The Absolute Death

I enjoyed reading the Absolute Sandman books so much I decided to buy Absolute Death to complete the set. It comes in the same matching oversized version, beautiful hardback and slipcase. It has the 2 Death mini series - "The High Cost of Living" and "The Time of Your Life" also found in the Deluxe versions which can be bought for £10 paperback or £15 hardback plus lots of extras to make up the 360 pages, including 2 Sandman issues featuring Death: "The Sound of her Wings" and "Façade", also "Death and Venice", "A Winter's Tale", "The Wheel", galleries of Death portraits, sketches, etc. Well worth paying the extra money as it costs £40+ to get everything in one luxurious volume.

just how they would do an Absolute edition 360 pages long, when there have only been two 3-part miniseries which take up half of that at most, featuring the character and written only by Neil Gaiman.In part, DC cheated by reprinting two stories, which have already been reprinted the Absolute Sandman volumes, featuring Death. But it's only a little cheat as the first story is the introduction of the character to the Sandman mythos and can be considered essential to an Absolute collection. The second story, hmmm -no, that is a cheat.Then we get to the meat of the book, the two miniseries which are terrific, but then you already knew that as few people are likely to buy this who aren't familiar with the character unless they've got more money than, umm, money.Next up we have a couple of stories, one from a little seen original Vertigo sampler, and one from a comic I'd never even heard of and, therefore, hadn't read the story before -whoohoo! Last of the stories is from Endless Nights -a definite cheat, though at least that volume hasn't been reprinted in the Absolute Sandman and remains a standalone.The final 100+ pages are taken up with a miscellany of galleries, scripts with orginal pencil artwork, and sundry bits and pieces of ephemera.So really, it's pretty much all you ever wanted to know about Death (the Gaiman character) with lots of pretty pictures by some brilliant artists. Despite being a somewhat hotchpotch collection, it's also weird and wonderful and thoroughly brilliant and an essential companion to those Absolute Sandman editions that you and I have occupying pride of place on our bookshelves.

Very happy with this collection :)