Enter his savior, a young gal by the name of Didi, who we (being the faithful fans of Gaiman's Sandman that I know we all are) instantly recognize as the one and only Death of the Endless, looking slightly less pale, more chipper (if that's possible) and a little younger (about 16) than usual. She's spending her one day-per-century as an orphaned

girl living alone in NYC. Sexton takes the information in stride. ("Uh... right. So. I suppose you must do a lot of drugs.")

Problems ensue, of course. Mad Hettie, who has popped up in Sandman (Preludes & Nocturnes, for the uninitiated), holds Sexton at gunpoint (well... pointy broken wine bottlepoint), demanding that Didi go off and fetch her heart for her. She's hidden it, you see, and forgotten where she left it. And a chap by the name of "The Eremite" is after Death's signature ankh she wears about her neck.

Here's what Death: The High Cost of Living isn't:

Plot-heavy. All the better for it. Both plots sort of fizzle, but in good ways. This story's not about would-be masters of life and death (that plot ends with Eremite being kicked out of a restaurant by the owner) or an old woman getting her heart back (but a sweet moment it is indeed); it's about a kid regaining interest in Going On.

It isn't Hollywood, and all the melodrama which that word summons up. What there ARE, are lots of Gaiman moments. Understated, fleeting, quiet, human moments that make you fall in love with bit characters. Especially in the sequence at The Undercut club. Foxglove sings a ditty about that poor Judy girl who died in the aforementioned Sandman vol.1 and Hazel, her very-pregnant lover, who relates the pain of nicotine-withdrawal during pregnancy. Theo, the thuggish, unsuccessfully double-crossing acolyte of the Eremite, meets with a bitter end, but his passing shows us more about Death's passion for life than anyone knew. My favorite is the anonymous soul at Undercut, who relates her "friend's" brush with childhood sexual abuse and subsequent attempted suicide to Sexton, only to have him give her the brush-off. Sexton and Didi shine together, whether locked in a warehouse, playfully tossing around a Russian doll; perusing the merits of hot dogs' chemical aftertaste; or discussing her Day in the Life by a water fountain in Central Park.

(I could be wrong, but isn't that the same one that Dream was sitting in, feeding the pigeons, when Death first walked into our unsuspecting lives in Sandman #8? Really need to brush up on my New York geography.)

It isn't an "R-rated" human-misery-fest. It's amazingly very PG-13. Let's check the key words again, shall we? Death. Suicide. Sex abuse. But aside from very occasional cursing and one instance some barely "on-camera" violence, this is something that anyone can pick up. It's one of the few Vertigo books I own I'd feel 100 percent confident my family would read and love. Bachalo's cartoony/sketchy art is expressive, magic and real. At a lean 100 or so pages, this is really a direct book. It's got a story to tell, and it tells it, unlike some volumes of The Sandman. (Though it does tie into the second Death mini, Time of Your Life, but that's neither here nor there, as I've not read it.) If "It's a Wonderful Life" had been made in comic form, in 1993, this is what it would be (and who wouldn't take a Winona Ryder look-alike over Clarence, the second-rate... sorry, second-class angel any day of the week?).

Oh, and there's a couple o' neat supplementary tidbits: Tori Amos' introduction, Tom Peyer's text piece on the history of the character Death, and, of course, the "Death Talks About Life" six-pager illustrated by Dave McKean, which gives frank information about AIDS, condom instructions and how life is a sexually-transmitted disease. Useful stuff, that.

So. In a sentence: one of my personal favorite of Gaiman's works, and I hope yours too. Pick it up and feel glad to be alive.


Could Death really be this bovinely mindless?   April 18, 2004
 20 out of 60 found this review helpful

The story begins in an alley where Mad Hattie is searching for her heart, and quickly moves to an urban apartment where fifteen year old Sexton Furnival lives with his "slightly off" mother Sylvia, an aging Earth Mother type.

Sexton is sitting at his computer typing out his suicide note when his mother obliviously sends him out for the afternoon because she has taken the day off to spring clean their apartment. When he literally falls into a garbage dump, he meets a cute and saucy Goth girl named Didi, not knowing that she is Death walking in flesh for a day. She takes Sexton back to her apartment to mend her torn jeans, and now the story begins its long slide downhill.

Mad Hattie confronts Death and threatens to cut off Sexton's nose if Didi (Death) does not go out to find her missing heart. So Didi and Sexton set off into the city at night, to have some fun and search for Mad Hattie's heart. And unexplained thread unravels as Didi (Death) continually is offered free goods by kind people. I didn't get it, and Gaimen never explained it. They go into a "hot" club (for free), and once inside with them, we are subjected to some extremely cheesy lyrics sung by lesbian acoustical guitarist.

Outside the club, a strange blind man and his minion do unexplained things to find Didi in the club, and when the minion lures them out, Death follows as bovinely as a cow does into the slaughtering pens. It gets worse. Once Sexton and Didi are trapped in the cellar, the story becomes even more aimless, filled with pointless conversations which all build up to a ridiculous and anticlimactic ending.

For me, Death lost her charm as Didi when she became so naively helpless and stupifyingly frivolous in her actions and speech. I was interested in Death presented as a charming Goth girl, but I expected her to have more power, more intelligence, more drive, and something more to say. Oh, and I have never met a Goth girl who babbled like a Valley girl...another disappointment.

To top off my disgust, this unsatisfying story is followed by a brutally inane short in which Didi (Death) lectures us on condom usage. I never thought that I would be subjected to a cartoon character putting a condom onto a cartoon banana, but it happened and I shudder every time I think of it.

I love stories of Death, and if you do too, I would caution you to glance through this particular graphic novel in the bookstore before laying your hard earned cash down on the table. This was very disappointing.


Ah, sweet mystery of death, at last I've found you   March 16, 2001
 14 out of 33 found this review helpful

Much as I love this comic, I find (after reading the other posted reviews on Amazon.com, as well as letters published during the series' initial publication) that most of the affection seems to stem from Death's visual and verbal appeal. This is not to diminish these characteristics (I like them myself!) but the people who are in love with Death ought to remember that Death is a nasty thing too --- cancer, car wrecks, murder --- not just the slightly goofy, Goth-styled "Quietus" that's being portrayed here. The point I'm trying to make is that the vast majority of readers seem to miss the irony of Death's attractiveness. The flip side of the coin is that she's the lure of the glittering blade to the suicide, as well as the nice, sane, take-each-day-as-it-comes-because-it-might-be-your-last heroine that Gaiman and Bachalo delineate so perfectly. In short, I'd like to add a touch of salt to all the sweetness and spice with which this comic has been overloaded by its fans.


Not so bad, once you know her   February 27, 2005
 13 out of 19 found this review helpful

Death, that is. In fact, she's quite a nice young lady. Helps an old lady find something that matters to her, that kind of thing. Everyone likes her - for Death, it's always "on the house."

Unfortunately, this doesn't present Death at her best. As part of the Sandman world, she was a much more complex and active figure. I guess the other stories set my hopes unrealistically high. That's not surprising, since Gaiman set the bar so high that not even he can match his own standard all the time.

Taken by itself, this is a pleasant but undistinguished comic. As part of the Sandman mythos, however, it contributes only a little.

//wiredweird