Bear in mind that Lucifer is not necessarily a bad person; or at least, that people can change, and repent—that leopards sometimes do change their spots, given enough time. He’s had a long time to think things over, after all … and he used to be an angel.
—Author’s note in script for Episode 2, “Season of Mists” (3, p. 95)
This week, folks, we go to hell.
Actually, Morpheus goes to Hell — Volume 4 of The Sandman: Season of Mists.
I trip over this title. It comes from one of my favorite poems, John Keats’ magnificent “To Autumn,” which is all about change, celebrating the moment, and finding beauty. If ever a title were miscast…but then, maybe that’s not completely true.
I’ll try to keep the spoilers to a dull roar, although I’ll have to show at least a few cards. Either you’ve read the book and are ready to talk about some of the different aspects of it or, if you’re following this series, eventually you’re going to read it. After giving us enough backstory to get going on with, Season of Mists is where the central narrative, the driving engine of the entire epic, takes off. It’s pretty much a straight shot from here to the end, with a few well-timed detours.
Who Manipulates Who?
It starts with the Three Sisters (those pesky wenches) visiting Destiny to spur a beginning. And it works. Destiny calls a family meeting, and so we get to meet the Endless, or almost all of them anyway. From here on until the end, it’s worthwhile to keep in mind who is behind the plot, who (or what) hides in the background and manipulates events to their conclusion.
First we meet the family.
In part, Season of Mists plays with Victorian interpretations of earlier literary conventions. The typeface, the titles, the glosses of the titles all derive from 18th and 19th Century publishing styles. The sense of tradition is strongest in the first chapter, in Destiny’s domain and in his gallery, whence he summons the family for a meeting, the first, we’re told, in three hundred years.
Destiny, Death, Dream, Desire, Despair and Delirium, the most dysfunctional family this side of everyone else’s Thanksgiving meal, 2016. Destiny is the oldest, followed by Death and then Dream. Like in many families, there’s a split between the older, arguably more powerful and certainly more responsible siblings and the younger ones. This split, and most of the resentment of the younger siblings, devolves upon Dream. Why? Because. Did I mention this family’s dysfunctional?
In Destiny’s gallery, which is represented by a series of Joshua Reynolds-style paintings, Delirium appears as her earlier incarnation, Delight, a child in a straw hat and blue dress, holding a bouquet of flowers.
The figure who emerges from the painting couldn’t be more different.
Her appearance, as well as her seemingly nonsensical dialogue, confirm that time can change even the Endless. And change can be tormenting, as Delirium makes clear. In fact, this is one of the central tenets of The Sandman— the inevitability of change and the difficulty in accommodating the inevitable.
As Destiny walks to his gallery, we get character sketches of the siblings. This is the only time that Gaiman really breaks the fourth wall and tells us 1) what these characters are like, and 2) what we should think about them. This too is a Victorian convention, grounded in a time when authors told their audiences right off who was who. Interestingly, all Gaiman writes about the second eldest is “And there is Death.” (1, p. 25)
We already know Death. Not to put too fine a point on it, we’ve also met Desire and Despair, but those two are about what you would expect them to be. Death is the most human of the Endless —sensible, compassionate, and the kind of anthropomorphic representation you would most like to hang out with. She is entirely herself, no more and no less. When Destiny calls her she shows up in jeans and a sleeveless black vest. Destiny asks her to “be more appropriately attired,” and she answers, “You know how much I hate wearing that stuff...Next thing you’re going to be moaning that I ought to get a scythe….” (1, p. 17)
Once the family assembles, minus one (we’ll come back to him in a bit), Desire dials the sibling aggression up to eleven with her needling attacks on Dream, who huffs off. Seems Desire thinks it’s hilarious that Dream condemned Nada to Hell ten thousand years ago, even though the Nada affair was her meddling in Dream’s world in ways that went bad. When Dream discovers that, in this case, Death, his closest sibling, agrees with Desire that Morpheus treated her unjustly, he resolves that he’s been wrong and he must right that wrong.
Okay, enough plot summary for now — we have our motivations. Desire has wanted to hurt Morpheus for a long time. Morpheus, realizing he’s been wrong, is going to make it right, even if it means going back to hell. If you remember the last time he visited, Lucifer vowed to destroy him, something he knows. As he prepares to leave, he isn’t afraid of being killed; as he says, he’ll return to the Dreaming in another form. His real fear is that he might be imprisoned again, and that fear may be grounded in one of two reasons (or both). Personal fear of suffering another imprisonment, one that would make Burgess’ glass bowl feel like a spa visit, and fear of abandoning his responsibilities, letting the Dreaming fall into disrepair again. That worries him.
