Sandman Update: Brief Lives

[sawyl]

I've recently finished reading Neil Gaiman's Brief Lives.

The story follows Delirium in her quest for Destruction, the only member of the Endless to give up his responsibilities and disappear. After initially approaching Desire and Despair, both of whom refuse to help, Delirium goes to visit Dream and finds him moping over a failed romance. In an attempt to get his mind off things, Dream agrees to help Delirium in her quest and the two of them travel to Earth to search for their missing brother, but without any serious expectation of success. After a motel fire and an encounter with the goddess Ishtar in a strip club, Dream decides the quest is hopeless and returns to his domain, throwing Delirium into a tantrum.

Death, in an attempt to calm Delirium, persuades Dream to resume the quest and the reunited pair visit Destiny, who refuses to tell them where Destruction is, but tells Dream that he already knows who he must consult. After consulting with an oracle, Delirium and Dream eventually meet up with Destruction, who explains the nature of change and meaning to them. Changed by his meetings with the oracle and with Destruction — as Despair says, "You cannot seek Destruction and return unscathed" — Dream returns to his realm, where he continues to deny that he has been altered in any way despite behaving quite differently towards his minions.

I really enjoyed Brief Lives. I liked the meditative nature of the discussion between Dream and Destruction over the nature of change and scholastic way existence is defined by it's negation. As Death says to the spirit of a 15,000 year old lawyer killed by falling masonry, "You lived what anybody gets... A life time." I also though that Jill Thompson's art meshed perfectly with the story, but then in Hanging Out With the Dream King, Thompson says that at one point she went to stay with Gaiman while he was writing BL and they sat at opposite ends of a sofa, one writing and other drawing, so perhaps that explains the rapport.