The Sandman: Season of Mists

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Season of Mists (1992) is the fourth collection of issues in the DC Comics series, The Sandman, written by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Kelley Jones, Mike Dringenberg, Malcolm Jones III, Matt Wagner, Dick Giordano, George Pratt and P. Craig Russell, coloured by Steve Oliff and Danny Vozzo, and lettered by Todd Klein.

The issues in the collection first appeared in 1990 and 1991. The collection first appeared in paperback and hardback in 1992. The title is the opening phrase of John Keats' "Ode to Autumn."

It was preceded by Dream Country and was followed by A Game of You. The 2003 graphic novel Death: At Death's Door by Jill Thompson is also related.

Kelley Jones pencils the bulk of the story, inked in various issues by Malcolm Jones, Dick Giordano and P. Craig Russell. Jones's larger-than-life grotesques and obvious sense of humour make him ideal for gods, demons and other supernatural figures. His episodes are bookended by a prologue and an epilogue drawn by Mike Dringenberg, the former inked by Malcolm Jones III, the latter by George Pratt; and an interlude set in an English boarding school is drawn by Matt Wagner and inked by Jones III. It introduces Endless siblings Destiny and Delirium, and features Thor, Odin and Loki from Norse mythology, Anubis and Bast from Egyptian mythology, Susanoo-no-mikoto from Japanese mythology, Lucifer and the Angels Duma and Remiel from Christianity, Shivering Jemmy, a Lord of Chaos with the body of a child and the mind of a monster, and the fairies Cluracan and Nuala, who will play important roles in later stories.

Season of Mists is the first rehearsal of one of the central themes of the series, that of rules and responsibilities and whether we can lay them down. The Endless family conference which opens the book makes the second reference to the "prodigal" (the first reference appearing in "The Doll's House"), an Endless sibling who abandoned his realm and responsibilities, and centres around Lucifer deciding he doesn't want to be the devil anymore.

In 2004 this collection received the award for the best scenario at the Angoulême International Comics Festival.

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The fourth collection belongs with the first as perhaps one of the two collections most focused on Morpheus himself. It begins with an Endless family meeting, which like (we assume) many Endless family meetings descends almost immediately into an Endless family argument. Desire angers Morpheus by taunting him about his intolerant treatment of a former lover, whose story formed the prologue to the second collection, The Doll's House; Death angers him further by agreeing with Desire, but Morpheus' immense respect for Death leads him eventually to agree with her assessment. He leaves his realm to travel to Hell, where he imprisoned his former lover, to release her. Having left Lucifer, lord of Hell, somewhat angry with him the last time he ventured there - in the first collection, Preludes and Nocturnes - Morpheus is understandably apprehensive about the task, but sets about it nevertheless; this is clearly one of his more basic characteristics, the belief that one should attempt to do what one believes is right.

In the event, his apprehension is somewhat misplaced. As he arrives, Lucifer is busy closing down Hell. In a beautifully illustrated sequence, Morpheus follows Lucifer around in a state of some bafflement before Lucifer finally persuades him this is not an elaborate trick, that he indeed intends to leave Hell - and his obligations as its lord - forever. His final act before leaving is to lock all the portals to Hell and cut off his wings; he then, with (one feels) a sense of some satisfaction, hands the key to Hell to Morpheus, to do with as he will. Much of the rest of the collection is concerned with Morpheus' attempt to divest himself of this troublesome piece of real estate.

Much to Morpheus's chagrin, the interested parties promptly convene in the castle at the centre of his realm, the Dreaming. Here many characters who have parts to play later in the series are introduced, amongst them the representatives of Faerie, Cluracan, and his sister Nuala. After much bargaining, wheedling, bribery, trickery, Norse drunkenness, and threatening behaviour, Morpheus manages to get rid of Hell without much obvious harm coming to him. (Whether or not the possession and handling of Hell and certain resulting decisions have much to do with the subsequent events that trouble Morpheus in later volumes is open to debate.) The collection ends with Lucifer sitting on an Australian beach, grudgingly admiring God's sunset.

The oddball issue in this mostly coherent collection is #24, "In Which the Dead Return; and Charles Rowland Concludes His Education", a rather spooky take on the traditional English boarding-school story which is used to illustrate the consequences of Hell's closure. This plotline was cut off before the resolution of Morpheus's predicament. Unfortunately, the two focus characters are never heard from again in the Sandman series, though they later appear as "The Dead Boy Detectives" in Gaiman's Vertigo cross-over story The Children's Crusade, and in a mini-series of that name by Jill Thompson.

In places one of the more obviously comic of the series' collections, it is principally concerned with fleshing out Morpheus' nobly tragic character, and some of his history. It also introduces some of the series' more important secondary characters. These include some who play a part in the eventual denouement of the series in the ninth collection, The Kindly Ones, the Norse gods Loki, Odin and Thor. In one of the many parallel stories the collection provides Loki's particular motive for resentment against Morpheus. The start of this particular thread contains one of the key lines of the series: "There is a cavern beneath the world. (This is true. You must know in your bones that this is true, although all logic argues against it.)" It encapsulates one of the series' key ideas, a version of the philosophical idea that reality is ultimately subjective, defined by human beliefs (and, for Gaiman at least, human stories).

[edit] Issues collected

Sandman #21: "Season of Mists: A Prologue" (aka "Episode 0")... art by Mike Dringenberg and Malcolm Jones III
Sandman #22: "Season of Mists: Episode 1" ... art by Kelley Jones and M. Jones III
Sandman #23: "Season of Mists: Episode 2" ... art by K. Jones and M. Jones III
Sandman #24: "Season of Mists: Episode 3" ... art by K. Jones and P. Craig Russell
Sandman #25: "Season of Mists: Episode 4" ... art by Matt Wagner and M. Jones III
Sandman #26: "Season of Mists: Episode 5" ... art by K. Jones and George Pratt
Sandman #27: "Season of Mists: Episode 6" ... art by K. Jones and Dick Giordano
Sandman #28: "Season of Mists: Episode 7" ... art by Dringenberg and Pratt