Corinthian takes on Mormon angel Moroni in DC's wild new Sandman comic

before The Sandman Ever premiered on Netflix, the choice of professional handsome Menace Boyd Holbrook to play the Corinthian – the toothless nightmare who invented serial killers – all but guaranteed a fandom bond with him.

And just in time there’s a book just for the beautiful, precious people who make gif sets and write Corinthian/Reader fic in the second person perspective: nightmare land by James Tynion IV and Lysander Esherren.

Actually, it’s more than just in time. The book is five issues deep in a story about a young woman who sees nightmares when she is awake. And her clash with the Corinthian results in a twist that’s at once wild and utterly fitting sandmans logic.

In Gaiman’s world, nightmares roam, Lucifer runs a piano bar, and dreams don’t have to be real to have power. So it’s actually incredible that Tynion and Esherren revealed that the villain of their first arc…is the angel Moroni, who is said to have appeared to Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism.

Welcome to Monday Funnies, Polygon’s weekly list of books our comics editor has enjoyed over the past week. It’s part society pages about the lives of superheroes, part recommended reading, and part look at this cool art. There may be some spoilers. There may not be enough context. But there will be great comics.

Also, it’s been a tight week for releases, as the “fifth Wednesday” usually is, so we decided to focus on a proper unveiling of a proper book. (And if you missed the last issue, read this.)

Crossing his face with black shadows, the angel Moroni explains his plan to “choose a new prophet to bring Eden back to America. And th is time, no one — not the Endless, not even the winged idiots in Silver City — will stand in my way.” In Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country #5 (2022).

Gaimans sandman – along with American gods – are his great works of cosmological egalitarianism. All beliefs, from superstitions and urban legends to folk tales and organized religions, are on the table ripe for inclusion and dramatization in the American melting pot. The world of comics gives us a lot of space to watch Britons write great American novels Guardian as a prime example. Tap the character of Moroni as a sandman Character is a perfect example of the kind of insight into American spiritual scum that only a true American writer will bring to production.

Until now, nightmare land was a comic with different elements, all extreme sandman. There’s a young artist who never dreams, but when she’s awake she sees a monster with toothless mouths for eyes. For some reason, she has drawn the attention of employers and their horribly self-mutilating hit men, Mr. Agony and Mr. Ecstasy. Which fascinates a rich asshole who is himself guided by a nameless menacing angel. And the Corinthian seems to be searching for the meaning of his influence on dreamers and the identity of the mouth-eyed monster that cramps his style, and takes an interest in all of it.

Created in the late 1980s, The Corinthian was Gaiman’s answer to America’s “Golden age of serial murder‘ in which he posits that a renegade nightmare created to force mortals to face their fears productively has escaped to the Awakened World and inspired enough killers that they could hold a secret annual gathering about it. Horror Author Tynion – Co-Creator of Savage Acumen Department of Truth with artist Martin Simmonds – has been exploring American conspiracy theories, urban legends, and folk mythologies since about 2016. Perspectives Gaiman has second-hand, Tynion is born with it: a queer sensibility and a cynical American’s grasp of the country’s mythology. It’s hard to think of a better combination to incorporate America’s most widespread native religion into a story about the Corinthians.

The Corinthian is standing on the floor in a room full of bloody people. Matthew the raven looks at him, then silently flies up to perch on the arm of a chair. — It doesn’t really have anything to do with it, I just think it’s an absolute Matthew the Raven moment.

nightmare land took his sweet time setting up smaller stakes with the staples of sandman Form: Mortals are instantly destroyed by Endless Drama, a monstrous murder duo, a rich dude who presumptuously believes he can conquer the supernatural while conquering the material. It was a comic that I enjoyed reading, but not one that I threw in my friends’ DMs to praise.

But is your villain, the angel who invented Mormonism, back for another punch to violently mold the American Dream to his mysterious intentions? I can not Waiting to see where this leads.