That font is uniquely used by the Invisible Man. 
That font is uniquely used by the Invisible Man.
(Double-take.) Where’s my post?
I mean, I typed a query AND a title to this post. I READ the query before it posted. Where the hell is my query? Okay, at least NOW I know why I didn’t get an answer six hours earlier…
MY QUESTION: See, there’s this font used in the Neil Gaiman SANDMAN TPB, “Seasons of Mists”, in the introduction by Harlan Ellison. The font somewhat resembles Bookman but whenever words with a ‘sh’ or ‘ch’ combination are used, there’s this neat curlicle that comes off the ‘h’ and hangs over the word. I checked the TPB indica carefully but unlike, say, a novel, it doesn’t mention typesetting for fonts. I hope some of you SANDMAN readers out there are familiar with what I’m talking about and/or this description was clear enough, because I was wondering what the name of that font was, and whether it was commercially availble.
Ta-da! Astound me, Teeming Millions, with a definitive answer…
Just looked at it. It’s great having a roommate who’s a Gaiman fan. 
The characteristic you speak of is called a ligature. The most common one is the fl or fi-- the f and i or l are connected, making the character pair æsthetically appealing and more readable. æ is also common.
I don’t know the name of the typeface that was used, but I hope that gives you a hand in your search. Free font archives will likely have it, under “fancy”, “special”, or “fantasy” and “decorative”. I’ll look around a little for you.
Just looked at it. It’s great having a roommate who’s a Gaiman fan.
The characteristic you speak of is called a ligature. The most common one is the fl or fi-- the f and i or l are connected, making the character pair æsthetically appealing and more readable. æ is also common.
I don’t know the name of the typeface that was used, but I hope that gives you a hand in your search. Free font archives will likely have it, under “fancy”, “special”, or “fantasy” and “decorative”. I’ll look around a little for you.
AudreyK – Thanks for the tip – I still haven’t found anything remotely like the font I saw.
Anyone else care to guess what i’m talking about?
If you get completely stuck - scan the page that the font is on into a jpeg and upload it to www.whathtefont.com
I use that fairly often and have about a 75% success rate with it identifying it.
I don’t have the book, but if the same typeface is used for both the cover and the contents, then it looks an awful lot like Trajan. Just for fun, you can actually type in your own text here to see how they match up to what you see in the book. I didn’t see any ligatures of swashes offered as a part of the Trajan font family, so they may have been custom-made.
If the font is something else, you can also try your luck at Identifont.
Oops…I should’ve noted that I found the cover online here.
Trajan is an all-caps font, I think. It wouln’t have the lowercase ligatures.
I found this just now. I don’t think it’s the exact font, but it looks a lot like it: