The Sandman: The Doll's House
Encyclopedia
The Doll's House is the second trade paperback
collection of the comic book
series The Sandman, published by DC Comics
. It collects issues #9-16. It is written by Neil Gaiman
, illustrated by Mike Dringenberg
, Malcolm Jones III
, Chris Bachalo
, Michael Zulli
and Steve Parkhouse
, coloured by Robbie Busch and lettered by Todd Klein
. It was issued in paperback in 1990 - before the first volume (Preludes and Nocturnes) - and later reissued as a hardback volume in 1995. The collected edition features a foreword by Gaiman's friend Clive Barker
.
Both Preludes and Nocturnes
and early editions of The Doll's House reprint issue #8 of the series ("The Sound of Her Wings"). This is probably because The Doll's House was the first Sandman collection to be printed, and it is likely that at the time it was unclear whether any others would be issued. When the series became popular enough to be fully collected, issue #8 was also included in Preludes and Nocturnes, to which it is arguably the epilogue, and newer reprints of The Doll's House do not include it.
The overall plot concerns Dream picking up the pieces of his kingdom and existence in the wake of his imprisonment for most of the twentieth century, and a machination by his sibling Desire
.
Specifically, Dream tracks down several nightmares who fled his realm during his imprisonment, and also deals with a "dream vortex" that exists within a young American woman named Rose Walker
. Dream knows that Walker, as the dream vortex, will draw rogue dreams and nightmares towards herself, or be drawn towards them. If left unchecked, Walker will eventually become the center of the Dreaming and cause it to collapse upon itself, and it is Dream's responsibility to kill her in order to prevent this from happening.
The Doll's House prologue begins with two men walking through a desert wearing "tribal" garb; one young, one old. The young man has just been circumcised
as part of the ritual of becoming a man. The second part of the ritual is the telling of a story that has been passed down among the males of the tribe for generations. Each man hears it once, and each man tells it once (if they live long enough). Before the old man tells the story he asks the young man to find an object that he will know when he sees (which turns out to be a piece of glass in the shape of a heart).
The glass belonged to a building in a glass city that stood in the desert in which they walked many years before. The queen of this city was a woman named Nada who had fallen in love with Lord Kai'ckul (Dream), king of the Dream realm, after seeing him walking through her city at night. She proceeds to hunt him down and enters the Dream realm, where she meets Lord Kai'ckul and tells him that she has fallen in love with him. He tells her that she may join him in the Dream realm if she wishes, but she refuses, telling him that no good can come from love between one of the Endless
and a mortal, then leaves him. Dismayed, Dream follows her and convinces her to be with him; they make love
on a hill overlooking her city. In the morning, a meteor strikes her city, destroying it completely (hence the glass shard). After seeing this Nada throws herself off a cliff before Dream can stop her. He meets her in Grandmother Death's realm, and tries to convince her to come back and live in the Dreaming with him. After he asks her twice, and she refuses he tells her that if she says no again he will send her to Hell. At this point the story ends and when the young man asks about what happens to Nada afterwards, he is told, "What else could she do? She said no." In the narration, it says that the women of the tribe tell a different version, which is unknown to the males.
The story then shifts to the present, where Desire
calls upon its twin, Despair
, to inform her that there is a new dream vortex. On Earth, young Rose Walker and her mother Miranda meet her grandmother, Unity Kinkaid, a victim of the sleeping sickness
that occurred while Dream was imprisoned. She was rape
d in her sleep and wanted to meet them, before she died. Although Miranda is unable to accept Unity as her mother (she was adopted quickly, and the scandal never gained publicity), Rose sees a resemblance.
Unity tells Rose to walk out of the room, so she can both comfort Miranda, and tell her the true story. When she's called back in, Miranda now admits to Rose that it's true. It's decided upon that while Miranda stays in England with Unity (who is slowly dying), Rose will hire a private investigator
to find her brother, Jed Walker.
The investigator finds that Rose's father (who had Jed) is dead, and his exact location. Rose takes up residence in a boarding house full of peculiar characters, including Chantal and Zelda, an ambiguosly lesbian couple who always wear bridal garb and own a collection of stuffed spiders; Ken and Barbie, an extremely yuppie
-ish couple; the eccentric Gilbert, a self-described "amateur knight errant"; and the landlord Hal, a gay man who performs at nightclubs in drag
. Barbie appears as a main character in the fifth Sandman collection, A Game of You
. It should also be noted that Zelda appears in the ninth collection, The Kindly Ones
. At night, Rose dreams of her brother, who is having his own problems.
Jed, it turns out, is now in the hands of distant relatives, who keep him locked in their basement, and have only continued this process because of the funding they receive for keeping him "safe". In his mind, he has become the pawn of a pair of Dream's escaped creatures, who have been using him to host a small dream dimension of their own. A previous, short-lived Sandman
series created by Joe Simon
and Jack Kirby
in the mid-1970s is referenced in this volume. Simon and Kirby's Sandman was an otherwise unnamed hero who operated out of a place called the "Dream Dome," and was assisted by two grotesque "nightmare monsters" named Brute and Glob. Although Simon and Kirby's Sandman does not appear in Gaiman's story, several other elements of the series are referenced, including the Dream Dome (revealed to be a small and neglected corner of the Dreaming) and Brute and Glob. Simon and Kirby's Sandman has been replaced by Hector Hall, who had previously been a member of the superhero team Infinity, Inc. under the name Silver Scarab. Hall, who had been killed several months earlier in Infinity, Inc., and his still-living wife, Lyta (a.k.a. Fury
), have become puppets of Brute and Glob, who are revealed as the two nightmares formerly under Dream's employ who have recently sought refuge in the dreams of Rose’s younger brother, Jed. Dream returns Hector to the realm of the dead and claims Lyta’s unborn child as his own because the child gestated in dreams for so long, saying he will eventually come to take the boy. Thus, Dream has, in Lyta's eyes, taken away her husband and threatened her child. Dream's attempt to explain the situation to her is hurried and incomplete, as he is now running late for an appointment that he is anxious not to miss, and makes no impression. This sequence of events will have a major effect on the series’s later chapters.
Dream's appointment is with a man named Hob Gadling
, who was born in the fourteenth century. In 1389, during a discussion in a tavern, he declared that "death's a mug's game" and that he had no intention of ever dying. He is overheard by Dream and his sister Death; at her brother's urging, Death, amused and interested, grants Gadling immortality for as long as he wishes to live. Dream and Gadling meet once every hundred years in the same tavern, and over time the two become friends. In 1889, Hob had come to the conclusion that the only reason they kept on meeting was because they were lonely. Dream is furious, and tells him that he wouldn't befriend a mortal. However, by 1989, they have reconciled.
Meanwhile, Jed falls into the clutches of the Corinthian
, an escaped nightmare of whom Morpheus had once been especially proud, who has taken to murdering boys and eating their eyes. The Corinthian attends a convention of his fellow serial killer
s. Rose's friend Gilbert, who looks strikingly like G. K. Chesterton
, discovers the convention's true nature when he seemingly recognizes the Corinthian, and tells Rose that if she were ever in danger she should call a name he writes on a scrap of paper. A serial killer by the alias of Fun Land sees her, breaks into her room, with the intent of raping her. Grabbing the scrap of paper quickly, she calls out the name: Morpheus, and soon Dream arrives, puts Fun Land to sleep, and destroys the Corinthian with little difficulty, pocketing one of his three shrunken skulls for later. He then dispels the "cereal" convention and punishes its attendants by taking their dreams away from them, thus making them finally realize how pathetic and devoid of meaning their lives and crimes ultimately are.
Gilbert finds Jed in the back of the Corinthian's car, and has him sent to the hospital. Miranda, back in England, is sad to find that Unity has precious little time left, and is there to try and comfort her in her final moments.
Rose finds that she can merge the dreams of those who live in the same block. Dream informs Rose that she is in fact a dream vortex, and that he must kill her to restore order to the Dreaming, or the destruction of her world will result. Gilbert, actually Fiddler's Green (an area in the Dreaming) offers his life in Rose's place. Dream tells him that it isn't an option. However, before Dream can kill Rose, her grandmother Unity (now in a younger form, as if she'd never fallen victim to sleeping sickness), enters the Dreaming and tells Dream to kill her instead. We learn that Unity was the one who was meant to be the dream vortex, but she never became one because of the sleeping sickness, so it was passed on to her granddaughter instead. Rose gives Unity her "heart", the object that makes her the vortex. At that moment, Unity seems to naturally die in the waking world, thus destroying the vortex. Dream explains to Rose that there is much that he doesn't understand, but she doesn't have to worry about it.
