The Sandman: Endless Nights
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The Sandman: Endless Nights is a graphic novel written by Neil Gaiman as a follow-up to his Sandman series. The book is divided into seven chapters, each devoted to one of the Endless, a family of brothers and sisters, anthropomorphic representations of aspects of life. It was published by DC Comics in 2003. It won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Illustrated Narrative. It is also the first comic book to ever be on the New York Times Bestseller List[citation needed].
Each tale is stylistically different, and illustrated by a different artist. Most of the tales are independent of each other; however Destruction's tale relates to and immediately follows Delirium's. Destruction and Delirium's tales are the only ones that take place after the events of the Sandman series.
In line with all the other Sandman comics, the cover, logo and book designs were created by Dave McKean.
[edit] Chapters
[edit] Chapter 1: Death - Death and Venice
Art by P. Craig Russell
This story deals with the idea of quality versus quantity of life. It is split between two views: the lives of a group on an island off the coast of Venice protected by magic from Death versus the memories and thoughts of a young American who has never forgotten his childhood encounter with her.
The story is narrated by a man in his late twenties/ early thirties who seems to be disillusioned with the world around him. He walks around Venice speaking of time, illusion and trickery before seguing into an extended flashback of his childhood trip to Venice. While playing hide and seek he gets lost and meets Death of the Endless before a locked gate. She asks him to please open it, which he attempts to do until finally he is found by his cousins hours later. They return to Venice with him in disgrace. The remaining story is his return to that gate, subsequent dealing with Death, and musings on the facade of reality, his obsession with Death, and his general melancholy.
The name is derived from Thomas Mann's 1912 novella Death in Venice. The magician's desire on how to die from the beginning of the story was originally stated by Boris the bodyguard in Death: The Time of Your Life.
[edit] Chapter 2: Desire - What I've tasted of Desire
Art by Milo Manara
This story is about a woman who bargains with Desire to win the hand of her tribe's favorite boy, and then loses him to war.
Gaiman himself has said that the story is based on a historical anecdote told by George MacDonald Fraser, and tells the story of a woman named Kara in what appears to be pre-Roman Britain. She mostly tells the story in a series of asides to the audience as she interacts with the other characters.
Kara starts off the story telling the early history of her romance with Danyal: he is, by all evidence, a charming, self-sure young man, adept both in the arts of war and of love, who one day walks with a goat-girl (Kara), tells her that hours spent fishing don't count against the time of a man's life, and after that seemingly harmless but charming remark, wanders off to live his life. Kara, however, conceives a powerful desire for this young man.
Kara consults a witch, not wanting a love potion ("I'd not want a man I could buy with a potion"). Some consultation later, the witch tells her about a man, or woman, or both, with golden eyes who inspires "a longing that has nothing to do with your young man."
(Incidentally, the witch's theory about how the love potions "don't not work" is a fairly popular conception of modern magical practice at work, and is further explored, among other places, in the short story "Reave the Just" by Stephen R. Donaldson.)
The young man goes to the coast, while his father goes to meet the people from across the river to negotiate for exchange of hostages. Negotiations go badly and Kara disguises herself as a man (not particularly well) to go to the coast and tell the young man his father is dead. On the way she meets Desire, goes to the latter's realm, and listens to Desire tell her many things, only two of which are directly revealed to the reader: first, that most stories are about someone wanting something, and second, that getting what you want and being happy are two entirely separate things. Desire's interest in Kara can be explained by its statement "Most people want like a candle flame, but you desire like a forest fire." Desire also cuts several days off her travel time.
Kara tells the young man about his father, and they set off for home. That evening he finally realizes she is the woman who walked with him to see the goats all that time ago, and proposes they sleep together. She declines. They go home, and he proposes marriage, again she declines. He courts her for eight months, at the end of which he falls madly in love with her and gives a torc to Kara as a wedding gift, she finally assents.
(She is engaging in a deliberate strategy. She wants this young man more than anything else on earth, but continues to deny him just enough to make him want her more, the idea being that eventually he's going to want her so much he'll keep her forever. This idea is further explored, among other places, in The Rules by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider).
Hunchbacks dance at their wedding, and the local girls feel that once the new chief gets tired of her he'll go back to them. He doesn't. Instead, he gives his wife a flower and sets off for the coast. One evening while he's away and all the village men are out patrolling for wolves, a group of male strangers visit the village, asking for shelter. Kara has to let them in, by custom ("Hospitality to strangers and to friends. That was the way of it."), and give them food. While she is arranging this, the men remove her husband's head from a sack and place it on the table, their plan being to rape her, steal everything, and flee.
