Sandman’s Cain and Abel were inspired by the most important book ever: Tales from the Crypt
Watching The Sandman on Netflix (or reading the DC Comic) can be an exercise in “spot the reference.” The story hangs together perfectly even if you don’t know that Dream’s raven Matthew is a resurrected Swamp Thing character or that the guy with Shakespeare in the pub is supposed to be Christopher Marlowe — but it can still be fun to trace everything back to its origin.
John Dee? That’s the given name of the dream-controlling Justice League foe Doctor Destiny. Fiddler’s Green? Thats a legendary afterlife realm of British folklore. Those massive gates at the entrance to the Dreaming? A reference to an ancient Greek literary trope with origins in The Odyssey. Cain and Abel? Well obviously they’re Cain and Abel from Book of Genesis, right?
Not right. The primary reference for The Sandman’s Cain and Abel isn’t biblical at all, but something much, much trashier. Something that makes the weird details of their life in the realm of Dreams — the gargoyles, the trinket-filled houses, the macabre cycle of eternal murder — all make instant sense.
Cain and Abel aren’t biblical figures. They’re cryptkeepers.
Recency bias says that American comics have always been a primarily superhero-based medium, with alternate genres like YA romance or horror only finding consistent popularity in recent years. But that’s a big bias. Before the industry went through a post-World War II contraction and wave of anti-comics fervor, the chart topping-est comics were often horror anthologies, particularly the blockbuster series Tales from the Crypt, published by EC Comics.
Tales was so successful that only a year after its first issue, DC Comics began producing its own imitator, House of Mystery. And when EC’s success with Tales spinoffs The Vault of
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