Vertigo revealed the first image by artist J.H. Williams for Neil Gaiman’s highly anticipated Sandman: Overture, the prequel to his Sandman series, to be released this October. From the Vertigo website:

“This is the one story that we never got to tell,” Gaiman told The New York Times today. “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.”

Gaiman told the New York Times, “The most peculiar thing for me about returning to ‘Sandman’ is how familiar it all feels.”

Issues will be released every other month, starting in October, with special editions in between. Also, according to The New York Times: