You Mean Death Doesn't Look Like Brad Pitt?

'One day in every century Death takes on mortal flesh, better to comprehend what the lives she takes must feel like, to taste the bitter tang of mortality: and this is the price she must pay for being the divider of the living from all that has gone before, all that must come after.

That's what Death tells Sexton Furnival as they sit locked in a basement together. And that's the basis for this three issue mini-series written by Neil Gaiman. It is based on the most popular character (besides Dream himself) from Gaiman's sweeping epic of a comic book series The Sandman. Death is the oldest sister of the family known as the Endless. They are older than the Gods, and will be the last ones here after the Gods die - in fact, Death'll be the one who "puts the chairs up on the table and locks the door" to the universe as she goes.

My name is Sexton Furnival, but I'm pretty much used to it by now, and this is the last thing I'm ever going to write.
Sexton is sixteen - almost sixteen and a half. He feels he has nothing to live for - he doesn't have anybody he's in love with, he doesn't have anybody that he hates, and he doesn't have a faithful sidekick. His mother kicks him out of their apartment so she can "spring clean" and Sexton runs into Death, who's "taking a holiday" in a dump. This isn't your typical Grim Reaper - Death is skinny, perky, Goth-looking girl, dressed all in black with a head full of bushy black hair and a silver ankh around her neck. But nevertheless, she is Death.

Ah, live fast, love hard, leave a beautiful corpse.
Death, on her day off, and Sexton go to a club where they hear a young woman named Foxglove sing. This is what makes Gaiman a genius - everything connects. Sandman readers will recognize Foxglove, and her (now pregnant) lover Hazel from the arc A Game of You. Delving in even farther... Foxglove (nee Donna Cavangh) had a girlfriend who beat her, named Judy. Judy went to a diner after having a fight with Foxglove, and was killed by Dr. Destiny in the issue 24 Hours from the first arc of Sandman, Preludes & Nocturnes. Mad Hettie, another character from Sandman and later of The Dreaming plays a large role in this mini-series as well. Everything connects.

I love that.

Death gets everything for free, 'cause she's nice and polite and says 'thank you' to people. But in the end, at the end of her day, she realizes that life has its own price, and its worth a whole lot more than some free lox and bagels or a hot dog or a top hat or an ankh. Gaiman's mastery is that even an anamorphic representation of something is still learning - that we never stop learning, that we are always expanding and that there is always something new.

Death is a great character -- it's easy to see why she remains very popular. Personally, I prefer the next Death mini-series that Gaiman did, called The Time of Your Life. That story is less Death's and more Foxglove and Hazel, but Death does play a key role and it is a wonderful story. Chris Bachalo and Mark Buckingham's artwork in The High Cost of Living is beautiful - the colors are rich and the pictures are detailed and wonderful. And, for the Tori fans who delve into Gaiman now and then, there is an introduction by Tori Amos to this mini-series, too.

There's this thing they have in French: l'esprit d'escalier. The spirit of the stairway. I don't think we have a word for it in English.
It means, well, the clever things to say that you only think to yourself when you're on your way out.
All the cool stuff you wish you'd said at the time. So I'm walking down the stairs thinking:
Firstly, there's no such person as Death.
Second, Death's this tall guy with a bone face, like a skeletal monk, with a scythe and an hourglass, and a penchant for playing chess with Scandinavians.
Third, he doesn't exist either.