0:02

Mr. Sandman I'm

0:30

so alone, don't have nobody

0:32

to call my own. I'm

1:00

doing them all the same. I

1:02

got into a groove with

1:06

Goosebumps where I could be a

1:08

different monster every time. Yeah,

1:10

right, sure. And this

1:12

one, what I could

1:14

have done, which maybe

1:16

would have just been another Goosebumps thing,

1:19

was try to each have

1:21

a different dream that I'm having each

1:23

time. It would be a different manifestation

1:25

of the endless each time. Oh, I

1:28

just woke up and I'm scared. Or

1:30

you could talk like you would talk without teeth in your mouth.

1:35

Like if you had one of those dreams where all your

1:37

teeth fall out. Oh,

1:39

okay. Your teeth control

1:41

a lot of stuff about the way your voice sounds. Yeah,

1:43

it's teeth all the way down. This is our

1:46

bespoke graphic

1:48

novel podcast about the graphic novel

1:51

The Sandman. It's still

1:53

an audio podcast, but it's about a graphic novel. Imagine

1:56

us looking different. each

2:01

issue. So with important markers where you could

2:03

kind of tell who we were, like of

2:05

our speech bubbles, we're both lettered

2:08

slightly differently or something. Yeah, for sure.

2:11

This is number nine. Number

2:13

nine? Number nine? Uh,

2:15

the kindly ones. Yeah, and

2:18

this is kind of the

2:21

narrative peak of the

2:24

Sandman books where all the little tiny

2:27

stories where you weren't sure if

2:29

you were going to need to

2:31

remember this for the test or

2:33

not, I'll come back and combine

2:35

into one big, interlocking narrative chunk

2:38

that changes

2:40

the world of the Sandman forever. Yeah,

2:43

true. It's

2:45

not telegraphed in

2:48

where it winds up, the

2:50

specifics of how it gets there were

2:52

interesting to me as the person who haven't read

2:54

this before. And

2:58

yeah, structurally, both

3:00

in a microcosm, I

3:02

feel like this collection

3:04

functions a bit more like a

3:06

traditional novel or a traditional story that

3:08

we are used to reading in written

3:10

fiction. Yeah, where it starts in

3:13

one place and then continues until

3:15

it ends in

3:17

its ending place. And not just that, because

3:20

we've had a few of those, but

3:22

this one has subplots

3:24

that are paying off other things.

3:27

They're not just setting something else

3:29

up. They are all

3:32

bubbling up into the main narrative

3:34

that is the work of several

3:37

collections that have come before it. Obviously, there

3:39

are things that this collection is doing that

3:42

it can only do because it is the

3:44

ninth collection so far, because

3:46

of where it is in the series. Right.

3:50

But both in a microcosm

3:52

and for the series as a whole, it

3:55

is making good on this as a long

3:58

work of storytelling. where

4:01

we've had a lot of fun with the one-offs,

4:03

which I don't even really like think about.

4:06

It's more the parts in

4:08

some of the chapter, the collections

4:10

that feel like they're advancing the story, but it's

4:12

like, well we spent a few pages with that

4:14

character. We spent a few pages with that character

4:17

and this is not a work of fiction that

4:19

is like really concerned about like flagging

4:22

those for you, at least

4:24

on your first way through. It's way more

4:27

subtle about that kind of stuff. There's like

4:29

sort of edge pieces to the puzzle that

4:31

is Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series. Like you

4:33

aren't necessarily, every time you read one

4:36

of those little stories, putting together

4:38

one of the big important central pieces that

4:40

sort of shows you the picture of the

4:42

story that it's trying to be, but

4:45

it's still like it's still important scaffolding.

4:47

It's still achieving a vibe. Yeah,

4:50

yes. And this collection, I think,

4:53

we'll get to it, has like a

4:55

moment where a character does a thing

4:57

and it causes something else. That's a

4:59

few of them actually. And you're

5:02

like, whoa, cause an effect in

5:04

the world of The Sandman. Whoa, like right next

5:06

to each other too. Whoa. And

5:09

yet it also has all of the weight of

5:11

the series coming towards it, which is

5:13

kind of fun. This is not the end of

5:15

the series. We have one more of these called

5:17

The Wake, which I

5:20

suppose is appropriate and maybe is a bit

5:23

of a foreshadowing of what we're going to talk about

5:25

today. Well, I mean the whole thing's about sleeping.

5:28

And so you wake up at the end. That's

5:30

definitely what it means, Andrew. Yeah, the

5:32

wake. Like, you know,

5:35

when you have the wake in the morning and

5:37

you, and you get up to take the shower

5:39

and eat the breakfast. I get into my pajamas

5:41

and I say it is time for the sleep.

5:43

And then I open my eyes and I say

5:46

it is time for the wake. And

5:49

then I eat my waffles. This is

5:51

time for being the wake. I

5:54

say every morning. These

5:56

issues, Andrew, do you have the issue numbers?

5:59

I know that. They appeared they

6:01

ran 1993 to 95 and the collection came out 96 But

6:06

I don't remember what the issue number issued numbers.

6:09

This is a big one. So this covers issues

6:12

57 to 69 nice. Okay, sure.

6:15

Yeah, I bet he planned

6:17

that he probably did plan that Neil

6:19

Gaiman seems like a kind guy Who's who

6:21

sees the number 69 is like nice. Nice,

6:23

you know The he's

6:26

pretty like highfalutin, but I bet he's not

6:28

above me like okay there it is the

6:33

collection The

6:36

if you get the like the The

6:38

ten issue collection. I'm not sure how this is

6:40

included if you get like the omnibus there is

6:43

a Vertigo

6:45

Jam number one called the castle

6:49

written by Gaiman Pencil or

6:51

Kevin Nolan Inc or Kevin Nolan A

6:55

few other artists on that and that is

6:58

like a one-off tour of the dreaming That

7:01

exists here, but it is not Part

7:04

of what you might consider The

7:07

original kindly ones run my

7:10

cursory understanding of what vertigo jam was

7:12

like just based on looking up the

7:14

issue online to read it is

7:17

vertigo as I think we talked about at the beginning of

7:19

the of the sand by me project is sort of a

7:22

A little indie like I

7:25

don't want to say rebel But like a

7:27

little sub label within DC that is

7:29

doing that wears a leather jacket and smoke

7:31

Yeah, yeah, that's wearing a leather jacket and

7:33

smokes and sits on chairs back And

7:38

I think the vertigo jam is just meant to

7:40

be like a little sampler of like here's a

7:42

bunch of stories that we're telling okay, well, they

7:44

they sort of kind of add

7:46

to To the

7:48

to the story at least in the same

7:50

a one you get So you

7:52

just you get a couple of panels to

7:54

spend with a bunch of characters You probably

7:56

already know and like and you're happy to spend the time

7:58

with them, but it doesn't really It's not really there

8:01

to do anything. Well, but

8:03

it's included in this collection. So I

8:05

want to give it its props for

8:07

what it's doing in this collection. Because

8:10

I read it, my immediate response was,

8:12

cool, that was neat. I'm

8:14

glad I did that. And then

8:17

the book started. I read

8:19

one or two, like, you know,

8:22

there are blogs of people, like our podcast project,

8:24

people have like read through the Sandman again and

8:26

written blogs about it, right? And I was just

8:28

like trying to compare notes to make sure I

8:30

wasn't forgetting anything. And some people

8:32

don't like that this is included because they feel

8:35

like, they really like

8:37

that the beginning and end of

8:40

the kindly ones, if

8:42

you don't have the Vertigo Jam,

8:44

is the three sisters like doing

8:47

stuff with thread, right? Book

8:49

ending it. Coming

8:51

out of world's end, which

8:54

was everyone in the inn, in

8:57

between realities and

8:59

everybody has their own stories and these own

9:01

places that have nothing to do, like

9:04

with the plot of the

9:07

Sandman in an explicit way. And

9:10

then we get that big like cliffhanger,

9:12

like everybody, all the magic characters are

9:14

sad in the sky thing. And

9:18

then I get a little tour of the

9:21

dreaming in a, from a

9:24

almost first person perspective, it's not quite, but

9:26

that's kind of a neat resonance with what

9:28

comes up later with the sisters. And

9:31

it's just a guy who is dreaming and like

9:33

instead of having a dream where he does, has

9:36

his own thing, he like, he

9:40

doesn't wake up because he's still asleep, but. He

9:44

just gets a tour of the castle and

9:46

he meets some of the characters. He meets

9:48

Dream, he meets the pumpkin head, he meets

9:50

Lucian, he meets Matthew, the

9:52

raven. He's there. Pain and Abel,

9:54

yes, are there. Noelle

9:56

is there. And

9:59

so for me it was like. this nice, oh

10:02

yeah, these are

10:04

not our heroes, but like these are

10:06

our people, and this is our

10:08

place. Yeah, and they are people who you'll

10:10

spend a lot of time with in this

10:12

issue. For me, just the only thing I

10:14

was thinking the entire time I was reading

10:16

this Virgo Jam is that this

10:19

is like the only Sandman thing where the

10:21

lettering is not done by Todd Klein. I

10:23

was, when you messaged me, I was like,

10:25

which one was that? Okay, sure. Yeah,

10:28

he's still riffing on the, like,

10:30

you know, the speech bubbles and everything are

10:32

still pretty well established,

10:34

like he's sort of following that convention,

10:36

but Todd Klein did all

10:38

the original Sandman stuff, he's done all of

10:41

the like reunion-y Sandman stuff

10:43

since it's very strange to read

10:45

any of these characters speaking with

10:47

letters that look slightly different and

10:49

then threw me for a loop.

10:51

And I think that's a good

10:53

segue to the rest of the

10:55

collection, which are all the ink

10:57

is done by Mark Hempel, who

11:00

I don't, he's done

11:02

other stuff, but like this

11:04

is one of his big achievements.

11:09

So save for like one issue,

11:11

right? Oh,

11:14

there's a few issues. He's the

11:16

penciler on almost all of it and

11:18

the inker on some of it. Yeah,

11:20

excuse me. I used the wrong term.

11:22

Yeah, come on. I meant to say

11:24

the penciler. Come on, nerd. I

11:27

want to be a nerd so bad. And

11:30

it just changes the tone of most of

11:33

it. And

11:37

you're like, well, I don't know.

11:40

It makes things feel

11:42

a little more surreal,

11:44

doesn't feel like quite the word because we've already had

11:46

a lot of surreal stuff, but there's

11:49

a heaviness to his visual

11:51

style. Yeah. That

11:54

I don't know. It's

11:57

not like, ooh, dreamy.

12:00

It's like yeah, there's a I

12:02

find dreamy is like one

12:04

word I would use for it. I

12:06

I find that the Like

12:09

I like it. It is a very it's a

12:11

very Distinctive style I think

12:13

but I also think it is Trying

12:17

it's not trying to be as out there as

12:19

some of the art that we've seen in some

12:22

of the other issues Sure I get I think that these

12:24

as The characters appear in

12:26

these issues is like pretty close to what

12:28

you would think of as they're like canonical

12:30

like on model Appearances I

12:32

think I also he also does a

12:35

thing that I like that some other

12:37

artists Who do comics

12:39

work that I read do where like if

12:41

you get up close to somebody's face? There's

12:43

a lot of detail in there. And then

12:45

if you zoom out from their face Yes,

12:47

it's just like two dots and a line

12:49

like for eyes and a smile But still

12:51

very like communicating a lot with those with

12:53

that very simple sort of representation

12:55

of what a face is I was

12:58

careful in Reading

13:00

about it because I don't want

13:03

I'm sure that like any spoilers for

13:05

the wake aren't hugely substantial But

13:07

I was just trying to be careful But like it

13:09

did not take me long to find dueling reddit threads

13:12

of like I came around on

13:14

Mark Hempel's art I love it and

13:16

what was gaming smoking when he hired

13:18

Mark Hempel? probably have

13:21

but There are some

13:23

moments like you there's some You

13:26

get you got a lot of Loki in these

13:28

issues, right? Loki. Yeah, trickster god He's back from

13:30

from a few books ago, and he plays

13:32

a pretty pivotal role The

13:35

Loki in here pretty pretty much the Joker.

13:37

He's kind of just he's kind of twisted

13:39

Yeah, kind of just the Joker and I

13:41

could see And

13:44

and everybody is sort of At

13:47

is sort of like that in so

13:49

far as their features are very exaggerated

13:51

Like I could see why it would

13:53

be not for some people I guess

13:55

but yeah And and also like

13:57

if you are reading it in

13:59

secret And you're like, oh,

14:01

I'm so excited to get to this like

14:05

Culminating book and

14:07

it is a brand new Artist,

14:09

which I don't think it takes you

14:12

to an entirely different universe, but

14:14

it struck me right away as being

14:16

very different And

14:18

if you're just like well, I don't feel comfortable

14:20

right now The

14:23

there's a few other issues like issue

14:25

six is Glynn Dillon Charles

14:28

Vasson Dean Ormston That is the one

14:30

that has those like three

14:32

old ladies in the nursing home

14:34

telling stories I have more people

14:36

sitting around telling stories classic gaming

14:38

Yeah And then Teddy Christensen does

14:40

some in issue eight which I'm

14:42

trying to remember what exactly that

14:45

is I'm flipping through the book

14:47

in front of me right now

14:50

and I don't Remember

14:53

oh, there's some more

14:56

What is going on in this one? Oh There's

14:59

a lot more there's a different delirium stuff

15:02

going on It's an

15:04

interesting design. Huh? I

15:06

had it like that one is that one is um

15:10

It's like it zooms out a little bit to

15:12

give you like everything that happens in a week

15:14

to Morpheus

15:17

and Around like Thursday

15:19

issue catch up to where the story

15:21

had been at that point. Yes. You're

15:23

right. Yes Okay, and there's like

15:25

a there's like an interesting rendering of the Corinthian

15:27

because he's back in that one. Oh, yeah, he's

15:29

back He's been re

15:32

he's been recreated You

15:35

remember the Corinthian in the dolls house,

15:37

I think was the big an actual

15:39

bad guy He's a bag. He's a

15:41

bad guy He was a dream who

15:43

in Morpheus's absence when he was

15:45

trapped Went out into the

15:47

real world and started just like for real

15:50

terrorizing people in real life. Yeah And

15:54

Morpheus is way we can't have this I

15:56

gotta make you and now he's returning to

15:58

a theme as he says And

16:01

recreating the Corinthian as a dark mirror to humanity

16:03

Corinthian if you're a member is a guy with

16:05

like the white hair and he has teeth eyes

16:09

Yeah, and he like your eyes. Yeah, he's not

16:11

a seat eyes He still wants to eat your

16:13

eyes like don't give him don't me give me

16:15

wrong the Corinthians not suddenly like a cool dude

16:18

No He doesn't

16:20

like just play the guitar and like

16:22

jam with you No, but he's more

16:24

of a loyalist to Morpheus in this

16:26

I guess because yeah recreated Yeah, you

16:29

need some of the memories of his

16:31

past like on life, but but

16:34

yeah So again,

16:36

like I think we covered where we left off there

16:38

was a reality storm Somebody's

16:41

dead or going to die Everybody

16:44

saw a very gloomy procession Yeah

16:47

outside of the outside of the story

16:49

hotel and this book

16:51

opens up with the three

16:53

sisters who we met as like I

16:57

Think at the close of our last episode

16:59

Andrew. I tried to draw a

17:01

distinction between the furies and the fates and

17:04

I think we got a little crosstalk on it because

17:07

game and I was reading about this like I Was

17:10

comparing it to Percy Jackson where they are where

17:12

they do maintain the difference it from Greek myth

17:15

because they are three different They're like six different

17:18

Ladies, I don't know what if they're goddesses or

17:20

what they are but there's

17:22

three fates there's three furies and Gay

17:25

men is like now there's just three

17:28

ladies and every instance of three ladies

17:30

in myth and history are the same

17:32

ladies Mm-hmm if it's you

17:34

know Arthur Ian legend if

17:37

it's Greek myth if it's Greek myth

17:39

again, they're all the same ladies Yeah,

17:42

just three ladies. How many groups of three

17:44

ladies do you need really? Yeah? And

17:49

so these books are all about how people can just

17:51

have like different aspects of what they are Who's to

17:53

say they aren't the same ladies? Yeah, it's a cool

17:55

way to use I think you would said fates to

17:57

refer to them and it's just not it's It's

18:00

not how they're ever, I don't think, directly

18:02

referred to in these pages. They're not. What

18:05

is tricky is that they do what the fates

18:07

do, which is they do that thing where they

18:10

cut the string and they're weaving the string. And

18:12

that's what's happening here. And that

18:14

is not what the Furies do. So like

18:16

I was confused that he would,

18:18

I didn't know that he was

18:20

stacking them on top of each other like that.

18:22

Sure. But yeah, they're the

18:24

ones who, and because

18:28

you have Destiny with his book, which has also come with the Fates.

18:31

Anyway, they're dealing with their

18:33

string. They're talking

18:35

about Morpheus. They're

18:37

getting ready. But

18:39

then we cut over to

18:42

Lida Hall. Andrew

18:44

refresh us on who Lida Hall is, what her

18:46

deal is. Another I

18:49

believe Doll's House introduction

18:51

where she was the one, she was the one

18:53

who was pregnant and married to

18:55

like goofy 70s Sandman. And

18:59

she was pregnant in the dreaming for

19:01

like two years and then was released

19:03

and Dream was like, Hey, your kid's

19:05

mind. See you later. Correct.

19:07

Like, I'm not going to take him now,

19:09

but like he, I yeah, he's, he's mine.

19:12

He gestated in the dreaming for

19:14

a long, long time. I'll be,

19:16

I'll be back for him. And did we

19:18

maybe see her, we've seen Daniel. We've

19:21

seen, yeah, we there, Daniel showed

19:23

up in another, one of the many ones

19:25

that's just like people sitting around and telling

19:28

stories to each other. It was the one

19:30

with like Morpheus, like dreaming

19:32

death babies that was in Cane's

19:34

house. And they were telling stories.

19:36

Oh, that was the one where like

19:38

Cane doesn't stutter when he tells

19:40

cool stories or no, Abel doesn't. Which

19:43

one's the nice one? Cane flew Abel. Oh,

19:46

Abel doesn't study or stutter when he tells cool

19:48

stories, which I think is a nice note. So

19:52

yeah, and Lita was in that as like

19:54

the bookends to what, to what Daniel was

19:56

doing. But yeah, she's back. She's like, her

19:58

life's, it's been. What maybe

20:00

like four or five years total since the

20:02

beginning of the Since

20:05

Morpheus got out of his little prison something

20:07

like that Daniel seems pretty little Well,

20:10

he's he's said to be like two or three

20:12

and I'm not sure how long I don't remember

20:15

how long after the dolls house that Sure,

20:18

sure sure actually, you know doesn't uh Rose

20:21

Walker talks about it having been like three

20:23

years. It sounds right since what happened in the

20:25

doll's house So it's maybe been four or five

20:27

years total since the very beginning of the

20:29

book And

20:33

she's like since she's been back in the

20:35

waking world and she's had Daniel She hasn't

20:37

really even going out or seeing anybody or

20:39

doing anything She's just been I think

20:42

partly because she is sort of consumed with

20:44

this promise that Morpheus has made to come

20:46

back and grab Her son from her. She

20:50

seems to have a hard time with Daniel Yeah,

20:53

as we all do with with children

20:57

When they like sleep in the bed and they get sand

20:59

in the bed for some reason Just

21:02

like I know this isn't your fault,

21:04

but I am frustrated that they're staying in the place. Yeah

21:09

She is she is one

21:11

of her friends is like talked her into going out

21:13

to try and get a job with with somebody

21:16

and she has left Daniel

21:19

home for like a night and Suddenly

21:22

in the middle of this job interview She gets this

21:24

premonition that something has happened to Daniel

21:27

and she rushes back home and Daniel is not

21:29

there and this is sort of the inciting incident

21:32

for the entire book like we do get a

21:34

little bit in the dreaming so the thing that

21:36

I The

21:39

I think the Virgo Jam thing kind of is

21:42

maybe a little redundant even in in this book

21:44

I kind of maybe might like it a little

21:46

better without it too both because of the book

21:48

and and because most of

21:50

issue one is just like Matthew flying through the

21:52

book and like visiting with all the important

21:55

people in the dreaming that we're gonna Spend

21:58

time with later in the book He's flying around

22:00

looking for Morphe as he talks with Lucian for a little

22:02

bit. He talks with Pumpkinhead for

22:05

a little bit. I think he might talk with new Allah for

22:07

a little bit Fair

22:10

point I don't agree but fair point fair

22:12

point I mean I but they both create

22:14

a vibe of you know Just checking in

22:16

so that everybody has a really good idea

22:18

of what the status quo and the dreaming

22:20

is before we blow Yeah,

22:22

we've got a bunch of we've got to

22:24

like let's let's see a

22:26

bunch of characters that we've developed feelings

22:28

for or relationships With because the

22:30

status of those characters is going to change Yeah,

22:34

but as we as we are heading into this

22:36

book Dream

22:40

has if you go back to before

22:42

world's end like the last time we

22:44

were in like the memory flies. Yes

22:47

Was the one where? Dream

22:49

kills Orpheus. Yeah, correct. Yeah, he's

22:51

killed. He's killed his son. Well,

22:54

it's the whole confrontation with destruction How could

22:56

you walk away from your thing? Mm-hmm all

22:58

that stuff? Oh even

23:01

even us the endless have

23:03

some sort of some sort of some sort of

23:06

and to

23:08

our existence and Also,

23:11

I should probably kill my son and relieve

23:13

him of what yeah, I

23:16

feel bad about not killing my son When

23:18

he asked me to kill him. Yeah weird,

23:20

even though he was kind of being a

23:22

little baby jerk at the time

23:24

Yeah, well or that's where we say

23:26

I like that's I like obvious for

23:28

you, but that is his thing Greek

23:30

sons What is it about these

23:33

these people like Orpheus? Lomachus? They're just little

23:35

whiny little whiny babies Get

23:37

over it snowflake note to everyone in Greek

23:40

myth don't have a son. What don't have

23:42

a bad one. You have a good son.

23:44

I Guess are there

23:46

no about her no good. I mean Odysseus

23:48

is kind of a son, right? We meet

23:51

his dad Who is

23:53

dad's also gets strong and gets all oily and kills

23:55

a bunch of Who

23:57

is the of Ptolemy's dad?

24:00

I don't know. He's named Ptolemyss.

24:02

He has my favorite ice cream though. That's

24:04

the kind with the chocolate strawberry vanilla, right?

24:06

Oh, he's Achilles' son. And yeah, he tastes

24:09

like strawberry and chocolate

24:11

and vanilla. Yeah, at the same time if you

24:13

scoop it right. He's

24:16

okay. I like the Ptolemyss part. Anyway. But

24:19

the sadest clue in the dreaming is that it's all,

24:21

it's just a gray skies. Like maybe it's gonna rain,

24:23

maybe it's not. It's like the most irritating weather to

24:25

plan for and it represents a sort of tension that

24:27

all the characters who live in the dreaming are feeling.

24:30

Like Morpheus is feeling

24:33

pretty heavy about having killed

24:35

his son. And I

24:37

think knowing what we learn... The next thing

24:40

he does is remake the Corinthian. Yeah, knowing

24:42

what we learn later, I think he kind

24:44

of suspects maybe what is coming and

24:46

is just like not feeling great about it.

24:48

But yeah, everybody is like,

24:50

man, you seem pretty down. I

24:52

know you usually get down when you like

24:54

break up with somebody, like a human person

24:56

who you've fallen in love with and then

24:58

she can't love you the way you want

25:00

because you're an eternal God and they're just

25:02

a person. And

25:05

then you break up and then everything's raining for a while.

25:07

But this is like that, but it's a little different. Yeah.

25:11

So that's kind of the established mood of Morpheus

25:13

the Dream King. Then we

25:15

have Lidah Hall and Daniel gets stolen.

25:18

That's the inciting incident. And then what

25:20

is the thing that happened? What happens

25:22

next after Daniel gets taken?

25:25

Daniel gets taken. I know we

25:27

meet the weird Joker cops who

25:30

come in and pretend to

25:32

take statements from everybody. So

25:35

that keeps that plot moving. The other

25:37

main plot that kicks off is Cluriken

25:40

comes to the dreaming, the

25:43

fairy guy. The fairy

25:45

lush. Everybody's favorite fairy

25:47

lush. Who during that

25:49

whole book

25:51

where Morpheus was going to

25:54

sell the keys to hell or whatever, Cluriken

25:58

left Nuala the other day. there as a gift

26:00

from Titania. And he was also in, he was

26:03

in the world's end hotel. Yeah, he was, very

26:05

much so. And so we, even

26:07

though the world's end issue. He's

26:10

the through line there, yeah. Yeah, even though the

26:12

world's end issue ended with like this vision of

26:14

this procession, it's

26:17

clear that this book is taking place

26:19

after everything that happened in World's End.

26:21

So that, yeah. Cause

26:24

he says he told Titania or he

26:27

tells Titania. The fairy queen, yeah. Over

26:29

the course of this book, about

26:31

his vision. And

26:34

so I think that's the, he's going to go.

26:36

Believe he tells her off screen and she sends

26:38

him to go get Nuala. To go get the

26:40

dreaming to get Nuala, yes. There's a cool bit

26:43

where he just barfs up a deer. And

26:47

I guess it's his nemesis. It's his nemesis

26:49

now? It's the one weird thread in this

26:51

that never gets pulled. Not at all. In

26:53

this book is like, Clerkin

26:55

the weird fairy lush wanders into

26:58

a room of like white mist

27:00

that represents like pure dream stuff.

27:03

He wasn't supposed to leave whatever like hallway he

27:05

was in. Wasn't supposed to leave the

27:07

path. Which we'll come back to later because the dragon

27:09

guard, like the door guardian refers

27:12

to the don't stray from the path thing in

27:15

like a sick, cool way.

27:18

Cool, cool, cool. But

27:20

he strays from the path, his throat

27:22

itches and he pulls out this big

27:24

like stag that then charges at him

27:26

and then dissolves and Nuala's like, you

27:28

idiot. You just made your nemesis, you

27:31

stupid duck. You

27:33

moron. I

27:35

guess the other thing, did we mention who

27:38

was supposed to, who was

27:40

babysitting Daniel? Was Rose

27:42

Walker was? Yeah, it was Rose. Because we're

27:44

gonna get a whole Rose Walker plot here

27:46

too. Yeah, who was living, again,

27:48

a doll's house, Rose Walker. Yep. The,

27:53

who was the granddaughter of Unity

27:55

Kincaid, who was the woman who

27:58

went to sleep and didn't wake up. And

28:00

got impregnated by delirium By

28:03

desire Oh desire excuse me.

