Death: The High Cost of Living [Paperback]

Neil Gaiman (Author), Chris Bachalo (Author), Mark Buckingham (Author), Dave McKean (Author)

Book Description

Release date: June 1, 1994 | Series: Death

Written by Neil Gaiman; Art by Chris Bachalo, Mark Buckingham, and Dave McKean From the pages of Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN comes the young, pale, perky, and genuinely likable Death. One day in every century, Death walks the Earth to better understand those to whom she will be the final visitor. Today is that day. As a young mortal girl named Didi, Death befriends a teenager and helps a 250-year old homeless woman find her missing heart. What follows is a sincere musing on love, life and (of course) death.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The High Cost of Living is a continuation of Harvey Award-winning fantasy writer Gaiman's series detailing the cosmic duties of a loose family of seven immortals. Not quite Gods, they embody realms of psychic experience: Dream, Desire, Despair, Destiny, Delirium, Destruction and Gaiman's very popular character, Death. Reaper, yes; but Death's not very grim as she goes about her business visiting the just-about-to-die and ushering them into their new existence. In this story she meets Sexton, a teenager contemplating suicide, and they end up searching New York City to find a witch's heart (the old hag hid it centuries ago, it's a witch tradition), so the old girl can hide it again. Up pops the Eremite, an evil wizard type, out to steal Death's mysterious necklace, who makes the usual threats against life and limb. Gaiman has created a character sweetly at odds with her modbid duties; dressed like a Satanic rocker, she's as pretty as a cheerleader and even more upbeat. While Gaiman brings a gritty urban contemporaneity to the fantasy genre, the story also suffers from a TV script-like sensibility--danger-defying quips, the good-hearted overweight black neighbor, melodramatic villain. Nevertheless the combination of wry mystic immortal and MTV slacker produces an engaging chemistry. Top-notch production, and although the illustration is a bit stiff, it's stylishly rendered and very nicely colored. The introduction is by pop singer Tori Amos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 104 pages
• Publisher: Vertigo (June 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563891336
• ISBN-13: 978-1563891335
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 0.4 x 9.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (66 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #82,726 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Sound of Her Wings January 13, 2000

By "fyrekitt"

Format:Paperback

The woman you are about to meet isn't called Death just because the tuff-sounding name compliments her heavy eye make up and black jeans. She really is Death, the reaper, the one who takes you away when you have had it. It turns out the cloak and the scyth thing were just bad press; there's nothing grim about her after all. Neil Gaiman fashions Death after the story in the Caballa where the Angel of Death is so beautiful that upon finaly seeing it (him or her)you fall in love so hard, so fast that your soul is pulled out through your eyes. He didn't want a death that agonized over her role, or who took grim delight in her job, or who didn't care. He wanted a Death that you'd like to meet, in the end. Someone who would care. I think he succeeded. Though there is a family resembalce between her and her younger brother Sandman she is in many ways his opposite, sensible, delightful, and nice. This novel version of the three part mini series that helped launch DC-Vertigo follows Death through the streets of New York in 1993. It's turns out one day in every century Death takes on mortal flesh, better to comprehend what the lives she takes must feel like, to taste the bitter tang of mortality: And this is the price she must pay for being the divider of the living from all that has gone before, all that must come after. She embodies the 16 year old Didi, whos family recently died in a car accident. We enter clueless, as Sexton does. As his understanding grows about her true self so does ours. The plot twists and drops out from under your many times,leading you on a merry goosechase of emotions. You may even find yourself turning back a few pages to re-read and try to find out what you may have missed, but in the end all is explained, leaving you with that curious, empty, "what-if?" feeling in the pit of your stomach. That almost always leads us to pick it up and enjoy it again. I have thoroughly enjoyed this insite to the workings of the world. I am certain you will as well.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Death Takes a (Working) Holiday April 23, 2000

By Adam Noble

Format:Paperback

Meet Sexton Furnival. Sexton is a well-spoken, intelligent lad, whose best friend is the mute, wheelchair-bound kid in the apartment down the corridor from he and his mother's (an unfortunately not quite burned-out hippie) and a dead ringer for Kurt Cobain (both physically and in attitude). Here's what Sexton isn't: in love with anyone, or hating anyone. In other words, his life ain't feeling particularly Hollywood right now. He doesn't feel the point to Life. So, in typical short-sighted 90's-youth fashion, he's going to take his own life. In a garbage dump, of all places. And for his trouble, he gets pinned under a fridge.