So he leaves instructions for how things are to be run in his absence, and he goes to hell for an all-out confrontation with Lucifer so he can set Nada free.
Subverting Expectations
Let’s face it—Lucifer vs Morpheus in a cage match? We’re primed for an epic battle, one in which Morpheus doesn’t exactly favor his own chances. Ever responsible and honorable, he sends the one being Lucifer can’t harm — Cain — as his herald. We already know how powerful Morpheus is, so when he’s unnerved at the prospect of taking on “the wisest, the most beautiful, the most powerful” being, in power second only to God (1, p. 47), we know this is going to be one nasty fight, and undertaken by Morpheus only to rectify a wrong done to one person, one single person (and if you’re remembering “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” you’re not alone). This undertaking gives us an indication of what Morpheus means when he talks about responsibility.
We also learn that Lucifer recognizes an opportunity when he sees one.
Close up on Lucifer. He’s back gazing across his land; only now, for the first time, he’s grinning joyously, hilariously. Make this a huge, wide grin, not an evil grin at all. If you make it unpleasant or evil or mad, it’ll be a million times less scary than if he’s simply happy; because he’s Lucifer, and he’s scary as hell because he’s who he is.”
— Author’s note in script for Episode 1, “Season of Mists” (3, p. 96)
When Morpheus arrives at the gates of hell, (and he’s the tiny figure on the right side of image above, in front of the gates), he finds them hanging open and the place almost entirely deserted. Lucifer is quitting his job.
After evicting the stragglers, Lucifer finds himself confessing to Morpheus that he’s tired; moreover, he’s changed, and he no longer cares what happens in hell. Nor does he care what happens to the dead and the damned he’s sent away. He is not responsible for them. “I have had my fill of the old life,. And that is all I care about…. Perhaps this is the ultimate freedom, eh, Dreamlord? The freedom to leave” (1, p. 84).
In “Façade,” Death tells Rainie, “You make your own hell,” (2, p. 105) ”Season of Mists” expands that idea, as Lucifer disavows responsibility for the damned, and makes it clear that we humans are in charge of our souls, and we make our own punishments.
So instead of a Battle Royale, we get a frank theosophical discussion between two old adversaries as one lays down his arms and leaves the field. Morpheus doesn’t get what he expects. He went to hell planning to retrieve Nada, but he fails as she’s missing and Lucifer doesn’t know where she is. Instead, Lucifer gifts him the key to hell and the power to decide what happens next, knowing that he won’t throw the key away or handle it irresponsibly. Perhaps it will destroy him. But even that vow, Lucifer finds, is one he can walk away from. Unlike Morpheus.
Lucifer leaves hell, idly wondering what’ll happen on earth when the dead start coming back, which as readers through the first time, we think will become the meat and the beating heart of Season of Mists. Another subversion, as we get only the torturous schoolboys in the public school literally from hell that makes up “Episode 4: In which the dead return; and Charles Rowland concludes his education.”
I actually planned that as a major subplot and even wrote the first seven pages of it, but I ended up throwing it all away. It was good material, involving creepy magical types on the run; a young lady named Isolde Bane and her baby Anthony; a group calling themselves the Fashion Satanists; and the return of Daniel Bustamonte from issue 1. It would’ve been a very cool story, but it also would’ve taken a lot of space, probably making Season of Mists run for four more issues than it actually did; and at the time, I didn’t want to strain the patience of my readers with a thirteen-issue storyline. (3, p. 104)
Want to bet we might see some of these nuggets of story eventually? But here it’s another expectation that gets turned on its head. Even so, Charles’ torture at the hands of the Old Boys is quite enough to give us an idea of what’s going on everywhere, and the return of the damned to the world increases the pressure on Morpheus to settle the matter of hell quickly. Charles Rowland’s friendship with the already-dead Edwin Payne is a pairing that eventually gives us the Dead Boy Detective series. (Season of Mists paid off in particularly fruitful dividends for DC Comics, as Lucifer was developed into the popular eponymous and campy Fox series which, it should be noted, Gaiman neither owns nor controls.)
