Reading Comics #99 "The Annotated Sandman Volume 1 #8"

Sandman #8 is the last issue included in the original collection Preludes & Nocturnes, and as such is the last issue I've previously read of the series on any kind of relevant basis (there was another odd issue, but for all intents and purposes, Preludes is the only real experience I have with the series to this point).

By the way, it's also the introduction of Death, the original Goth Chick.

The first notes Leslie S. Klinger provides reference blurbs that ran in the original comic, which curiously he doesn't provide for new readers, which is something that might have been expected.  He's provided lengthy extracts of similar material for previous issues.

Death, for the record, may look like a Goth Chick, but doesn't act like a Goth Chick.  She's much more lively!  The notes for the third page include a fairly spooky artistic coincidence concerning Neil Gaiman's encounter with a waitress who looked exactly like Death.

Keeping up the pattern established in other issues, Death is more prominent than Dream in the issue, though the star of the comic does end up doing some considerable reflecting based on this reunion with his sister.

If you want to know how lively Death really is, she apparently loves the movie Mary Poppins, which Klinger duly explains as different from the original book material, in such key points as the absence of "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" from the text (although that shouldn't be much of a surprise).

Klinger also explains all about the Egyptian talisman Death sports, the ankh, which ironically is all about life.

For Dream, this is a completely reflective issue, actually, as he remembers everything that he's experienced since the start of the series.  It's Death, however, who basically says what Gaiman's about to do with the rest of the series, starting a whole new story.  In a way, it's more appropriate than anyone seems to have considered for Gaiman to have done his version of a traditional superhero story to start things off, because that's not what anything else will be like.

As the issue progresses, Gaiman revisits some of the stuff he's already done in a different way, the little vignettes of lives that have populated the series so far.  This is turning out to be reliable material.

Klinger explains what you might to expect if you're intrigued by Death and want to know what else she does, by far at this point the most interesting example of this impulse in the notes, since Death is the most famous example so far.  If you ever wondered what Gaiman does in Death: The High Cost of Living, for example, Klinger lets you know.  It's a little surprising that Gaiman hasn't devoted more time to Death.

Though, of course, by the end of the issue it's Dream who's ready to move on, appropriate for any visit from Death...