Vertigo

Over the course of seventeen years and seventy-five issues, writer Neil Gaiman partnered with a host of artists and a fledging comic book imprint to create one of the most popular comic series of the late 20th Century. The Sandman proved to be a seminal work for the then-newly growing graphic novel format as well as the growing modern alternative comics movement. Described by none other than Norman Mailer as "a comic book for intellectuals", it carved a path – and a course – for not only Gaiman, but Vertigo as well.

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of The Sandman, which debuted in January 1989. Vertigo has recently collected those seventy-five issues into four massive volumes in the "Absolute" format, but did anyone back then know to what heights the series would eventually achieve? We asked Vertigo Executive Editor Karen Berger.

"I thought it had a lot of potential and there are some brilliant ideas there," said Berger,"but I will admit it took me a few issues into the book to really sort of get a real sense of how great the series is going to be. So, in other words, I didn't know in reading the pitch that this book was going to wind up being such a ground-breaking series."

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