Mémoire de Master sur Neil Gaiman

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Master 2 d'anglais

Patrick Lemaire

Mémoire

Myths in the novel American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Myths have long been a subject of study. According to George Dumézil, they reveal the structure of societies and these myths evolve along with society. This new understanding of the myth is so useful that the word myth has gained increased currency. It is now applied to actual contemporary living or dead persons, fictional characters, companies, cultural forms, etc.

America's relation to myths is singular. For thousands of years its existence was unknown, though there were myths about faraway lands beyond the Atlantic for Europeans or beyond the Pacific for the Chinese. However, even after its discovery it kept its mythical quality and has retained it longer than the Orient or Africa.

As a meeting place of all kinds of cultures, it retained or modified old myths and developed new ones. It was interesting how people who settled there broke with old myths. Gaiman's novel starts with this quote from Richard Dorson:

“One question that has always intrigued me is what happens to demonic beings when immigrants move from their homelands. Irish-Americans remember the fairies, Norwegian Americans the nisser, Greek-Americans the vrykolakas, but only in relation to events remembered in the old country.” (Dorson, “A Theory for American Folklore”)

And then there is also the propensity to turn the oddest things into religion, often with attendant myths. Editor Bruce David Forbes in Religion and Popular Culture in America assembled essays which describe the following as religion: Star Trek, sports (especially baseball), rock 'n' roll, Coca-Cola, female dieting. They each have fervent followers, some of these activities have their hall of fame, their legends, but overall they give meaning to and shape the lives of their supporters according to them¹. Religion is that thing to which one sacrifices one's time, money.

W. H. Auden in his lecture on The Tempest published in Lectures on Shakespeare wrote of modern myths:

“The great myths in the Christian period are Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, the Wandering Jew. Among the great modern myths are Sherlock Holmes and Li'l Abner, neither of which exhibits a talent for literary expression. Rider Haggard's She is another example of a myth in which literary distinction is largely absent. Comic strips are a good place to start in understanding the nature of myths, because their language is unimportant.” (Lectures on Shakespeare, p. 297.)

Mircea Eliade mentions how comic characters and celebrities are made into myths:

“Des recherches récentes ont mis en lumière les structures mythiques des images et des comportements imposés sur les collectivités par la voie des mass-media. Ce phénomène se constate surtout aux Etats-Unis.”

“Les personnages des 'comic strips' présentent la version moderne des héros mythologiques ou folkloriques. Ils incarnent à tel point l'idéal d'une grande partie de la société que les éventuelles retouches apportées à leur conduite ou, pis encore, leur mort, provoquent de véritables crises chez les lecteurs; ceux-ci réagissent violemment et protestent, en envoyant des télégrammes par milliers aux auteurs des comic strips.”

“Si l'on va au fond des choses, le mythe du superman satisfait les nostalgies secrètes de l'homme moderne qui, en se sachant déchu et limité, rêve de se révéler un jour un 'personnage exceptionnel', un 'héros'.

“On a également démontré la mythisation des personnalités au moyen des mass-media, leur transformation en image exemplaire.” (Aspects du mythe, pp. 226-227)

This evolution has continued to this day. News media reported the death of Captain America in 2007² and Paris Hilton announced in August 2008 that she and Stan Lee (co-creator of Spider-Man) had created a super-hero based on herself.

There is also the use of the words “canon” and “apocryphal” to qualify stories happening in a fictional universe such as those of Sherlock Holmes, Star Trek and Star Wars. While I just mention this in passing, a look at the Wikipedia entry on “canon (fiction)” and all its links will show how much time and effort goes into these considerations.

Myths aren't limited to characters. Everyday fixtures of our life are also described this way. In the 1950s, Mircea Eliade wrote:

“On découvrirait des comportements mythiques... dans le déchainement affectif de ce qu'on a appelé le 'culte de la voiture sacrée'. Comme le remarque Andrew Greeley, 'il suffit de visiter le salon annuel de l'automobile pour y reconnaître une manifestation religieuse profondément ritualisée'.” (Aspects du mythe, p. 228)

Roland Barthes expressed similar views:

“Je crois que l'automobile est aujourd'hui l'équivalent assez exact des grandes cathédrales gothiques : je veux dire une grande création d'époque, conçue passionnément par des artistes inconnus, consommée dans son image, sinon dans son usage, par un peuple entier qui s'approprie en elle un objet parfaitement magique.” (Mythologies p. 140)

Gaiman's friend J. Michael Straczynski recognized how religion is an enduring part of human society:

“If you look at the long history of human society, religion - whether you describe that as organized, disorganized, or the various degrees of accepted superstition - has always been present. And it will be present 200 years from now... To totally ignore that part of the human equation would be as false and wrong-headed as ignoring the fact that people get mad, or passionate, or strive for better lives.” (http://groups.google.com/group/alt.tv.babylon-5/msg/fc782309e6eb9a6f)

Indeed, in spite of the secularisation of modern society and the setbacks encountered by traditional religions, one can observe an ongoing need for meaning and belief. This is what drove me to choose American Gods as subject of my essay since this was something that Gaiman not only recognised but associated especially with the American experience.

The use of myths in fiction can be more than the perpetuation of common, traditional tropes, it can be a way for a writer to comment on society. It is my conviction that this is what Neil Gaiman attempted to do in writing American Gods.

However, the novel is hard to categorise and it would be unfair to reduce it to an inquiry on belief. The book designers seemed to experience some difficulty in the choice of a cover. A sample of the covers used can be found on the site http://pigface.club.fr/Illustrations/Illustrations-American-gods.htm. Its first cover, a road with two lanes and a storm on the horizon, marks the novel as the literary equivalent of a mythological road movie, itself similar to an epic journey or a heroic quest.

The two covers of the French editions take a different approach. One (http://www.amazon.fr/gp/reader/2846260338/ref=sib_dp_pt/403-5237845-0482830#reader-link) describes a bottle of Coca-Cola, the American dollar bill, and a viking character with a hammer (Thor?) drawn in the super-hero style made popular by American comic book icon Jack Kirby (who himself co-created a popular super-hero comic book version of Thor for Marvel Comics). The reference to American super-hero comics and to their development as modern myths is thus made explicit. It links the novel with Gaiman's work for American comics publishers.

The second cover (http://www.jailu.com/albums_detail.cfm?id=13538) also uses a super-heroic version of Thor against the background of the American dollar bill.

As such these two covers showcase the integration of mythic elements reworked as popular culture against the backdrop of the economic necessity that drives the actions of the old gods in the novel, as well as the consumerism of modern society.

Gaiman is aware of the polymorphism of his novels. In an interview he declared,

“I do know they're going to be all over the place. When I finish writing them, it's going to be bloody hard to rack them, because they aren't going to slide neatly into the horror or the humor or the fantasy or science fiction or the mystery or the mainstream sections of the book shelf.” (http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2001_02_01_archive.html)

He even has something to say about the classification used by the Library of Congress: 1.National characteristics, American -- Fiction. 2. Spiritual warfare - Fiction. 3 Ex-prisoners - Fiction. 4. Bodyguards - Fiction 5. Widowers - Fiction I.

“And I wonder, who picks these categories? What do they base them on? I mean, while it is undoubtedly true that Shadow, our more-or-less hero, is an ex-prisoner, and that his wife is killed in a car crash early in the book; but I feel deeply sorry for anyone who goes into it looking for fiction about widowers, ex-prisoners or bodyguards; while all the people looking for the things it has in abundance, like history and geography and mythology, like dreams and confidence tricks and sacrifice, Roadside Attractions and lakes and coin magic and funeral homes go by the wayside.” (http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2001_02_01_archive.html)

As for this specific novel he described it in these words in post 2 of his blog:

“It's a thriller, I suppose, although as many of the thrills occur in headspace as in real life, and it's a murder mystery; it's a travel guide, and it's the story of a war. It's a history. It's funny, although the humour is pretty dark.

“It's the story of a man called Shadow and the job he is offered when he gets out of prison.”

(http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2001_02_01_archive.html)

The outline he wrote in Iceland in 1998 read this way:

“If Neverwhere was about the London underneath, this would be about the America between, and on-top-of, and around. It's an America with strange mythic depths. Ones that can hurt you. Or kill you. Or make you mad.

“American Gods will be a big book, I hope. A sort of weird, sprawling picaresque epic, which starts out relatively small and gets larger. Not horror, although I plan a few moments that are up there with anything I did in Sandman, and not strictly fantasy either. I see it as a distorting mirror; a book of danger and secrets, of romance and magic.

“It's about the soul of America, really. What people brought to America; what found them when they came; and the things that lie sleeping beneath it all.” (Gaiman, op. cit.)

The central idea is that people brought the gods and creatures they believed in with them but, as is stated several times, this land isn't good ground for gods. As the old gods got forgotten when their believers passed away, they had to make a living without the offerings they used to receive. The current American population now makes their offerings (time, money, blood) to cars, television, the Internet, etc.

But in the end the war between these gods is a lie and the opposition between tradition and modernity isn't the soul of America that Gaiman is writing about. There are three distinct endings to the novel. After the war of the gods ends in anticlimax, the mystery of Lakeside is solved, then Shadow goes to meet his fate at the hands of Czernobog and then there is a postscript.

The reader is left with many questions and the lack of resolution may have been intended. It was deliberate in a companion piece; in his introduction to “Pages From A Journal Found In A Shoebox Left In A Greyhound Bus Somewhere Between Tulsa, Oklahoma, And Louisville, Kentucky” in Fragile Things, Gaiman writes,

“I wanted to write something about identity and travel and America, like a tiny companion piece to American Gods, in which everything, including any kind of resolution, hovered just out of reach.”