After waking from the dream of almost dying and being saved by her grandmother's sacrifice, Rose Walker retreats into isolation and tries to make sense of what happened to her and her family. If the dream were true, she reasons, then humans would merely be pieces in a game played by powers which to think about for too long would drive one crazy. At the end of six months, she decides that she has brooded and pondered for long enough, concludes that her dream was just a dream and returns to normal life.
In the next scene it appears that Dream too has spent the last six months thinking, and he confronts Desire with his conclusions. It is revealed that Dream's androgynous sibling, Desire
, devised the entire plot, raping Rose's grandmother in her sleep to set the wheels in motion. Desire's plan was to force Dream to kill a descendant of Desire and thus murder his own blood. This elaborate plot foreshadows many future troubles for Dream, and reveals Desire's vendetta with its older brother. Desire's plan to send the Kindly Ones after its brother was made in Three Septembers and a January (included in Fables and Reflections
), though the origin of their mutual hatred seems to be far more ancient than that (possibly even more ancient than the tragedy involving Nada). In the story "Dream: The Heart Of A Star" from "The Sandman: Endless Nights", it is revealed that Desire used to be Dream's "favourite sibling"--possibly already wantonly meddling with Dream's love life, until he declares they are no longer friends.
Dream warns Desire that it has overstepped its bounds, that the Endless exist for the mortals and not vice versa, that, if anything, mortals manipulate the Endless, like dolls. However, Desire shows no signs of understanding Dream, and, fickle as it is, it promptly forgets the idea completely and convinces itself that it is the master of its own destiny.
1 After positive sales of "the Doll's House," DC went back and published "Preludes & Nocturnes" as a bound collection, and this book was published the same month as "Dream Country." Newer editions of "the Doll's House" start with issue 9.
Trade paperback (comics)
In comics, a trade paperback is a collection of stories originally published in comic books, reprinted in book format, usually capturing one story arc from a single title or a series of stories with a connected story arc or common theme from one or more titles...
collection of the comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
series The Sandman, published by DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
. It collects issues #9-16. It is written by Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard Gaiman born 10 November 1960)is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book...
, illustrated by Mike Dringenberg
Mike Dringenberg
Mike Dringenberg is a German/American comic book artist best known for his work on DC/Vertigo's Sandman series with writer Neil Gaiman after original artist Sam Kieth's departure.-Biography:Dringenberg was born in Laon, France...
, Malcolm Jones III
Malcolm Jones III
Malcolm Jones, III was an American comic book artist best known as an inker on The Sandman, where he added his illustrative line and textures to the work of pencillers such as Mike Dringenberg, Kelley Jones, and Colleen Doran...
, Chris Bachalo
Chris Bachalo
Chris Bachalo is an American comic book illustrator known for his quirky, cartoon-like style. He became well known for stints on DC Comics’ Shade, the Changing Man and Neil Gaiman's two Death series...
, Michael Zulli
Michael Zulli
Michael Zulli is an American artist known for his work as an animal and wildlife illustrator and as a comic book illustrator. He's gotten great acclaim for his work on The Sandman with writer Neil Gaiman and has been a longtime collaborator with the author...
and Steve Parkhouse
Steve Parkhouse
Steve Parkhouse is a writer, artist and letterer who has worked for many British comics, especially 2000 AD and Doctor Who Magazine.-Biography:...
, coloured by Robbie Busch and lettered by Todd Klein
Todd Klein
Todd Klein is an American comic book letterer, logo designer, and occasional writer, primarily for DC Comics.- Early career:Todd Klein broke into comics in the summer of 1977, hired by DC Comics as a staff production worker...