A Gathering of the Gods
As Morpheus is in possession of what Death calls “the most desirable plot of psychic real estate in the whole order of created things,” he’s not lonely for long (1, p. 103). In fact, everyone wants a piece of hell, and they all show up in the Dreaming to take their shot. Each of the gods, fairies, demons, and other various supplicants has its own agenda, and Morpheus is stumped about how to make the right decision. These passages are fun to read in their own right, as Gaiman corrals a pantheon of pantheons, each one making its best case and offering to give Morpheus something he wants—whether it’s Nada, who is a helpless hostage, or Bast, who offers Morpheus information about his missing sibling, the one who walked away from his realm and his responsibilities (kind of like Lucifer did).
Truly, Morpheus has no good options but, with an assist from the Creator, he manages to deal wisely, justly and effectively with his guests. He even saves Nada, who is not especially happy with him. In fact, he bungles his apology and gets a slap in the face for his efforts. When you consider how he threatened Cluracan for being so bold as to touch his robe, a smack across the jaw has him spluttering in rage. Of course, Nada is not impressed. “What will you do to me, Dreamlord,” she asks, “send me back to hell?” (1, p. 201)
Her forthright fearlessness earns her a real apology, likely the first that Morpheus has ever given to anyone. This is a measure of how much he has changed—he’s learned humility and compassion. In another subversion of expectation (a lesser writer would have drawn out battles and bloody epic struggles in universe-shaking confrontations), after facing down Lucifer and much of humanity’s pantheon, Morpheus is more nervous about facing Nada, and would likely rather face a dozen Lucifers. After his real and heartfelt apology, they kiss and make up. Their story closes on a sweet and graceful note.
Meanwhile, with the angels Duma and Remiel assigned to oversee hell, the souls that have condemned themselves to reside there return. This is hell with a difference, though. Under Remiel and Duma, the purpose of torture is to redeem. “We will hurt you,” Remiel tells the damned. “And we are not sorry. But we do not do it to punish you. We do it to redeem you. Because afterward, you’ll be a better person, and because we love you.” To which one of the millions of tormented souls answers, “That makes it worse. That makes it so much worse” (1, pp. 216-217).
Is this not the dark heart of beating a child? The pain inflicted on us by those we love, whatever our age and whatever the torturer’s motivation, cuts infinitely deeper than the worst deed committed by someone who doesn’t care about us.
Season of Mists closes with the three angels, Duma and Remiel, making hell the best of all possible worlds, and Lucifer hanging out on the beach, talking with an old codger about spectacular sunsets.
Nothing in Season of Mists happens as we traditionally expect it to in fantasy and in comics. In fact, no small number of comic-aficionado forums have discussed their disappointment in the lack of traditional epic battles. Yet the book closes on a satisfying note, an extract from a book in Lucius’ library in the Dreaming, a book that G. K. Chesterton dreamed but never wrote, The Man Who Was October.
October knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter or of shutting a book, did not end a tale.
Having admitted that, he would also avow that happy endings were never difficult to find: “It is simply a matter,” he explained to April, “of finding a sunny place in a garden, where the light is golden and the grass is soft; somewhere to rest, to stop reading, and to be content.” (1, p. 216)
This tale has not ended, although mighty changes have occurred. Loki is loose, and in Morpheus’ debt (which is not good for Morpheus). The Dream-king has changed more than he thought he had. The slow reveal of the missing Endless sibling remains clothed in mystery. We know it’s a brother, he left 300 years ago, and his family misses him. His absence troubles Morpheus considerably, enough that he contemplated trading hell for information about him. He walked away from his realm, like Lucifer did, both of them abdications that Morpheus cannot fathom.
Finally I want to return to the title, Season of Mists. Gaiman yokes it to an invented toast inspired by Lud-in-the-Mist (“To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due”). In his mind he says, the line reads not “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” but “Season of mists and mellow frightfulness.” Keats’ ode is a meditation on change and changelessness, the inevitability of time’s passage and the approach of death.
It’s quite appropriate on its own, after all.
References
1. Neil Gaiman, Season of Mists. NY: Vertigo, 1992. All quotations from the episodes are from this edition.
2. Neil Gaiman, Dream Country. NY: Vertigo, 1991.
3. Hy Bender, The Sandman Companion. NY: Vertigo, 1999.
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