Faerie (DC Comics)

Faerie
Timothy Hunter and Rose Psychic entering Faerie Market from The Books of Magic #3, artist Charles Vess
Race(s)	Sidhe, Elves, Brownies, Flitlings, Gnomes, Trolls, Goblins
Notable locations	Avalon, Elvenhome, Dom-daniel, Goblin Market
First appearance	The Books of Magic #3, (January 1990)
Publisher	DC Comics

Faerie, The Fair Lands or The Twilight Realm is one of two fictional otherdimensional homelands for the Faerie, as published by DC Comics. The Vertigo Comics realm of Faerie is an amalgam of the mythological realms of Álfheimr, Otherworld, the Fortunate Isles, Tír na nÓg and Avalon. This mix is heavily influenced by Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. It is home to the faeries and other mythical races, ruled over by the Seelie Court and King Auberon and Queen Titania. Faerie debuted in The Books of Magic #3, and was created by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess.

As part of his comic The Sandman, writer Neil Gaiman planned a small arc involving William Shakespeare entering a deal with the Dream King to write plays that would live on after him. Having introduced Shakespeare, Gaiman then decided to tell the story of the first play that the writer wrote for Dream in payment of the bargain. He turned to his favourite of Shakespeare's plays, A Midsummer Night's Dream creating analogues of the play's main otherworldly characters and inventing the fiction that Shakespeare wrote the play to Dream's instructions to ensure that humans never forgot Faerie and its rulers. Having created her, Gaiman used Queen Titania as a recurring character throughout the series, and when he was asked part way through his run on The Sandman to write a four-issue miniseries to introduce DC's magical characters to a new audience he gave her a guest role in one of the issues of that as well. The Books of Magic miniseries showed Titania in her kingdom, meaning Gaiman had to create the realm of Faerie in more depth than he had previously shown it.