. It was issued in paperback in 1990 - before the first volume (Preludes and Nocturnes) - and later reissued as a hardback volume in 1995. The collected edition features a foreword by Gaiman's friend Clive Barker
Clive Barker
Clive Barker is an English author, film director and visual artist best known for his work in both fantasy and horror fiction. Barker came to prominence in the mid-1980s with a series of short stories which established him as a leading young horror writer...
.
Both Preludes and Nocturnes
The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes
Preludes & Nocturnes is the first trade paperback collection of the comic book series The Sandman, published by DC Comics. It collects issues #1-8...
and early editions of The Doll's House reprint issue #8 of the series ("The Sound of Her Wings"). This is probably because The Doll's House was the first Sandman collection to be printed, and it is likely that at the time it was unclear whether any others would be issued. When the series became popular enough to be fully collected, issue #8 was also included in Preludes and Nocturnes, to which it is arguably the epilogue, and newer reprints of The Doll's House do not include it.
Synopsis
Desire (DC Comics)
Desire is a fictional character from the DC comic book series The Sandman . The character first appeared in The Sandman vol. 2, #10 , and was created by Neil Gaiman and Mike Dringenberg.-Publication history:...
.
Specifically, Dream tracks down several nightmares who fled his realm during his imprisonment, and also deals with a "dream vortex" that exists within a young American woman named Rose Walker
Rose Walker
Rose Walker is a fictional character from the Sandman series written by Neil Gaiman. She makes her first appearance in issue #10, part one of The Doll's House story arc. She is a beautiful young girl, a blonde with red- and purple-dyed streaks in her hair...
. Dream knows that Walker, as the dream vortex, will draw rogue dreams and nightmares towards herself, or be drawn towards them. If left unchecked, Walker will eventually become the center of the Dreaming and cause it to collapse upon itself, and it is Dream's responsibility to kill her in order to prevent this from happening.
The Doll's House prologue begins with two men walking through a desert wearing "tribal" garb; one young, one old. The young man has just been circumcised
Circumcision
Male circumcision is the surgical removal of some or all of the foreskin from the penis. The word "circumcision" comes from Latin and ....
as part of the ritual of becoming a man. The second part of the ritual is the telling of a story that has been passed down among the males of the tribe for generations. Each man hears it once, and each man tells it once (if they live long enough). Before the old man tells the story he asks the young man to find an object that he will know when he sees (which turns out to be a piece of glass in the shape of a heart).
The glass belonged to a building in a glass city that stood in the desert in which they walked many years before. The queen of this city was a woman named Nada who had fallen in love with Lord Kai'ckul (Dream), king of the Dream realm, after seeing him walking through her city at night. She proceeds to hunt him down and enters the Dream realm, where she meets Lord Kai'ckul and tells him that she has fallen in love with him. He tells her that she may join him in the Dream realm if she wishes, but she refuses, telling him that no good can come from love between one of the Endless
Endless (comics)
The Endless are a group of beings who embody powerful forces or aspects of the universe in the DC comic book series The Sandman, by Neil Gaiman. They have existed since the dawn of time and are thought to be among the most powerful beings in the universe...
and a mortal, then leaves him. Dismayed, Dream follows her and convinces her to be with him; they make love
Sex
In biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety . Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents...
on a hill overlooking her city. In the morning, a meteor strikes her city, destroying it completely (hence the glass shard). After seeing this Nada throws herself off a cliff before Dream can stop her. He meets her in Grandmother Death's realm, and tries to convince her to come back and live in the Dreaming with him. After he asks her twice, and she refuses he tells her that if she says no again he will send her to Hell. At this point the story ends and when the young man asks about what happens to Nada afterwards, he is told, "What else could she do? She said no." In the narration, it says that the women of the tribe tell a different version, which is unknown to the males.
The story then shifts to the present, where Desire
Desire (DC Comics)
Desire is a fictional character from the DC comic book series The Sandman . The character first appeared in The Sandman vol. 2, #10 , and was created by Neil Gaiman and Mike Dringenberg.-Publication history:...
calls upon its twin, Despair
Despair (DC Comics)
Despair is one of the Endless, fictional characters from Neil Gaiman's comic book series, The Sandman.Despair is the twin sister of Desire. She is squat, flabby and pale-skinned, with black hair, gray eyes, and pointed teeth. Her voice is little more than a whisper, and she has no odor, but her...
