Author: Neil Gaiman

Title: The Sandman: Endless Nights

Year of publication: 2003

Page count: 160

Rating: ★★★★

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I thought I’d read all of the (non-spin-off) Sandman comics years ago—but I recently (re)discovered an unread and forgotten volume on my shelf, and it felt like Christmas morning! Endless Nights made history; it was the first graphic novel to ever make the New York Times Bestseller List. Each of the Endless get their own chapter, and each tale is illustrated by a different artist in an often experimental style that you wouldn’t have seen in the main series. The stories are stand-alones and independent of each other, except Delirium’s and Destruction’s, which are also the only ones that take place after the events in the main Sandman series. I wouldn’t normally review a graphic novel issue by issue, but since these can be considered to be illustrated short stories, and they are so stylistically different, I’ll break it down.

Death And Venice · ★★★★ (Art by P. Craig Russell)

This is the oldest story in the book, written in Venice the week after the 9/11 attacks. Its title is a nod to Thomas Mann’s Death In Venice, and the tale itself is clearly strongly inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death. It switches back and forth between two story- and timelines: A group of people in a by-gone century, living on an island off the coast of Venice which is protected from Death by magic, and the memories and thoughts of a contemporary American soldier who met Death on that same island as a child, and never forgot the encounter. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Craig P. Russell’s art—I think his style was fantastically suited for the comic adaptation of The Graveyard Book, but in this heavier sort of story, it really depended on the page or even panel, and was more hit-and-miss, but the story more than made up for it.

What I’ve Tasted Of Desire · ★★★★½ (Art by Milo Manara)

In the introduction, Gaiman says that the thought of Manara illustrating a tale of Desire was one of the things that propelled him into making Endless Nights a reality, and I can see why; everything from his line-work to the coloring is beautiful and sensual. This story appears to be set in pre-Roman Britain, and follows the life of a woman who bargains with Desire to win the hand of her handsome neighbor.



Dream: The Heart of a Star · ★★★ (Art by Miguelanxo Prado)

I admit that this one tied into the wider DC universe too strongly for me to fully appreciate, so it’s my least favorite in the collection—I like my Sandman to be self-contained. This is the earliest story in the Sandman chronology, set near the beginning of the habitability of the universe—Delight has not yet become Delirium, Death is unmerciful, and we see the genesis of the rivalry between Dream and Desire. The story is narrated by the Sun to the Earth, long before the evolution of life on it, and the illustrations involving space were by far my favorites, while I really disliked the look of Killalla of the Glow’s face.

Fifteen Portraits Of Despair · ★★★★★ (Art by Barron Storey, designed by Dave McKean)

Not really a story, but rather a collection of fifteen vignettes, or, as the title suggests, portraits, illustrating different aspects of Despair. This was some really heavy stuff, and the dark, bizarre, and often abstract art, unlike any I’ve seen in any other Sandman book (save on McKean’s cover art), really enhanced the stories. This would be my pick as favorite chapter, although I had to take breaks while reading it because the sense of hopeless despair I got from these shorts was a lot to take.



Delirium: Going Inside · ★★★★½ (Art by Bill Sienkiewicz)

I felt like I was going crazy while trying to bring coherence to these pages, until you realize that you just have to let it go, you’re entering Delirium’s realm after all—which tells you how well-done both story and accompanying artwork really are. It’s about several mentally ill people (one of whom is loosely based on Henry Darger – I had never heard of him, but it’s an incredibly fascinating story, I encourage you to look it up) who are brought together by Daniel, Dream’s raven Matthew, and Delirium’s dog protector Barnabas, on a quest to save Delirium from herself.

Destruction: On the Peninsula · ★★★★ (Art by Glenn Fabry)

This directly follows and relates to Delirium’s story, and features her as well. A female archaeologist who has constant dreams and visions of variations of a post-apocalyptic world is exploring an Italian peninsula which appears to hold artifacts from the future (they find pennies dated 2019—I was so glad to have found this volume now, while the future in the story is still the future!). The most sci-fi of the stories, in a way, I really enjoyed it, although Destruction’s role was rather minor when compared to the other chapters so far.



Destiny: Endless Nights · ★★★★ (Art by Frank Quitley)

Not a story, but a short vignette of the burden of responsibility that Destiny, the most elusive and mysterious of the Endless, has to bear. This chapter holds my favorite art and lettering in the volume—bright and airy full-page illustrations perfectly suited as the closing chapter in what, at the time, was the last Sandman volume.

While Endless Nights might not be an essential addition to the Sandman Universe, it is a delightful one, and a great way to revisit the siblings; perhaps especially because each of them gets to shine in turn. I took my time reading it and really savored it, knowing that it might be the last time I’d read a Sandman story for the first time. I can highly recommend it—it would be confusing to someone unfamiliar with the main series though, and is really only a treat for long-time fans, and not a good starting point for new readers. I just love this universe; the Sandman series is undoubtedly Gaiman’s magnum opus and changed comics forever; how they are written, and how they are regarded.