28:05

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know

28:07

if delirium has any Progeny

28:09

anywhere, but I would be

28:11

there'd be some wild kids that you're you

28:13

are correct Yes, because we'd meet delirium in

28:16

this in this book and she is like

28:18

turned into what like 111 rainbow fishes because

28:25

There are a lot of good delirium Delirium

28:28

is like a lot of

28:30

the endless delirium

28:33

is a great case study in Effective

28:38

screen time Leading to

28:40

like really good feeling like don't like

28:43

most of them. They do not overstay their welcome

28:46

You see her and it's like if

28:48

a whole book was like this it'd be a lot

28:51

Mm-hmm and gaming, you know for

28:54

a big sprawling text like this if you

28:56

zoom in there is a lot of really

28:59

impressive restraint Anyway,

29:01

so, okay We're

29:04

we're moving on the daniel thing. Yeah, I'm just I

29:06

think my favorite delirium be in this comes much later

29:09

I wanted to talk. Oh, yeah, but we have we

29:11

have to we have to know oh Boy,

29:14

we haven't talked about yet The

29:17

so the main thing with a Clerican plot is he

29:19

has come to get his sister back She

29:21

was a gift from Titania. So a gift

29:24

slash bribe slash question mark Yeah, nobody's quite

29:26

sure what the purpose of leaving here or

29:28

her here was and so Morpheus

29:32

is like and they he's

29:34

kind of like okay, I guess if you

29:36

want to leave And

29:39

she's not even sure she wants to leave Mm-hmm

29:42

But she kind of doesn't want to leave

29:44

like you like yes, she likes

29:46

Morpheus. She feels like At

29:50

least she does something in the dreaming where

29:52

everybody in the realm of fairies kind of

29:55

drinking and getting about all the time Yeah,

29:59

then The one other thing we haven't we we

30:02

I'd skipped over that we need to

30:04

just remember for later is when When

30:08

Lida goes for that job interview. She is in

30:10

a bar called the Lux Yes,

30:13

which is like the bar that

30:15

like Lucifer owns with With

30:18

his like the handmaiden slash Yeah,

30:21

I'd piece Mazakine Yeah,

30:24

I think I think this is the

30:26

part of the the Sandman mythology that

30:28

does make it through intact to the

30:31

Fox crime Drama Lucifer Oh neat. Okay.

30:33

I think the Lux is part of

30:35

the lore there I

30:38

was like playing he's playing piano in

30:40

the in this bar I was having

30:42

trouble tracking that throughout because it is

30:44

one of the subplots That

30:47

doesn't bubble up all the way to the top

30:49

like Morpheus doesn't wind up

30:51

in the club delirium does but So

30:56

I was just kind of like okay, that's just

30:58

that's interesting that's I do like Lucifer so it's

31:00

fun to see him But

31:04

so Morpheus is gonna let Nuala

31:07

go Mm-hmm because Clerkin

31:09

is being very pushy. Yes,

31:12

and for her service. He gives

31:14

her a little crystal Yep

31:17

that she puts her on her neck and he says

31:19

you can Call

31:21

me with this anytime and I'll give you one boon and

31:24

what's what could possibly go wrong? nothing

31:28

Nothing. Nothing at all like this. I

31:30

do Will flag this

31:32

right here like like

31:34

a traditional book this

31:37

Collection has like a thing

31:39

happens in the beginning It's gonna

31:41

happen and it's gonna impact the end and when it

31:43

does show up It is delivered

31:45

in such a way. They're like, oh no

31:47

that thing like it's pretty good.

31:50

Anyway Part three

31:53

we see some bad guys We

31:56

see Loki and then some like lesser

31:58

like Puck guy

32:01

from fairy called Robin good fellow who I

32:03

who we've seen before but I don't really

32:05

remember So they're about they look way too

32:07

similar Kind of

32:09

confusing the art there Puck

32:11

is a is the fairy from Midsummer Night's

32:14

Dream if you don't if you do

32:16

not recall So like I mean, I know

32:18

he was in the same man The

32:21

thing about him being Antitania and Oberon

32:23

are from the Midsummer Night's Dream. So

32:25

when they come in to watch the

32:27

play That Morpheus

32:30

has inspired Shakespeare to write about

32:32

them. Uh-huh He's borrowing

32:34

all those characters from wherever Shakespeare got

32:36

them from. Uh-huh That's

32:39

why it's cool that they're in here. Sure. I

32:42

believe I'm sure Anyway,

32:47

this is just the guy who looks too

32:49

much less like Loki and I think they

32:51

should have picked somebody who looked The

32:54

thing about this well and the thing about this

32:56

puck is he is way more

32:59

malevolent Than Shakespeare's puck

33:01

and I think that was a thing that

33:03

puck said back in that issue, too Yeah,

33:05

he's not he's not yeah the I think

33:08

puck as we understand a puckish

33:10

figure now is more interested in

33:12

mischief and less in Throwing

33:15

toddlers into fireplaces, which is what

33:18

they do. There's a there's a

33:20

lot of visual nods to thread

33:22

and To Daniel playing

33:24

with thread but Daniel Is

33:27

in danger? Yeah, these are the

33:29

these are the guys who said Daniel Yeah,

33:32

there's literally a giant

33:35

panel of them putting him into a

33:37

fireplace. It sucks. Not good It's

33:40

not great But light a

33:42

hall. I believe we already know at this point Because

33:45

of the way that dream was like hey I'm

33:47

gonna take your son at some point does think

33:49

the dream did it does think the only dream

33:51

could possibly have done it Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah,

33:54

then we spent some time with hob gatling.

33:57

Yeah, he said that somebody died again Yeah,

34:00

well, I mean not like a different person died

34:02

the first time not the

34:04

same one person died another

34:07

time Yeah, yeah Well, this is Hobgoblin It's

34:09

just like it's just like I'm 600 years

34:11

old and I and you

34:13

know, I've loved people but I loved you and

34:15

I'm sad that you're dead So

34:17

dream is gonna go see him while

34:19

that's happening we get this like brief interlude

34:21

of the

34:24

the various endless The

34:27

main thing is that desire has sealed itself

34:29

off Right

34:32

Desires on that destiny is seeing multiple

34:35

destinies. That's right. We've seen this which

34:37

seems weird and bad Despair

34:40

just kind of sits in a room, which

34:42

is all despair ever does. Yeah Delirium

34:46

it was in the delirium notice that she had

34:48

absent mindingly transformed into 111 perfect

34:50

tiny multicolored fish each fish sang a different

34:52

song As she put herself back

34:55

together again unable for the moment to remember whether the

34:57

silver flex went into the blue eye of their green

34:59

one She decided the dog would be a nice thing

35:01

to have Mm-hmm, and

35:03

then she remembers that she did have a dog and so she goes off

35:06

to find her dog and Trailing

35:08

occasional fish. Oh, yes, then that's the dog

35:10

that destruction used to have And

35:15

the conversation with dream and gatling is mostly

35:17

about the like concept of revenge because

35:20

gatling is like upset about this

35:23

woman who died because it was like a car accident

35:25

or something and More

35:27

pieces like I don't know about revenge Generally,

35:31

yeah, it seems

35:33

it's not ideal for that and

35:37

then he just kind of leaves and Gaddling

35:41

go that's right. Yeah. Oh the art

35:43

here is pretty good. I will say

35:47

when Gaddling is

35:49

like it's in this like snowy village Yes,

35:52

very snowy and people are kind of

35:54

like their their images are being

35:56

taken over by the snow Which is really

35:58

well done And he's like listen

36:03

Lord of dream I

36:06

know people kind of start to smell when

36:08

they die and I when they're gonna die

36:10

I know this cuz I'm hundreds of years

36:12

old and like you got the stink

36:14

bud Mm-hmm careful.

36:17

Yeah, and Morpheus is like, all right.

36:19

I will be careful Here

36:21

is where here's where starts light is

36:24

true descent into madness where he's kind

36:26

of losing it because Daniels disappeared Is

36:29

alienating the couple of people that she

36:32

does know and just kind of like a

36:34

wanders off kind

36:36

of unable to sleep this

36:39

is after these Loki and

36:41

Robin good fellow disguises these two detectives come

36:43

back and show her a picture of a

36:47

Charred infant. Yeah, she's then they're

36:49

like, yeah, Daniel died. So

36:51

she blamed me. Yeah, so at that point she totally

36:53

loses it and The

36:57

art the art is very good through

36:59

this section to it like, you know,

37:02

it gets more Distorted

37:05

and unrealistic

37:07

as Light is mental

37:10

state kind of yeah, I would say it's

37:12

kind of like it's Yeah,

37:15

I don't know. There's a lot of like Picasso

37:17

like kind of canted angles. I don't even want to

37:20

cite specific artists because I'll probably get it

37:22

wrong But yeah, we are artists. We're just

37:25

guys. It's a lot of like off

37:27

kilter diagonals a lot of really sharp

37:29

jagged lines Almost

37:33

become like becoming paintings,

37:36

you know vaguely screen mask kind

37:38

of stuff That

37:42

she is just like yeah, she's really not well

37:44

now and then the next issue that kind of

37:46

continues Like there's a little bit of Lucifer stuff

37:48

I don't think we need to go below by

37:50

below because like you said the Lucifer thing is

37:52

all kind of happening in the background of can

37:54

I and it's not there's not quite come up

37:57

to the foreground Can I also flag the Rose

37:59

Walker plot? in that way too like

38:02

i did not that i there are places

38:04

in the rose walker plot that like a

38:06

bump up against what is happening the morpheus

38:10

but it never fully came full circle

38:12

for me and maybe it will other

38:14

than the the guy at the end who wakes up

38:17

but that's not even rose you know i mean

38:21

yeah i guess i know jimmy and yeah i mean

38:23

i think i've rose walker is more well

38:26

i guess lucifer had a

38:28

prominent role in a couple of issues but

38:30

i think rose walker occupies a bigger spot

38:33

in the larger mythos but

38:37

i i think given the weight of the

38:39

other things happening in this collection i was

38:42

like well it's

38:44

going somewhere the

38:46

part where she falls later falls asleep and

38:49

talks to desire briefly i was like okay

38:51

that's cool but yeah yeah uh... but yeah

38:53

we can kinda yada yada this lucifer stuff

38:55

because it's mostly about light a hall yeah

38:58

and light light it just continues she we

39:00

see a few scenes of her talking with

39:02

some kind of fantastical creatures about what

39:05

happened and then we get

39:07

brief flashes to reality and then like so

39:09

she's talking to like a cat person and

39:12

then we'd flash a reality and there's just like

39:14

a cat alleyway so

39:17

she's looking she's looking for the

39:19

furies because she wants revenge on

39:22

more now sushi thinks killed her son

39:24

that and they reference her having

39:27

been you really like

39:29

a superhero and i feel

39:31

very which is a d c character i went

39:33

down this rabbit hole uh...

39:36

which i don't think we talked about when we

39:38

talked about her husband being what

39:41

like named one of the weird fan man at

39:43

some point uh...