, to inform her that there is a new dream vortex. On Earth, young Rose Walker and her mother Miranda meet her grandmother, Unity Kinkaid, a victim of the sleeping sickness
Encephalitis lethargica
Encephalitis lethargica or von Economo disease is an atypical form of encephalitis. Also known as "sleepy sickness" , it was first described by the neurologist Constantin von Economo in 1917. The disease attacks the brain, leaving some victims in a statue-like condition, speechless and motionless...
that occurred while Dream was imprisoned. She was rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
d in her sleep and wanted to meet them, before she died. Although Miranda is unable to accept Unity as her mother (she was adopted quickly, and the scandal never gained publicity), Rose sees a resemblance.
Unity tells Rose to walk out of the room, so she can both comfort Miranda, and tell her the true story. When she's called back in, Miranda now admits to Rose that it's true. It's decided upon that while Miranda stays in England with Unity (who is slowly dying), Rose will hire a private investigator
Private investigator
A private investigator , private detective or inquiry agent, is a person who can be hired by individuals or groups to undertake investigatory law services. Private detectives/investigators often work for attorneys in civil cases. Many work for insurance companies to investigate suspicious claims...
to find her brother, Jed Walker.
The investigator finds that Rose's father (who had Jed) is dead, and his exact location. Rose takes up residence in a boarding house full of peculiar characters, including Chantal and Zelda, an ambiguosly lesbian couple who always wear bridal garb and own a collection of stuffed spiders; Ken and Barbie, an extremely yuppie
Yuppie
Yuppie is a term that refers to a member of the upper middle class or upper class in their 20s or 30s. It first came into use in the early-1980s and largely faded from American popular culture in the late-1980s, due to the 1987 stock market crash and the early 1990s recession...
-ish couple; the eccentric Gilbert, a self-described "amateur knight errant"; and the landlord Hal, a gay man who performs at nightclubs in drag
Drag queen
A drag queen is a man who dresses, and usually acts, like a caricature woman often for the purpose of entertaining. There are many kinds of drag artists and they vary greatly, from professionals who have starred in films to people who just try it once. Drag queens also vary by class and culture and...
. Barbie appears as a main character in the fifth Sandman collection, A Game of You
The Sandman: A Game of You
A Game of You is the fifth collection of issues in the DC Comics series, The Sandman. Written by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Shawn McManus, Colleen Doran, Bryan Talbot, George Pratt, Stan Woch and Dick Giordano, and lettered by Todd Klein....
. It should also be noted that Zelda appears in the ninth collection, The Kindly Ones
The Sandman: The Kindly Ones
The Kindly Ones is the ninth collection of issues in the DC Comics series, The Sandman. Written by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Marc Hempel, Richard Case, D'Israeli, Teddy Kristiansen, Glyn Dillon, Charles Vess, Dean Ormston and Kevin Nowlan, coloured by Danny Vozzo, and lettered by Todd Klein.The...
. At night, Rose dreams of her brother, who is having his own problems.
Jed, it turns out, is now in the hands of distant relatives, who keep him locked in their basement, and have only continued this process because of the funding they receive for keeping him "safe". In his mind, he has become the pawn of a pair of Dream's escaped creatures, who have been using him to host a small dream dimension of their own. A previous, short-lived Sandman
Sandman (DC Comics)
Sandman is the name of seven fictional characters, superheroes appearing in comic books published by DC Comics. All are connected in one way or the other, though there are three largely dissimilar concepts, with two or three persons having served in each role various times...
series created by Joe Simon
Joe Simon
Joseph Henry "Joe" Simon is an American comic book writer, artist, editor, and publisher. Simon created or co-created many important characters in the 1930s-1940s Golden Age of Comic Books and served as the first editor of Timely Comics, the company that would evolve into Marvel Comics.With his...
and Jack Kirby
Jack Kirby
Jack Kirby , born Jacob Kurtzberg, was an American comic book artist, writer and editor regarded by historians and fans as one of the major innovators and most influential creators in the comic book medium....