Enter his savior, a young gal by the name of Didi, who we (being the faithful fans of Gaiman's Sandman that I know we all are) instantly recognize as the one and only Death of the Endless, looking slightly less pale, more chipper (if that's possible) and a little younger (about 16) than usual. She's spending her one day-per-century as an orphaned

girl living alone in NYC. Sexton takes the information in stride. ("Uh... right. So. I suppose you must do a lot of drugs.")

Problems ensue, of course. Mad Hettie, who has popped up in Sandman (Preludes & Nocturnes, for the uninitiated), holds Sexton at gunpoint (well... pointy broken wine bottlepoint), demanding that Didi go off and fetch her heart for her. She's hidden it, you see, and forgotten where she left it. And a chap by the name of "The Eremite" is after Death's signature ankh she wears about her neck.

Here's what Death: The High Cost of Living isn't:

Plot-heavy. All the better for it. Both plots sort of fizzle, but in good ways. This story's not about would-be masters of life and death (that plot ends with Eremite being kicked out of a restaurant by the owner) or an old woman getting her heart back (but a sweet moment it is indeed); it's about a kid regaining interest in Going On.

It isn't Hollywood, and all the melodrama which that word summons up. What there ARE, are lots of Gaiman moments. Understated, fleeting, quiet, human moments that make you fall in love with bit characters. Especially in the sequence at The Undercut club. Foxglove sings a ditty about that poor Judy girl who died in the aforementioned Sandman vol.1 and Hazel, her very-pregnant lover, who relates the pain of nicotine-withdrawal during pregnancy. Theo, the thuggish, unsuccessfully double-crossing acolyte of the Eremite, meets with a bitter end, but his passing shows us more about Death's passion for life than anyone knew. My favorite is the anonymous soul at Undercut, who relates her "friend's" brush with childhood sexual abuse and subsequent attempted suicide to Sexton, only to have him give her the brush-off. Sexton and Didi shine together, whether locked in a warehouse, playfully tossing around a Russian doll; perusing the merits of hot dogs' chemical aftertaste; or discussing her Day in the Life by a water fountain in Central Park.

(I could be wrong, but isn't that the same one that Dream was sitting in, feeding the pigeons, when Death first walked into our unsuspecting lives in Sandman #8? Really need to brush up on my New York geography.)

It isn't an "R-rated" human-misery-fest. It's amazingly very PG-13. Let's check the key words again, shall we? Death. Suicide. Sex abuse. But aside from very occasional cursing and one instance some barely "on-camera" violence, this is something that anyone can pick up. It's one of the few Vertigo books I own I'd feel 100 percent confident my family would read and love. Bachalo's cartoony/sketchy art is expressive, magic and real. At a lean 100 or so pages, this is really a direct book. It's got a story to tell, and it tells it, unlike some volumes of The Sandman. (Though it does tie into the second Death mini, Time of Your Life, but that's neither here nor there, as I've not read it.) If "It's a Wonderful Life" had been made in comic form, in 1993, this is what it would be (and who wouldn't take a Winona Ryder look-alike over Clarence, the second-rate... sorry, second-class angel any day of the week?).

Oh, and there's a couple o' neat supplementary tidbits: Tori Amos' introduction, Tom Peyer's text piece on the history of the character Death, and, of course, the "Death Talks About Life" six-pager illustrated by Dave McKean, which gives frank information about AIDS, condom instructions and how life is a sexually-transmitted disease. Useful stuff, that.

So. In a sentence: one of my personal favorite of Gaiman's works, and I hope yours too. Pick it up and feel glad to be alive.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A sweet and lovely Death! December 29, 1999

By Stephen Richmond VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Neil Gaiman's portrayal of Death as a sweet Gothette with a sense of humor and a marvelous joie de vivre is far from the usual cloaked figure with scythe. In Death: The High Cost of Living, she adventures with a somewhat suicidal young man named Sexton, showing him the intrinsic value of living. They encounter the darling dyke duo, popstar Foxglove and here dear domestic and pregnant love Hazel the chef, who provide a glimpse of the glamorous life and its toll on otherwise loving relationships. Gaiman's clever turns of plot and stolidly real characterization rivet interest and unfailingly engage reader attention. There is so much here to appeal to a young adult and older teen audience, but the depth of character and complexity of plot will resound with and delight more mature audiences. Longtime comics readers will quickly become Gaiman fans (and what pleasures await them in his Sandman and Books of Magic tales!) and those who either have never know or had abandoned the four-color medium should give it a try. This and Death: The Time of Your Life will not fail to please and to distract.