In the opening of my favorite comic book, the Sandman, an evil man, Mr. Burgess uses magic to try and capture Death so that he can live forever. This comic series personifies the endless, as they are called, Death, Desire, Despair, Destiny, Destruction, and Dream. Death is a character in the story, who we journey along with as she does her work. In this opening scene, Mr. Burgess, expecting to trap her, traps her brother Dream.

In the next panel we see the consequences, shown with four different characters, of no longer having Dream in our lives:
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In the upper left, the first three pictures, we see Ellie, asleep, and no longer with dreams, she never wakes up again. Below her, Daniel has his dream taken away from him, and no longer with dreams, he’s forever awake. Upper right, Stefan shocked, without dreams becomes paralyzed. And bottom right, Unity drifts off into a coma, unmoving, dead to the world.

And this is what the first book. We read along until Dream escapes and recaptures his power, return to serve mankind again, so we all can go on dreaming.