The Dreaming was a monthly comic series that ran for 60 issues (June 1996 to May 2001) and was revived in 2018. It is set in the same dimension of the DC universe as The Sandman and the stories occurred primarily within Dream's realm, The Dreaming, concentrating on characters who had played minor roles in The Sandman, including The Corinthian, Matthew the raven, Cain and Abel, Lucien the dream librarian, the faerie Nuala, Eve, and Mervyn Pumpkinhead (janitor of The Dreaming). It also introduced a number of new characters, Echo and a new (white) dream raven, Tethys. After those characters were retconned the 2018 version of The Dreaming introduced new characters such as Hyperion Keeter, WAN (An AI sent to destroy The Dreaming), and the night hag, Dora. The 2020 spin-off / continuation, The Dreaming: Waking Hours introduced other new characters such as Linsy, Ruin (a Nightmare in love with a human), and most notably, Heather After, a direct descendant of Roderick Burgess. There were brief (but often important) appearances by The Endless during the series, including cameos by Dream (both Morpheus and Daniel), Death, Destiny, and Desire. Publication history The series was initially conceived as an anthology series edited by Vertigo editor Alisa Kwitney, and as such it was written, drawn and inked by a variety of artists. The covers were all painted by former Sandman cover-artist Dave McKean, and Sandmans writer Neil Gaiman acted as creative consultant on the series - having a notional right of refusal on scripts and plotlines (which he never exercised) and suggesting developments or characters for exploration. However Gaiman was quick to undo events of The Dreaming comics with the publication of Endless Nights, just one year after The Dreaming ended. Endless Nights ultimately ignored events from The Dreaming, such as the death of Matthew the raven, and later the new Sandman Universe version of The Dreaming (2018) would quietly ignore all the events and new characters from the first iteration of The Dreaming. Kwitney contacted several writers inviting them to submit stories for the new anthology, amongst them Peter Hogan on the basis of his work for British comic 2000 AD. He suggested the story that eventually became "The Lost Boy" (Issues #4-#7). Following the completion of Al Davison's "The Dark Rose" story (issues #20 - #21), The Dreaming underwent a change of direction: it changed from an anthology series to an