Island Spirit # 6 (illustrated by Kai Martin)

Around 1584 William Shakespeare made an agreement with Dream. The exact details of their pact are unknown, but it’s known that Shakespeare would owe Morpheus two plays. The first of these plays was A Midsummer Nights Dream. The second of these plays, The Tempest, was the final play of Shakespeare’s career.

In the final issue of Sandman, Shakespeare is fulfilling his obligation to the King Of Dreams and writing The Tempest.

At one point within the play he writes a speech in which Prospero recounts the imprisonment of Ariel.

“Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,
by help of her more potent ministers
and in her most unmitigable rage,
into a cloven pine,
within which rift
imprisoned though didst painfully remain
a dozen years."

This imprisonment is foreshadowing to that of Morpheus’ capture at the hands of Roderick Burgess, more than 400 years later.

This Island Spirit appears in Sandman # 75, on page 17, in panel 1 and is reflected in the imagination of Shakespeare as he writes the play.

This is a great portrait from Kai. He was experimenting with his brush pen and I really like the results. I like the ink effects on this creature’s body. I don’t know what the effect is called, but it adds a nice feeling to the reality of the character.