Sandman-The Kind

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The Benevolent (OT The Kindly Ones ) is the ninth collection of the DC Comics series The Sandman . The series was written by Neil Gaiman , the individual episodes were illustrated by Marc Hempel , Richard Case , D'Israeli , Teddy Kristiansen , Glyn Dillon , Charles Vess , Dean Ormston and Kevin Nowlan . All episodes were posted by Todd Klein .

The individual editions of the collection were first published between 1993 and 1995. The collection was published as paperback and hardcover in 1996.

action

The Kindly Ones concludes the main storyline of The Sandman and in particular completes the storylines from the second volume The Doll's House and the fifth volume A Game of You . Gaiman also takes up many motifs from the Season of Mists and the Orpheus story (in Fables and Reflections and Brief Lives ) and gives them more meaning.

Structurally, The Kindly Ones is certainly one of the most ambitious collections in the series. It is also by far the longest. The Tilsner Verlag divided the German edition into two books. The narrative is conceived like an ancient tragedy in which the moirs form the chorus . The Moiren embody fate and are represented as three witches, who also appeared in the previous volumes.

In this story, various conflicts that Morpheus caused in the past culminate and combine to form a threat that he could only avoid by relinquishing his responsibility. And that would never be an option for him.

Hypolyta Hall, mother of Morpheus' son Daniel, the Norse god Loki, and the witch Thessaly all have their own reasons for taking revenge on Morpheus. After Daniel is kidnapped, Hypolyta mistakenly believes that Morpheus was responsible. In fact, Loki and the puck from Gaiman's version of the Midsummer Night's Dream kidnapped the boy and burned his mortal part to incite Hypolyta on Morpheus.

On her search for Morpheus, Hypolyta meets the goddesses of vengeance themselves, the Erinyes (or Furies or Eumenides - the eponymous "kind") and joins them. You may punish Morpheus avengingly for shedding family blood - not that of his son Daniel, as Hypolyta believed, but that of Orpheus, whom he killed at his own request.

Throughout the story it remains vague whether Morpheus understood the consequences of his actions and his unconditional devotion to his duty. He follows a call from Nuala to the fairy kingdom, although he thereby exposes his kingdom to the Erinyes, only because he has promised the girl that he will do her a favor one day.

Gaiman contrasts this unconditional fulfillment of duty, as it were as comments, with other stories that only have something to do with the actual plot to a limited extent. For example, Hypolyta Hall meets a man in a nightclub in Los Angeles while the bar owner plays the piano in the background, although he doesn't like to fulfill wishes. The pianist is Lucifer , who once presented Morpheus with the keys to Hell when he no longer felt any desire for them and thus simply gave up his duty.

It can be assumed that Morpheus sees the end of his path at the latest when he instructs the newly created Corinthians, an eye-eating nightmare, to look for Daniel and bring him into the dream realm. In the end, Morpheus is faced with the choice between letting the Erinyes destroy his empire or dying. He calls his sister Death and offers her his hand, a scene that strangely takes up the much funnier scene from Sound of Her Wings . Morpheus and with it his incarnation of the principle Dream is now dead. His role is now taken over by Daniel, who will never return to his mother.

See also

Characters in the Sandman series