The Absolute Death

This collection brings together all the stories of Death, Dream's older sister. Some of which has even been featured before in the Absolute editions and that's what kicks off this book. Issue #8 of The Sandman, The Sound of Her Wings is the introduction to the character of Death and so was the logical place to start before moving on to Façade (Sandman #20) which is probably only included to fill out the volume. We then move on to the two 3-part stories, Death: The High Cost of Living and Death: The Time of Your Life. The first of these has Death experiencing time amongst the living as she does once in every hundred years and the second features Death more as a background character as the story revolves around Foxglove and Hazel whom you might remember from an earlier volume (Hint: Foxglove used to be called Donna). These are two very good stories and really show why Death is such a beloved character from the series as a whole. We then come to a couple more one-shot stories: A Winter's Tale gives Death's take on the job she does and The Wheel which is a story written about 9-11 where a boy after losing his mother decides life isn't worth living anymore. And finally we have Death in Venice which features in Endless Nights. A soldier on leave from his unit returns to Venice where he stayed as a young boy and had a dreamlike encounter with a girl who was waiting next to a closed door. The rest of the volume is taken up with A Death Miscellany, a gallery of over 40 pages of artwork by many leading names in the comic-book field, a public service comic featuring Death (with the aid of John Constantine) talking about AIDS, artwork and products used in the marketing for Sandman and a full script (including original pencilled drawings) for The Sound of Her Wings.

Made in the same way as all the other Absolute editions with a faux-leather/felt hardcover in a slip case and high quality oversized pages. This is a good companion piece to the series but if you own the two main stories featured then it is certainly not worth shelling out the money for. It does look good though! ( )

It's wonderful to have all of these Death-related graphic novels and comics in one spot. I loved revisiting these stories, though it's a little jarring to read them all in a mish-mash together. This collection just makes me think Death deserves her own series. She's a supporting character that sometimes steals the show in "Sandman." Putting these stories all together in one place show how short-changed she's been.

So the four-star rating is for actual story content, because these stories aren't knock-yourself-out amazing. The collection gets five stars on presentation, because it's absolutely gorgeous. Even though I have the graphic novels that the bulk of this book collects, the never-before printed stories and the gallery make this a wonderful collection of the beloved "Sandman" character. ( )

Collected, re-edited, re-colored, in part re-lettered - what's not to like? Oh, except for the size of this massive tome, which makes it rather unsuited for curling up in bed. ( )

This last Sandman Absolute Edition collects the adventures of Dream's sister, Death. It leads off with two Death-centric issues from The Sandman, which was probably done to pad out the book, but I still appreciated the chance to reread "The Sound of Her Wings," which features Death's first appearance. In retrospect, it stands out: Dream narrates part of it, which rarely (never?) happened again in the series, and it also seems to set up some of Dream's decisions in The Kindly Ones, a full fifty issues later. But the primary point of this collection are the two Death-focused miniseries it collects.

The first of these is The High Cost of Living, which tells the story of a 24-hour period spent by Death as an ordinary, living person in modern New York. Primarily told from the perspective of a layabout teenager, it's a nice story with a lot of fun moments and couple reappearances by Sandman stalwarts such as Mad Hettie and Hazel and Foxglove. Death's adventures are alternately entertaining and horrifying, as you might imagine, and I enjoyed this one a lot.

The second is The Time of Your Life, which isn't really about Death at all, though she appears; it's more about Hazel and Foxglove, and how they deal with having a child and the pressures of fame. I liked getting to focus on these two because, for me, Death doesn't really work as a principal character-- even more so than Dream, she's all-powerful and all-knowing, and what's worse, she likes what she does, so what's at stake for her? She works better as a side character in the stories of others. Hazel and Foxglove go on a stranger journey in this tale, and learn a bit about themselves-- though unfortunately the story occasionally descends into the kind of cheesy aphorisms you might see inside of chocolate wrappers. Also the ending is a convenient cop-out.

The art of both tales is ably provided by Chris Bachalo. I especially liked his art in the second story, where Mark Buckingham's inks are clear and gorgeous. The use of color in The Time of Your Life is really great, too.

After this, there's a few mini-stories about Death, all of which look pretty good, but maybe didn't do a whole lot for me. The one about 9/11 also descends in cheesy aphorisms, I think. The AIDS awareness story featuring Death was worth it for John Constantine holding a banana while Death put a condom on it.

Neil Gaiman's The Sandman Spin-Offs: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence »

Surprisingly, the death stories always seemed to me to be the lighter side of the Sandman Universe. Although still quite dark, they tend to have simpler lessons to tell and are tied up in a more easily digestible way. This makes them easier to get into, but they also feel a little incomplete compared to Gaiman's more complex stories. Definitely still worth a read and the Absolute version is the way to go in order to appreciate the beautiful full size artwork. ( )