What are myths?

Karin Heller in La bande dessinée fantastique à la lumière de l'anthropologie religieuse aims to demonstrate that fantasy comics create modern myths. She starts by defining myths:

“Selon Lévi-Strauss, l'objet du mythe est de fournir un modèle logique pour résoudre une contradiction ; pour lui les mythes ne disent rien sur l'ordre du monde, sur la nature du réel, sur l'origine de l'homme, sur sa destinée. Mais l'étude des mythes permet de dégager certains modes d'opérations de l'esprit humain.” (La pensée sauvage, Paris, 1962, p. 123 and following, p. 303-305; as quoted by Heller on p. 10)

She proceeds to list the functions of myths according to Saucin:

“Fonctions du mythe: ludique, psychologique, éducative et initiatique. J. Saucin, Le conte au milieu des images. Essai d'interprétation symbolique par la méthode d'amplification de Carl Gustav Young de quelques bandes dessinées francophones. p. 8 Pont-à-Celles 1995; as quoted by Heller on p. 12)

She then quotes Louis-Vincent Thomas on the links between science fiction and mythology:

“La science-fiction développe une mythologie moderne où se dessine un destin qui ressemble fort à l'apocalypse” (p. 12 Civilisations et divagations. Mort, fantasmes, science-fiction Payot, Paris 1979; as quoted by Heller on p. 14)

Her basic assumption is relevant to Gaiman's use of myths:

“Le terme anglais fantasy exprime en général toute production de l'imaginaire ayant pour but de divertir ou d'illustrer un message. Certes la BD dite fantastique peut parfaitement distraire ou illustrer un message. Mais ne fait-elle que cela? Sa fonction n'est-elle pas bien plus étendue? N'est-elle pas une expression du mythe qui fonde un monde, le justifie, lui donne un sens ou des sens? Telle a été notre hypothèse de départ.” (Op. cit. p. 14)

Modern man needs myths with which he can structure the world he lives in. Myths provide patterns he can use in his day-to-day living and thinking. Yes, they are founding tales, they tell us about origins but as Claude Lévi-Strauss says:

“La valeur intrinsèque attribuée aux mythes provient de ce que les événements, censés se dérouler à un moment du temps, forment aussi une structure permanente. Celle-si se rapporte simultanément au passé, au présent et au futur.” (Anthropologie structurale)

This essay will first examine the American identity crisis since this is the context in which we can better interpret American Gods. The second part will be devoted to the first work of Gaiman to explore myths and modern America. After this preliminary work, we will examine American Gods properly in the last two parts, first from the traditional myths and a possible explanation of why they are used, then from myths in their modern (anthropological) meaning, including the new gods of modern life and technology and Americana. Finally in the conclusion, we'll look over our findings and make new hypotheses on the message and purpose of the novel.

Part One: The American Identity Crisis

In his book La crise de l'identité américaine, Denis Lacorne described “multiculturalism” in these terms,

“Le mot, d'origine anglaise, est d'usage récent et il renvoie à la diversité culturelle; politique, religieuse des immigrés qui ne cessent d'affluer aux Etats-Unis depuis le vote, en 1965, de la plus libérale des lois d'immigration américaines. Cette diversité n'est pas seulement la conséquence des politiques d'immigration ; elle est aussi liée au mouvement des droits civiques des années 1960, qui incita les Noirs à prendre conscience de la richesse de leur identité ethnique. Peu à peu, par effet d'imitation, d'autres 'minorités' prirent l'habitude de célébrer leur identité, au point, parfois, d'en réécrire l'histoire et de s'inventer des mythes fondateurs, étrangers à l'histoire du pays.”

I would argue however, that all founding myths are invented. Even when they are held as historical facts, they are told with a special reverence which sets them apart from historical objectivity. Multiculturalism divides the whole society. On one hand, the society aims to assimilate everybody ; on the other hand it aims to promote underprivileged groups. To the degree that assimilation meant everybody had to agree to the WASP model, it was bound to fail.

In the nineteenth century, Chinese workers immigrated to work on railways but a law was passed to forbid them from acquiring propriety. There was one population however, that couldn't be so summarily dismissed, the Blacks. Their original identity had been purposefully erased to limit possibilities of revolt. Within a few generations, they forgot their original language, their country and their customs. While African traits survived, they were a new common identity. They could not easily be returned to their original land, though it was tried with the creation of Liberia. Furthermore they could not be assimilated in the WASP model. While many other populations could simply adopt English names to hide their origin, Blacks could not disguise their physical features.

Catholics, South Europeans, Jews weren't that different from the WASPs but if some children of Black concubines passed into white society, the vast majority could not be “assimilated”. It is no surprise, then, that the Blacks would challenge this assimilation into the WASP model. Especially as it was a model of escaping the old world to find freedom, religious freedom. The Africans found slavery on the new continent and could not identify with their oppressors. Yet they came to share values with the Whites since they had been converted to Christianity and this made possible a new national model of “coming to the Promised Land.” American Indians do not fit that model. If history has shown that they were also immigrants tens of thousands of years ago, they don't consider themselves as sons of immigrants.

Denis Lacorne describes the process by which multiculturalism came to be:

“Par effet d'imitation, d'autres groupes ethniques (Chicanos, Amérindiens, Cubains...), et religieux (catholiques, juifs orthodoxes, amish...), jusque-là marginalisés, allaient proclamer leur 'différence' et célébrer la grandeur d'identités redécouvertes. Dans la même veine, le mouvement féministe mettrait l'accent sur un irréductible' droit à la différence', avant d'être imité à son tour par le mouvement de la Gay Pride. (La Crise de l'identité américaine, p. 20)

While Lacorne traces the rise of the Gay Pride movement to feminism, I think that the Supreme Court's decision to declare anti-miscegenation statutes unconstitutional in the Loving vs Virginia case also challenged traditional views of the American family. The case has been mentioned in courts, unsuccessfully, in legal attempts to establish a same-sex marriage jurisprudence.

In addition to the national identity crisis and the rise of ethnic minorities, America had to face changing values as many lifestyles have vied for recognition. New immigrants want to be acknowledged as full Americans without giving up their names, traditions or heritage. Indeed some want to live there without having to be Americans. Huntington mentions the case of the Mexican Americans who booed the American national anthem and American players during a Mexico-USA soccer match.

Likewise, the USA has sometimes been compared to the Roman empire as an empire with freedom of religion but with that difference: you can practise any religion as long as it is Christianity. Today Islam and Asian religions are growing. Moreover, religious practices who used to be recognised not as such but as superstition, such as paganism (such as Wicca) or voodoo, ask for equal treatment. Even some non-believers organise themselves to fight the stereotypes. Non-theists have renamed themselves “Brights” to avoid the negative associations linked to the words “atheist” and “godless.”

The fall of the Soviet Union is another factor in the American identity crisis. For a nation thriving on war, the existence of an identifiable enemy is essential. During a period of fragmentation of their identity, the existence of a clear enemy-other provided the US with something against which to define themselves. On pages 254-259 of Qui sommes-nous? Identité nationale et choc des cultures, Huntington develops this “quest for an enemy” idea and concludes that fundamentalist Islam became that enemy on September 11, 2001.

The work of Gaiman acknowledges the ethnic diversity in his cast of characters. The Sandman not only shows various divinities, it shows human characters believing or practicing different religions. The “I believe” speech of Samantha Black Crow on pages 394-395 is a glimpse of the various beliefs that can be held concurrently in modern America.

What is missing then, in this abundance of myths generated by the ethnic groups, is a single unifying myth for the new multicultural United States. This is the significance of Neil Gaiman's American Gods and the previous exploration of this theme: The Sandman.

Part Two: Gaiman's The Sandman

A. The Genesis of The Sandman

The tension between reality and fantasy which is at the core of American Gods has been extensively used by Gaiman in his comic book The Sandman (1988-1995). As a foreign writer trying to break into the American comic scene, Gaiman faced quite a challenge. His own interests lied in the field of fantasy but there was nearly no market for it in the Anglo-Saxon world. British comics specialised in boys humor comics and science-fiction (Judge Dredd in the magazine 2000AD).

With the British public favoring future war stories and the American public favoring super-heroes, Gaiman seemed doomed to fall in a rut if he wanted to reach a large public. The successful approach for new writers was to take over a lesser known character and make it succesful. Gaiman's mentor, Alan Moore, had done that with a horror character, the Swamp Thing. Originally the story of a man turned into a vegetal monster who was trying to regain his lost humanity, Moore took apart the original limited premise by redefining the character as a plant creature who believed it was a man and used the series as a vehicle to deliver an ecological message. The series quickly garnered the most prestigious comics awards. Fellow Britisher Grant Morrison had succeeded in reviving an obscure character from the sixties, Animal Man, which he had turned as a vehicle for animal rights. That was the stage when Gaiman entered it.

Gaiman pitched and then wrote a 3-issue limited series about a very obscure sixties spy female character called Black Orchid and told a story about saving the Amazonian forest. He successfully used other characters with plant motifs, thus integrating Swamp Thing, Poison Ivy (a Batman adversary) and Black Orchid. Although he took a cue from Moore in this regard, his deftness at combining characters from different genres was evident from the start and foreshadows his later combination of various mythologies, classic and modern.

His editor, Karen Berger (also Alan Moore's editor on Swamp Thing), then looked at the other pitches that Gaiman had sent her. One was about an obscure seventies character called Sandman. The name Sandman had been a property of DC Comics since 1939. The first iteration was a pulp avenger in the style of The Spider and The Shadow. He wore a trenchcoat, a gas mask, and a gas pistol with which he put his adversaries to sleep (hence the name). In the seventies DC Comics created a new character with that name. This new character started as the master of dreams but a later writer made him a psychologist who lived in the collective subconscious of mankind.

