Brief Lives

The only reason I gave this story 5 stars is because there wasn't six, or ten, or a hundred available as choices.Simply put, the Sandman is one of the greatest, most involving, most touching, (even for a hard to touch person such as myself) work of literature (yes, despite being a mere comic book it is literature, or as Peter Stuab says, nothing is) in the past century, perhaps in the past several centuries.And Brief Lives is the best volume in the Sandman series, hands down.The story, plot wise, is about a quest to find a missing brother.The story is really about so many things more; about death, fate, redemption, mercy, terrible kindness, the meddling of gods and endless in human affairs, what happens to a family when the person that is its glue leaves, what it means to have a conscience, pride, honor, and much more.Brief Lives is, even more than the other Sandman volumes, rich with beauty, imagery, imagination, and scenes that fire the imagination and touch the heart. Who cannot be moved by the anguish of Delirium and Despair, who is not awestruck by the scenes in the garden of Destiny or the conversation with Destruction, who is not genuinely saddened by the death of Orpheus and at Dream's terrible grief after the act, and who cannot be uplifted by the ending and the bond of love between Orpheus and his servant.As an aspiring writer, I can honestly say that Brief Lives is both an inspiration and a goal; I hope that I may be able to write a single work that compares to it.I will admit to being initially reluctant to pick up Brief Lives, perhaps because I sensed where Gaiman would take the Sandman in the last four issues, the inevitable turn to tragedy. Brief Lives is like the last warm day before winter or the last flash of light and color at sunset. The course of the Sandman was always destined to be a tragic one, and Brief Lives is the beginning of the end, the movement from dreamy stories to true tragedy, and watching it happen to an incredible character like Dream only makes it that much more affecting. Towards the end of the story, Desire, foretelling the future, says that Dream was wreck waiting to happen, and that has been true. Dream has been a wreck waiting to happen since he escaped his captivity, or maybe since Orpheus went down to Hades, or maybe before that. Up till now, though, there was always the chance that things would go another way, that there was a way around that destiny, but after Brief Lives, that is no longer the case. There is only one possible outcome, and it is only a matter of time.That knowledge, heart wrenching as it is, is what makes this the best of all the Sandman series, and the best story, of any type or genre that I've read in quite some time.

I have a soft spot of the Kindly Ones because that was my introduction to Neil Gaiman (I had read about him in Wizard, the monthly bible of the comic book world, but I was young, and stupid, and my ignorance kept me away from revelation), and for The Wake because Micheal Zulli's pencils are exquisite - but whenever I _need_ exactly what it is the Sandman has to offer I turn to Brief Lives.It's the distilliation - the essence - of what Sandman is about. Some might argue that Fables and Reflections or even Dream Country would be a better representative, a series of stunning vignettes whose swirling, mythic and dream like quality (I'm thinking of the fabulous Ramadan story) are about horror, fate, the depths of humanity and all that good stuff in the great traditions of fire-side story tellers.But Brief Lives is something even better. As Mikal Gilmore noted in his introduction to the graphic novel edition of The Wake, one of the seminal joys of the Sandman is hearing Gaiman's voice grow clearer with each passing issue. The progression from "The Sleep of the Just" to "The Tempest" is an astounding one; watching him grow makes any burgeoning and would-be writer both jealous and elated. The entire idea of the Sandman was revolutionary and different and pregnant with greatness (yes, a dangerous term, but applicable) - but it wasn't until Brief Lives that we _really_ saw what this thing could be capable of. Some argue that point occurred in "The Sound of Her Wings" in the first story arc, or perhaps Seasons of Mists, but _anyone_ who has read Brief Lives understands the truth....This story is breathtaking. It's a romp. It's a ride. It blows you away, grabs you, throws you down forever into the endless sky with a wild rush of words and images (the matching of Jill Thompson to this story is once more pure genius), it picks up a fatal and final inertia that doesn't slow down until the final page is turned - that is, the final page of the last issue of the series. It's from this point that the story picks up speed and urgency. Everything revolves around the central act of kindness that concludes Brief Lives, and all the tragedy and death and destruction and redemption that occur later on are merely a reflection of that single act.This is _the_ story. Everything before was technically brilliant, possessed of a fresh and blindingly new verve that the comic books medium hadn't seen in quite some time - but it was somehow _distant_. Brief Lives is full of a passionate proximity, a feeling of the here and now, a sense of both the confusion of every day life and miraculously together with that, the grand rush of scope. This is where Gaiman gets his chops.I can't recommend this book enough. It's got a winding, willowy wisdom (how's that for alliteration?) that stays with you beyond the waking realms, the kind of gift you return to as the years pass by, something that grows with you as oppossed to on you. Each time I read it I read something new and fresh, and each

Delirium, the youngest of the Endless, who was once Delight, needs a change. She decides to find her missing "prodigal" brother. She begs Dream to accompany her and surprisingly, (for reasons we don't discover til later) he agrees. But their prodigal brother is none other than Destruction, and as Dream and Delirium soon learn, few can seek Destruction unscathed. One of Gaiman's many skills is the use of doublespeak, and this story is no exception. It is a brilliant interplay of past accounts and current journeys, mirroring each other. "What's the name of the word for things not being the same always.....there must be a word for it. The thing that let's you know time is happening. Is there a word?" "Change" replies Dream, and that is the basis for this story. It marks the realization of what Dream boths needs and yet cannot accomplish - he must change to survive, or cast about the seeds of his own future destruction. "Brief Lives" is the glory of an already impeccable series. It is for me, the jewel in the crown of the entire Sandman saga. It manages to be haunting, thrilling and hysterical all at the same time.

Back in 1994, my brother was very much into comic books. Not wanting to buy my brother something wihtout buying me something, and knowing my flare for the dramatic and mythological, my father bought me one of the installments of Sandman: Brief Lives...and it changed my life forever. I hungrily started to read anything I could get my hands on by Neil Gaiman...but the haunting images and statements that I received from that book are still with me. It was the episode in which Dream comes face to face with his son after many many years...and agrees to a deadly boon. There are not enough adjectives dealing with "wonder" to describe Gaiman's work. He redefines the mythologies we are all familiar with and creates some new ones. But this is the catalyst installment...Brief Lives is when Dream truly cannot go back...when he passes the cusp of fate into the inevitable. Up until this point, Dream has a choice, but following his decisions in this book, he can no longer retreat to safety. He had become a part of my personal pantheon, as his brothers and sisters have. He's with me for the rest of my life.

Brief Lives, the sixth volume in the momentous, blindingly brilliant Sandman series, is the best yet. Though it's really hard to imagine anything better than A Game of You, which in turn was a shock to be better than A Season of Mists, it really DOES take one step up. Gaiman was better than them all before, but now he's a leap above himself again.In Brief Lives, Delirium, the youngest of the Endless, who was once Delight, sees the painful side of existence and concludes that it is due to the fact the the Endless are incomplete: Destruction left 300 years ago. She misses him and drags Morpheus into assisting her in finding their wayward brother. Things are never that easy, however, and they both learn quite a few valuable lessons in their travels, not least that all lives, even eternal ones, are brief and should thus be celebrated, cherished, and mourned. The whole thing is framed in two different ways of saying the same thing: "It is, of course, a miracle." and "It is going to be a beautiful day." All days are beautiful, no more and no less, and Gaiman never lets us forget it.Though this one deals with the Endless more than usually, it is, paradoxically, the most human one so far. Everyone feels the same way that this one does.