Death: The High Cost of Living

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This triple-issue miniseries tells one of those “days”, when Death walks the earth as a mortal so she could taste the “bitter tang of mortality”, some kind of a requirement for being the divider between life and afterlife. Here, Death takes on human flesh as a girl named Didi, and she literally stumbles upon Sexton Furnival, a suicidal boy. In a whole day they spent together, both took from each other important lessons about life and the value of it. The mini-series shared the Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Award for Favorite Limited Comic-Book Series for 1993 with Frank Miller's Daredevil: The Man Without Fear. [5] For their work in the mini-series, Neil Gaiman and Karen Berger received Eisner Award in 1994 as Best Writer and Best Editor. [6] Plot [ edit ] Death is always smiling, and it’s not a creepy malicious grin, she is genuily happy with her role in the balance of the universe and she likes to meet people and experience new things.

He isn’t a carpe diem kind of young man. But he accepts that life is something, and death is something else, and he saw things in his three issues with Didi that made him scared and showed him kindness and gave him a perspective on something bigger than his small apartment. Sexton is the protagonist, he grows and changes, fundamentally, but not in an overdramatic way. And not because he turns from a meek nonparticipant in the world into an action hero. No, Gaiman keeps the story relatively small, with weirdness at its edges, and that’s enough—along with Didi’s joyous embrace of everything that comes her way—to make him see that there is something precious to this mortal existence. But he doesn’t revel in it. He doesn’t kiss babies or frolic in the flowers. This isn’t Harold and Maude, though the underlying theme is similar. Gaiman keeps the story restrained, focused not on Sexton’s growth as a character but on the dangers faced by the characters, and the quest to find Mad Hettie’s heart. In this story, Death lives a day as a normal human being. Really alive, breathing, eating, and experience as much as possible in those 24 hours.Death: The High Cost of Living is a three-issue stand-alone spin-off from Gaiman’s Sandman series, and tells a tale alluded to in Sandman #21 when, speaking of Morpheus, it says of his elder sister: “He heard long ago, in a dream, that one day in every century Death takes on mortal flesh, better to comprehend what the lives she takes must feel like, to taste the bitter tang of mortality that is the price she must pay for being the divider of the living from all that has gone before, all that must come after.” And Death: The High Cost of Living tells the story of the most recent of those days when Death takes the form of a 16-year-old girl named Didi whose family has recently died and spends the day in New York with the unfortunately named Sexton Furnival, another teen who has been contemplating ending his life. The two of them have a rather busy day, and at one point Death/Didi trying to prove who she is recites that passage from Sandman to Sexton, and asks, “Haven’t you heard that before?” Sexton says “no” and wonders what it’s from. Death doesn’t remember. Death: The Time of Your Life, published in 1996, is a sequel that focuses on Death, Hazel and Foxglove. Hazel gave birth to Alvie just as Foxglove's career took off. The family moved to Los Angeles. Foxglove was warned not to go by her manager. On the road, she began to have a series of one night stands. Gaiman’s Sandman is such a brilliant and creative series; yet, for all that Dream does not have much personality. Death is a far better character. Yet the first Death miniseries doesn’t end with a Sexton opening his arms up to the sun and embracing the wondrous nature of life. His epiphany is more subtle, but no less grand. He simply understands that life is. His final commentary on the subject of death—and at the beginning of the story, he was crafting his own suicide note—is that he wishes that there might be a reality in which Death was “funny, and friendly, and nice. And maybe just a tiny bit crazy.” And he wishes to see her again, but “if that means dying first…” well, he decides he can wait a little bit.

Every 100 years the spirit of Death must experience the mortal world for one day to gain a better understanding of life. This time around she touches on the lives of many people that embrace her open, friendly attitude. Even though she has a single day in this world, she will leave a lasting impression on a handful of people, will encounter an enemy of hers and will gain an appreciation of the thing she has to take from the living. Other than two additional scenes at the beginning (set in a Tibetan monastery and Alaska), and a move from New York City to London for the main setting, the screenplay was relatively unchanged from the comic script. On October 14, 2010, it was reported in an interview with Gaiman that as of June or July, DC and Warner Bros. had closed down work on the film and it was unclear if they would start it up again. [10] Other Sandman spin-offs [ edit ] Conspicuous Gloves: A woman Sexton speaks with in the club, wears long conceiling gloves and tells him about a friend of hers who tried to commit suicide by slitting her veins. All Girls Want Bad Boys: Sexton complains that his classmate Theo is the type of asshole to cruelly kill kittens, but all the girls think he's "sex in blue jeans".

