I think there should be a place for stories that don't have mass appeal. So go find and support something that's so aggressively your jam that no studio could ever hope to adapt it. I could point to Tannit Lee's Tales from the Flat Earth series as a Sandman alternative. People like to say Gameman plagiarised it when creating Sandman, which I'm not sure is credible, but it does seem to have been an inspiration. So if you like Sandman, why not give it a go? So in conclusion, though I admit Netflix's Sandman takes a decent whack at it, it fails because Sandman is unadaptable.
{# E23 (Nick, ruling section 1 answer 10): quoting a bill or a court opinion works
the way quoting a news article works. Select a passage above and the same panel
opens: the passage goes to the official you choose, with this document's own
address as its source and its own type. #}