39:46

only we talked about so she had a debut

39:48

in like an old wonder woman comic

39:50

because her back

39:53

story originally was that

39:55

she was the daughter of

39:57

wonder woman and the forever But

40:00

then there was a

40:03

crisis on infinite earth. I don't know if you've

40:05

heard about this Andrew. I've heard about this crisis

40:08

But it was very big it was

40:10

infinite in fact, and I think Wonder

40:12

Woman ceased to exist so they gave

40:14

her a different Fact

40:17

story and her mom

40:19

became Helena Cosmatos a

40:21

like aka fury who was

40:24

this like Greek Nazi

40:26

killer or something and then she

40:28

inherited her mom's mantle which

40:31

is where she gets the lineage to

40:34

whatever version of The

40:37

fate slash fury is that Gaiman

40:39

is borrowing from DC writ large

40:42

here Okay So

40:44

like the lid what I mostly want to

40:46

flag like I did not know before I

40:48

started researching it after reading That

40:51

Gaiman is like still finding

40:53

a way to play around with comics

40:55

history In his like

40:57

big opus about the nature of

41:00

existence. Yeah for sure. You know, yeah Yeah,

41:03

I guess Matthew is like a reincarnated

41:05

character from like some swamp thing comic

41:07

or something I don't know. It all

41:09

goes deeper down that then we have

41:12

Been going which is fine. I don't feel like

41:14

I need to Go

41:16

into those waters because I would rather

41:18

talk about Sandman than swamp. Yeah sure,

41:20

but here we are So

41:23

this is when she meets the it

41:25

kicks off the Rose Walker stuff. She

41:27

meets the Gorgons light

41:29

it does light it does and They're

41:33

like, hey you want to stay around and be our sister

41:36

with snakes in your hair and she's like no Not really,

41:38

but I guess I'll sleep here

41:40

for a couple nights and get some snakes in my

41:42

hair. Yes And then

41:44

it ends with Morpheus finishing off the

41:46

Corinthian which no one in the dreaming

41:48

is excited about everyone Kind

41:51

of bad with the Corinthian before And

41:56

it's I'm curious how the TV show is gonna

41:58

handle it even though I'd be astounded If the

42:00

TV show gets a third season, yeah, but the

42:02

Corinthian is being set up as much more of

42:04

like a big big bad Then

42:07

huh just like a one-issue villain. I'm

42:09

I don't know what was he fully

42:11

vanquished in the first season of the

42:13

show now No, boy. Okay. Yeah And

42:18

he's like you didn't even see a lot of

42:20

Corinthian in the first issue like the first book

42:22

of Sandman Like he was mostly a self-contained Yeah

42:26

in in the in the

42:28

second in doll's house Yeah, yeah in doll's house,

42:30

but in the in the show like right from

42:32

the beginning He's kind of a malevolent

42:34

presence. So yeah, we'll see what they end up

42:36

doing. Yeah Okay,

42:40

yeah the Corinthians back he's got he

42:42

still does teeth eyes still creepy still

42:44

good effect though still like it love

42:47

that jack-o'-lantern Murf

42:50

cannot care for I May

42:53

I eyeball teeth He

42:56

doesn't like eyeball teeth Murf is just the guy

42:58

that you know who always wants to complain about

43:00

his boss But always when his boss

43:03

is not like in the room to see

43:05

yep So,

43:10

yeah, we do this light a Gorgon

43:14

thing for a while and then

43:16

Rose is visiting Zelda. It was

43:19

one of the Two

43:22

like She so

43:24

there were two sisters who like wore

43:26

veils and were really into spiders who

43:29

were in the weird Apartment in the

43:31

doll's house. Yeah with Barbie and Ken

43:33

and Rose Walker and Hal and the

43:35

entire yeah Yeah, my name is like

43:37

the menagerie And

43:40

she was silent the whole time,

43:42

but now she's talking and she had she has

43:44

AIDS This is what 1990 like mid 90s mid

43:46

90s. Yep. Yeah, it's Good

43:51

It's still a bad thing to have but it is

43:53

nowhere near like manageable

43:55

or live with a ball in

43:57

the mid 90s the way though. Yeah And

44:00

your game is tapping into a much

44:03

more of it, a

44:05

lived experience for everyone in that generation.

44:07

So yeah. But

44:10

then, I guess maybe that's why it's kind

44:12

of grounded and

44:16

not connected to Dream as

44:19

explicitly. Like it's there

44:21

to be, Rose's arc I think is

44:23

maybe there to be

44:25

a parallel to the Morpheus stuff as

44:27

opposed to an intersection.

44:30

Yeah, yeah. Saying goodbye to someone,

44:33

the ramifications of who that person

44:36

left behind, who

44:38

does and does not want to say goodbye to them, that

44:41

kind of stuff. Which upon

44:43

a reread, I would probably appreciate more, but I

44:45

really wanted to just find out what was happening

44:47

with Morpheus. Yeah, no, I think you'd appreciate it

44:49

more on a reread. I

44:52

think it comes across

44:54

more as a parallel

44:56

thing and also a, this

44:58

has a million calls back

45:00

to Doll's House in

45:03

it, it's a way to close the loop

45:05

on a bunch of characters who we met

45:07

in that issue. It's a way

45:09

to, I don't think it leavens

45:11

the Morpheus stuff because it's still

45:14

pretty heavy in and of itself,

45:16

but it does pace

45:19

it a little bit more. That's a

45:21

good one, yep. Yeah, it makes you wait a little

45:23

bit more in a way that I think ends

45:25

up being satisfying. Dream

45:27

has resurrected the Corinthian, he gives

45:30

Corinthian and Matthew

45:32

a mission. Go find out what happened

45:34

to Daniel. Yeah,

45:37

Matthew's not excited about that. Matthew

45:40

doesn't want to be with the Corinthian

45:42

because Corinthian's a bad guy. Yep. You

45:45

kill people, you eat their eyeballs,

45:47

says Matthew, in

45:49

response to the Corinthian saying, why don't you like me?

45:53

Yes, yes, I suppose I do, or I will,

45:55

but that is my nature, isn't it? That's what

45:57

I am. Do you not eat eyeballs also, Master

45:59

Raven? you not also feast on Caria. So

46:03

gotcha there I guess. Yep. And

46:06

then we were hanging out in, we were kind

46:08

of jumping back and forth between a little

46:10

bit of Lida and more

46:13

of the police stuff with her friend

46:15

Carla, as well as Nuala

46:18

has made it back to the

46:20

fairy realm. All the police stuff

46:22

with Carla, I believe has hit

46:24

its conclusion at this

46:28

issue. Yeah, within this issue.

46:31

Yeah. So with some

46:33

Nuala being not

46:35

happy with being back in fairy stuff, I

46:38

don't think we really need to dive

46:40

into it in any detail beyond that.

46:42

Lida still with the Gorgons finally leaves

46:45

them and then Carla

46:47

is with the cops trying to

46:49

find what happened. These cops

46:52

who came by and said they were looking for Daniel

46:54

and nobody at the police station

46:56

knows about these these fellers. Yeah. And

46:59

it's those those

47:02

cops were Loki and Puck.

47:05

Yeah. And they kill Carla. Yeah. This

47:07

is this is some cool art like with oh

47:10

yeah like outlined in black against the fire

47:12

of the car that he's killed this woman

47:14

in. Yeah. Pretty pretty pretty rough. He's

47:18

basically like you are you know like Rose Walker

47:20

knows about the weird stuff that's happening like Lida

47:22

Hall kind of knows about the weird stuff that's

47:24

happening like there are mortal people who are

47:27

enmeshed in this family

47:29

and this universe in in some

47:32

way. Carla is just like some

47:34

person who's friends with Lida who's like trying

47:36

to help her and

47:39

Loki is like yeah

47:41

you you've been you've been looking into this the whole

47:43

time. You have no idea what's going on. You

47:46

don't know who I am and now you're dead.

47:48

Sorry. But yeah,

47:50

that issue ends with the

47:52

death of Carla the death of

47:55

Carla and Loki like getting his

47:57

motivation for why he's doing anything

47:59

was Like if you'll recall at the end

48:01

of the like the the

48:03

healthy hell the key to hell

48:05

sweepstakes to Morpheus Loki

48:09

had like he

48:11

had been freed from his prison to like

48:13

come to this confab and He

48:16

being the trickster God had tried

48:19

to trap somebody else so he could be out and

48:21

about in the world Morpheus

48:23

discovered that this has happened and

48:27

and Makes a

48:29

like figment like a dream guy

48:31

who can sit in Loki's prison and

48:34

get snake venom dripped in his eyes

48:36

as a Loki O's dream

48:38

something Yeah, and Loki

48:40

is upset about it and he refuses to

48:42

owe anybody anything And so that's why he

48:44

is that that is why he is upset

48:46

at Morpheus Yeah, cuz Morpheus did

48:49

a nice thing. So why don't I kill this

48:51

kid? Yeah Yeah, he sucks

48:53

Loki. I mean Loki the point is the

48:55

point of low time that he sucks. He

48:57

high key sucks It's there's nothing Loki about

49:00

it Yeah, you got to that joke before

49:02

I did Okay Part

49:05

six kicks off with a lot of this is the

49:08

one with Rose going

49:10

to England She's

49:12

visiting the guy Who

49:15

is also caring for Alex Burgess? I bet

49:17

I bet that I bet this issue was

49:21

Torture for you because it's Rose Walker

49:23

and there's no Morpheus and there's no

49:25

dream There's nothing happening and then they

49:27

get to a story Even

49:30

where even the art style changes and it's

49:33

like oh well great if they're doing if

49:35

they're doing its whole own art style It's

49:37

gonna be a whole thing. Where's what's happening?

49:39

What's happening the more? No, it made it

49:41

it made it less sticky for me I

49:44

didn't uh-huh. I didn't not enjoy

49:46

wait Yeah,

49:48

I didn't not enjoy reading it because there's a part

49:50

in this story where all the the guy has like

49:52

spurned his wife And then all the kids come back

49:55

as birds little harpies and just

49:57

kill him and kill him. It's

49:59

a very intense story and there's also there

50:01

are three ladies in this old

50:03

person's home and that's you

50:05

know we know what gaming likes to do

50:08

with you know what happens anytime three ladies

50:10

get together yeah but I was

50:12

I think I was

50:14

not prepared to process like what

50:17

this how this fits in as I was reading

50:19

it because I knew that I still had more

50:21

book to go and but

50:24

there isn't a really great frame

50:26

of the eyeballs of

50:28

the three ladies mm-hmm

50:31

that feels very reminiscent of

50:33

the of the weird sisters

50:35

elsewhere in the collection so

50:39

yeah like less like they're all old

50:41

ladies and the thing about the Furies

50:43

and as they are normally depicted it's

50:45

three different yeah one young blonde hot

50:47

one and then one sort of

50:50

middle-aged school school marm one and then an old

50:52

one yeah like an old crone one and this

50:54

is less like that but yeah I don't think

50:56

it's a mistake that it's three ladies no not

50:59

at all we're sitting around talking about stuff the

51:02

big takeaway really from this issue is

51:04

we just like the same Rose

51:09

walker has gone back to England because Zelda

51:11

told her that she saw her

51:14

her dead grandmother in

51:16

a dream yeah and her grandmother

51:18

said give this message to Rose like

51:20

it's about her heart or whatever

51:23

like it's some some message that

51:25

makes it clear that it's

51:28

actually about like the dreaming and some

51:30

of this weird stuff that that Rose

51:32

has been exposed to she

51:34

so she goes all the way back to

51:36

England she's hanging around in this home where

51:38

unity concave used to live mm-hmm the big

51:41

takeaway from this is we meet this guy

51:43

named mr. McGuire who is also hanging around

51:45

this this home and it

51:47

turns out that he is in love with this guy

51:50

who's also been asleep for a long time and it

51:52

turns out to be the son of

51:55

the you like

51:57

evil magician guy who trapped dream and

52:00

big like globe in the

52:02

first place yep who if

52:04

you'll recall Morpheus like punished

52:06

him by making him like have

52:09

nightmares just forever he has waking

52:11

up nightmares forever and he

52:13

never actually wakes up nope not at all yeah

52:16

and so yeah

52:19

that's that one it's

52:21

another another thing that happens in this this round

52:23

of issues that really feel like you know we're

52:25

coming back around to beginning in a way that

52:27

we yeah we're only doing

52:29

things are ending yeah we're name-checking stuff

52:31

from preludes and nocturnes yeah for sure

52:35

then we get a check-in with thessaly who

52:39

is from what's the is it game

52:41

of you is the is the

52:44

one five it's five or six it's

52:46

the weird one with Barbie and that

52:49

and the land game of you yes

52:51

and that's the least the witch who

52:54

helps them go into the

52:56

who love the moon who's a turf

52:58

as we have a saddle huh and

53:00

then off-screen heard Morpheus bang

53:03

or whatever and then

53:05

next time we see Morpheus I think in the

53:07

beginning of brief lives yeah he's sad about a

53:09

breakup and I guess yes about yeah

53:12

and this is who it is

53:14

yeah and so she is

53:16

out hunting for light a

53:18

hall mm-hmm calling herself Larissa

53:20

I don't really

53:22

remember why she

53:25

cottons on to light up the

53:27

first obviously she's you you you dream but

53:29

you get the information later it's her like she

53:31

had made some kind of a deal with

53:33

the Furies for a couple thousand extra years

53:35

of light oh yes yes and you get the

53:37

you get the sense that the Furies were

53:39

like hey find this this woman's

53:42

physical form and protect it because

53:45

it's going to be the

53:47

thing that is like powering

53:49

the hurricane of our vengeance

53:51

yep the

53:54

other plot that's moving forward is that

53:56

Morpheus has met Odin has

53:58

come by been like um Where's

54:01

Loki though? Yeah you freed Loki huh?

54:03

Well you know I'm not mad I'm

54:05

just disappointed and Dream takes it super

54:08

hard. Yep. That Odin is disappointed in

54:10

him. Yeah he seems to really respect

54:12

Odin actually. I like

54:14

Odin's hat. I love Odin's

54:17

whole deal visually. There's also

54:19

a cool like I don't know

54:21

Dream gets a cool coat with like fire on

54:23

it for some reason. Yeah we've seen a coat

54:25

not dissimilar from that. Like I think Dream's...

54:30

so this recall like there was

54:32

some story about remember the one

54:34

about the king

54:36

of like the... Oh the

54:40

caliphate. Yeah the caliphate and he's like

54:43

and he'd had that orb and he like demanded

54:45

that Dream come to him or he would release

54:47

all the nightmares in that orb. The costume that

54:49

Dream is wearing here briefly looks a lot like

54:51

that one. I think if you go all the

54:53

way back to the beginning when

54:55

Dream is like freed too I think I'd

54:57

sort of hot wheels

55:00

flame decal. Sure. He's more a part

55:02

of his whole ensemble. Yeah. He kind

55:04

of falls out of it a little

55:06

bit later. Yeah they really lean into

55:08

just... he just wears black don't worry

55:10

about it. Yeah it's just black. This

55:12

one is cool. He's kind of stunting

55:15

on Odin because Odin shows up and

55:17

he's got really cool like I know

55:19

he looks when um looks like when...