Karen Berger told him he had the go-ahead for a regular series but to come up with an entirely new character with the same name. Gaiman came up with the Sandman of legend, a character existing in dreams, called Dream but who was also Morpheus and Oneiros of greco-latin myths. In order not to alienate the readership of his publisher he tied his series with the previous Sandman characters as well as with other DC properties. However it is with issue 8 that the series gains its distinctive voice. In this issue Gaiman introduces Dream's elder sister, Death, a teenage lively goth girl, a radical departure from traditional representations of Death. This is the start of Gaiman's own pantheon, seven characters called the Endless, which are both “above gods and less than gods” and whose names all start by the letter D. One of these characters already existed in DC Comics, Destiny. All the others are Gaiman's creations but their identities will slowly unfold in the 75-issue series.

B. The Context of the Creation of The Sandman

Uninterested in costumed super-heroes, Gaiman used marginal DC characters, freaks, witches, demons, angels but in a contemporary setting. His America and England aren't the fictionalised versions found in super-hero comics, but countries populated by marginals: homosexuals, transvestites, transsexuals, abused children, vagrants, serial murderers.

Such subjects were long taboo. In the spring of 1954, the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency conducted its investigation of the comic book industry. As a result, the US comics industry created a self-censoring organisation called the Comics Code Authority which delivered a seal without which comics could not be distributed on newsstands. However the eighties had seen the growth of specialty bookstores where the CCA seal wasn't required. This was the fertile ground where grew the Vertigo revolution and The Sandman.

Vertigo is the name of the imprint from DC Comics headed by Karen Berger and dedicated to mature comics. Berger has heavily relied upon British writers: Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Neil Gaiman, Jamie Delano, Peter Milligan, Garth Ennis. This Vertigo revolution has been the subject of a modern literature thesis by David Beau in the University of Cergy-Pontoise: Le complot Vertigo, la bande dessinée nord-américaine en quête d'une nouvelle identité in 1997. The work of Gaiman is itself the subject of a number of books in the English-speaking world as can be seen in the bibliography.

After Professor Frank McConnell's 1995 article, we started seeing books, at first companions to enrich the experience of reading by providing background information. So, while some of them, like Hy Bender's 2000 The Sandman Companion : A Dreamer's Guide to the Award-Winning Comic Series, are here to supplement the series, Stephen Rauch's Neil Gaiman's The Sandman and Joseph Campbell: In Search of the Modern Myth from 2003 has been described as “the first scholarly book-length examination of the work of comics legend Neil Gaiman.” 2006's The Sandman Papers: An Exploration of the Sandman Mythology, edited by Joe Sanders, continues the research. In Summer 2008, the English Department at the University of Florida devoted an entire issue of ImageText to his works.

In his paper, David Beau describes how the growing popularity of fantasy in the 1970s and 1980s created the conditions for a mature comic book like The Sandman. Whether through motions pictures, music, board games, card games or video games, fantasy had become omnipresent and closer to realise the aim of science fiction pioneers: achieve the status of a mainstream genre rather than that of a marginal one.

This trend grew more pronounced in the 1990s. Angels became a popular trope in theater and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel were highly influential TV series which adopted and adapted conventions from American super-hero comics to a fantasy setting while also being recognised for raising issues of identity, gender relations and family just like The Sandman had done.

The kinship between fantasy and science fiction has long been recognised and the Science Fiction Writers of America was renamed the Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards of America. The main SF awards, the Hugo and the Nebula, now are often given to pure fantasy works, accounting for Gaiman's awards and nominations.

C. The Reality/Fiction Tension in The Sandman

SF has always been best used as a commentary on the present. SF masterworks like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's 1984 and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 are a reflection on society and SF lends itself well to works of parody. The fictional and future setting provides the necessary distance by which the reader can mentally step out of the society he lives in and look at it with fresh eyes.

Voltaire used extraterrestrial beings to satirise French society but Rabelais had used a fictional race of giants to do the same. Thus fiction and fantasy are used as tools to comment on society without being preachy. Readers don't put up the mental defenses they would if they were reading a sermon. Because it is a fiction work, they suspends disbelief, which makes them more receptive to new ideas.

This is Beau's opinion as well in analysing modern fantasy writers,

“En posant un regard plein de lucidité, malgré son habillage fantaisiste, sur le monde qui les entoure, ils reviennent à plus de réalisme. Le fantastique leur est un outil qui, par son opposition liée à sa définition face aux thèmes concrets qu'ils développent dans leurs différents titres, renforce du point de vue en rétablissant l'homme à sa juste valeur.” (Beau, Op. cit. p. 115)

Beau sees a continuation from classical thinking,

“Platon affirmait que le poète était un menteur, parce qu'il représentait la réalité au lieu de simplement l'évoquer. (...) The Sandman est un comics.” (Beau, Op. cit. p. 80)

He hastens to add that this is deliberate from because Gaiman has one of his characters, the writer Erasmus Fry, say,

“Writers are liars” (Gaiman, The Sandman, Dream Country, p. 17)

The tension between reality and fiction appears in many places in the series. For instance there is a library of fictional books in the Dreaming (the domain of Morpheus) where, between The Return of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens and The Dark God's Darlings by Lord Dunsany, one finds The Hand of Glory by Erasmus Fry. Fry, a character of the series, is mixed with real authors. Even in the epigraphs of the collected graphic novels, a sentence from actual books is next to a line from one of the series' characters.

While Gaiman is influenced by literature, he reverses the causation within his narrative. For instance, while he uses Titania, Auberon and Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream in The Sandman #19, Shakespeare gets the inspiration for the characters from the actual fairies he meets in the story.

Several issues feature historical figures. A list of them can be found in the Appendix C.

D. Gaiman's Mythology in The Sandman

Late UC Santa Barbara Professor of English Frank McConnell wrote, “Gaiman has invented (...) a mythology not just of the comics but of storytelling itself.”³

The Sandman straddles three domains: traditional mythology, DC Comics mythology and the modern world, which Gaiman depicts with a seldom seen realism. But he weaves these three domains in such a way as to make a coherent whole. This is accomplished by superimposing his own mythology on these structures.

More than a unifying structure, this modern mythology embodies a philosophy of existence. The Sandman (the character) is part of the Endless. From the oldest to the youngest, they are Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair, Delirium. Though this is never properly explained, we can conjecture that this sequence is supposed to parallel the history of the universe. With Destiny starts time, with time life starts and thus death. With living creatures and consciousness, Dream appears. It is stated in the series that at the end of the universe, the last life Death will take will be that of Destiny and she will “close the door” on that universe (after having extinguished all the lights).

In issue 30, Dream says to Roman emperor Augustus, “All gods begin in my realm, Caius Octavius. They walk your world for a span, and when they are old they return to my world, to die.”

In The Sandman #48, Destruction describes the Endless:

“The Endless are merely patterns. The Endless are ideas. The Endless are wave functions⁴. The Endless are repeating motifs. The Endless are echoes of darkness, and nothing more... And even our existences are brief and bounded. None of us will last longer than this version of the Universe.”

The use of quantum physics terms to describe his fantasy characters shows a will to produce a philosophical work, not just an entertaining fantasy. Karin Heller's working hypothesis that fantasy's function isn't just to illustrate a message or to entertain but that it is an expression of “the myth which founds a world, justifies it, gives it a meaning or meanings” seems to be borne out.⁵

The origin and exact nature of the Endless is unknown. Few hints are ever given in the series as to exactly why the Endless exist. They seem to be natural forces. They have at times been described as “a creation of the consciousness of living beings.”⁶

The Endless are as old as the concepts that they represent. The Endless are said to be older than the fairy folk, gods, and other supernatural beings. Their exact ages in years are unknown, but they are known to have existed long before life on Earth. They have manifested themselves in alien civilizations from long before the creation of the Earth in The Sandman's universe (and DC Comics continuity in general).

The chapter “Dream: The Heart of the Star” in the anthology Endless Nights is said to take place before our sun's planets have “awakened” with life. Death has claimed that she was there when the first living thing stirred, and Destiny has said that Dream gave the Earth itself the fond dream of being able to support life. Dream was created shortly after Death, as living things could die before they could dream.

David Beau describes the Endless in this way,

“Death régit le domaine de la vie et de la mort, Destiny représente l'histoire du monde, Destruction est lié à tout ce qui change et se transforme, Desire est à l'origine des tentations et des sentiments, Despair se complait dans l'observation des gens accablés par le malheur, Delirium est la personnification du plaisir et de son ultime expression : la folie.” (Op. cit. p. 98)

Toward the end of the series, we get an inkling of the nature of the Endless. They stand both for what their names entail and for the opposite concept. For instance, Death stands for death but also for life as death defines (limits, bounds) life. In issue 70, we see her give life rather than taking it. We can infer that Destiny also encompasses the concept of free will. By the same token, Dream defines reality (Morpheus means the Shaper) and we find here the realisation of the fantasy-reality dichotomy which lies at the core of The Sandman and American Gods. To know reality, one has to know fantasy. If American Gods can be approached as a serious piece of literature on American myth and identity, it is because we can know the reality of America by the underlying myths of America (dreams) that shape that reality.

