The Origin of the Comic You Are Now Holding

The last page of Issue 4 of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series is an essay by Gaiman entitled "The Origin of the Comic You Are Now Holding (What It is and How It Came to Be)" that reveals some of the genesis of the character and the series. Although it has been reproduced in some of the collected re-prints of the series, the original format best shows it for what it is: a letter to new readers from a new author starting a story together. We apologize for the poor formatting on the blog. Click on the image, download it, and it should read fine.

And below are some sketches of the title character, made by Gaiman around the time of that hurricane. They were published on the last page of 1994's Sandman: A Gallery of Dreams as the series was coming to a close.