55:21

who's the old

55:24

guy from the babe the pig

55:26

movie? Cromwell? Yeah Cromwell.

55:28

It's like when he shows up on Succession

55:30

the first time. He's like this old like

55:32

bog guy. He's just like made

55:35

of earth. Like when he shows up

55:37

in a Starbucks and glues himself to

55:39

the counter because... Well James Cromwell rules

55:41

first. He might be Odin also. I

55:44

would hate to disappoint James Cromwell. My

55:47

inventor of warp drive. If they have

55:49

not cast James Cromwell as Odin for

55:51

this same-man show. That

55:54

would be pretty good. Anyway.

55:56

Except from Cochran himself. Wild...

56:00

That's happening then there's a brief

56:02

visit with delirium and destiny the

56:05

multiple destiny thing is still sort of happening

56:08

Yeah, and she asks them, you know what I'm

56:10

looking for my dog and I also look at

56:12

that statue of dream He looks

56:14

pretty sad. Should I go help? Yep, and

56:17

destiny simultaneously tells her to help and not

56:19

to help which is love it Yeah,

56:22

which is a cool brother. What's going on with

56:24

destiny right now. That's the lead makes a protective

56:27

Ring around light a hall. Yeah, it's gonna

56:29

sit around reading a book while

56:32

I just keeping light as Light

56:35

a lie while she continues to look for the furies

56:38

and this is the end at the end

56:40

of this issue She finally finds the furies.

56:42

I mean dream does briefly

56:44

visit Gilbert fiddlers green.

56:47

Yeah and disappoints him to

56:50

Dreams like why am I disappointing everybody today?

56:52

This sucks Yeah

56:56

Yeah But the

56:58

big thing is that she is now awakened

57:02

Well, cuz she is coming to them With

57:05

I was a fury. I Would

57:08

like vengeance now You

57:10

can help me with my vengeance,

57:12

right? and they're like And

57:15

well, then they're like, well we we avenge

57:17

blood blood Stuff

57:20

and she's like well He killed

57:22

my son and they're very carefully

57:24

like even if he had killed

57:26

your son Which I'm neither

57:28

going to confirm nor did not We

57:31

couldn't do anything about that. He would have to have killed

57:34

one of his own family members and

57:37

she leaves and was like, okay, thanks for your

57:39

time and then They

57:41

come to the door and they're like, oh, hey

57:43

actually he did kill his son. So it's cool.

57:45

Let's let's get some vengeance on Yeah,

57:49

it's it's very The

57:52

play I'm familiar with but that's the furies in it

57:54

is the rest ease That

57:56

also has a similar like you killed someone in your

57:58

family sort

58:00

of thing but yeah so

58:03

they're they're willing to take on

58:06

her case I guess what maybe

58:08

you got

58:10

a better sense of this or like it's in some

58:12

Shakespeare play that I don't know about or something like

58:15

I don't a hundred percent understand why

58:17

if Morpheus killed Orpheus and

58:19

that's what they're mad about why Lyda Hall is

58:21

a necessary catalyst for this at all I guess

58:24

we could just kind of have to accept that

58:26

she is I think

58:28

we kind of have to accept that she

58:30

is I think maybe like maybe the Furies

58:33

can't do anything in and

58:35

of themselves they have to be like asked by somebody

58:37

and this is just like a this

58:39

is just a thing this

58:42

is just a thing that they can't

58:44

actually need before they can start raining

58:46

vengeance down on Morpheus's head but yeah

58:48

it is unclear why they wouldn't just

58:50

do it anyway and maybe

58:52

they would do it anyway but now we

58:54

have someone who's giving

58:56

them pretext giving them pretext and

58:58

who's like knocking on

59:00

their door yes it

59:03

is if you zoom

59:05

out from like a plotting perspective why

59:07

did they need her I don't know

59:09

that they did they're the freakin Furies

59:11

they can do whatever they want apparently

59:13

mm-hmm sucks so

59:15

they're gonna do this

59:18

then we get what is

59:23

happening in eight the

59:25

lyrium is looking for a dog more

59:28

Rose Walker stuff the

59:30

main story progressing stuff

59:33

in this one which is a

59:35

break from the issues

59:38

we've been reading in pacing

59:41

a little bit as well as art style like this

59:43

is one of the few in this

59:45

this book that is done

59:47

by somebody other than Mark Hempel so

59:50

delirium shows up is like hey I'm looking for my dog

59:53

also are you okay and

59:55

dream is like don't worry about it

59:57

I'm gonna send here I'm gonna send you with a A

1:00:01

small but highly conscientious nightmare to help his

1:00:03

sister find her companion and set them on

1:00:05

their way Yeah Rose

1:00:11

with more Rose Walker stuff where she Has

1:00:15

sex with the the lawyer

1:00:17

Lloyd. Yeah the lawyer for

1:00:19

her like a state. Mm-hmm

1:00:23

Some Corinthian Matthew stuff where they track

1:00:25

down Carlos corpse and

1:00:27

the Corinthian eats her eyes and sees Her

1:00:31

what you know, he sees her last vision

1:00:33

which is of Loki blowing

1:00:35

up her car And

1:00:38

then we get the furies in the

1:00:40

dreaming that's the big that's a big

1:00:43

thing. Yeah and the

1:00:45

thing To know if

1:00:47

you've never read these and to you know, enjoy it

1:00:49

when you get there Is

1:00:51

that all of the fury stuff

1:00:54

in the dreaming is first-person POV?

1:00:57

Like they're in doom. It's cooler than that,

1:00:59

but it's sort of like they're in doom

1:01:01

and They

1:01:03

are like Every time they

1:01:06

are talking to someone if it's a

1:01:08

frame that they are like talking in for the most part

1:01:11

You are if you're seeing anything

1:01:13

of them you're seeing shadows of them. Yeah,

1:01:15

it's shadows and then they get Their

1:01:18

speech bubbles are rectangles with red.

1:01:21

Yeah, like Surround the

1:01:23

border. Yeah, like a thread around like they look like

1:01:25

they look mad I don't know if it looks like

1:01:27

a thread to know looks more like

1:01:29

blood. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's mad It looks

1:01:31

like they're mad, but they take out is

1:01:34

it the Griffin? Yeah the Griffin one of

1:01:36

the three things that

1:01:38

guards the door to dreams castle,

1:01:40

they're like, hey A King

1:01:44

doesn't want you here get out and Griffin says

1:01:46

run away lady run very fast and The

1:01:50

theories are just like hey you are old

1:01:52

and you're dying And

1:01:54

then the Griffin dies is very sad. It's

1:01:57

very sad It's

1:01:59

very upsetting And then

1:02:02

Dream says, you know, let them in, they can't do

1:02:04

anything. The dragon says, I'm honored

1:02:06

by him to warn you to stay on the

1:02:08

path through the castle, straying from the path can

1:02:10

mean your destruction. You killed my friend, woman, stray

1:02:12

from your path, which is just the very good

1:02:15

thing. It's very funny.

1:02:18

They pass, you see these kitties playing cards

1:02:21

as the Furies are entering the castle. Why

1:02:24

are those kitties playing cards? They're just little Dream

1:02:26

kitties who are just playing cards. I love these

1:02:28

little kitties who are playing these cards. I don't

1:02:30

know why they're playing cards. I don't know, but

1:02:32

I love it. I'm just noticing it just now.

1:02:36

It's very cute. And

1:02:40

that's kind of like where this one,

1:02:42

we had a little bit more Corinthian,

1:02:44

a little bit more

1:02:46

Rose, and then

1:02:48

it ends on, and on

1:02:51

Sunday they held the first funeral

1:02:54

and there is an empty grave that presumably the

1:02:56

griffin is going into. The griffin is going in,

1:02:59

yeah. Well, maybe not empty, but a freshly dug

1:03:01

grave that the griffin is going into. But

1:03:04

you flagged the thing where Morpheus

1:03:08

is there, so ostensibly

1:03:10

things will be okay. Yeah.

1:03:15

But he's also not being super

1:03:18

active or striking

1:03:22

out against the Furies. He just checks in with Corinthian

1:03:24

and Matthew and is like, hey, have you found

1:03:26

this kid yet because this lady is really mad

1:03:29

at me for no reason. Well,

1:03:31

when they come through the door, he's like, oh, light a

1:03:33

hall, come in, and they're like, we're more than light a

1:03:35

hall. We're the Furies. And

1:03:38

then there's like a picture in your

1:03:40

brain that like hard guitar plays

1:03:42

or something, rock

1:03:45

and solo or something. Yeah, rock and solo. Hans'

1:03:48

cousin, Hans' full cousin, rock

1:03:51

and solo. So he was also

1:03:54

alone. That's why he took the name.

1:03:56

So then the next issue kicks off. off

1:04:00

with more Rose stuff and Rose

1:04:02

is going down to this cellar

1:04:05

and it is the place

1:04:07

where dream was kept. Yeah. In

1:04:09

the first book for 60

1:04:11

years and she falls

1:04:14

asleep there and meets

1:04:16

desire. Yeah. And

1:04:19

desire is like hey I'm your grandparents. And

1:04:21

like to the extent that Rose is tied

1:04:25

into this it's like what

1:04:27

desire was trying to do in the

1:04:29

doll's house issue I think

1:04:32

was to get dream to kill Rose

1:04:34

Walker so that it would set off

1:04:36

exactly what is happening now. Like trying

1:04:38

to get dream to build family blood.

1:04:40

Yeah so there's a version of this

1:04:42

story where Rose has

1:04:45

not you know has died or Rose

1:04:48

is a different path in Destiny's

1:04:51

Garden I suppose is one way to think

1:04:53

about it. But also interesting

1:04:56

that Rose meets a

1:04:59

grandparent desire after having

1:05:02

that like weird fling with

1:05:04

the lawyer and being like really pissed about

1:05:07

or is going to be really pissed I don't remember what

1:05:09

the sequence is but like is not

1:05:12

happy with that

1:05:14

aspect of life. Yeah is not happy with that

1:05:16

aspect of her life. Yeah and

1:05:19

that's kind of it like that doesn't I

1:05:21

don't know that we see desire again in this

1:05:24

whole collection but it's a fun little

1:05:26

thing. Yeah to the extent

1:05:28

that we can elide over everything I think

1:05:31

we're gonna elide over a lot of the

1:05:33

the nitty gritty of the Rose stuff just

1:05:35

because it's not as it does not feel

1:05:37

as big as the rest of it. Corinthian

1:05:41

and Matthew find Daniel

1:05:43

right? Yeah they find Daniel. Something

1:05:46

is pulling Matthew back to the dreaming. That's

1:05:48

right that's right. But

1:05:52

yeah Corinthian and Matthew

1:05:54

find Daniel and

1:05:57

Loki and Puck. Yes but

1:06:00

And while this is all happening, the

1:06:03

Furies are going through the dreaming and they're just starting

1:06:05

to kill people. And

1:06:07

they don't kill everybody. They skip over

1:06:09

some people who they decide not to

1:06:11

kill first, including Cain and

1:06:13

Eve. But

1:06:16

they kill some animals in Fiddler's Green and

1:06:18

then they kill Gilbert. And he's like, well,

1:06:20

I wish you hadn't done that. Yeah.

1:06:24

Poor guy. Yeah. And it just

1:06:26

seems like bad things are happening in

1:06:28

the dreaming while Dream just kind of sits and

1:06:30

waits. The

1:06:33

Corinthians did pull out Loki's eyes also

1:06:35

and eat them. Yeah, it doesn't look like Loki's eyes. It's cool. It's

1:06:38

like, you ever eat the eyes of a god? I'm going to do

1:06:40

it. This feels cool. How

1:06:43

do we feel about the Corinthian, Andrew? I think

1:06:45

the Corinthian's cool now. You like him? That

1:06:48

he's been remade. I think he's neat.

1:06:50

And he and Matthew do a good buddy cop. They

1:06:53

hate each other, but they have to work for each other kind of

1:06:55

thing. Kind of tips? Tips? Hat

1:06:58

tip to Gameen for pulling

1:07:00

off a second like Matthew buddy cop experience

1:07:02

because Matthew was part of the other buddy

1:07:05

cop experience with the lyrium and dream, right?

1:07:07

Yeah. So it

1:07:09

works again. There's

1:07:11

a there is a series

1:07:13

of comics

1:07:16

that ran after the Sandman called

1:07:18

The Dreaming. Yeah. That

1:07:20

had Gameen's blessing. Other

1:07:23

than that, really had nothing to do

1:07:25

with him. And he immediately retconned everything

1:07:27

in it. Oh, cool. Okay.

1:07:30

He came back to the series himself. So I

1:07:32

don't think I don't think the reputation

1:07:34

of it is great,

1:07:37

but it is the continuing

1:07:39

story of these characters. I think Matthew

1:07:42

and the Corinthian get teamed up again,

1:07:44

a bunch in those. And it's almost

1:07:47

enough to make me want to try it, but

1:07:50

they're good. Probably, I'd only

1:07:52

be disappointed. Yeah. I think

1:07:54

in general, we'll talk about this more in the

1:07:56

wake episode, I think, because

1:07:58

that's also going to be... Sort

1:08:01

of denouement for the yeah for our

1:08:03

experience with this series. I just

1:08:05

think any Any

1:08:07

revisitation of this material that anybody has ever

1:08:09

tried has only been disappointing I have some

1:08:11

theories about why that is okay cool.

