Let me tell you about the first time I saw Death.
Not the grim reaper, not the rider on the pale horse, but the petite goth in the black tank top, back-combed hair and ankh necklace from the Sandman comics, penned by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Mike Dringenberg. I think about her often, and I’ve been thinking about her almost nonstop since sexual abuse allegations started coming out against Gaiman last year.
Back in 1994, I was living in a student-run co-op at UC Berkeley and began bonding with a British exchange student, Alison, over our shared love of Tori Amos. She asked if I’d read Sandman; Tori namechecked Gaiman in “Tear In Your Hand,” off her debut album, even before the two became friends. When I said no, Alison pressed the first collection of issues into my hands and told me to come back when I’d finished reading it.
Graphic novels aren’t usually my favorite way to enjoy fiction, but I was sucked in by the gothic, surreal, moody atmosphere of the stories. And even though the Sandman/Morpheus/Dream is meant to be the central figure of the series, I immediately fell in love with Death, Dream’s older sister, when she appeared in issue #8, “The Sound of her Wings.”
By the time this character entered my life, Death had already made her mark. I lost a close friend when I was 16, followed by my mother when I was 22. A friend of mine’s mom died when he was 13 and I was 20. Another friend took his own life. Any adolescent sense of immortality had long been stripped away. It felt as though life could end at any moment and, if there was any personification of Death out there, it was indifferent at best, and possibly cruel in its timing.
Sitting in an urban park while Dream feeds the pigeons, Death offers her brother wise advice, but she never pulls rank or condescends. And when she does her job — that is, turning up at the moment of death and escorting people to the afterlife — she is kind and empathetic. In one issue, as she’s arrived to collect a man’s soul, she tells him, “You got what anyone gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime.” Somehow, she makes it sound fair.
“People feel as pleased to have been born, as if they did it themselves,” Death tells Dream in the 2022 Netflix adaptation of Sandman. “But they get upset and hurt and shaken when they die. And eventually, I learned that all they really need is a kind word and a friendly face, like they had in the beginning.”
A moment later, she gathers an infant into her arms and tells it, in the gentlest voice, “Yeah, I’m afraid so. That’s all there is, little one.”
Seeing those scenes, I thought: If that’s what death is like, if she’s the one who comes to take you across, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.
I was deeply grateful to Neil Gaiman for giving me this character, who I needed so badly. And for giving me the space not to hate, fear or resent death, even as I experienced more losses.
But my fondness for this character, Death, became more layered and complicated about 25 years ago, when I grew close with someone who strongly identified with Morpheus. Like Dream, my friend was tall, charismatic, shrouded in darkness. I started to feel like the Death to his Dream, the petite, compassionate and patient older sister. And I felt, too, like the Tori Amos to his Neil Gaiman, particularly in the lyrics from her song “Carbon,” where she sings,
“Get me Neil on the line
No I can't hold
have him read
‘Snow, Glass, Apples’
where nothing is what it seems
‘Little Sis, you must crack this,’
he says to me,
‘You must go in again
carbon made
only wants to be unmade.’”
Things began to unravel from there. I brought my friend to see Tori Amos perform live, and when she got to “Carbon,” tears of resonance streamed down my cheeks. But when I turned to my friend, he only gave me a blank look. We weren’t in this moment together; I was in it alone. Soon he started keeping his distance. He engaged in unethical and predatory sexual behavior. Cutting myself off from him was one of the most painful things I’ve ever done.
There’s no way I could have known then that Gaiman, too, was engaging in unethical and predatory sexual behavior (to be clear: Gaiman’s is many orders of magnitude worse). Everything looks different in hindsight. But in hindsight, perhaps the echo between my friend and Gaiman was a clue.
In the decades that followed, Gaiman’s version of Death continued to feel like a companion, an ally. “On bad days, I talk to Death constantly,” Amos wrote in the introduction to a collection of comic issues focusing on the character. She meant it more in the way of serious depression, but I felt it more in the way I was drawn to graveyards and history, particularly the histories of forgotten dead. Other personifications of Death — Hades and Hel, in particular — turned up in my dreams, though that’s a story for another time.
I fell in love with Death all over again when the Netflix adaptation of Sandman came out. Kirby Howell-Baptiste infuses her with a grounded warmth and wisdom that makes her feel more real than ever. The fact that a longtime friend of mine (one I met 30 years ago through Tori Amos fan communities) is a writer and producer for the series is a serious bonus. And I’m excited for the next season, due out later this year.
When the truth about Gaiman started to emerge, I gave away most of my copies of his books. But I’ve held onto the Death stories: “Death: The High Cost of Living” and “Death: The Time of Your Life.” But now I realize those stories may be tainted in other ways. In addition to the sexual abuse, Gaiman also liberally appropriated ideas from other writers, especially Tanith Lee, whose Flat Earth series underlies Gaiman’s entire Sandman premise and pantheon, and whose “Red as Blood,” a retelling of Snow White, is the blueprint for “Snow, Glass, Apples” — the story Amos sung about in “Carbon.” (I’ve loved Tanith Lee’s fairytale versions even longer than I’ve loved Gaiman’s work, but never made the connection.)
It’s hard to know what to do when something so important to you turns out to be constructed from lies, mirages and charm. I stuck by Buffy even after it turned out that her creator, Joss Whedon, was a creep on set who paid lip service to feminist ideas while firing an actress for becoming pregnant. But again: What Gaiman did is many orders of magnitude worse and, for the most part, I want to make sure none of my money ever gets into his hands again.
And yet, some of the same framework applies. Like “Buffy: The Vampire Slayer,” “Sandman” is a series made by hundreds, if not thousands, of people: Cast, crew, writers, directors, graphic designers and so many others. They deserve to have their work seen and appreciated. They deserve money and accolades for their hard work. They don’t deserve to have that work tainted by Gaiman’s actions; it’s unlikely any of them knew anything about it.
As for Death and me, I’m not sure what the future holds. I’ll have to keep thinking about it. These kinds of touchstone characters rarely stop being important to us. There’s a way in which I don’t want to let Gaiman and his horrifying actions take her away from me. And I still hope that she — or someone just as kind — is there for all of us when we take our final breaths.