Sandman - Short Lives

Short Lives (OT Brief Lives ) is the seventh collection of editions of the DC Comics series, The Sandman , written by Neil Gaiman , illustrated by Jill Thompson , Vince Locke and Dick Giordano, and lettered by Todd Klein .

The editions of this collection first appeared in 1992 and 1993. The collection was published in paperback and hardcover in 1994.

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The plot of this collection takes storylines from Season of Mist and the Orpheus story from Fables and Reflections again and is for the most part of the Eternal (English: the endless ), where more space is given than in the other episodes of the series.

The main story is structurally a quest . Morpheus and his younger sister Delirium are looking for their brother Destruction , who gave up his kingdom and responsibility at the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment . Delirium had previously asked her siblings Desire and Despair for help, but they refused. Dream, who suffers from lovesickness, welcomes the distraction. Together with Delirium, he looks for a list of people in the real world who have had close contact with Destruction. Because Destruction does not want to be found, several of these contact persons die or disappear, for example the 15,000 year old lawyer who is killed by a collapsing building, a shaman who transforms into a bear, and a former lover of Destruction, which barely escapes a gas explosion. The driver that Morpheus' friend Pharamond found for them (he, too, of extreme longevity, to which the title of the volume alludes ironically - it is said they drank wine together in Babylon ) died. Finally they meet the former Mesopotamian goddess of love Ištar , who is now leading a decline in her ancient life in a table dance club. She also has no information about Destruction's whereabouts, but in remembrance of her previous existence, she abandons any reluctance to dance, causing the audience to experience a deadly orgasm and the club being destroyed. Dream realizes that the search will only bring death to people and, to Delirium's disappointment, breaks off the search. Back in the dreamland, he makes contact with the Egyptian cat goddess Bastet , who in Season of Mists had pretended to know Destruction's whereabouts, but this turns out to be a lie. Criticized by his sister Death for abandoning delirium, Dream changes his mind. together they look for their brother Destiny , who advises them to consult an oracle . They then go to Dream's son Orpheus. Its immortal head is the only thing that the maenads left of it and has been tended to on a Greek island for millennia. As a reward, Orpheus wants his father to die, which the latter grants him at the end of the gathering after a reconciliation. The shedding of family blood, which Morpheus was able to prevent in the case of Rose Walker (see The Doll's House ), now becomes inevitable for him, since it is out of the question for him to escape the responsibility of gratitude. This lays the foundation for the ninth volume Die Gütigen .

The conversation with Destruction is the focus of the collection. Destruction's comments about change and responsibility collide with Morpheus' rigid view of responsibility and duty. Although Dream is noticeably changing himself, he insists not to and refuses to consider the consequences.

The end of the meeting shows the differences between Destruction's willingness to change and Morpheus' rigid structure of duty. Destruction pulls out into the universe with a folded handkerchief on the end of a stick. When asked where to go, he replies: Oh, out there somewhere. Up. Out. (German: Oh, out somewhere. Up. Out. ). Morpheus names his sister's next goal: I need to return to the temple. I have to kill my son. (German: I have to go back to the temple. I have to kill my son. )

The old man who tends Orpheus' head and ultimately buries it forms the frame of the story. In the first panel it says: “Of course it's a miracle” (namely the survival of the head), in the last panel he says: “It will be a very wonderful day”. The American writer Peter Straub interprets this in the afterword as a consequence of the finiteness of all human existence, even if it is extremely long-lived: In view of the approaching death, it is important to perceive and enjoy every day as something special.