1:08:14

Yeah, I've never done of it, so you can tell me how you

1:08:16

feel yeah Dream

1:08:18

visits thessaly briefly we get

1:08:21

some clarification on their relationship

1:08:23

and also why thessaly is

1:08:26

Protecting the body of light a hall cuz Morpheus

1:08:28

has come and is like Fine,

1:08:31

I don't want to but I'll kill her because she's

1:08:33

messing stuff up in the dreaming Yeah,

1:08:35

and thessaly's like well haha you can't and then

1:08:38

dream Leaves and then

1:08:40

blows up all the windows in her little

1:08:42

apartment Do you think that this

1:08:44

might be an explanation to what you just what

1:08:46

you asked earlier Andrew? Do they need to enter

1:08:48

through her dream? Oh? Oh,

1:08:51

maybe possibly maybe that's kind of what it

1:08:53

is maybe if they just walked in on

1:08:55

their own He

1:08:57

could just be like nah. Yeah, maybe

1:09:00

maybe But

1:09:03

yeah, so God

1:09:06

and what is up with all the what is up

1:09:08

with all the Ravens Andrew? Why are all the Ravens

1:09:10

all the Ravens are showing up like it? There's

1:09:12

a and there are

1:09:14

a thing about Ravens like showing up where there's about

1:09:16

to be a battle like as a So

1:09:21

Yes, they talk about that where like there

1:09:23

there's going to be corpses to eat Yeah,

1:09:26

cuz usually the the dreaming as Matthew has

1:09:28

said is a one Raven at a time

1:09:30

sort of gig Mm-hmm, but suddenly all these

1:09:33

other Ravens are showing up here and Matthew

1:09:35

himself has been pulled back here against his

1:09:37

will Ten

1:09:40

opens up with the Corinthian

1:09:43

finishing off Also nine

1:09:46

this issue ends with the Corinthian pulling the

1:09:48

string down and getting Matthew back after he's

1:09:50

eaten Daniel back Yeah,

1:09:52

Daniel back. Yeah But

1:09:55

then it opens with him with puck

1:09:57

running away back to fairy And

1:10:00

we're gonna close the book on Loki here, I

1:10:03

think right because Odin

1:10:06

and Thor are gonna show up and They're

1:10:10

gonna take him into the earth and

1:10:13

strap him back and strap Loki back up And

1:10:16

punish him forever. Yeah, they take

1:10:18

Loki back. He's getting the punishment that he

1:10:20

deserves for doing all this So

1:10:23

I guess good for him The

1:10:26

Furies kill Abel which Cain is very upset

1:10:28

about later on he's like I have a

1:10:31

contract he's he only I can do it

1:10:33

Only I can kill him They

1:10:36

aren't even family to have how did what right today

1:10:38

have to kill? And

1:10:42

then this is where we get to if

1:10:44

we get another little bit of fairy like

1:10:46

Clerkin is here Nuala is

1:10:48

just wandering around without any ever glamour

1:10:50

on and scandalizing everybody Clerkin

1:10:53

puts some Glamour

1:10:55

back on her to get her out of trouble, but

1:10:57

she's like listen this this life does not Do

1:11:00

anything for me anymore? I kind of want to

1:11:02

go back. I kind of leave and go back

1:11:05

to the dreaming Yeah, it's this depiction of the

1:11:07

fairy like culture as

1:11:09

this like superficial

1:11:13

We can use magic to be

1:11:15

hot and be happy and she's

1:11:18

like no I've had real emotions And

1:11:20

like this isn't how I look all the time, and I'd

1:11:23

rather just be who I am all the time Instead

1:11:26

and her brother and like Titani

1:11:28

doesn't like it her brother cast the

1:11:31

glamour on her to make her look like

1:11:33

better And she kind of hates it And

1:11:36

that's gonna spur her towards

1:11:40

Calling dream which is what's a set

1:11:42

up earlier the Furies continue their

1:11:44

rampage through the dreaming This is the part where we

1:11:47

get the coolest art in the entire I

1:11:50

was yeah, I thought you might like this.

1:11:52

Yeah, is merv the pumpkin head smoking his

1:11:54

cigar And the smokes coming out of his

1:11:56

eyes, and I was also holding a big

1:11:58

machine gun going Full Rambo

1:12:01

me lady. I'm your worst nightmare a pumpkin with

1:12:03

a gun Well,

1:12:06

and then they say we are the kindly ones we

1:12:08

are the humanities and he says yeah, well you men

1:12:10

at ease this And

1:12:13

then he dies unfortunately, but yeah,

1:12:15

he tries to shoot them with bullets and the bullets go

1:12:18

back at him and he dies And

1:12:21

dream is you know learning of how terrible

1:12:23

all this is while no Yeah,

1:12:26

Lucian's kind of yelling at him being like what are

1:12:28

you why are you just sitting here? What are you

1:12:30

doing and dream is like listen as long as I

1:12:32

stay here. It's gonna be fine. Yes, he

1:12:34

can remake all of it And

1:12:36

so cut right back to Nuala who is

1:12:39

like I was going to remove the mortal woman

1:12:41

light a hall She is what powers this aspect

1:12:43

of the furies. So I guess that's that's what

1:12:45

we get sure if I were an explanation and

1:12:51

and Nuala is like I hate

1:12:53

this I Am

1:12:55

going to she bumps into delirium

1:12:57

briefly who's looking for her dog.

1:12:59

Mm-hmm Then

1:13:02

we check out the the Borgal ranty pole

1:13:04

which is the name of the little nightmare

1:13:06

that yeah dream center out with I like

1:13:08

the Borgal ranty pole. He doesn't really do

1:13:10

anything, but he's funny quick

1:13:13

scene of Rose on a plane headed home

1:13:15

and then Nuala

1:13:19

Who is like I

1:13:22

would I like out of this, please she

1:13:24

summons dream with her

1:13:26

boon not with her boon But with the little

1:13:28

crystal with the little the boon crystal and She's

1:13:33

like hey Do

1:13:37

you want anything Please

1:13:39

please please please please please please please can you come and he's

1:13:41

like this is not a good

1:13:43

time Can I can I not and she's like

1:13:45

please can you come and then she

1:13:48

kind of forces the issue? Yep And

1:13:51

now he says as long as I

1:13:53

remain in the dreaming no real harm can occur and She

1:13:56

says my lord, you're no longer in the dreaming and he says

1:13:58

no, I am NOT Oops. Nuwala

1:14:02

messed it up for everybody. Yeah, that's

1:14:04

a real like boom

1:14:06

and then like your gut drops. A

1:14:09

lot of bad stuff has been done by a

1:14:11

lot of people, but if you want to find

1:14:13

the one event that seems to have been the

1:14:15

thing that nobody can come back from, it's Nuwala

1:14:18

doing that thing in that moment. Yeah. Like

1:14:21

an extremely inconsequential character from an

1:14:23

inconsequential slice of this fictional universe

1:14:25

does this thing for selfish reasons

1:14:27

and then ruins it for everybody.

1:14:30

Consequential now. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

1:14:34

I mean, we'll get to the scene where somebody

1:14:38

tells Dream that he can't

1:14:40

dare blame Nuwala on this. Yeah, no,

1:14:43

no, no. I'm not like, I'm

1:14:45

not trying to blame Nuwala. I'm just like,

1:14:48

man, I think that's just too bad for

1:14:51

her and too bad for everybody. Sure. Yes,

1:14:53

yes, yes. And then in

1:14:55

the 11th issue has brought Daniel back to

1:14:57

the dreaming, but it is a nightmare town.

1:15:01

Mm-hmm. Dream's not there anymore. Nope.

1:15:04

They're like kind of holed

1:15:06

up in the castle because

1:15:08

that might be the safest

1:15:10

place and Dream

1:15:12

is going to... He finally makes his way back

1:15:15

there, but for a period of time, he's hanging out with

1:15:17

Nuwala for a while and she's like, could you love me?

1:15:21

Like could that be your boon? And he's like, I

1:15:24

can't, that's not, I can't get, just get that. That's

1:15:26

not how boon would work. Yeah.

1:15:30

I can't do it. And he's like, I really have to

1:15:32

go home. And

1:15:35

he's not even saying that he's gonna, I mean, he's

1:15:37

like talking about Orpheus and having killed him and he's

1:15:39

like kind of, you get the sense he

1:15:41

knows what's going to happen. And

1:15:44

that he thinks he has changed and that

1:15:47

has caused things, but

1:15:49

he cannot stay here with her, which is what you would

1:15:52

have asked him for. More

1:15:55

rose stuff. Her friend died while she was on the

1:15:57

plane, which is sad. Yeah, it's very sad. Back

1:16:03

in the dreaming with the Corinthian and gang,

1:16:05

everybody's here, Daniel's there, he's kind

1:16:08

of poking around and getting into stuff that maybe

1:16:10

he shouldn't get into. Yeah. There's

1:16:14

a great three panel sequence where they give him a

1:16:16

crystal ball and in the second panel

1:16:18

it just goes

1:16:20

like a complete... Like reacting to him

1:16:23

in some way? Yeah, it is just

1:16:25

pure white, just with lines as opposed

1:16:27

to the full art and Corinthian's

1:16:29

like maybe we should give him something else to play with.

1:16:32

No thanks. And

1:16:35

then the multiple destiny crisis starts

1:16:38

to resolve itself. As

1:16:41

dream is coming back to the dreaming, you

1:16:44

get the idea that a decision has been

1:16:46

made that is

1:16:49

going to make things end the way they end.

1:16:52

He takes a chariot to

1:16:54

a cool train. It

1:16:56

turns into a train. It turns into

1:16:59

a train. It goes through a train

1:17:01

station that only has two of the

1:17:03

people. It only has two guardian statues

1:17:05

above it. And then he's wearing like

1:17:07

a sick double breasted jacket with

1:17:10

a scarf looking... His fire cape.

1:17:12

Yeah. Oh, yes, fire cape

1:17:14

is there. Looking

1:17:17

like a very elaborate Broadway

1:17:19

director. The

1:17:22

vibe he's giving off. And

1:17:26

he starts to... I wouldn't

1:17:28

even say confront, but

1:17:30

he is now dealing with the Furies again

1:17:32

directly. He was saying leave. Yeah.

1:17:36

They hurt him. They like

1:17:38

draw blood. Yep, they do. And

1:17:41

they reference that Daniel isn't... Like

1:17:44

he's not dead, but he's no longer alive.

1:17:47

Yeah, he's not like... Either

1:17:51

Loki or Robin Goodfellow

1:17:53

said that they had burned most of the

1:17:55

mortality out of him. Cool phrase.

1:17:57

Which is why they were putting him on the fires. Yeah,

1:18:01

okay. And

1:18:04

then Lida tries to rein

1:18:08

the feets, the Furies

1:18:10

back in and they are like nah. Eh, we're

1:18:12

kind of on our roll, we're kind of doing

1:18:14

something. We don't want to. Yeah.

1:18:21

And that, like the end of this issue

1:18:23

is essentially like Lida saying, hey we don't

1:18:25

have to do this. The Furies saying,

1:18:27

yeah actually we do. And

1:18:30

Dream getting his weirdo helmet

1:18:32

out and preparing

1:18:35

to just like go for, in

1:18:38

for this final confrontation. Rules and responsibilities,

1:18:40

these are the ties that bind us.

1:18:42

We do what we do because of who we are.

1:18:45

If we did otherwise we would not be ourselves. I

1:18:47

will do what I have to do and I will do

1:18:49

what I must. Which you also get

1:18:51

the sense that like when

1:18:55

he can he extends that worldview

1:18:57

to other people. Dream

1:18:59

does. Which prevents,

1:19:02

I mean he does, he's not happy about what

1:19:04

the Furies are doing but I get the sense

1:19:06

that he can

1:19:08

extend that worldview to them. There's

1:19:11

a lot in these issues including that conversation

1:19:13

between Matthew and the Corinthian that's about like

1:19:17

what is it, what is your nature and how does

1:19:19

that inform whatever

1:19:21

your actions are? Like how does that,

1:19:23

yeah. He

1:19:25

has this emerald, it's one of the 12 dreamstones. He

1:19:29

has this cool emerald that's not as powerful or neat as

1:19:31

a ruby but he did make it. It's a dreamstone, he

1:19:33

gives it to Daniel. Just to hang out with.

1:19:36

He says we've spoken about him

1:19:39

and Daniel. Yeah because Matthew's like, I don't

1:19:41

know man, he can't really talk and he's like, no

1:19:43

we've talked. It's fine, we talked, don't worry about it.

1:19:47

And he's gonna try and go in for

1:19:49

this confrontation without Matthew and Matthew's like, hey

1:19:51

I'm gonna go with you. Because Matthew's been

1:19:54

going on this little quest

1:19:57

this entire book really trying

1:19:59

to. Figure out what happened to

1:20:01

the other Ravens like yeah, he'll was cuz

1:20:03

he knows he's not the first Mm-hmm

1:20:06

And so well, the other ones aren't around anymore. So

1:20:09

what happened to them? What's gonna happen to me? Yeah

1:20:13

We hang out at the Lux Club

1:20:15

with delirium and Delirium

1:20:17

is gonna meet Lucifer. This is my favorite

1:20:19

This is my favorite delirium thing in the

1:20:21

whole thing because she's she's turned the Borghal

1:20:24

rant at pole into a fish And she's

1:20:26

shown up to the club to

1:20:28

look for a dog Yeah, and Mazakine who's

1:20:30

been in this in these issues

1:20:32

throughout just like not speaking with like

1:20:35

a mask on to hide the the

1:20:38

The squishy good gross half of her face.

