This toothy serial killer once saved a child and almost killed a god.
Does The Corinthian from "The Sandman" have a heart of gold, or is he just in it for the
fun?
Dreams are strange, often abstract things, but the Corinthian is definitely the stuff
nightmares are made of.
While the world of "The Sandman" is populated by a host of unforgettable characters, the
Corinthian is probably the most terrifying.
This creature looks human, but behind his sunglasses are two rows of teeth where each
of his eyes should be.
And if that wasn't enough, the Corinthian's viciousness is unmatched.
While the character is making his first live-action appearance in the Netflix "The Sandman" adaptation,
his first appearance was actually much earlier.
Specifically, he shows up in "The Sandman" #10 in 1989 during "The Doll's House" arc.
Naturally, The Corinthian is prominently featured in Netflix's adaptation of "The Sandman,"
which recently hit the steaming platform on August 5.
The living nightmare was voiced by Riz Ahmed in the excellent audio version of "The Sandman"
and is portrayed by Boyd Holbrook in the Netflix series.
So, who exactly is the Corinthian?
Don't worry, we're here to answer that exact question for you.
The Corinthian was created by Morpheus, aka the central character of "The Sandman," who
goes by many names.
He and his siblings comprise the seven Endless: the living embodiments of Destiny, Death,
Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair, and Delirium.
Morpheus is the Prince of Stories, responsible not only for dreams, but nightmares as well.
His realm is known as the Dreaming.
As Dream tells the Corinthian in the Netflix show,
"You were my masterpiece.
A black mirror, made to reflect everything humanity will not confront."
But this living nightmare struggled to mind the boundaries between dreams and reality
— a crime for which Dream planned to unmake him.
However, before he could do so, Dream was captured and held prisoner in 1916 until he
escaped in 1988 —although in the Netflix series the timeline is a bit longer.
Not only did Dream's realm fall into disrepair, but his absence left the waking world vulnerable
to the Corinthian, who fled the Dreaming into the real world.
The Corinthian is terrifying not only in appearance, but also in appetite.
He can use his extra mouths to consume the eyeballs of his victims and greatly relishes
the process.
This nightmare can also see things through the eyes of those victims.
Over the decades he managed to hide himself behind those trademark shades and built up
quite a reputation amongst frighteningly like-minded people.
He didn't just torture and kill, but also empowered others to do the same.
This led to him speaking at a serial killer convention, where Dream finally tracked him
down.
After finally escaping his imprisonment, Dream had a long journey ahead of him.
When he finally met up with his creation, he told the Corinthian that after walking
the earth for 40 years, all he'd done was show humanity that this type of evil exists,
a fact that people are already all too well acquainted with.
Dream took the blame, feeling that the ultimate failing was his own for doing a poor job constructing
the creature.
The Corinthian challenged his creator, but was swiftly unmade.
However, that wasn't the end for this living nightmare.
A few years later during the climactic arc of "The Sandman," "The Kindly Ones," Dream
would find himself in need of the Corinthian again for a very important mission: to find
a lost child whose relationship to the Dreaming made him extremely important.
You might not think a search and rescue mission would be in the Corinthian's wheelhouse, but
it proved to be a task he was uniquely suited for.
Dream remade the nightmare, but with a few key differences.
This version of the Corinthian was a distinct creature, but retained his predecessor's memories.
He was far more loyal this time around, though perhaps this was because he hoped to avoid
the fate of the first Corinthian.
However, over time, this iteration of the Nightmare would prove unstable as well.
Aside from those major story arcs in "The Sandman," the Corinthian would also appear
in spinoff books, "The Dreaming," and "The Sandman Presents: The Corinthian."
Most recently, he headlines his own story in "The Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country."
So if you ended the show wanting more of the scariest nightmare in all of Dream's kingdom,
there's plenty of places the Corinthian is haunting.