Neil Gaiman has hit back at critics of The Sandman, calling the pushback a “weird silliness”.
The creator of the beloved graphic novel, turned into a Netflix series, has commented on criticism surrounding the show’s casting, namely those taking issues with the characters’ gender-swapping and sexuality.
“Occasionally, you get people shouting at us for having made up all of these gay characters who weren’t in the comics, and then we’d go ‘Have you read the comics?’ And they’d go ‘No,'” Gaiman told Inverse.
“We’d go, ‘They were gay in the comics.’ And they’d go ‘You’re just woke and nobody is going to watch your horrible show.’ And then we went Number 1 in the world for four weeks. And they went ‘It’s all bots! We hate you. You’re woke.’”
He added: “It’s a weird silliness. These complainers don’t like gay people, they don’t like Black people, and they don’t like women. And if you look at their profiles, they don’t like vaccines, they don’t like Democrats, and they’re not big on voting.”
The Sandman was recently renewed for a second season at Netflix.
Gaiman himself teased some future plot points for the next season, adding: “There are some astonishing stories waiting for Morpheus & the rest of them… Now it’s time to get back to work. There’s a family meal ahead… And Lucifer is waiting for Morpheus to return to Hell.”
In a four-star review, NME said The Sandman was “a big story that rarely feels half told” and one that “is at its best when it’s grounded in human problems”.
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