It definitely has plenty of the dark whimsy I associate with The Sandman. Admittedly, there are some fun things here - I like that his Thor is a drunken lunkhead and Bast rejects his very crude advances. Mostly, this just feels like Gaiman’s desire to show off his knowledge of world mythology. Because then the story changes gears once again and various gods and entities and other creatures come to compete for the key to Hell. The whole misdirection of “Dream goes to fight Lucifer but there’s no battle” isn’t necessarily a bad one and I assume most of this was plotted out beforehand, but this is where Season of Mists falls into the “cool ideas, poor execution” trap. He then gives Dream the key to Hell so he gets to decide what to do with it. It’s very wordy and not nearly as deep as it thinks it is (especially to me now - as a teenager, I didn’t mind it as much). There’s a lot of speech-making and philosophizing from Lucifer as he justifies his decision. Instead, Lucifer decides to quit and empty out hell. I don’t know how much Neil Gaiman planned this story out when he first introduced Nada, but Dream’s decision to free her from Hell does feel like an attempt to correct something that always came across as a bit problematic. In ten thousand years, no one had told him this (nor did Dream realize it, but that’s to be expected). Here’s the entire summary of this issue: Dream was a jerk for sending Nada to Hell. I do feel like much of this prologue was just an excuse to get to the rest of them, though, and maybe serve as a quick entry point for readers just picking up this comic since each of The Endless gets a short text introduction. Destiny is about what one would expect and here, Delirium is a bit darker than she’ll be portrayed later (but her changeable nature is part of her character).

We finally get to meet the rest of The Endless! Well, minus the missing one.

The sandman season of mists