​Neil Gaiman Dismisses The Sandman Critics Who 'Don't Like Gay People'

Don’t expect Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman to pull back on the LGBTQ of it all anytime soon.

The author, who helped develop the adaptation for Netflix alongside David S. Goyer and showrunner Allan Heinberg, has had no qualms with brushing off trolls who complain to him that The Sandman wasn’t exactly what they wanted it to be.

“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.’ And we’d go, ‘They were gay in the comics,’” he recently told Inverse. “And they’d go ‘You’re just woke and nobody is going to watch your horrible show.’”

It isn’t hard to imagine conversations playing out roughly like that, with all the protests of an “agenda” or “wokeness” that inevitably get hurled about every time characters that are queer or trans or not white get included in an adaptation of a known IP.

But people with complaints like that aren’t who Gaiman made the show for, as he pointed out that actual fans of his graphic novels know that some characters are gay, that “Lucifer [Gwendoline Christie] looked kind of like an androgynous David Bowie and doesn’t have any genitalia because they’re an angel,” or that The Endless — powerful forces, including Kirby Howell-Baptiste’s Death — “are supposed to look like what the people looking at them think they look like.”

“It’s weird silliness,” he continued. “These complainers don’t like gay people, they don’t like Black people, and they don’t like women.”

Gaiman’s disinterest to bow to bad faith criticism of the show is unsurprising, and also bodes well for more inclusivity previously promised for season two.

Back in August, the author teased the inclusion of an important trans character who appears in the comics, Wanda Mann.

“Wanda is an absolutely integral part of The Sandman universe,” he told Logo. “And if we’re lucky enough to make Season 2, Wanda will be a huge, huge part… It’s going to be so much fun casting fabulous trans actors.”

The Sandman was, in fact, renewed for a second season in early November, although it is unclear when it might premiere. The first season and bonus episode are currently available to stream on Netflix.