in the mid-1970s is referenced in this volume. Simon and Kirby's Sandman was an otherwise unnamed hero who operated out of a place called the "Dream Dome," and was assisted by two grotesque "nightmare monsters" named Brute and Glob. Although Simon and Kirby's Sandman does not appear in Gaiman's story, several other elements of the series are referenced, including the Dream Dome (revealed to be a small and neglected corner of the Dreaming) and Brute and Glob. Simon and Kirby's Sandman has been replaced by Hector Hall, who had previously been a member of the superhero team Infinity, Inc. under the name Silver Scarab. Hall, who had been killed several months earlier in Infinity, Inc., and his still-living wife, Lyta (a.k.a. Fury
Fury (DC Comics)
Fury is the codename shared by three DC Comics superheroes, two of whom are mother and daughter, both of whom directly connected with the Furies of mythology, and the third who is an altogether different character.-Pre-Crisis:...
), have become puppets of Brute and Glob, who are revealed as the two nightmares formerly under Dream's employ who have recently sought refuge in the dreams of Rose’s younger brother, Jed. Dream returns Hector to the realm of the dead and claims Lyta’s unborn child as his own because the child gestated in dreams for so long, saying he will eventually come to take the boy. Thus, Dream has, in Lyta's eyes, taken away her husband and threatened her child. Dream's attempt to explain the situation to her is hurried and incomplete, as he is now running late for an appointment that he is anxious not to miss, and makes no impression. This sequence of events will have a major effect on the series’s later chapters.
Dream's appointment is with a man named Hob Gadling
Hob Gadling
Hob Gadling is a fictional character from the Sandman comic book series by Neil Gaiman. Gadling first appears in the story "Men of Good Fortune" in The Sandman #13 as a soldier of the Hundred Years' War, arguing with friends in an inn somewhere inside the modern borders of London.-Background:We...
, who was born in the fourteenth century. In 1389, during a discussion in a tavern, he declared that "death's a mug's game" and that he had no intention of ever dying. He is overheard by Dream and his sister Death; at her brother's urging, Death, amused and interested, grants Gadling immortality for as long as he wishes to live. Dream and Gadling meet once every hundred years in the same tavern, and over time the two become friends. In 1889, Hob had come to the conclusion that the only reason they kept on meeting was because they were lonely. Dream is furious, and tells him that he wouldn't befriend a mortal. However, by 1989, they have reconciled.
Meanwhile, Jed falls into the clutches of the Corinthian
Corinthian (comics)
The Corinthian is a fictional character in Neil Gaiman's comic book series The Sandman. He can first be seen in The Sandman #10 , which is part of the second story arc, The Doll's House. The Corinthian is a nightmare created by Dream, who destroys him in the same collection for going rogue and...
, an escaped nightmare of whom Morpheus had once been especially proud, who has taken to murdering boys and eating their eyes. The Corinthian attends a convention of his fellow serial killer
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
s. Rose's friend Gilbert, who looks strikingly like G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....
, discovers the convention's true nature when he seemingly recognizes the Corinthian, and tells Rose that if she were ever in danger she should call a name he writes on a scrap of paper. A serial killer by the alias of Fun Land sees her, breaks into her room, with the intent of raping her. Grabbing the scrap of paper quickly, she calls out the name: Morpheus, and soon Dream arrives, puts Fun Land to sleep, and destroys the Corinthian with little difficulty, pocketing one of his three shrunken skulls for later. He then dispels the "cereal" convention and punishes its attendants by taking their dreams away from them, thus making them finally realize how pathetic and devoid of meaning their lives and crimes ultimately are.
Gilbert finds Jed in the back of the Corinthian's car, and has him sent to the hospital. Miranda, back in England, is sad to find that Unity has precious little time left, and is there to try and comfort her in her final moments.
Rose finds that she can merge the dreams of those who live in the same block. Dream informs Rose that she is in fact a dream vortex, and that he must kill her to restore order to the Dreaming, or the destruction of her world will result. Gilbert, actually Fiddler's Green (an area in the Dreaming) offers his life in Rose's place. Dream tells him that it isn't an option. However, before Dream can kill Rose, her grandmother Unity (now in a younger form, as if she'd never fallen victim to sleeping sickness), enters the Dreaming and tells Dream to kill her instead. We learn that Unity was the one who was meant to be the dream vortex, but she never became one because of the sleeping sickness, so it was passed on to her granddaughter instead. Rose gives Unity her "heart", the object that makes her the vortex. At that moment, Unity seems to naturally die in the waking world, thus destroying the vortex. Dream explains to Rose that there is much that he doesn't understand, but she doesn't have to worry about it.