1:20:40

Yeah. Yep. Yep He's like

1:20:42

go away and delirium says if you don't let me

1:20:44

in I will turn you into a demon half-faced waitress

1:20:47

nightclub lady with a crush on her boss and I'll

1:20:49

make it so you've been that from the beginning of

1:20:51

time to now and You'll never ever know if you

1:20:53

were anything else and it will itch inside your head

1:20:55

worse than little bugs. Yeah She's

1:21:01

great, yeah So

1:21:04

then oh then

1:21:07

Rose is talking to Vixen

1:21:11

On that's your Yes.

1:21:13

Yeah, I mean there's a big scene of Morpheus being

1:21:16

like we saw this man and all of the rose

1:21:18

stuff There is like this little tiny flash of this

1:21:21

Character on TV whose name is Vixen LaBitch

1:21:23

and I guess she just says like a

1:21:25

bunch of Ann Coulter kind of yeah Yeah,

1:21:28

for sure reactionary awful stuff and

1:21:31

people listen because she's like an attractive blonde

1:21:33

lady Yeah, not to say

1:21:37

That's what the media was but yes

1:21:42

It turns out that this is how who

1:21:44

is the like the drag queen character

1:21:46

from the doll's house. Yep. Yep and

1:21:50

Rose has come to tell how

1:21:52

that Zelda has died and that He

1:21:55

would be like one of two people at the

1:21:57

funeral and does he want to come and like

1:22:00

like bury the hatchet and yeah. So

1:22:04

this is again. Very like to have

1:22:06

this juxtaposed with like this

1:22:08

final confrontation between Dream and the Furies

1:22:10

and everybody is just like, it's a

1:22:12

lot. I think the thing for me

1:22:14

that makes it tough as

1:22:18

an active parallel to hold in my head

1:22:20

is it's been so long since I thought

1:22:22

about Rose Walker. And that's so

1:22:24

long, like even if you've been thinking about Rose

1:22:26

Walker this whole time, it's been so long since

1:22:28

you thought about like one

1:22:31

of Rose Walker's lesser roommates from seven

1:22:33

books ago. And like I can sit

1:22:35

here now and talk with you and

1:22:38

like hash out what the thematic resonance

1:22:40

is, but in

1:22:42

the issue reading it in sequence, I'm

1:22:45

like, okay though, but you have

1:22:47

big lightning, Morpheus, Matthew

1:22:50

stuff happening. And

1:22:52

I empirically know I'm

1:22:54

supposed to like trying to be weighing these

1:22:57

against each other maybe, but it's tough to

1:22:59

do. I'm too

1:23:01

invested in the endless at this point.

1:23:04

Because I also like these scenes with Delirium

1:23:07

and Lucifer and like that's not

1:23:09

grounded in just people living

1:23:11

in America in the 90s, which is

1:23:13

the Rose Walker stuff. Yeah, it's just

1:23:15

Lucifer being like, like he

1:23:17

had at one point said

1:23:19

some pretty like talk, some pretty big talk

1:23:21

about the bad stuff he was gonna do

1:23:23

to Dream because he like embarrassed him and

1:23:26

his minions in hell. Yeah. And

1:23:29

Lucifer just saying, yeah, I kind of like let go of

1:23:31

that and now I sort of feel bad for him that

1:23:34

all this is happening to him. Yeah.

1:23:37

Like Lucifer is another character

1:23:39

who like destruction decided

1:23:42

to hit the bricks instead of. That's

1:23:45

true, he did hit the brick. Instead of

1:23:47

seeing through some job that he didn't like

1:23:49

or care about anymore. You're totally right. Yeah.

1:23:53

And then there's like

1:23:55

another confrontation,

1:23:57

not confrontation, but

1:23:59

scene. between um, Newell

1:24:02

and Clerican where she's like, can you just

1:24:04

like let me go off and be myself

1:24:06

and don't... This is later, I think. You're,

1:24:09

you're, um, there's another,

1:24:12

there's the bit, like in between

1:24:14

the, the Lucifer and Delirium stuff,

1:24:17

there is, like Matthew gets

1:24:19

a straight answer from drinking about what happened to him.

1:24:21

Oh sure, sure, sure, sure. And this is where you

1:24:23

find out, you know, like various things happen to them.

1:24:26

Uh, Lucian was one. Like he

1:24:28

was the first Raven. Yeah. And

1:24:31

he doesn't really remember anymore because all he

1:24:33

knows is books, but like that's, you know,

1:24:35

there's different things happen to different Ravens, just

1:24:37

like different things happen to different people. Yeah,

1:24:39

yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but

1:24:42

then this is the close of Newell, because I don't think we

1:24:44

see any more of her in this collection.

1:24:46

No. Where she kind

1:24:49

of tells Clerican

1:24:51

off for what

1:24:53

he's done quote unquote for her, um, and

1:24:56

she would like to leave

1:24:59

the fairy and not be not

1:25:01

who she is, um, and

1:25:03

not be her nature, I think. Um,

1:25:07

and then yeah, then we're, then the, the

1:25:09

furies have summoned a dream.

1:25:12

They're like, we're here. Let's go. They

1:25:16

haven't, they've shown up to where a dream is.

1:25:19

Yeah. Yeah, yeah,

1:25:21

yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um,

1:25:23

death shows up. Tied everybody. And

1:25:27

then she goes to find

1:25:29

Morpheus, like Morpheus gives Matthew

1:25:32

a couple of things and is like, Hey, you have to,

1:25:34

you have to take my helmet and the soul,

1:25:36

like a bag of stuff. Yep. And you have to go back and

1:25:38

my sister's going to be there and you have to, you have to

1:25:40

ask her to come see me. Um,

1:25:42

a lot of cool art of

1:25:44

Morpheus standing on the top of a mountain.

1:25:48

Just like taking all of his

1:25:50

armor off and kind of accepting whatever's

1:25:52

about to happen. And

1:25:55

then we kind of get a revisit

1:25:57

of the end of the first. collection.

1:26:00

Come full circle again baby.

1:26:03

Yeah, yeah. Just death

1:26:06

and dream chatting about

1:26:08

what could have been, about

1:26:10

what is. Corinthians is just like fighting

1:26:12

monsters. Last time we had this conversation you threw a loaf

1:26:14

of bread at me. Oh yeah, yeah.

1:26:18

The stuff is at the beginning of this issue

1:26:20

which is it's the last issue in

1:26:24

the book. It's also issue 69 nice if you're reading

1:26:28

them as they were published. So you

1:26:30

know it's the nicest issue in the

1:26:33

entire series. These bits that we get

1:26:35

with dream and death that is

1:26:37

like bringing it all back to the first book.

1:26:41

Like there is at the beginning of

1:26:43

this you they're sitting calmly

1:26:45

in this rainstorm as the lightning flashes

1:26:47

around them like all the anger of

1:26:49

the Furies is

1:26:51

still very much present and they're just having

1:26:53

this quiet little conversation that is to

1:26:57

God's talking but also a brother and sister talking

1:26:59

and like coming

1:27:01

back to a conversation that they've kind of

1:27:03

had before but it's gonna end very differently

1:27:05

than it did last time and you

1:27:08

can tell how sad death is about it. Like when I think about

1:27:12

this book I think these

1:27:14

frames are the ones that I think about

1:27:17

the most is just this like this little moment

1:27:19

at the end between the two of them. Mm-hmm.

1:27:21

Yeah. It sticks with me a lot. Well

1:27:24

and it doesn't do you know there's

1:27:26

some scenes intermixed where like the Corinthian

1:27:28

is like killing random

1:27:30

demons that the Furies

1:27:32

have unleashed or whatever. Yeah mostly just

1:27:34

letting letting everybody know that he and

1:27:37

Matthew are still cool. So cool to

1:27:39

be buddy cops later if it comes

1:27:41

up. But like there's a

1:27:43

difference in tone with this first exchange

1:27:45

between the two of them that ends

1:27:47

with Dream just saying I'm tired I'm

1:27:49

very tired and then the next exchange

1:27:51

which is a bit more confrontational where

1:27:54

you're actually getting not I

1:27:57

mean it's like it's tough cuz you're death right

1:28:00

Like how much can you grieve your

1:28:03

brother? But she does

1:28:05

seem to grieve him. And

1:28:07

he's the one who's always more

1:28:09

reserved about anything anyway. Yeah.

1:28:12

I get that, like, my read on death

1:28:14

throughout the whole series is not that she

1:28:17

is like... Like

1:28:21

has no emotions about what she does and

1:28:23

what people experience. It's just that she has

1:28:25

a very deep understanding of it and

1:28:28

is able to shepherd people through it. It seems

1:28:30

like her work-life balance might be a little better.

1:28:32

I don't know. It does! It does! She

1:28:34

has a healthier relationship with her job. Whereas

1:28:38

Dream does, which Dream is still trying

1:28:40

to kind of figure out. Dream, who

1:28:43

is thousands and

1:28:45

thousands of years old and has two friends,

1:28:47

both of which he's made in the last

1:28:49

three years. Well, because

1:28:53

she's the one who's like, don't you dare blame

1:28:55

Newala, you could have done that differently. The

1:28:59

only reason you got yourself into this mess is because this

1:29:01

is where you want it to be. Yeah. There's

1:29:04

personal responsibility too, not only the kind

1:29:06

you're always talking about. And

1:29:09

he's like, listen, this

1:29:13

got out of hand. I thought

1:29:15

maybe it wouldn't go this bad. I

1:29:17

did plan for it to go this bad, but I didn't want

1:29:21

it to. I

1:29:23

do have a contingency. And

1:29:26

she's like, listen, our brother walked away.

1:29:28

You could have done that. And

1:29:30

he's like, no, I couldn't have. And she's

1:29:33

like, yes, I see you. You could not

1:29:35

have done that. So

1:29:37

it is a book. Ultimately, it

1:29:39

does really deliver on the thing that Dream

1:29:42

has been hammering home throughout the whole series,

1:29:44

which is like honoring

1:29:46

your nature, honoring your... Like

1:29:50

where you think you fit into the

1:29:52

whole existence. It also kind of is

1:29:54

him leaving, but in the

1:29:57

way that he can. living

1:30:00

and like trying to draw bad art in

1:30:02

a in a villa like

1:30:04

destruction is like he is yeah

1:30:07

he's yeah so that he he Morpheus

1:30:09

personally no longer needs to be doing

1:30:12

this but he

1:30:15

also can't be around like

1:30:17

he knows if he is still

1:30:19

around he's gonna like feel too bad

1:30:21

or whatever about giving up his responsibility

1:30:24

and it's just not a

1:30:26

thing he can do but he doesn't that

1:30:28

doesn't mean he wants to keep doing is

1:30:30

this all because he got trapped in a

1:30:32

basement for 60 years it's not all because

1:30:34

of that I do feel like there was

1:30:37

a catalyst that set up a lot of

1:30:39

stuff yeah I mean I was a maiden

1:30:41

that was like that

1:30:44

experience made him start thinking about

1:30:46

and caring about other

1:30:48

people enough that he

1:30:51

eventually had mercy on his

1:30:53

son head and killed him and yeah

1:30:55

it's like the impetus

1:30:57

for this all happening yeah sure sure

1:30:59

sure and is what he was feeling

1:31:01

bad about at the beginning of the

1:31:04

of the book and I and

1:31:06

you know of the collection that we're reading now

1:31:10

so then we get

1:31:12

like quick check-ins with other characters as it's

1:31:15

like clear that we are approaching the end

1:31:20

but the real end is the art

1:31:23

of death just

1:31:25

like asking for more pieces hand and

1:31:27

then big vertical

1:31:29

panels of light

1:31:32

and it is interesting I

1:31:34

don't know how it renders on any digital

1:31:36

versions of the book but

1:31:39

the when

1:31:41

they reach out and touch each

1:31:43

other like ET finger

1:31:46

touch yeah it's

1:31:48

at the theme of the page which is just interesting

1:31:51

good use of the form and

1:31:54

then he's gone and then all of that wherever

1:31:56

they were is this in complete shadow Yeah,

1:32:00

and there's nobody left on that though mountain

1:32:02

anymore. Nope. Nope Titania's

1:32:06

sad she knows it's happened delirium

1:32:08

is reunited with the dog Barnabas

1:32:13

He's a cool guy. I

1:32:15

think barnabas lost her on like the Disney Disney

1:32:18

world like small world after all ride or

1:32:21

something like it was a very specific place

1:32:23

where they lost yep, it's pretty good and

1:32:27

then I

1:32:30

don't know what what we get though. We get

1:32:32

the Rose Walker like funeral stuff is happening He

1:32:36

doesn't wind up going how the

1:32:38

word Lucifer leaves the bar.