E. The Modern World in The Sandman

By “reality” here, we mean the current state of the country in its diversity and complexity. “Reality” is opposed to “myth”. If The Sandman has earned some acclaim, it is as much for its fantastical universe as for its depiction of underrepresented segments of the population. American comics are known for appealing more to boys than girls, a fact specifically mentioned when Disney recently announced their decision to purchase Marvel Comics, the leader of the comics industry and long-time rival to DC Comics.⁷

While the Endless are seven, a male-female parity is maintained. Destiny, Dream and Destruction are male, Death, Despair and Delirium are female and Desire is androgynous. In the structure of the series, another parity exists as Gaiman purposely tried to appeal to both genders. In his essay “All Books Have Genders,”⁸ he writes,

“When I wrote the ten volumes of Sandman, I tended to alternate between what I thought of as male storylines, such as the first story, collected under the title Preludes and Nocturnes, or the fourth book, Season of Mists; and more female stories, like Game of You, or Brief Lives.”

He must have been successful since the audience for The Sandman was quite unlike that of mainstream comics: half the readership was female, many were in their twenties, and many read no other comics at all.

American Gods contains another example of the male-female parity in Sam Black Crow: she is a female double of Shadow as she also dreams of a buffalo god--a female god, as opposed to the male god Shadow dreams about.

Gaiman didn't stop at the male/female dichotomy. As mentioned, one of the Endless is androgynous but other sexual identities are acknowledged within the course of the series. In the first issue, the male character who keeps Dream imprisoned has a male lover; in the fifth volume, A Game of You, Gaiman features a lesbian couple and Wanda, a pre-operative transsexual.

Mortality is common theme from the first issue, where the central character tries to trap Death in order to gain immortality, to the last one, where we are told of the death of William Shakespeare. The main story concerns the death of the title character. In one of the most significant line of the series, in Brief Lives, Death tells to a fifteen thousand year old man, “You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime.” In the series, people die from electrocution, cot death, AIDS, fire, accidents, murder, starvation, overdose. Death can be long and protracted or sudden and unexpected. The characters also age in real time. This is quite at odd with an American comics tradition where characters don't age (or age very slowly) and often come back from death.

F. Traditional Mythology

The Sandman, under his name of Morpheus, Greek god of dreams, is the perfect example of the merging of Gaiman's mythology with traditional mythology. He fathered Orpheus with Calliope, thus substituting in this role for Apollo. The three witches, Mildred, Mordred and Cynthia, are redefined as the Triple Goddess. As such they can become any set of three goddesses, such as the Fates (Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos) interchangeable with the Roman Parcae or Germanic Norns; the Furies (prominent in The Kindly Ones) or the maiden-mother-crone of neo-pagan movements. As the three witches, they are also a reference to the Weird Sisters of Shakespeare's MacBeth. They appear as old women in a retirement home visited by Rose Walker.

The Judeo-Christian mythology is the most represented. It bears the influence of John Milton. The Presence/Creator/Yahweh is the creator of the universe. Lucifer abandons Hell which devolves to two angels, Duma and Remiel, to rule. Demons Azazel, Beelzebub and Mazikeen are from the Jewish tradition while Choronzon is a recent creation. The use by Gaiman of the Miltonian Lucifer will be so compelling that it will spin-off its own 75 issue series. Cain, Abel and Eve are characters which, like the three witches and Destiny, Gaiman picked from old horror anthologies but he redefines them as the Biblical characters. Even Eve gets mixed up with the pagan triple goddess in Sandman #40 where the three wives of Adam are described as mother, maiden and crone.

Odin, Thor and Loki represent Norse mythology and their use is consistent with their appearance in American Gods. To a public used to the popular Marvel Comics version (one of the bestselling American comic book in the sixties), this was the first time a writer wrote the characters like they appear in the Norse literature. Contrary to many other deities, those aren't affected by the modern world.

Faeries are regulars in the series but there again, it owes a lot to Shakespeare.

Ishtar and Bast (also used in American Gods) round up the list of traditional gods. Both suffer from the lack of worshippers. While Bast stays away from the modern world, Ishtar works as an exotic dancer and kills herself.

The character Pharamond is a fictional god who reinvents himself as a god of travel to avoid fading with the times. While he looks Babylonian, the name is that of a legendary King of the Franks and is used by Shakespeare in Henry V, Act I, Scene 2 as the originator of the Salic law. This is very likely where Gaiman found the name.

G. DC Comics Mythology

The Sandman was originally a proposal to use the 1970s character who lives in the Dream Dimension and protects children from their nightmares and occasionally from real-life menaces. While the character was dressed as a super-hero, he had been intended to be the Sandman of popular myth, eternal and immortal, however a later writer turned him into a human. In being given carte blanche to come up with a new character Gaiman was free to create a new design. But he had plans to use lesser known characters and effectively managed to make them prominent.

In his second issue, “Imperfect Hosts” he reintroduces horror comic book hosts: Cain from House of Mystery, Abel from House of Secrets, and the three witches from The Witching Hour. Cain and Abel also co-hosted Plop! and Secrets of Haunted House with Eve. Their use by Alan Moore in just one issue of Swamp Thing redefined them as closer to their biblical counterparts. Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing had made the series the best comic in America; Gaiman continued this characterisation and set out to do the same with the three witches. In the same issue, he also mentioned two lesser known hosts: the Mad Mod Witch (as the Mad Yuppie Witch), host of The Unexpected and Lucien, host of Tales of Ghost Castle. Lucien would become a regular supporting character.

In his third issue, Gaiman uses an Alan Moore character, occult detective John Constantine, but the character already has his own series. Later he will create 18^th century supernatural adventuress Lady Johanna Constantine. In the fourth issue, he uses Etrigan the Demon, a seventies character created by Jack Kirby but reimagined in the eighties by Alan Moore. Soon, he also introduces Matt, a raven who used to be a human who died in his sleep. This is another character inherited from Alan Moore and another sign that Gaiman was setting himself up as his successor.

In issue 7, Destiny, host of Weird Mystery Tales and Secrets of Haunted House is revealed as the eldest of the Endless. Eve from Secrets of Sinister House and Weird Mystery Tales appears later but in a reimagined version both as the Biblical character and as an aspect of the triple goddess, the old woman of the maiden-mother-crone trinity, thus merging the DC character with Judeo-Christian and pagan myths.

Gaiman's use of other DC characters is peripheral but can be quite potent. Issue 20 remains a favorite for the treatment of obscure character Element Girl. She received powers and immortality from Ra to serve as warrior in his battle against the god Apep (who died 3000 years ago). Death, coming for an upstairs neighbour who has fallen off a ladder, visits her, sensing her longing to die, but is unable to take her, though she informs her that Ra (the sun) can take her power back so she can die.

Lyta Hall is the only major character of the series who has been a super-hero. She was known as Fury, daughter of a Greek super-heroin, a fact that Gaiman makes use of when Lyta contacts the mythological Furies (the Kindly Ones) to inflict her vengeance on Morpheus when she believes him responsible for the disappearance of her son. She never appears in costume, only as a normal woman though with superhuman force as she is able to break a man's arm without effort.

So, with the costumed Sandmen explained as the universe's attempt to fill the void left by the imprisonment of Morpheus and with the use of super-heroes with mythological connections, Gaiman maintains a unity of tone.

H. Literature

Literature is a distinct source. Professor McConnell told us that Gaiman invented a mythology not just of comics but of storytelling itself, and as such writers are prominently featured. Writers Mark Twain, Marco Polo, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare appear as characters.

Richard Madoc is a fictional writer who gets his inspiration by keeping the muse Calliope as his prisoner. The works of Shakespeare, John Milton, John Dee, Robert Graves, L. Frank Baum provide characters. Crowley and G. K. Chesterton are the inspiration for the characters Roderick Burgess and Fiddler's Green respectively.

Finally, Gaiman features Shakespeare and uses “The Tempest,” a play fundamentally about change, endings, and new beginnings, to finish the series.

On the occasion of Gaiman's earning of the Hugo award for The Graveyard Book in August 2009 Damien G. Walter heaped praise upon Neil Gaiman in The Guardian:

“Neil Gaiman has won over his audience one-by-one with stories in which readers find intense personal meaning. But that audience is now numbered in its millions because of Gaiman’s understanding of the primal role of myth in our lives, and our hunger for myths that suit our modern age. His stories stitch together a 21st-century mythology, woven from the legends of ancient Greece and the Norse pantheon, eastern European folktales and the British literary tradition of Milton and Shakespeare, to name just a few of his sources. Into this fabric are embroidered modern mythic figures for our age: Dream and his family of the Endless; the bespectacled boy wizard; and now the child raised by nightmares in a graveyard.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/aug/10/myth-genius-neil-gaiman)

He wrote the following about American Gods:

But it was with the release of American Gods in 2001 that Neil finally captured a mainstream readership. The story of an America populated by all the gods who had ever washed up on its shores, and a war between ancient magic and modern technology, resonated deeply with millions of readers who did not know how much they longed for myth until they were given one. (Walter, op. cit.)

We have seen with the Sandman how myths are said to underlie the structure of existence. So in the next part, let's look at what myths are used and figure what reality they define in American Gods.

Part Three: Old Gods

Emile Durkheim, the famous French sociologist/philosopher posed the question that this novel explores: That the old gods have died, and he feared for the future of society, because he could not imagine what new gods could come along and replace them.

I. Norse mythology

In his blog entry of 7 March 2001 Gaiman mentions “twelve years spent getting as deeply into Norse stuff as anyone who doesn’t do it for a living” and indeed Norse mythology is at the heart of the story.

A. Odin

1. Background

It takes some time to figure out where the story is going. The first mythological character to appear and to be recognizable is Odin. He appears under a recognizable name, Wednesday, i.e. Day of Woden, his name in English (German: Wotan). The Slavic gods call him Votan on page 74. The constellation Ursa Major is called Odin's Wain on page 89.