After waking from the dream of almost dying and being saved by her grandmother's sacrifice, Rose Walker retreats into isolation and tries to make sense of what happened to her and her family. If the dream were true, she reasons, then humans would merely be pieces in a game played by powers which to think about for too long would drive one crazy. At the end of six months, she decides that she has brooded and pondered for long enough, concludes that her dream was just a dream and returns to normal life.
In the next scene it appears that Dream too has spent the last six months thinking, and he confronts Desire with his conclusions. It is revealed that Dream's androgynous sibling, Desire
Desire (DC Comics)
Desire is a fictional character from the DC comic book series The Sandman . The character first appeared in The Sandman vol. 2, #10 , and was created by Neil Gaiman and Mike Dringenberg.-Publication history:...
, devised the entire plot, raping Rose's grandmother in her sleep to set the wheels in motion. Desire's plan was to force Dream to kill a descendant of Desire and thus murder his own blood. This elaborate plot foreshadows many future troubles for Dream, and reveals Desire's vendetta with its older brother. Desire's plan to send the Kindly Ones after its brother was made in Three Septembers and a January (included in Fables and Reflections
The Sandman: Fables and Reflections
Fables & Reflections is the sixth collection of issues in the DC Comics series, The Sandman. It was written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Bryan Talbot, Stan Woch, P...
), though the origin of their mutual hatred seems to be far more ancient than that (possibly even more ancient than the tragedy involving Nada). In the story "Dream: The Heart Of A Star" from "The Sandman: Endless Nights", it is revealed that Desire used to be Dream's "favourite sibling"--possibly already wantonly meddling with Dream's love life, until he declares they are no longer friends.
Dream warns Desire that it has overstepped its bounds, that the Endless exist for the mortals and not vice versa, that, if anything, mortals manipulate the Endless, like dolls. However, Desire shows no signs of understanding Dream, and, fickle as it is, it promptly forgets the idea completely and convinces itself that it is the master of its own destiny.
Issues Collected
| Issue | Title | Writer | Penciller | Inker | Colorist | Letterer | Ast Editor | Editor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 81 | The Sound of Her Wings | Neil Gaiman | Mike Dringenberg | Malcolm Jones III | Robbie Busch | Todd Klein | Art Young | Karen Berger |
| 9 | Tales in the Sand | Neil Gaiman | Mike Dringenberg | Malcolm Jones III | Robbie Busch | Todd Klein | Art Young | Karen Berger |
| 10 | The Doll's House | Neil Gaiman | Mike Dringenberg | Malcolm Jones III | Robbie Busch | Todd Klein | Art Young | Karen Berger |
| 11 | Moving In | Neil Gaiman | Mike Dringenberg | Malcolm Jones III | Robbie Busch | John Costanza | Art Young | Karen Berger |
| 12 | Playing House | Neil Gaiman | Chris Bachalo | Malcolm Jones III | Robbie Busch | John Costanza | Art Young | Karen Berger |
| 13 | Men of Good Fortune | Neil Gaiman | Michael Zulli | Steve Parkhouse | Robbie Busch | Todd Klein | Art Young | Karen Berger |
| 14 | Collectors | Neil Gaiman | Mike Dringenberg | Malcolm Jones III | Robbie Busch | Todd Klein | Art Young | Karen Berger |
| 15 | Into the Night | Neil Gaiman | Mike Dringenberg w/ help from Sam Kieth | Malcolm Jones III | Robbie Busch | Todd Klein | Art Young | Karen Berger |
| 16 | Lost Hearts | Neil Gaiman | Mike Dringenberg | Malcolm Jones III | Robbie Busch | Todd Klein | Tom Peyer | Karen Berger |
1 After positive sales of "the Doll's House," DC went back and published "Preludes & Nocturnes" as a bound collection, and this book was published the same month as "Dream Country." Newer editions of "the Doll's House" start with issue 9.