Worlds' End

Besides just reading this weeks required works I picked up the eighth issue of Sandman and read through it so I thought I would share my thoughts on it with you here.

Neil Gaiman is a master storyteller and his Sandman series never ceases to amaze me. I recently finished reading the 8th installment entitled “Worlds' End” which had a lot to live up to since it was following “Brief Lives,” which is one of my favorite stories ever written. However “Worlds' End” more than lives up to my expectations.

The format of the story is very much like that of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in that the narrative consists of a group of travelers telling stories. However the travelers in Gaiman's tale have become caught in a “reality storm” and have converged on the inn called Worlds' End from many varied places and times to take refuge until the storm ends. The price for lodging at the inn, however, is a tale to help pass the time and so the travelers each take turns in recounting a tale from their home.

With the stories is where Gaiman really gets to work. The tales he chooses to tell are based largely on the artists who will represent them in visual form. There were six individual artists who worked on this issue of The Sandman, each bringing his or her own unique style to the telling of their tale. Bryan Talbot keeps the whole thing grounded with his representation of the inn, leaving Mike Allred, Michael Zulli, Alec Stevens, John Watkiss, and Shea Anton Penson free to explore their art form in the tales of the travelers.

However simple you might think the setup of this story might be in its Chaucerian styling Gaiman has managed to complicate things quite a lot. We see the whole as a tale narrated by Brant Tucker, recounting the experience of his time at the Worlds' End and what led to his arrival. At the end however it is revealed that he is indeed telling the tale to a bar tender in Chicago, and so really that bar and not Worlds' End is the true setting for the entire story, and that's only the first bit.

The six tales told by tenants at Worlds' End increase in complexity as they go. The first is simply one story with one character and one plot. However, each subsequent tale adds either a character from a previous issue of Sandman or a story told within the story. Some have both in fact, like the tale told by the young seaman called Jim. Within his tale Hob Gadling, previously seen in Sandman volume 2 “The Doll's House”, is a prominent player and is told a tale of fickle women by Gunga Din, a character from a Kipling poem. There are many literary references sprinkled throughout tales in Worlds' End besides Gunga Din such as Gaheris, a character from Arthurian legend, and Prez Rickard, the lead from a four issue comic by Joe Simon.

The most complex and rewarding of the tales is the final one, told by a young journeyman from the Necropolis Litharge named Petrefax. In the tale he is ordered by his master Claproth to attend an air burial and at that burial the workers performing the ceremony each tell their own tales. There are three workers and each tells one tale, but the final tale, recounted by Hermas is of his mistress Veltis, is one in which she tell him a tale of her youth. If your keeping track that's a story told by Veltis within a story told by Hermas, within a story told by Petrefax, within a story told by Brant Tucker. So yeah, things get a bit complicated.

Overall this eighth issue of Sandman is an excellent addition to the overall mythos of the realm of Sandman, and even though he never appears as a key player Dream and the rest of the Endless are there in the shadows as they always are.