His story is the following: he appears to recruit Shadow as a bodyguard while he is recruiting an army. It turns out that he's recruiting old gods to fight the modern gods. In the end he turns out to have orchestrated the conflict with Loki as he benefits from the dedication of the battle to him just as Norsemen did.

He's a one-eyed god since he sacrificed an eye to gain knowledge and he is described as having a glass eye. Walking disguised among men is typical of his legendary characteristics.

Odin come to America in AD 813 when Norsemen first arrived there. They made a human sacrifice to him by hanging a Native American (which they called a scraeling, the name the Norse Greenlanders gave to the people they encountered in Greenland; they used the same name for the inhabitants of North America, specifically present-day Newfoundland [“Vinland”]).

Which aspect of current American life he describes isn't easy to find. He's described as a hustler. He isn't worshipped in any way and has to live as a con artist.

In the end, Odin is revealed to be behind the war of the gods when Loki dedicates the battle to him. This war of the gods is akin to Ragnarök, the fate of the gods, the eschatological story in which the Aesir (the Norse gods led by Odin) die in their final fight against their enemies. In the old myths, Odin is obsessed by this upcoming event, trying to gather foreknowledge of its circumstances. But in the novel, this event is necessary to his continued survival as a god. Indeed Odin receives the souls of warriors who fell in battle in his hall.

The sinister nature of Odin is foretold when Samantha tells of a legend about him (p. 171). Some Vikings hang their king in effigy as they had promised a human sacrifice to Odin but didn't actually want to kill their king. The mock hanging and the mock spear become real ones and kill the king.

He's accompanied by two ravens Huginn and Muninn (p. 132, 157, 158), as well as two wolves, Geri and Freki (p. 128, 132) and has an eight-legged horse, Sleipnir. The horse and the name don't appear in the novel but are mentioned obliquely; Wednesday says, “my horse is the gallows” (p. 132) and on page 68 the four Norsemen carry a body to be sacrificed to Odin “making him an eight-legged horse.”

2. Odin as the aging American identity

Odin is the chief Anglo-Saxon god. He started as a minor god but took on the attributes of majesty in the same way the USA was a European nation which gradually became the superpower which it is.

Odin is the god of commerce, an attribute which he shares with the Roman god Mercury and explains why they share same day of the week (Wednesday = Woden's day = Mercuri dies). Commerce has always been a characteristic of the USA as demonstrated in Fareed Zakaria's From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America's World Role.

But more than anything else, as emphasized in American Gods, Odin is renewed by deaths on the battlefield. Walter Hixson in The Myth of American Democracy tells us that the American identity is renewed by war.

“US foreign policy is a lethal, pathological force, emanating from a self-serving national mythology. To the extent that we can we must unpack the 'myth to power' and replace it with an alternative hegemony that will enable us to transcend the nation's congenital and pathological aggression against enemy-others in deference to genuine efforts at global community.” (Hixson, op. cit. p. 307)

Samuel Huntington concurs,

“Quarante années durant, l'Amérique a été le chef de file du 'monde libre' contre 'l'empire du mal'. Cet empire disparu comment l'Amérique devait-elle se définir?”

“'C'est la guerre, a dit Heinrich Treitscheke, qui fait d'un peuple une nation.' La Révolution a donné naissance au peuple américain, la guerre d'indépendance à la nation américaine et la Seconde Guerre mondiale a été l'épiphanie de l'identification des Américains à leur pays.”

B. Loki

Before Odin appears, the reader has been presented with another Norse myth though this is revealed much later in the novel (p. 443). Loki first appears as Shadow's inmate, Low Key Lyesmith, a transparent name. Lie-Smith (maker of lies) is one of the names he is known by in the Eddas. The embers that dance in his eyes (p. 442) and his orange-blond hair are marks that further distinguish Loki, whose name may be related to loga, fire. Orange, fiery hair is also used in the visual depiction of Loki in two volumes of Neil Gaiman's graphic novel The Sandman--Seasons of Mists and The Kindly Ones.

In the Norse myths, he is a troublemaker, a god of mischief and god of evil who ends up causing the death of Baldur and hence Ragnarök, the final battle in which the gods die. In the novel he plays a double game by appearing as Mister World, one of the modern gods. His ability to take on other shapes is part of his folklore (Shape-Changer is another of his names). He's the progenitor of monsters: Jormungand, the World Serpent, Sleipnir, Odin's eight-legged horse (which he carried as a mare) and Fenrir the giant wolf who eats Odin at Ragnarök. The eight-legged horse made by the four Norsemen carrying the Native American is the result of deceit (= Loki). His scarred lips (p. 442) refer to his punishment: sewn lips.

While the identity of Low Key Lyesmith as Loki is not too hard to figure out to those who are familiar with Norse myths, Mister World is obscure. As a name it reminds us of Mr. Universe and Mr. Olympia, bodybuilding titles, but the names of his acolytes, like Mr. Town, head us in a different direction and it isn't clear how and why this is a modern god since it evokes no form of worship.

Yet there is maybe one connection between Loki and the world. As punishment for causing the death of Baldur Loki is bound under the earth where his writhing is supposed to be the origin of earthquakes. His child, Jormungand, lives in the ocean and is so big that he encircles the Earth.

D. Shadow as Baldur

Shadow is the hero of the novel. His real name is not given. He doesn't appear as a god, but is revealed ultimately as a son of Odin. As Odin explains, he was conceived to be sacrificed since “there is much power in the sacrifice of a son.” In the original myths, Odin is the all-father, the father of many gods and it is the death of his son Baldur that causes the coming of Ragnarök. Since his other son Thor is revealed as having committed suicide in 1932, he needed to conceive another son.

Shadow can be seen as a new Baldur. His wife Laura says he shines like a beacon. Baldur was so beautiful that he was luminous.

On page 167 he accurately predicts Samantha's occupation, possibly a telltale sign that he has divination abilities like his father Odin. On page 203 he doesn't cut himself when using a straight razor for the first time just like Baldur was invulnerable to most weapons.

His real name is not given and he “loses” it by the end of the novel in exchange for his life. It is common in magic that names have a mystic significance. “Shadow” is just a name he goes by. However the last name of his wife (practically unused) is Moon (p. 16, p. 27), which strengthens the Baldur connection since Baldur's wife is Nanna, the moon-maid. However we find out that Laura's family has the last name McCabe (p. 257), hence Moon is her married name and the last name of Shadow. Shadow isn't a solar deity like Baldur or Apollo but a lunar one like Artemis or Selene. He's not a destructive male but a male with female qualities (while Samantha Black Crow, being bisexual, has male qualities).

In a follow-up short story, “Monarch of the Glen” published in the collection Fragile Things, his name is given as Baldur Moon.

II. Non-Norse myths

A. Egyptian pantheon

Gods of the Egyptian pantheon play a strong role in the story, especially in the death, judgement and resurrection of Shadow.

Mr. Ibis is first mentioned on page 92 as the fictional author of the second “Coming to America” story but only appears on page 180 where we find out he runs a funeral parlor with Mr. Jacquel. In a postmodern trick, he is later revealed to be the fictional author of all of the “Coming to America” stories that the reader read earlier. He's the Egyptian god Thoth. His attributes fit with his actions in the novel, whether as a writer, a mortician or a coroner. He is the inventor of writing, assisted in the resurrections of Osiris and Horus and without his words the gods would not exist. If for Derrida, Thoth is the god of the secondary language, acting for Horus (“Tout ce qu'il doit énoncer ou faire connaître avec les mots, Horus l'a déjà pensé”), for Gaiman the writer is the ultimate creator, including the creator of gods. Appropriately, Gaiman has often contributed to the fight for creators rights in comics. Mr. Ibis helps Shadow in the afterlife to survive his judgement and come back to life.

Jacquel is Anubis, the god with a jackal head associated with mummification and acting as judge in the afterlife.

Bast, a solar and war goddess depicted with a cat's head, appears as a cat on pages 180 and 202. She can observe whatever cats anywhere can see, just like the Bast which Gaiman used in Sandman.

The god Set is said to have left the group of Egyptian deities 200 years ago to go exploring (p. 202) and to have sent a postcard from San Francisco circa 1905-1906 (probably not so coincidentally the time of the earthquake). As the god of the desert, storm and chaos, one wonders if he is the forgettable god that appears as a man in a dark suit on page 141 and then on page 285 in Las Vegas.

Horus has gone crazy and remains in the form of a hawk most of the time until he appears at the crucifixion of Shadow.

B. Others

More myths appear than I need to catalog though I researched them all. Gaiman makes extensive use of allusions. Meredith Collins, Rodney Sharkey, James Fleming, and Zuleyha Cetiner-Oktem have commented on it, mostly positively, while Clay Smith argues that it tends to assert Gaiman as an authorial voice and therefore to exclude his collaborators as authors, and that reading Gaiman becomes a sort of game to entice readers to identify references with the result of investing time and money in his works.⁹ (Since whatever obtains a sacrifice of time and money is potentially a god, one must wonder what Gaiman thinks of his self made apotheosis.)

While Gaiman will vaguely mention a character on one page, only to give more information much later that allows the reader to connect the dots, this is a common practice for writers.

III. Gaiman characters

Gaiman created his own mythology in his Sandman graphic novels, notably the personifications called the Endless: Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair, Delirium. He describes them as more than gods but less than gods. Unlike gods, their existence precedes words and depends not on worshipers but on the existence of living beings since they're supposed to represent features common to all life. While gods are fictional constructs, they're as powerful as people imagine them to be and so can be more than the Endless. In the letters to Sandman, a reader wonders about the existence of an ultimate Christian God along with the Endless. If gods came to existence after living beings used their power of imagination (as represented by the Sandman), how could there be an ultimate Creator? As an answer he proposes that humans created Yahweh and Yahweh evolved in their consciousness and tales from a Jewish storm god to the ultimate god eventually described by Milton (since Milton is the inspiration for Gaiman's Yahweh), he became that ultimate god. As per Jean Baudrillard, the simulacrum comes before the real. Thus we have a reality with multiple strata.

