Note: “As I Go Along” is a new feature in which I review and discuss the best graphic novels and series that I haven’t yet had a chance to read. These are the titles your comic-loving friends have been trying to push into your hands for years, only now I’ll be doing the pushing (or telling you not to bother). The post will include spoilers for those who have not yet read the work.

I like the stars. It’s the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they’re always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend…I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don’t last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a collection that focused on Morpheus as its central character. Perhaps even better is the increased “screen time” for the rest of the Endless family, namely Delirium and Destruction. Up to this point we’d heard a whole lot about “The Prodigal” without ever seeing him or getting any explanation as to why he disappeared beyond small hints.

As I’ve often said, one of my favorite parts of the “Sandman” series is that we get to see growth, change, and development—in short, humanity—in characters that are “Endless” (both in name and life span). In “Brief Lives,” Dream and Delirium embark on an (ultimately successful, sort of) quest to find their brother. Along the way, explanations of each of the Endless’ motives and feelings regarding the search do much to increase their depth and relatability. Change is the major theme of this story arc, and as a result, it’s one of the best yet, right up there with “Preludes and Nocturnes.”

First off, there’s Delirium. This whole shebang is her idea, and the impetus for it all is change. What else? We’ve been told before that Delirium has changed, but we get our first glimpse into the “before” period in chapter two.

Delirium was once Delight. Her name, and thus her function was different, and it’s clear her new form isn’t the easier to handle of the two. She recalls going to see Destruction in the early stages of her transition. He told her things are changing, and she knows it to be true, but is nonetheless comforted by her brother’s presence. But now he’s been gone for 300 years and she hopes finding him will bring more change, this time for the better.

Of course, the main attraction here is Dream and his changes, although the long-awaited introduction of Destruction came in a close second. Dream initially embarks on the quest not out of any desire to find his brother or help his sister, but because he needs to take his mind off the end of yet another failed love affair. The lost lover is never named, but writers like Gaiman don’t make so many hints at such a mystery without ultimately unveiling the secret.

Although he refuses to acknowledge it, at least outwardly, Dream’s imprisonment changed him. The muse Calliope pointed it out back in “Dream Country,” with Morpheus responding that he had “learned much in recent times.” A few more characters made note of Dream’s evolution in “Brief Lives.” Opheus, Dream and Calliope’s son, says something similar when he and his father speak about Dream’s freeing Calliope. But Dream responds “I doubt it.” When Delirium first visits his realm, Dream apologizes for being a bad host. At first, Delirium thinks he is mocking her, but when asks why he would do that, she responds “You’ve never apologized to me. You just act like you know stuff I don’t know that makes everything you do okay.”

Of course, actions speak louder than words. The fact that Dream grants Orpheus a boon, the gift of death, is near amazing considering he refused to even see his son for millennia. More interesting however is that the ever-stoic Morpheus quite literally crumbles to his knees when Destiny tells him something he already knew: that the only way he will find Destruction is with Orpheus’s help. This event paves the way for the most interesting moment of Delirium’s change as well. When she sees the effect Destiny’s words have had on Dream, she momentarily changes back to Delight to confront him, saying “Do you know why I stopped being Delight, my brother? I do. There are things not in your book. There are paths outside this garden. You would do well to remember that.” It seems Delight can collect herself for small periods if need be, though she says it’s very painful.

In the middle of their journey, Dream quits when he recognizes the human cost their quest is having. Most searches for a long lost sibling don’t involve a body count. The old Dream would not have been agitated by the deaths of a few measly humans, and Destruction points to Dream’s distress as proof of his having changed. These deaths are a part of another aspect of the collection’s major theme: the brevity of life (or “Brief Lives”).

Of all the characters in the “Sandman” universe only the Endless have lives that are anything but brief. Recall that even Gods can die when the living stop believing in them, and that although he lived for thousands of years, Dream calls Orpheus life “short.” The fact of the matter is that it’s all relative. Everything in existence will consider their lives brief when faced with the end. There’s Ruby, whose average human lifespan comes to an abrupt conclusion in a fire, and Bernie Capax, who screams “Not yet” when he sees a building about to collapse on him, despite having lived 15,000 years. When Death comes to claim Capax, she explains “You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime.”