Tropes:

On bad days I talk to Death constantly, not about suicide because honestly that's not dramatic enough. Most of us love the stage and suicide is definitely your last performance and being addicted to the stage, suicide was never an option - plus people get to look you over and stare at your fatty bits and you can't cross your legs to give that flattering thigh angle and that's depressing. So we talk. She says things no one else seems to come up with, like let's have a hotdog and then it's like nothing's impossible. If you have not read this, please be prepared to seriously ponder your own mortality as this comic is that profound.

Sexton at first thinks that Didi is just being her eccentric self until the Eremite arrives, angry that Didi has escaped him again. Sexton decides to stay with Didi and see what the day brings. Sexton is sullen and moody, often speaking sarcastically about the simple joys that Didi seems to find in everything. The two attend a party, where Sexton runs into a former employee of his mother's. Hazel is there in support of her lover, Foxglove, who is performing for the first time that night. A casual conversation with a man next to him sets Fox's career in motion, though Sexton is unaware of it at the time. Because he is the son of a famous entertainment lawyer in California, Sexton's opinion of the performer carries some weight. If you know someone really well it’s hard to be mad at them for very long... ...I know everybody really well.Mad Hettie arrives and finds her heart in the nesting doll. Having missed the chance for Death again, she leaves, trying to decide where to hide her heart again. Didi speaks with unknown and unseen person, telling them that her one day on earth was worth it, having met some nice people. Didi is clearly thinking of Sexton, the boy she saved from an early death. Outside of the Sandman series proper, as the dark but sophisticated corner of Karen Berger’s DC Editorial offices became Vertigo Comics, a troop of writers continued the tales of some of the less prominent members of the Neil Gaiman comics, with titles like The Dreaming and Lucifer and Merv Pumpkinhead, Agent of D.R.E.A.M. (Yes, that last one is a real comic, and it was written by Fables scribe Bill Willingham.) But that would all happen after Sandman ended, as a way to sustain the franchise while Neil Gaiman moved on to become a fancy-pants novelist and screenwriter. Gaiman produced a few Sandman-related books in the years after the series concluded, and, of course, he’s slated for a return engagement with the character in the fall of 2013, but, in total, more issues of Sandman spin off comics were written by people named neither Neil nor Gaiman than were produced in the entirety of the initial run of the series.

The main character is a teenage girl named Didi, who appears to be an eccentric, orphaned goth, but who also insists that she is Death personified, taking her one-day every hundred-year sabbatical as a living person. She guides a suicidal young male protagonist called Sexton on a journey of self-discovery. As the story goes on, Sexton gains a reason for not wishing to die, his love for the girl claiming to be Death. It was during this time that Hazel revealed she had had a one night stand with a man and had gotten pregnant. Foxglove eventually forgave her, and the two decided to raise the child together. When they returned to the real world, their friend, Wanda, had been killed and their home destroyed. Napoleon Delusion: Sexton thinks that Didi only thinks she's the personification of Death because she's mentally unwell after the death of her family. The readers know better. The macabre depressing singer was interesting, but only because i was wondering if neil gaiman was the one actually writing her songs.I love what Gaiman has done with her. Death is the end, but she is also something we will all have to accept with open arms. There’s no escaping her and perhaps that’s why she is so welcoming here. It is fate that we will one day meet her. And she’s so likable; she has a big smile and an even bigger heart. The people she meets cannot resist her charm and easy going manner. They like her. They want to be around her and one day they will be forevermore. Death: The High Cost of Living is a spin-off of the Sandman series. I just finished rereading the sixth volume, Fables and Reflections, and I would have reviewed it and gone on to Brief Lives…except that I’m craving for a lot of Death perkiness and peachiness that I decided to skip to this novel first. It contained no spoiler for the rest of the graphic novels anyway. year-old Sexton is going through a bad patch in his life. He considers suicide when a young goth girl who calls herseld Didi shows up. She has a very positive attitude, is friendly with everybody and gains free stuff wherever she goes. He has no idea that the girl is Death. The first Death miniseries features a reluctant antihero by the name of Sexton—who is an antihero in the traditional sense of having no particularly spectacular qualities, not an antihero in the sense of, say, the Punisher—and a young Goth girl named Didi, who believes that she is the personification of death. Because she is. She’s Death in mortal form, which, according to Gaiman’s own Sandman mythology, occurs once every 100 years. So that’s that. Most of the story is from the perspective of Sexton, the grumpy narrator ready to end his life until he’s found by Didi in a trash heap. Didi is Death or the young girl claiming to be Death. Of course she’s got to be crazy. Of course there’s another explanation. Spending the day with Did leads Sexton to being accosted by Mad Hettie among others. Meeting Hazel, watching Foxglove perform, and taking one small action which could change their lives. All the while Sexton finds himself a little more cheerful in Didi’s company even if he can’t admit it. Of course it can’t last. Life never does, but maybe it’s more worth living than Sexton realized. Didi certainly appreciated it.