Some of the Endless make veiled appearances in the novel, which is fitting: his work and his creations have a following of their own and Gaiman has been credited with creating a mythology. The voice encouraging Shadow to cut his throat is Despair. Delirium appears on page 306 (“A young girl, no older than fourteen, her hair dyed green and orange and pink, stared at them as they went by. She sat beside a dog, a mongrel, with pieces of string for a collar and a leash.”) The goth girl on page 489 with her black silk top hat and her black hair fits the description of both Death in Sandman and Didi, the incarnation of Death in Gaiman's Death: The High Cost of Living.

In addition, as another wink to his fans, there is no author called Jenny Kerton (p. 297) but this is the name of a character in the Gaiman short story Wall: A Prologue.

IV. Christian parallels

In the first part, we have identified Shadow as Baldur. He's the son of a god and a mortal, which by definition makes him a hero in the classical tradition. Sons of god are very popular myths: Hercules has arguably been the most popular mythological character of the western world. As an employee of Odin, he is in a position to accomplish legendary works of his own.

But in an examination of American myths set in the modern world, one wonders how come Yahweh and Jesus are not prominent characters. In his blog entry of June 22, 2001, Gaiman had this to say on that point:

“Jesus actually did turn up in a scene which I cut, as it just didn`t work, but I figured a book about American Religion was not the book I wanted to write, which was about American Belief, so I let some things go...”

However parallels between Baldur and Jesus aren't new. The similarities between the two would have been used by Christian missionaries to convert Germanic people. In his autobiography “Surprised by Joy: the Shape of my Early Life” in which he tells of his conversion to Christianity, the British scholar and writer C. S. Lewis said he “loved Balder before Christ”. Baldur is the son of the chief god, the all-father, he is loved by all that lives except Loki (the main antagonist of the gods, who brings about the end of the world), dies from a spear, and is reborn after the end of the world to lead humanity.

With Shadow we have additional parallels: Shadow is thirty-three when he is crucified on the tree and dies, he has a bleeding wound on his side (caused by a stick which is a spear) and is revived by the goddess Eostre (Easter). On page 14 his head is filled with ghost images that remind us of Jesus going out of prison:

“In his imagination he was leaving another prison, long ago. He had been imprisoned in a lightless room for far too long: his beard was wild and his hair was a tangle. The guards had walked him down a gray stone stairway and out into a plaza filled with brightly colored things, with people and with objects. It was a market day and he was dazzled by the noise and the color, squinting at the sunlight that filled the square, smelling the salt-wet air and all the good things of the market and on his left the sun glittered from the water...”

The battle at Rock City is a Ragnarök deliberately engineered by Odin. The battle is dedicated to Odin so he can feed off deaths. Shadow makes the following accusation:

“You wanted a massacre. You needed a blood sacrifice. A sacrifice of gods.”

Later, to stop the battle, he explains the situation in these terms:

“There was a god who came here from a far land, and whose power and influence waned as belief in him faded. He was a god who took his power from sacrifice, and from death, and especially from war.”

This is consistent with Odin's usual attributes: he would collect the slain in battle in his hall, the Valhalla. He is also associated with cunning, trickery and deception. Ragnarök is not unlike the Apocalypse: it is the final fight between the forces of good and evil. And although there are no parallels between the Christian devil and Loki, we can draw some in the novel.

Loki comes from one side, the old gods, but leads the new gods. This parallels the fallen angel Lucifer leading the demons against God. The ability of Loki as a shape-changer is one attributed to the devil. The name used by Loki, Mr. World, is very close to the title of the devil as Prince of this World. He also leads the spook show, i.e. government agents (from spook = an espionage agent; a spy). They are described as Men in Black, a term which first meant real or pretended government agents suppressing UFO evidence and now refers to any generic suited government/corporate official. Folklorist Peter Rojcewicz noted that many Men in Black accounts parallel tales of people encountering the devil: neither Men in Black nor the devil are quite human, and witnesses often discover this fact midway through an encounter.¹⁰

Gaiman would then have used and reinforced parallels between Norse myths and Christian belief to comment on the latter. Odin's statement that “there's power in the sacrifice of a son-power enough, and more than enough, to get the whole ball rolling” applies equally to Odin-Balder, Odin-Shadow and Yahweh-Jesus. When the non-Christian native American Sam Black Crow remarks that “White people have some fucked-up gods,” she probably expresses her view on Christianity as well even though she cited an example involving Odin. She's using the present tense and white people overwhelmingly believe in the Christian god.

Part Four: Gods and America

I. Modern Gods

In the Acknowledgements section, Gaiman credits other authors in tackling these themes: James Branch Cabell, Roger Zelazny and Harlan Ellison. However, whereas his use of old gods owes nearly everything to research and is remarkable in its power to evoke pictures, he has to create the new ones and he only describes a couple of them. For the rest he gives only broad strokes:

“there are new gods in America, clinging to growing knots of belief: gods of credit card and freeway, of Internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon.” (p. 138)

“But the spook show, the ones you met, they're something else. They exist because everyone knows they must exist.” (p. 309)

“The techies want it in Austin, or maybe San Jose, the players want it in Hollywood, the intangibles want it on Wall Street.” (p. 346)

“I've checked with the crew at Radio Modern, and they're all for settling this peacefully; and the intangibles are pretty much in favor of letting market forces take care of it.” (p. 505)

“railroad baron” (p. 537)

“gods of the airplanes” (p. 537)

Except for the one called Media, they are typically nameless. The most featured one is just called the technical boy or the fat kid. Apart from a couple of examples, Gaiman doesn't delve much into the form of belief they receive. For instance this dialogue on page 175 reveals the mechanism that deifies TV:

“I'm the TV. (...) I'm the little shrine the family gathers to adore. (...) The TV's the altar. I'm what people are sacrificing to.”

“What do they sacrifice?”

“Their time, mostly. Sometimes, each other.”

And this passage page 537 does the same for cars:

“There were car gods there: a powerful, serious-faced contingent, with blood on their black gloves and on their chrome teeth: recipients of human sacrifice on a scale un- dreamed-of since the Aztecs.”

II. American identity

Shadow, however, isn't reducible to Baldur nor to a metaphor of Jesus. For one thing, he isn't trapped in America the way the old gods are. Odin says “I've been trapped in this damned land for almost twelve hundred years.” Shadow was born abroad, lived abroad with his mother when he was young and goes to Iceland at the end. He is above all an American and that may be part of the reason why he's so important to both sides. The new gods make a lot of effort to recruit him. We can see him as the synthesis of the dichotomy between new and old gods. There are several clues to this basic American identity.

Shadow starts as an ex-convict. This places him in the tradition of Tom Joad in Grapes of Wrath and, more loosely, of all the convicts that were transported to America to start a new life. Reminding us that the original Americans were convicts is another denial of the “Pilgrim Fathers” origin.

In Chapter Eight, Shadow learns from Mad Sweeney that he was given a coin meant for royalty by mistake, for “the king of America himself.” However we can surmise that he didn't get the coin by mistake but by design since the sequence of events that unfold due to the coin lead to the failure of the plot of Odin and Loki.

There are recurring hints that Shadow might be of mixed heritage. In Chapter One, while he's in prison, an inmate and a guard inquire about his origin; in Chapter Seven page 166, Sam Black Crow asks him if he has Indian blood. Shadow's mother must have had African ancestry as she dies of complications of sickle-cell anemia, a disease which occurs most commonly in people (or their descendants) from sub-Saharan Africa. He dreams of the buffalo-headed god and of thunderbirds. The buffalo god provides him with clues and tells him that he is the land and the reason why people and their gods came to America.

Even though he might be the king of America, he has no desire for this, which is also an American characteristic. Article One of the United States Constitution expressly excludes such titles (“No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”)

There is even a comparison with the game of checkers which Shadow plays with Czernobog (p. 79-83). The text tells us the rules: “no longer forced to move only forward on the board, a sideways slip at a time, the kings could move forward or back, which made them doubly dangerous. They had reached the farthest row, and could go where they wanted.” Until his crucifixion and death, Shadow is a pawn of Odin, only able to move forward. After he dies he becomes a king, able to go where he wants. He's able to go backstage, the place where only the gods can go, to stop the battle. He also manages to put roses in the hands of Sam without her noticing.

We can even establish a parity and find a female counterpart. As he explains in his essay “All Book Have Genders”¹¹ Gaiman thinks there are male stories and female stories and he alternated them when he was writing Sandman. Naturally he would avoid sexism in having the American being a male.

Though she plays no major role in the story, Sam Black Crow keeps crossing the path of Shadow. We see her in five scenes during the story. She has a mixed heritage with her father being Cherokee and her mother's family being European Jewish. She also has dreams and believes in a buffalo divinity, but a female one. When she states her beliefs she says, “I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass.” And when she tells of her dreams she recounts, “Sometimes I'm underground, talking to a woman with a buffalo head.” It is quite possible that her Indian father is himself a god, fathering children here and there as Odin did since we are told he leaves his family after ten years to make a new child.

Both Shadow and she have memories of a past life and each knows things about the other which they have no reason to. When Shadow hazards a guess as to what she's doing, he says:

“I figure you're at school.” (...) “Where you are undoubtedly studying art history, women's studies, and probably casting your own bronzes. And you probably work in a coffeehouse to help cover the rent.” (p. 167)

Which happens to be exactly what she's doing, to their common surprise. She also sensed that he had dies, and then wasn't dead anymore.

