NEIL GAIMAN and DAVE MCKEAN returning to ‘SANDMAN’ in October. Gnarly.

Friggin’ righteous. Come this October, Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean, and J.H. Williams III are handling the Sandman. The series will be a prequel to the One You’ve Probably Read, detailing the events that let up to the initial series. Oh, you could figure that out? ‘Cause that’s generally how prequels work? Fair enough, fair enough.

Hit the jump for more details.

Kotaku:

Writer Neil Gaiman’s first new Sandman comic in a decade will be out on October 30 from Vertigo/DC and will be shipping—sigh—every other month.

The prequel series, Sandman Overture, will be drawn by J.H. Williams (Promethea) with covers by Williams and original Sandmancover maestro Dave McKean.

Gaiman’s Sandman series, which chronicles the exploits of Morpheus, the lord of dreams, in a modern take on mythology, is one of the most acclaimed comics of all time—and one of the most beautifully-illustrated ones as well.

A press release from DC Comics quotes Gaiman’s comments in The New York Times today in a story about a surge of new titles from the once-mighty Vertigo imprint:

“In Sandman #1 Morpheus is captured somehow. Later on in the series, you learn he was returning from somewhere far, far away – but we never got to the story of what he was doing and what had happened. This is our chance to tell that story, and J.H. Williams III is drawing it. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world.”

DC will doubtless receive more positive attention for this prequel than the did for their last one, the 2012-launching Before Watchmen, which was made, controversially, against the will of original Watchmen writer Alan Moore.