Even for the Endless, things are not so cut and dry. In Chapter 8 it is revealed that Despair was once destroyed and “another aspect of one of us had to reassume the position.” Dream notes that this was the only time such a thing occurred, but it still goes to show that even the individual forms of these “Endless” beings can die. Although they will be eventually reborn, it creates a philosophical conundrum: is the new aspect the “same” as the old one? Destruction explains that it is this infinite cycle that caused him to abandon his position, saying “After all, it wouldn’t have done for another version of me to have been dumped into the same mess all over again.”

I could go on and on about “Brief Lives,” it was a true masterpiece on so many levels. I just hope the rest of the series can even approach the impossibly high bar this collection has set.

Note: “As I Go Along” is a weekly feature in which I review and discuss the best graphic novels and series that I haven’t yet had a chance to read. These are the titles your comic-loving friends have been trying to push into your hands for years, only now I’ll be doing the pushing (or telling you not to bother). The post will include spoilers for those who have not yet read the work.

“To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due.”

After a bit of a wait, the latest collection of “The Sandman” I’ve gotten to put the focus back on Dream as the central character, with, of course, a few of Neil Gaiman’s trademark jumps elsewhere mixed in. “Seasons of Mist” begins with Destiny, the oldest of the Endless, calling a “family meeting.” One member is absent, and although we don’t know anything about he/she/it yet, other than that it is sometimes referred to as “the prodigal,” I’d wager its name starts with “d” (the six members present are Death, Destiny, Dream, Desire, Delirum, and Despair).

The happy family reunion quickly turns into a family argument, as Desire tells Dream he was wrong in sending Nada to Hell for thousands of years. Recall that we saw Dream walk past his former lover during his first trip to the underworld, and that we got the full story of their relationship in the prologue of “The Doll’s House.” Dream is outraged, until in a private conversation, Death says, “condemning her to eternity in hell, just because she turned you down… That’s a really shitty thing to do.”

Think about that, the Endless, the only immortal beings in the universe, use language as colloquial as “really shitty thing to do.” Well, Death does anyway. But it’s these kinds of odd juxtapositions that make “The Sandman” so great. Anyway, the argument leads to a sequence of events that make up the bulk of the major story arc: Dream returns to Hell only to find Lucifer is busy closing it down. It seems Satan is done ruling the underworld, and he puts Dream in charge of figuring out what the hell to do with the place (see what I did there?). As such, the story sets out to answer one question: What would happen if Lucifer up and left? Or, storytelling being what it is, what would you do if you had to decide who to give the key to Hell to? Dream ends up putting a couple of angels in charge despite the pleas of a plethora of deities, demons, and demi-gods (shit, Gaiman’s got me doing the d thing now). Of course, Destiny knew that was going to happen along, it’s kind of his thing.

The main story in “Seasons of Mist” was fantastic, but my favorite issue in the collection was doubtless one of those trademark jumps. It’s the fifth story, “”In Which the Dead Return; and Charles Rowland Concludes His Education.” Charles Rowland is left at his boarding school when most everyone else has gone home. Unfortunately for Charles, this happens to be at the same time Lucifer has kicked the dead out of hell, so those that died at the school (or just didn’t have anywhere else to go) return to haunt it.

Early on, Charles sits in front of a memorial for the boys from his school that died during the “Great War.” Two of those boys end up returning to St. Hilarion’s to torment Charles. He’s rescued by one Edwin Paine, who just so happened to have died when the same boys sacrificed him to the devil in 1914. The boys thought they would get special treatment in Hell because of their actions, “but when we went to Hell… They didn’t even care. They hadn’t even known. They–they laughed at us.”

Charles ends up dying, but Death’s far too busy to take him. Charles and Edwin decide they’ve learned all they’re going to at school and leave. Although they’re dead, they plan to “see what life’s got to offer.”