“A few weeks back, I was certain he was dead. ESP. Or whatever. Like, I knew. But then, I started to think maybe he wasn't. I don't know. I guess my ESP isn't that hot.” (p. 576)

But what makes her the expression of the American Belief that the book is about is her long soliloquy pages 394-395 where she states her beliefs. Many of these beliefs are mutually exclusive, like a personal god, an impersonal god and a godless universe or a woman's right to choose and a baby's right to live. Their coexistence here is a reflection of their coexistence in America. That multiplicity makes her an everywoman in the same way that Shadow's lack of name makes him an everyman.

The inclusion of two quantum physics statements, “light is a wave and a particle” and the reference to Schroedinger's cat, validates the multiplicity since both possibilities are true at the same time. In this worldview, it isn't necessary to choose a belief to the exclusion of another which would normally be deemed incompatible. In other words such dichotomies are outmoded.

III. America is the myth

The buffalo-headed god that haunts Shadow's dreams explains that he is not just a god but that he is “the land” and that it was he who attracted all the peoples who came to inhabit it. We can break down this mythical America into three components: Americana, geography, history.

A. Americana

The semantic field of myth has exploded to the point that, as the quotes of Eliade, Barthes and Forbes in the introduction show, the concept now extends to names, places, customs, personalities, TV series, manufactured objects, etc.

In Appendix A, I made a list of Americana. They are the elements which give America its distinctive allure.

Gaiman isn't shy about citing names and brands and uses it to achieve what Roland Barthes calls the “effet de réel.” Their omnipresence evokes the American day-to-day life itself as the average American is bombarded daily with advertisements and trademarks. Whenever possible Gaiman uses the brand name directly without the generic descriptor, even praising his copy editor for capitalising Dumpster in the American Gods Blog (March 2, 2001). So that a distributor is rather called a Coke machine. This is a novelty since writing manuals advocate using the descriptors for a proper use of trademarks. Gaiman the novelist chooses the opposite direction. He doesn't restrict his use to American marks though. Foreign marks are used when they are omnipresent and part of American life, so we find Toyota or Nissan and Nokia along with Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart or KFC.

Beyond the “effet de réel” Georges Lewi, in Les marques, mythologies du quotidien : comprendre le succès des grandes marques, has demonstrated how brand names have their own life cycle parallel to the development of myths. From heroic origins, characters then become models providing inspiration for the way to conduct one's life. Brand names become mythical to the degree they can evolve from the heroic to the wisdom stage.

Lewi explains what is a myth:

Le mythe est un récit fondateur si ancien qu'on ne lui connait pas d'origine. Il continue cependant de se transmettre. C'est un système porteur de sens et de vérité dont les deux principaux acteurs sont l'homme et le cosmos.

Ce récit anonyme et collectif est réapproprié par la collectivité.

Il a une fonction d'intégrateur social, en proposant un sens au présent ainsi que des modèles de conduite. Il aide à comprendre la place de l'homme dans la société.

On le juge vrai et il s'appuie sur des éléments de vraisemblance.

Les héros qui peuplent le mythe sont des monotypes dénués de fine psychologie. Ils incarnent des forces, des archétypes. Ils fascinent parce qu'ils sont absolus. (Lewi, op. cit. p. 216)

In The Sandman, we have a founding myth of the universe in the Endless. They are the wave patterns of existence. In American Gods we have a founding myth of America, the land attracted the inhabitants. The Sandman provides meaning and truth as outsiders are part of the same whole that the rest of society belongs to. They even define normality if we are to follow the philosophy of the series. People are equal before death, everybody gets a lifetime whether it lasted a few hours or fifteen thousand years. Even gods can die and fade away.

It has no origin. While old myths have no origin, it is interesting to notice that recent characters who reach mythical status have unresolved questions and arguments about their origin so that if the origin is known, it gets confused with time. In the matter of Shakespeare and his works, scholarship has unveiled the many sources and inspirations for the plays. This tends to diminish Shakespeare as sole originator. The author's identity itself is put in question. Was the Shakespeare of Stratford the writer of the plays? Other aspects are challenged, what was his religion? What was his sexual orientation? Characters created in the twentieth century aren't immune to this process, While Spider-Man has been created by writer Stan Lee and penciler Steve Ditko, the contributions of each are debated and other creators, like Joe Simon, Jack Kirby and Eric Stanton have claimed to have created various aspects of the character. We even find disagreements on the creation of recent characters like Wolverine 1974) and Venom (1988). Writer Al Nickerson believes “that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko created the Spider-Man that we are familiar with today [but that] ultimately, Spider-Man came into existence, and prospered, through the efforts of not just one or two, but many, comic book creators.”¹²

I would posit the following law: The more a creation achieves mythical status, the more its original creator will get if only because later contributors add to it or alternately it requires a fuzzy origin for a creation to achieve mythical status.

The group or community makes it his own. This has started with The Sandman where other artists have started using some of Gaiman's characters such as Death. Old myths get reused all the time but in popular culture, we have the phenomenon often fiction (starting with Star Trek). There is also the feeling that the fans are the true depository of popular characters and that they are entitled to boycott the publisher to revert the decisions they don't like about the character.

Lewi tells us:

La marque raconte. C'est ce qui la différencie du produit. (Lewi, op. cit. p. 225)

From this we can see that the abundant use of trademarks in a work concerned with myths is pertinent after all. This reminds us of professor McConnell's stating that Gaiman invented a mythology of storytelling itself. The world is shaped by those who can describe it. Each writer is a creator.

But Lewi's best remark or at least the best suited to our examination of myths and America is here:

Mythe et marque sont avant tout de formidables intégrateurs sociaux.

Mythes et marques sont là pour rappeler à l'individu son importance, ses droits, et ses devoirs vis-à-vis du groupe.

« Les rapports de l'individu et du groupe sont au centre des tragédies d'Eschyle et d'Euripide. »¹³

Ce fut le rôle du mythe d'exprimer ces rapports difficiles. Il n'y a pas eu de marques avant le 19e siècle, car jusqu'alors l'individu n'existait pas. Le concept de marques est né aux Etats-Unis d'Amérique, où l'individu est au centre de la société. (Lewi, op. cit. p. 256)

The trademark is an American phenomenon originally. Myths provide a model of belonging. The outsiders in Gaimans's novels interact with the rest of society and sometimes come to represent it. The former convict Shadow, who could be king of America, is the perfect example of that.

B. Geography

The novel is quite appropriately a road trip. Road trips are convenient because they relate to the immigrant experience and this has been used in great American novels: The Grapes of Wrath, On the Road, Lolita. The path followed by Shadow is given in Appendix B.

Roadside attractions are one of the themes of the novel. “It is a holy place” says Odin of Mount Rushmore. It is stated that such places have power. These places of power are where in the Old World, people built churches and other religiously significant places. In America these places become popular attractions, touristic sites such as the House on the Rock or Rock City. But arbitrarily chosen places such as the motel in the center of America do not function this way. It's the land who decides such things. They are a microcosm of America as a whole.

The novel also describes the charm of small town life. Englishmen like Gaiman have a saying, “England has history while America has geography.” Small towns are a peculiar experience because the population density is lower than in Europe. In keeping with the road trip motif, these small towns are enumerated, often with their population: Our Town, Peru, El Paso, Normal, Bloomington, Lawndale, Middletown, Red Bud, Chester, La Crosse, Pinewood, Ironwood, Green Bay, Humansville, Cherryvale.

A good part of the novel is devoted to describing life in the small town of Lakeside. This is where the secondary plot of the novel takes place: the yearly disappearance of children due to a kobold perpetuating human sacrifices dating from the pagan era. Small towns are charming but also ugly. Gaiman doesn't present us with a positive view of beliefs: they come with a price. This is no Promised Land.

Though they are visited, little attention is paid to big cities except to explain they exist in their own space. On page 306, Wednesday explains that San Francisco isn't in the same country as New Orleans, New York or Miami though it's the same land. Historically these towns each started in different countries. San Francisco and Miami were part of Spain. New Orleans was French and New York was Dutch. Is it what Gaiman means?

The unity of the land is asserted through the buffalo god when he claims to have been the reason for the waves of immigration or, better, when he says, “I am the land.” But history cannot be the only criterion since San Francisco and Miami would be part of the same country. Their recent evolution have made them distinct. San Francisco is now renowned for its homosexual population and Silicon Valley (and for Chinatown or drug use in the past). Miami, long a haven for retired people, was changed by the arrival of Cuban immigrants including its prison population.

In 2000, 31.1 % of adults denizens of Miami said they spoke English very well, 39 % for Los Angeles, 42.5 % for San Francisco and 46.5 % for New York¹⁴. So not even half of the population spoke the language of the country very well.

The reason why the novel doesn't focus on these big towns, then, is because of their strong identity. They are not the heartland, they have been shaped by outside forces and are subject to recent trends. Physically they are far apart and have their own customs.

C. History

As readers, we have been subjected to a deluge of names and many locations but it is in the historical myths that our desire for a single picture gets the most challenged. The novel gives multiple accounts for the creation of the Earth, for the discovery of America and for the migration to the Americas.

1. The Creation Myths

On page 246, we have four creation myths.

