-A Tale of Two Houses-
Authors: Various | Illustrators: Various | Issues: 60
'This dark night is full of spirits, bad dreams and old harm dressed up in the deceitful skins of men.'
A Sandman spin-off that lasted an impressive 60 issues (June 1996 to May 2001). It began life as a monthly anthology, telling both single issue and multipart stories that took place either within the Dreaming itself or had the Dreaming play a pivotal role in the telling.
Initially, the various dreamers had little or no connection to each other, but the format changed to an ongoing story arc about a third of the way through its run.
Various secondary characters from The Sandman featured from time to time — most frequently Cain and Abel, Lucien, and Matthew the Raven — but they weren't always the main focus and weren't always named.
It seems to have been assumed that most readers would be able to recognise such characters themselves, and tough shit to anyone that didn't already know. That's the nature of some spin-offs, I suppose.
