SUMMARY
The article discusses the intricacies of Neil Gaiman’s comics work The Sandman through the lens of reception; particularly it examines how Dante Alighieri’s masterpiece The Divine Comedy echoes through this epic comic. It not only tries to bring together (or rather deconstruct) these two profound works of art from diverse eras of human expression, it also discusses how two different modes of artistic expression – comics and poetry – converge on a metalevel. It furthermore treats the general nature of comics; denoting both their connection with literature and art in general, though in this respect also stressing the need for a separate study of the comics medium, and not as merely a genre of either literature or art.