Ok, this is the basic one, but if you haven’t read it, do it. And if you have read it, do it again. The Sandman is so rich in details that you’ll probably find things you didn’t catch the first time you did it.
What’s The Sandman about? The Sandman tells the story of Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, which we find at the beginning of the story, in 1916, captured and imprisoned by a group pf occultists. When Morpheus finally manages to escape, in 1988, he fights to regain control of the Dreaming, his realm, and his powers.
This is just the beginning of the story: through the 75 issues of the main comic series, published by DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint, The Sandman makes us travel in time and space to unexplored territories, as Morpheus fulfills his role of inspiring the dreams of every person in the world.
As I mentioned earlier, Gaiman mixes elements and characters of history, many religions and mythology along the book, with stories closer to classic horror, retellings of classic stories (such as the beautiful “The Song of Orpheus”), and some touches of classic comic books characters along the way.
In the main series we get also to know Morpheus’ brothers and sisters: Destiny, Death, Despair, Destruction, Desire and Delirium. Together with Dream (Morpheus), they’re called the Endless, and they are the inspiring forces behind all things that happen in our world.
The story reads as a whole, due to the fact that Gaiman includes elements and characters that appear to be minor in some issues, but they happen to reappear in later issues with unforeseen consequences.
As a matter of fact, one of the great hits of the book is it’s cast of characters: from the Endless family to Lucifer and Loki and Egyptian gods. From obscure characters that appeared as introductory characters from horror books in the 70’s such as Destiny, Cain and Abel and Lucien, to Matthew Cable (who appears as Matthew The Raven) from the pages of The Swamp Thing and William Shakespeare. The cast is incredibly heterogeneous and rich.
By now, you may read the book collected in 10 trades, buy the boxed set, go for the Omnibus versions, or a new print in Deluxe format. In this case, due to the quality of the material, I recommend you to get the best editions available, because you might want to read them and re-read them again many times…
Any format you choose, please check the contents of each book if you mix editions. There might be things that are included on one edition and not included in the other. When you mix, you might risk losing some material.