Kara does a strange thing, which she only explains to us later, and never to the strangers: she flatters each one of them, giving them attention and flirtation, but never too much. Essentially, she kept each of the stangers wanting her, but also wanting her to want them, which led to contests of strength and skill, conversation, etc. and essentially kept the strangers distracted all night until the menfolk of the village returned and slew them all.
Kara buries her dead husband, and, not wanting anything again as much as she wanted him, spends the rest of her life waiting for Desire's sister, Death.
The title is probably taken from a line in Robert Frost's poem Fire and Ice.
[edit] Chapter 3: Dream - The Heart of a Star
Art by Miguelanxo Prado
In the far distant past, Dream and his new romantic interest Killalla of the Glow travel to a meeting of astronomical phenomena. The mortal Killalla is astonished to learn that the beings with which she is mingling and chit-chatting with rather comfortably are, in fact, the very stars, galaxies, and dimensions which comprise her universe. After an encounter with her world's own sun, Sto-Oa, Killalla and the star fall in love, possibly thanks to Desire's powers, as the distraught and heartbroken Dream watches on.
This story showcases a number of things mentioned in The Sandman series but never before illustrated. Here, Death is a cold unmerciful character and Delight has not yet become Delirium. The roots of Dream's conflicts with Desire (in the beginning of this story, they are very close) are illustrated for the first time, as are the roots of the rules forbidding the Endless from becoming romantically involved with mortals. The first aspect of Despair also appears in the story, looking quite different from her replacement and is more sociable than her latter aspect.
In addition, other DC comics characters and beings are suggested in the story. The character Killalla is from the planet Oa, and is an ancestor of the Guardians of the Universe, who go on to form the Green Lantern Corps. Her power to manipulate green energy can be seen as an evolution towards the creation of the Green Lantern's power. Despair has a conversation with a red giant star named Rao about the creation of life on an unstable world and the possibility of a lone survivor to continually mourn the destruction of that world. This is an allusion to the history of Superman; Rao is the red giant sun around which Superman's homeworld of Krypton once orbited, as well as the Kryptonian God. (The colors of the stars in the story follow the DC Universe's standards, not the actual star lifecycle.)
The story is narrated by the Sun, depicted within the comic as a very young and clumsy star known by his Latin name Sol. He is telling the tale to the Earth at a time when she is still sleeping and has no life on her. Dream converses with Sol about the possibility of life on one of his planets. Sol expresses an interest in them resembling Killalla, setting the stage for our own existence as well as providing a possible reason why Dream seems to favor Earth as opposed to any other planet in the universe.
[edit] Chapter 4: Despair - Fifteen Portraits of Despair
Art by Barron Storey, designed by Dave McKean
This collection of fifteen very short vignettes illustrate different aspects of Despair, either the character herself, the emotion in abstract, or people in a state of despair. One is about an unemployed man who's feeding cats, only to have them end up eating each other to survive when he goes on an extended leave for work. Another is about a priest who's being forcibly defrocked due to a molestation scandal despite the fact that he can prove the allegations false. A third is about a woman who, after committing suicide to escape her pain, sits on the side of the road waiting for the happiness to begin.
In the book's introduction, Neil Gaiman states that he had originally planned to write twenty-five "Portraits of Despair".
[edit] Chapter 5: Delirium - Going Inside
Art by Bill Sienkiewicz
This story is about several mentally unbalanced people who are brought together on a quest to save Delirium from herself. It's possible at the end of this story that Delirium is somewhat healed in some fundamental way; at least two of the people involved in her rescue are also at least partly healed. Daniel, Dream's raven Matthew, and Barnabas, Delirium's dog protector on indefinite loan from Destruction, also appear as part of the rescue mission.
[edit] Chapter 6: Destruction - On the Peninsula
Art by Glenn Fabry
This is a story about some archaeologists who uncover and explore a peninsula from many years in the future. Chronologically, this takes place after Delirium's Going Inside, the chapter preceding this one, featuring Delirium herself. Dialogue between Delirium and a human character indicate that the rift between Destruction and the rest of the Endless has been partially healed.
[edit] Chapter 7: Destiny - Endless Nights
Art by Frank Quitely
This short story is simply a wander through Destiny's garden of forking paths. Based on the clothes of Delirium's statue in one of the panels and the posture of Dream's statue, it seems to be taking place during The Kindly Ones.
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