Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

No, Coventry has not — yet, at least — driven me to thoughts of suicide. No, I'm talking about Neil Gaiman's Death comics spun off the original Sandman series, y'know, the ones featuring Dream's chirpy, Mary Poppins obsessed sister.

The High Cost of Living has it that Death of the Endless becomes moral for one day in every century so that she can learn more about the people whose lives she has to take, to learn what makes them tick.

Incarnated as Didi, a New York goth chick whose parents have recently died in a car crash, Death hooks up with a grumpy, suicidally bored teen called Sexton and they get tasked with recovering Mad Hettie's heart. After meeting up with Hazel and catching Foxglove's first gig, they get cornered by a creepy magician called the Eremite and Didi's ankh gets stolen. With the help of Mad Hettie and hindrance of a bunch of broken toys, they skip out of bad guy's clutches and head off to pick up a couple of bagels for breakfast and to snag a replacement ankh. Her day up, Didi heads off on her sweet way, leaving Sexton happier and Mad Hettie with her heart.

The comic closes with a short anti-AIDS pamphlet drawn by Dave McKean — amusing, unpatronising, educational, informative and way better than those Thatcherite iceberg ads. Ouch. I think that dates me. Carbon dates me, perhaps.

Time of Your Life is set five years after the events of High Cost. Foxglove is now a big time rock chick, spending most of her days on the road, while poor old Hazel is stuck in LA looking after her son Alvie and pretending to be Fox's secretary. All in all, things don't look good for our happy couple.

After Foxglove's manager passes on a message from beyond the grave, Fox freaks out at film premier and drags her bodyguard Boris (real name Endymion) and her bogus date for the evening, across the country to LA. She discovers Haze and Alvie are missing and sets off into Death's Realm in an attempt to get them back. After striking a bargain, our heroines head off into the happily ever after of anonymous obscurity, a place so obscure that the supermarket tabloids have taken to telling tales of Foxglove and Elvis dueting together in distant corners of the US.

Verdict: a nice little pair of comics that do a nice job filling in some of the details of Hazel and Foxglove's lives both before and after the events of A Game of You. The art is beautiful, the stories are interesting, the characterisations elegant, what more could a person want?

Well, it's taken a while, but I've finally achieved closure: I've finally got my hands on a copy of Preludes and Nocturnes. In an attempt to provide some small recompense to everyone who went out of their way to help me get a copy, here's a brief summary and a few random thoughts.

Roderick Burgess, magus of the Order of Ancient Mysteries, was trying to trap Death, but instead, he managed to capture a tired and despondent Dream. After confiscating his ruby, helmet and sand pouch, Burgess leaves his silent prisoner to rot. After some seventy years, Burgess' son Alex inadvertently breaks the magic circle which allows Dream to escape. After a brief pause to inflict a horrible nightmare on Alex, Dream heads off in search of his stolen artifacts.

Dream tracks his sand pouch to London and with the help of John Constantine, liberates it from the clutches of one of Constantine's ex-girlfriends. He then uses the sand to descend into hell, where he challenges the demon Choronzon to a duel of antitheses to win possession of his helmet. After bluffing his way back out of hell, the Sandman heads off in search of repository of much of his power: his ruby.

Unknown to Dream, the recovery of his helmet has allowed Dr Dee, madman and former wielder of the ruby, to escape. With help from the Justice League, Dream locates his ruby ahead of Dee, but Dee's modifications drain him of his little remaining strength when he attempts to use it. Dee then takes possession of the gem and over the course of 24 hours, uses it to drive the entire world mad. After challenging Morpheus to a duel, Dee shatters the ruby thinking to destroy his opponent, but instead returns him to his full strength at which point, Dream takes pity on Dee and returns him to Arkham.

Having recovered his power, Dream finds himself at a loose end, feeding the pigeons in Greenwich Village. Death turns up and tries to convince him to stop moping by enthusing about Mary Poppins. When this doesn't work, she chucks a loaf of bread at him and takes him with her on her rounds to remind him of his responsibilities. The collection ends with Dream, newly invigorated, creating a new dream for pure joy of it.

So, thoughts. As Gaiman freely admits in his afterword, P&N was very much a set of five finger exercises, an attempt to find a voice of his own, and boy does it show. The early episodes, especially the ones featuring some of the pre-existing DC characters, seem clunky and strained and not at all like the subtle and elegant Neil everyone knows and loves from the later story lines, but still, they do a pretty good job of setting up the Sandman and if they seem slightly disappointing, that's only because of the absurd brilliance of his later stuff.

The best story, the main reason for reading Preludes & Nocturnes, has to the very last: The Sound of her Wings. Not only does it introduce Death for the first time, but the tone is much closer to the later comics. It's very light on action, focusing instead on the two main characters talking. There are some beautiful little moments of compassion and some moments of real sadness, which serve to illuminate both Death's and Dream's characters in a elegantly understated way.

It's been a while since last wrote about a Sandman collection, so here are a few thoughts on volume 8, World's End.

A group of travelers are stranded in the World's End Inn by a reality storm and, like Chaucer's pilgrims, they pass they time by telling stories. The stories include a tale about the dream life of cities, a Melvillesque yarn about the last days of the great sailing ships, a story about the rituals of the dead, a description of the rise to power of the youngest American president, Prez Rickard, assisted by nothing more than clean living and a talent for watch repair, and a swashbuckling account of the derring-do heroics of Cluracan the feckless fairy.

There's even a nice non-story from of the characters from the 1990s. She complains that, thanks to a life full of minor disappointments, "I joined a local theatre group for long enough to realise I'd never be an actor, and joined a writing circle long enough to realise that I don't have anything to say", she doesn't really have a story to tell, despite having just told it...

As might be expected, there are plenty of nods to historical and literary events, including a reference in Cluracan's tale to the Donation of Constantine. There are connection to both past and future events in the Sandman series, with a hint that the reality storm was caused by events that are due to occur at the end of The Kindly Ones, and in the funereal collection, a completely circular set of links with a story within a story referring to a group of travels trapped in an inn during a storm, telling tales to pay for the cost of their shelter.

In summary then, an enjoyable set of short stories that illuminate some of the dustier corners of the Sandman Universe and expand on the background of some of the recurring characters, like Hob Gadling and Cluracan.

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.

After two months, I've finally managed to finish Hanging Out with the Dream King. It was pretty cool - I enjoyed the way that all the pencilers seemed to be unsatisfied with the inkers or the colourists or both - and because it was a series of short interviews, it was great for reading on ten minute bus rides.

I almost feel inspired to go back and re-read all my Sandman comics. Maybe I'll start reading them on the journey in to work.