Sandman Universe - Nightmare Country sends the scariest Sandman character on a road trip

Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country #1 cover (Image credit: DC)

Writer James Tynion IV, who recently exited DC's Batman title to prioritize creator-owned stories released through his personal Substack, will return to the publisher in April for a new ongoing title set in the Sandman Universe imprint, which will focus on the darker, much more terrifying creations of Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams: those being nightmares, of course.

Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country will live up to its title by focusing on one of Morpheus's most notorious nightmarish creations, the Corinthian - a supernatural serial killer who takes the form of a person with mouths full of teeth where their eyes should be.

In Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country, the Corinthian is reluctantly released from its captivity in the realm of the Dreaming by Daniel, the current Lord of Dreams, in order to hunt down something even worse than itself: a nightmare not created by Dream, with a hidden origin and mind of its own.

Living up to its name again, Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country will take the Corinthian on a terrifying road trip across America, which DC describes as "a terrifying travelogue through a nation both recognizable and obscene, which will show you things seen in no Sandman series ever before."

Those new sights start with two new monstrosities who are following the Corinthian around on its mission: a pair of murderers named Mr. Agony and Mr. Ecstasy who have a bloodthirsty agenda all their own, including killing the Corinthian itself. You can see series artist Lisandro Estherren's designs for Mr. Agony and Mr. Ecstasy here:

Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country designs (Image credit: DC)

Along with the main story, each issue of Nightmare Country will feature a back-up story focusing on different nightmares from the Dreaming, with a guest artist taking on each tale. The first back-up in Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country #1 will be drawn by Yanick Paquette.

"The Sandman is the series that made me want to become a comic book writer," says Tynion in the series announcement.

Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country — (Image credit: DC)

"Growing up, I loved reading the comics about costumed heroes and villains, but the stories that I kept wanting to put to paper lived in many genres, and I had convinced myself that the only place you could get away with that was in prose," he continues. "It wasn’t until early high school when I got my hands on the first volumes of Sandman that I saw the immensity of what was possible in a comic book, and I became determined to spend my life making comics."

Along with titles such as Batman and Detective Comics, Tynion is known for his creator-owned horror stories such as Something is Killing the Children, Memetic, and The Woods.

Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country #1 goes on sale on April 12, with a main cover from Reiko Murakami, and variant covers from Kelley Jones, Alvaro Martinez Bueno, and Jenny Frison.

Stay tuned to Newsarama for DC's full April 2022 solicitations, coming later in January.

There's no better place to pick up a copy of Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country #1 than your local comic book shop.

I've been Newsarama's resident Marvel Comics expert and general comic book historian since 2011. I've also been the on-site reporter at most major comic conventions such as Comic-Con International: San Diego, New York Comic Con, and C2E2. Outside of comic journalism, I am the artist of many weird pictures, and the guitarist of many heavy riffs. (They/Them)