Daniel Hall

Daniel Hall, Dream of the Endless
Daniel Hall as Dream. art by Michael Zulli
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics (Vertigo)
First appearance	(pregnancy revealed) Infinity, Inc. #42 (September 1987) (born) The Sandman (vol. 2) #22 (January 1991)
Created by	Neil Gaiman
In-story information
Alter ego	Daniel Hall
Team affiliations	The Endless
Notable aliases	The Dream King, the Sandman, many others
Abilities	Nigh-omnipotent aspect of dreams and reality

Daniel Hall is a fictional character in the Sandman comic book series written by Neil Gaiman and published by DC Comics. An infant for the majority of the Sandman series, he is the son of Hippolyta 'Lyta' Hall and Hector Hall, borne in utero for two years in the Dreaming. Hector Hall was a perennial DC character, son of Carter Hall (the Golden Age Hawkman), and has assumed many guises during his stay in the DC Universe, and was at one point the Sandman. Lyta was the daughter of the Golden Age Wonder Woman (later changed post-Crisis to a new "Golden Age Fury") and once a superheroine called the Fury whose powers were derived from Tisiphone. When her fellow members of Infinity, Inc. learned she was pregnant, she was forced to resign from the team. Daniel, at the end of the Sandman series, becomes the new "Dream of the Endless".

Daniel's father, Hector, was a ghost revived by the two nightmares Brute and Glob, in Morpheus's absence; whereafter Lyta and Hector's ghost lived in the dreams of a child, Jed Walker, for two years. Upon Dream's return to the Dreaming, he destroyed the barrier that the two had created around the child's mind from the real Dreaming; imprisoned the two nightmares; released Hector's ghost; and restored Lyta to the waking world. Upon leaving her, Dream revealed that because her unborn son had spent much of his gestation in the Dreaming, he would someday belong to Dream himself. Before Dream faced Lucifer, he paid another visit to the two, and named the child Daniel. In one of the issues in Fables and Reflections, Daniel was regaled with stories by Cain, Abel, and Eve, while Matthew watched. In the Kindly Ones saga, Lyta incorrectly believed that Daniel had been 'abducted' by Dream, and took her grievances to the Furies, with whom she destroyed much of the Dreaming. Unknown to her, Daniel was abducted by Loki and Robin Goodfellow, and retrieved by the Corinthian and Matthew. At Morpheus' citadel, Morpheus transfers his role to Daniel, and allows Death to take him. Daniel, as the new Dream, is an amalgam of a child and the Endless whom he represents. His speech is largely unchanged but it is drawn with black font on a white background (as opposed to the direct contrasting style of the former self). He is still identified by the honorific 'Dream of the Endless', but refuses the name of 'Morpheus'. He is inexperienced in government of the Dreaming and relies on the raven, Matthew, for advice. As Dream, Daniel is a gentler and more merciful lord than Morpheus.