 and is now available from Vertigo Comics in a series of ten trade paperbacks or four fabulous re-coloured slip-cased hardback Absolute editions. In 1999 Neil Gaiman returned to the world of The Sandman with The Dream Hunters, a novella illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano that told the tale of a love affair between a Buddhist monk and a fox spirit. The Dream Hunters was tangential to The Sandman comic book series and only featured a small role for Morpheus. Although Gaiman had originally claimed that the fable at the centre of The Dream Hunters was taken from Y.T. Ozaki’s Old Japanese Fairy Tales, it has since been revealed to be an original work of fiction. To celebrate the 20^th anniversary of The Sandman, P. Craig Russell adapted The Dream Hunters into a four issue miniseries for Vertigo which ran from November 2008 until February 2009 and which has now been collected into an excellent hardback graphic novel.

The Dream Hunters begins with a wager between a kitsune, a fox spirit, and a tanuki, a racoon spirit, that whichever of them can convince a pious young Buddhist monk to leave his temple may make that temple for their dwelling place. Both the kitsune and the tanuki fail to influence the monk and the tanuki flees in disgrace. The kitsune, however, has fallen in love with the monk and so, in the form of a beautiful woman, she appears to the monk and begs his forgiveness. The monk permits the kitsune to remain in the temple provided that she promises never to cause him any trouble.

Meanwhile, far away in Kyoto, a rich onmyoji (a civil servant responsible for magic and divination) is plagued by fear and so seeks the advice of three witches. The witches reveal that the onmyoji will only overcome his fear by stealing the strength of the young monk. In order to achieve this, the onmyoji must send the monk evil dreams over three consecutive nights until, on the third night, the monk dies. The onmyoji sends demons to the temple to work his evil but the kitsune overhears their plot and, in an attempt to save the monk, she travels to the Dreaming and seeks help from Morpheus. After talking to Morpheus, the kitsune formulates a plan to capture a baku (a supernatural being that devours dreams) and substitute it for the monk on the third night.

The Dream Hunters was an excellent novella but the faithful adaptation coupled with the beautiful art by P. Craig Russell has made it an exquisite graphic novel. Taking his cue from traditional Japanese artwork, Russell weaves the story of The Dream Hunters around elaborate panels full of soft, muted colours. His realistic recreation of feudal Japan is complemented by the supernatural wasteland inhabited by the witches and the ephemeral visage of Morpheus himself. Gaiman’s delightful fable of impossible love is brought to breathtakingly beautiful life by Russell’s stunning paintings. With its magical storyline and mesmeric artwork, The Dream Hunters is a visual treat, a true work of beauty, as well as joyous read.

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