1:32:40

Yep. Yep with Mazikine Alex

1:32:44

Burgess wakes up because now dream

1:32:47

is dead. Mm-hmm. So that's

1:32:49

gone and light a

1:32:51

hall wakes up and That's

1:32:53

and yeah, that's the leaves like hey, you're

1:32:55

gonna want to run because a lot of people are

1:32:58

mad at you including me. Yep And

1:33:01

then there's a little shot of Daniel playing with

1:33:03

the emeralds as I understand that your actions have

1:33:05

ensured that you will never see Daniel again. Yeah

1:33:09

Yeah, because he kind of turns into

1:33:12

a Like

1:33:14

film negative of Morpheus, but a

1:33:17

but like a tween Yeah,

1:33:21

cool teen more teen Morpheus in his

1:33:24

Rebelling against his dad or

1:33:26

his previous aspect by wearing all

1:33:28

white and having white speech bubbles

1:33:30

with black text Yeah, but still

1:33:32

all like bloopy. Yep Dreaming

1:33:35

it's so pretty clear that he is dream

1:33:37

now But

1:33:40

Corinthian says Daniel and he says no not any

1:33:42

longer And

1:33:45

then we get it. We got a little close on

1:33:47

the three ladies Reading

1:33:51

a fortune cookie And

1:33:54

being done. Yeah there for good or bad.

1:33:56

It's done. Yeah, that's

1:33:59

that And this is actually one

1:34:01

where the so

1:34:04

if you think of it like a cold open,

1:34:06

I guess every one of these issues You

1:34:09

read a few pages and then you get to

1:34:11

like the title card I don't know the kindly

1:34:13

ones with all the the You

1:34:15

know the credits for the art and everything and then this one

1:34:17

you don't get it until The

1:34:19

very very end of the entire book when it's just

1:34:21

a shot of the little house that they're in. Yeah

1:34:25

But they what they call in the biz a

1:34:27

late title card. Yeah, we title card. Yeah but

1:34:30

yeah, it's a good it's a Again,

1:34:33

as I said at the beginning this

1:34:35

one feels like a book like

1:34:38

it's got Robust

1:34:40

subplots it's got stow. Yeah,

1:34:43

you know Callbacks,

1:34:45

it does it feels like I know there's

1:34:47

one more thing But it feels like a

1:34:49

really quality like series finale from like a

1:34:51

four or five season HBO show where they're

1:34:54

like Really delivering on a

1:34:56

lot of character relationships. You haven't thought about

1:34:58

in a while. Yeah, this is like the

1:35:00

wake serves as a Letting

1:35:04

down Thing after this

1:35:06

and I feel like I feel like shows

1:35:09

You can't end right after The

1:35:13

like a big climactic action

1:35:15

of your thing. Not usually you can't and

1:35:17

you also shouldn't do it With

1:35:20

like a little stupid Token like four-page

1:35:22

thing where like Harry and Ron and

1:35:24

Hermione's kids all go to school together

1:35:26

now and like that's the whole That's

1:35:29

all like you have to do You

1:35:31

have to have a proper ending

1:35:33

so that people can I Don't

1:35:36

know process it a little bit anything else just

1:35:38

feels too abrupt to me like this. This is

1:35:42

In a lot of ways like the end of this story

1:35:44

that has been yeah told the whole time And I actually

1:35:46

think that it holds up even better on a reread if

1:35:48

you do Ever reread the

1:35:50

story because you do have a better sense

1:35:53

of all the Different

1:35:56

little pieces that are like building

1:35:58

toward this. Yeah, you are

1:36:00

a little bit it's

1:36:02

a little bit easier to trace the thing

1:36:05

through to its climax when you're sure what the

1:36:07

climax is gonna be instead of just being like

1:36:09

hey am I gonna need to remember this like

1:36:12

kitty story for the series

1:36:15

right is because

1:36:18

he is so adventurous that

1:36:22

in the moment it is hard to tell it's like

1:36:24

I know this is like a

1:36:26

seven instance of somebody telling me a story

1:36:29

within someone telling me a story like listen

1:36:31

is this gonna be do I need to

1:36:33

remember every detail this or not or what

1:36:35

and there is joy in not knowing which

1:36:38

one of those is gonna wind up being

1:36:40

very important yeah there's a kind of he's

1:36:42

playing with expectations he is you

1:36:45

know picking and choosing which ones to really

1:36:47

build back but but what what he is

1:36:51

well you don't know he's so artful

1:36:53

at until it's happening is when

1:36:55

he is bringing people back that

1:36:57

you haven't thought about in a while you're like oh

1:37:00

yeah do it go

1:37:03

on over

1:37:06

the course of this episode I've like really

1:37:08

I've come around on the Walker stuff and

1:37:10

I thought I didn't like it again it

1:37:12

was just I didn't quite on

1:37:14

my first read I hadn't really gotten a sense of

1:37:16

why it was there yeah we've had to give it

1:37:18

not there on purpose right right and we've had to

1:37:20

give it shorter shrift then then yeah

1:37:23

we might have otherwise just because this

1:37:25

is a lot issues to get through

1:37:27

it like it's a lot the and

1:37:30

like the big thing that the wake

1:37:32

is about is not necessarily about like

1:37:34

the Rose Walker story oh yeah so

1:37:36

I imagine there will be some unpacking

1:37:38

of the endless experience this

1:37:40

is definitely a series about consequences

1:37:42

so it certainly makes sense to

1:37:45

not just end it here but to

1:37:47

give you some time to see the

1:37:50

ripples you know so

1:37:52

yeah that would be next time I'll be the wake

1:37:55

and that will take us out of the dreaming entirely

1:37:58

yeah no they'll probably like and I think it's some

1:38:00

in our other long reads most of them we've

1:38:02

done like a little like

1:38:04

denouement episode and I think that will

1:38:07

probably just end up packing those

1:38:09

thoughts into into the wake cuz

1:38:11

yeah we gotta get away under

1:38:13

the next one onto the Iliad and also it's

1:38:15

you know it's a lot shorter than this I

1:38:17

think it's like six issues and yeah

1:38:20

yeah so six issues instead of

1:38:22

what like like 13 and a

1:38:25

half if you count the opening prologue yeah

1:38:27

the jam yeah there you go jam that

1:38:29

was me jamming at the front so well

1:38:33

that's another like

1:38:35

sands through the hourglass these

1:38:37

are the issues of the

1:38:39

Sandman mm-hmm send us an

1:38:42

email over to pot a gmail.com if you have

1:38:44

specific thoughts on either art in these issues because

1:38:46

we were thinking about some of

1:38:48

them and the whole hemple art stuff is

1:38:50

like really sets this whole collection apart for

1:38:52

me so let me know if

1:38:54

you know what Neil Gaiman was smoking I

1:38:57

never like I never know how

1:38:59

these play to a

1:39:02

person who is like interested in listening to us

1:39:04

talk to each other but also has not wanted

1:39:06

to like actually follow along with us and so

1:39:08

we're like 10 episodes deep on a series that

1:39:10

you're not

1:39:13

familiar with so hopefully you know hopefully there's

1:39:15

there's something here for everybody still you're

1:39:17

probably having a good time probably having a good time you

1:39:19

still found out the moon's a turf you

1:39:22

still I'll never forget about the moon being a

1:39:24

turf that's the biggest thing on this like my

1:39:26

third or fourth time through this series ever and

1:39:29

had never really thought about the moon being a

1:39:32

turf before hey look now so we're

1:39:35

all learning and growing and changing it's

1:39:37

true maybe my next reread maybe the

1:39:39

moon even could my next reread I'm

1:39:41

only gonna read issue like panels that

1:39:43

have Gregory in them okay

1:39:45

that's my plan all right I'll see

1:39:47

what I learn mm-hmm anyway you

1:39:51

know we say at the end of every episode of stand

1:39:53

by me Gregory isn't he the

1:39:55

little gargoyle Oh Goldie

1:39:58

Oh who's Gregory I don't know I

1:40:00

agree. Well, I'm gonna do a reread

1:40:02

where I look for Gregory and then

1:40:04

I'm gonna do a reread where I

1:40:06

ask Goldie who Gregory is Hey everybody

1:40:09

welcome to sand by me a bespoke

1:40:29

podcast about Neil Gaiman's the

1:40:31

Sandman from the boys that

1:40:33

overdue a Podcast about

1:40:35

the books you've been meaning to read

1:40:37

and I am clearly Craig And

1:40:40

I am clearly Andrew. I have

1:40:42

gone through a momentous shift. I

1:40:46

Am I'm still Craig, but I am NOT

1:40:48

the Craig you knew. Yes, you're a different

1:40:50

aspect of Craig There will always be Craig

1:40:54

You're Craig and yet you're not I'm

1:40:57

excited to meet you my co-host Yeah,

1:41:00

I mean I feel like I'm meeting you for

1:41:02

the first time but that I've known you for

1:41:04

all these many years I'm sure it's unsettling but

1:41:06

welcome to my realm So

1:41:09

Craig this is Craig's sick.

1:41:12

I don't know when you're listening to this It might

1:41:14

be like months after he was last sick. So he's

1:41:16

like not sick again. He's sick still And

1:41:20

his voice is sounding more normal. I

1:41:22

thought until he switched into podcast register and I

1:41:25

was like, uh, oh I

1:41:29

would feel weird doing the whole show down

1:41:31

here. I feel like my energy is very

1:41:33

different and I

1:41:36

don't know. I don't know I can try it. I mean

1:41:39

you do you do what feels good to you We're

1:41:41

doing a kind of a sleepy kind of winding down

1:41:43

of the Sandman Series,

1:41:45

so maybe if your energy is a little low because We're

1:41:49

in the day new mall, baby. Sure.

1:41:51

We are in the day new mall.

1:41:53

We've got partings and meetings Yeah, right

1:41:55

goodbyes. You're right and hello So

1:41:57

this episode goodbye is our

1:42:00

final episode of Sand By Me

1:42:02

we are covering book

1:42:05

10 of the trade

1:42:07

paperback collections of Neil Gaiman's The

1:42:09

Sandman so we are talking

1:42:11

about The Wake which are issues 70

1:42:14

through 75 I think if you're

1:42:17

reading just the comics themselves uh-huh and

1:42:20

it was originally ran in 95 and 96 that is the

1:42:22

1990s excuse me just

1:42:26

making sure Bob Gatling is listening

1:42:29

and he doesn't get confused no

1:42:31

that's good of you yeah and

1:42:33

they were collected in hardback in

1:42:35

1996 what happened

1:42:40

last time Morpheus died

1:42:42

Morpheus died a lot of stuff happened but

1:42:44

Morpheus died it's the main one the

1:42:47

Furies came from Morpheus he kind of

1:42:50

caused it sort of there's

1:42:52

a lot in this book

1:42:55

that really feels like you are a lot

1:42:59

of people are experiencing grief for

1:43:01

someone who ended

1:43:03

their own life in some

1:43:05

ways yeah it's like yeah

1:43:08

it is pitched

1:43:10

that way and it's also pitched I think we

1:43:12

might talk about this last time like

1:43:16

this is Morpheus's version of the

1:43:18

thing that destruction did like not

1:43:20

yeah do it anymore but it

1:43:22

had to be done in a way that because Morpheus

1:43:25

could not live with himself giving

1:43:27

it up true true true true he

1:43:30

didn't want to be doing it anymore so he took

1:43:32

it out he took it different route yes and

1:43:35

at the end of the last book Lida

1:43:38

Hall's son Daniel little baby

1:43:40

Daniel became

1:43:43

the new dream yeah gave

1:43:47

him a little emerald now he's in your dream and

1:43:49

he is like kind of like

1:43:52

a it's not a one-to-one

1:43:54

but he is sort of like an inversion of

1:43:57

Morpheus and in many like visually in

1:43:59

many ways and also in tone. If

1:44:02

you took Morpheus and took

1:44:04

the contrast slider and slid it all the way

1:44:06

over to the other end, you get Daniel as

1:44:09

Dream. Sure, sure. So

1:44:11

where do you want Morpheus anymore? He's Dream of the

1:44:13

Endless. Morpheus, he's

1:44:16

Daniel. Anywhere big picture you

1:44:18

want to start, Andrew, you've read this whole series before so

1:44:20

what was it like coming

1:44:22

home again? It's

1:44:25

just, it's the

1:44:28

wake part and the

1:44:30

funeral part is a lot of like

1:44:33

sign, cell, finale, courtroom

1:44:36

energy because everybody from all, and I

1:44:38

don't mean that in a derogatory way,

1:44:40

I mean it in an everybody's back

1:44:44

to say all your faves are

1:44:46

back. That guy who like imprisoned,

1:44:48

amused, and then as punishment

1:44:50

had to like just write and write

1:44:52

with his things like bleeding fingers because

1:44:54

that was his punishment for Morpheus, like

1:44:57

he's back, everybody's back. Everybody's back. And

1:45:00

everybody says a little piece about Dream and it's

1:45:02

just the

1:45:05

impression that you get and we can talk

1:45:07

about individual bits that we liked but

1:45:11

yeah everybody is like yeah he was a,

1:45:14

he was a little distant, it was hard to be

1:45:16

close to him but he also seemed like a decent,

1:45:18

he seemed like a decent type. And

1:45:21

he's not here anymore and we need to and

1:45:23

we all just have feelings about it. And we

1:45:25

all just need to process this. Yeah. So like

1:45:27

the three, so this collection

1:45:29

is six issues. The first

1:45:32

three are the wake and