InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Why didn't you call me?"

espanolbot (espanolbot) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-07-30 22:24:00

Entry tags:

char: death of the endless, char: lobo, char: phantom stranger, publisher: dc comics, publisher: vertigo comics, title: books of magic, title: swamp thing

Death in Books of Magic and Lobo

Tim Hunter, glasses-wearing British teenage magician unaffiliated with the later Rowling creation, finds himself both dead and crashing in the apartment of Our Favourite Goth,

Tim explains that he's after his real father, leading to this conversation.

Tim returns to life, and things are resolved somewhat.

And the other cameo I mentioned, Death in Lobo...

Also, here're two more that I've found of alternate forms of DC's Death,
First, here's one from Swamp Thing vol. 2 issue 6

The story is about a woman called Maggie Brennan who suffers a head injury and becomes able to see Death, who promptly decides to marry her. Maggie then convinces him that he needs to be more merciful, and the two become aspects of death, her sort of filling in Death's role in the non-canon Captain Atom appearence.

And here's one from Weird War Tales #80,

(Post a new comment)

	volksjager 2009-07-30 10:05 pm UTC (link)
	Death had a very good appearence in Captain Atom (along with the Black Racer explaining that death was a "big concept" and there was room for one that one representation. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	espanolbot 2009-07-30 10:10 pm UTC (link)
	Which kind of contradicted what Gaiman's Death said she was. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	btravage.livejournal.com 2009-07-30 10:56 pm UTC (link)
	Which contradicts what we've seen before and after in the DCU. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

espanolbot
2009-07-30 11:00 pm UTC (link)

Pretty much every DCU Vertigo book that has Death appear has used the Gaiman version. Regular DCU not to much these days.

My problem was that as Gaiman was writing his story about what the characters represented, the writer of Captain Atom decided to write what he thought that the characters meant. So Gaiman had to correct some contradictions that were made with his own characters in a book he had no control over.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	btravage.livejournal.com 2009-07-30 11:13 pm UTC (link)
	I think that if Gaiman expected other writers use of the character to remain consistent with his, he should have explained things better. Where in sandman does it say anything about the Black Racer, or the Black Flash. Are those characters just off limits now? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

espanolbot
2009-07-30 11:23 pm UTC (link)

It was pretty early in the series at this point, and he hadn't gotten around to fleshing out the characters yet. He did go on to have the explain what she was and what she represented in the Element Girl story, which I'll be posting later.

She pretty much said that she WAS death, not an aspect, not a section of it like the Death of Rats, the entirety of the thing.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	sandoz_iscariot 2009-07-31 02:57 am UTC (link)
	Doesn't Gaiman have a special agreement that the Endless characters can't be used in the Vertigo-DCU without his permission? Definitely a good way to prevent stuff like that from happening again. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	btravage.livejournal.com 2009-08-01 10:24 pm UTC (link)
	So are all these other bozos an aspect of her? Dream appeared to J'onnz as the equivalent God in the Martian Pantheon, why can't Death appear as the Black Racer whenever she meets a New God? (Reply to this) (Parent)

	mullon 2009-07-30 11:42 pm UTC (link)
	I kinda don't like Death as much when she is being used as a mouthpiece. (Reply to this)

box_in_the_box
2009-07-31 02:23 am UTC (link)

Death's guest-starring appearance in The Books of Magic was the only time I didn't like her, because Tim Hunter is pretty much right in 90 percent of his objections to her - he's a kid who's basically spent his entire life getting shit all over for things that have nothing to do with him, and by people who openly admit to him that he doesn't deserve their mistreatment of him, and yet, here's Death, saying "Why are you so worried about this stuff? Aren't I perky?" Unlike Sexton Furnival, who's simply possessed by ennui, Tim has incredibly powerful assholes playing chess games with his fucking life, so, yeah, I always thought he was entitled to tell everyone around him to go fuck themselves, starting with the Trenchcoat Brigade.

(Reply to this)

bluefall
2009-07-31 04:36 am UTC (link)

I can never quite decide if my profound, overwhelming, deep-seated loathing of Tim Hunter as a character is fair. I'm not sure I care, mind you, I'm perfectly content to despise him either way, but it is an interesting puzzle in an academic sense.

Otherwise, I agree with

mullon. Plus, it always bothers me a bit when Death actually comes out and names herself as Death. I'm reasonably sure she never did that in SANDMAN, and between that and the whole "everyone meets her twice, once at the end of life and once at the beginning" thing there was always this sort of vague, subtle implication that "Death" really isn't the right name for her, she's something bigger than that, and we only call her that because it's the closest we can come up with or we're not thinking it through. "I have many names" is a weak sort of sop, nothing like the magnificence of her always choosing to identify herself instead by what she does.

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	juliansinger 2009-08-01 06:24 am UTC (link)
	John Nay Rieber basically stopped writing Books of Magic in part because he couldn't stand Tim-the-character. So even if you're not fair, you're far from alone! (I still miss Molly.) (Reply to this) (Parent)

petalsinthewind
2009-08-01 06:43 am UTC (link)

I think all the siblings are implied to be more than their names state. You see Destruction trying to create (painting, cooking, etc.) after he quits, and I think he discusses the idea of change, creation and destruction. Dream obviously has vast power over reality, as per Neil Gaiman's ideas about stories and perception being reality, and you see Dee warping reality with Dream's powers.

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