“This land was brought up from the depths of the ocean by a diver”

“It was spun from its own substance by a spider”

“It was shat by a raven”

“It is the body of a fallen father, whose bones are mountains, whose eyes are lakes”

The first is similar to the creation myth of the Cherokees. In the beginning, there was just water. All the animals lived above it and the sky was overcrowded. They were all curious about what was beneath the water and one day Dayuni'si, the water beetle, volunteered to explore it. He explored the surface but could not find any solid ground. He explored below the surface to the bottom and all he found was mud which he brought back to the surface. After collecting the mud, it began to grow in size and spread outwards until it became the Earth as we know it.

The second is similar to the Kiowa Apache's. In the beginning nothing existed, only darkness was everywhere. Suddenly from the darkness emerged a thin disc, one side yellow and the other side white, appearing suspended in midair. Within the disc sat a small bearded man, Creator, the One Who Lives Above. When he looked into the endless darkness, light appeared above. He looked down and it became a sea of light. To the east, he created yellow streaks of dawn. To the west, tints of many colours appeared everywhere. There were also clouds of different colors. He also created three other gods: a little girl, a sun god and a small boy. Then he created celestial phenomena, the winds, the tarantula, and the earth from the sweat of the four gods mixed together in the Creator's palms, from a small round, brown ball, not much larger than a bean. The world was expanded to its current size by the gods kicking the small brown ball. Creator told Wind to go inside the ball and to blow it up. The tarantula, the trickster character, spun a black cord and, attaching it to the ball, crawled away fast to the east, pulling on the cord with all his strength. Tarantula repeated this with a blue cord to the south, a yellow cord to the west, and a white cord to the north. With mighty pulls in each direction, the brown ball stretched to immeasurable size--it became the earth!

The third could be a variant of the Christian flood story as well as the Eskimo myth: In the beginning, Raven was born out of the darkness. Weak, unknowing of himself or his purpose, he set out to learn more about the area where he was walking. He felt trees, plants, and grass. He thought about such things and soon realized that he was the Raven Father, Creator of All Life. He gathered strength and flew out of the darkness and found new land, called the earth.¹⁵

The fourth evokes the Norse myth where the bones of the giant Ymir (the first being) are cast to create mountains. On page 67 a Norseman recalls that myth: “The All-Father made the world. He built it with his hands from the shattered bones and the flesh of Ymir, his grandfather. He placed Ymir's brains in the sky as clouds, and his salt blood became the seas we crossed. If he made the world, do you not realize that he created this land as well?”

Ymir, the frost giant, appears in another creation myth with parallels with an American myth. He was the first living creature and fed from the primeval cow Audumla's four rivers of milk, who in turn fed from licking the salty ice blocks. Her licking the rime ice eventually revealed the body of a man named Buri, the first of the Aesir. Buri had a son called Borr, who had three sons of his own, including Odin called the All-Father. This comes from an account of Icelander Snorri Sturluson. The image of Ymir and Audumla evokes that of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe, who are both giants living in cold areas.

Doubts have been cast at one time about the authenticity of the Bunyan tales. They would be the work of clever writers to advertise the Red River Lumber Company in the 1910s. However, interviews with retired lumberjacks turned up good evidence that Paul Bunyan stories had circulated at logging camps in the U.S. and Canada in the 1880s and 1890s and possibly earlier. Yet, none of that really matters. Georges Lewi, in Les marques, mythologies du quotidien : comprendre le succès des grandes marques explains the principles on which trademarks gained prominence to and proposes a comparison between the narratology of myths and the narratology of trademarks.

2. The Discovery of America

Before America was discovered, there were myths about faraway lands. On page 197, Mr. Ibis tells of the people who discovered America: the Ainu, the Polynesians, the Irish, the Welsh, the Vikings, the Africans, the Chinese, the Basque, the Egyptians. Gaiman didn't make that up. Here are the claims that have been made of discovery by these people.

Ainu

About these he says, “Here's a skull that shows the Ainu, the Japanese aboriginal race, were in America nine thousand years ago.” This is a reference to the Kennewick Man, skeletal remains found on a bank of the Columbia river in 1996 in the state of Washington. First thought to be European, it most resembled south Asians and the Ainu. This discovery furthered the debate over whether there was a single or multiple waves of migration for early Native American people.

Polynesians

Mr. Ibis says, “Here's another that shows there were Polynesians in California nearly two thousand years later.” Certainly, the dissemination of people across the Pacific was a curiosity for Western scholars. The Atlantic was difficult to get across and so the Pacific got its name from its calm waters. Even so, the crossing of thousands of miles of water in rudimentary embarkations was no mean feat. If Easter Island was reached, then there are reasons to think Polynesians would have reached the American continent.

Chinese

There is a mention of Fusang, a land described by a Chinese traveler of the fifth century, as a place 20,000 Chinese li (circa 7,000 to 10,000 kilometers, depending on the definition of the li ) east of Da-han, and also east of China. Da-han is described as a place north-east of the country of Wo southwestern Japan). Hui Shen went by ship to Fusang, and upon his return reported his findings to the Chinese Emperor. His descriptions are recorded in the 7th century Book of Liang by Yao Silian.

An earlier account, from the annals of the Han dynasty, also declares that in 219 BC emperor Shi Huang sent an expedition of young men and women to a wonderful country lying far off to the east, across the ocean, called Fu-Sang. The young people settled there and were happy.

A common interpretation of the term “Fusang” is Japan, although in Hui-Sheng's report Fusang is presented as distinct from the statelet of Wo, another name associated with ancient Japan and probably could have been describing Japanese communities in the island of Kyushu or Ryukyu Kingdom.

According to some historians since the work of Joseph de Guignes (Le Fou-Sang des Chinois est-il l'Amérique? Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, tome 28, Paris, 1761), the distances given by Hui Shen (20,000 Chinese li) would locate Fusang on the west coast of the American continent, when taking the ancient Han-period definition of the Chinese li. Some 18th century European maps locate Fusang north of the State of California, in the area of British Columbia.

Europeans

Europeans had mythical islands such as St. Brendan's Island, the Isle of Brazil or Hy-Brazil, both of Irish origin. Brazil and Hy-Brazil are thought to come from the Irish Uí Breasail (meaning “descendants (i.e., clan) of Breasal”), one of the ancient clans of northeastern Ireland.

Saint Brendan was a monk who is said to have discovered an island while traveling across the ocean. The island appeared on numerous maps in Christopher Columbus’ time, apparently acting as one of the things spurring him on to explore the ocean westwards.

It sparked the claim that Saint Brendan arrived at the Americas first, around the 6th century (530 AD). The island was first mentioned in a Latin text of the ninth century, Navigatio Santi Brendani Abatis (Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot), placing the island into Irish and European folklore.

In 1976, an Irish explorer, Tim Severin, undertook the same voyage, using a leather boat, to see if it was possible. He managed to arrive at Newfoundland, following the records of the Latin text, confirming that it was possible, but he couldn’t find the mysterious island.

According to British legend, Madoc was a prince from Wales who explored the Americas as early as 1170. While most scholars consider this legend to be untrue, it was used as justification for British claims to the Americas, based on the notion of a Briton arriving before other European nationalities. A memorial tablet erected at Fort Morgan, Mobile Bay reads: “In memory of Prince Madog, a Welsh explorer, who landed on the shores of Mobile Bay in 1170 and left behind, with the Indians, the Welsh language.” Gwydion, Merlin, is stated as having come in the 7^th century (p. 428)

3. Migration

The text is interspersed with interludes called “Coming to America.” There are four of them. They are on pages 66, 92, 321, 412. The story “Somewhere in America” on page 181 is related but occurs in the present rather than in the past. The tale of Mad Sweeney told by Mr. Ibis from his book on page 226 is related but isn't focused on immigration to America. These tales are supposedly written by Mr. Ibis in a book. This first appears on the second account on page 92: “The important thing to understand about American history, wrote Mr. Ibis, in his leather-bound journal, is that it is fictional, a charcoal-sketched simplicity for the children, or the easily bored.” As a character Mr. Ibis is properly introduced on page 180. On page 194 he states that he writes “books of tales, accounts of lives” and on page 196, “There's nothing special about coming to America. I've been writing stories about it, from time to time.”

This makes him the fictional author of parts of this novel and possibly all of it since Thoth was considered the true author of every work of every branch of knowledge. His point is that the founding story of “pilgrims seeking the freedom to believe as they wished is a fiction, the American colonies were as much a dumping ground as an escape, a forgetting place.” Each of these stories shatter the myth.

In AD 813, we see how the Vikings first brought Odin, Thor and Tyr to America. Thor is thanked for being with them through thunder and the storm, Odin is mentioned as creator of the Earth and is especially invoked by a human sacrifice. In fact the four vikings bearing the Native American make an eight-legged horse, a reference to Sleipnir, the fantastic mount of Odin. They arrive on the day of Tyr, Tuesday.

“Coming to America 1721” tells the story of a young woman brought to America for “transportation,” i.e. deportation as a criminal. Far from religious pilgrims, criminals then made a large part of the immigrant population. The fact that Shadow is an inmate is a tie to that American identity.

“Somewhere in America” isn't a flashback but it is very much related as it includes the same thematic elements: an immigrant who didn't especially want to get there, who is an outcast from his social group due to being homosexual and who meets a fantastic being from his culture brought to America (though not by him) and it is told at the end of a chapter.

The origin of Mad Sweeney told by Mr. Ibis from his book (p. 226-227) is different as there is no human at the center of the story. Nevertheless it describes the phenomenon of the evolution of mythical beings, from gods to folklore, as new beliefs enter a culture.

“Coming to America 1778” (p. 321) tells the story of two African slaves, a brother and a sister. The brother is sent to the West Indies where he gets bitten on the back of his hand by a spider (a possible reference to Anansi) and loses his arm but fights for the independence of St. Domingue. The sister winds up in New Orleans where she teaches voodoo. So he brings freedom to African slaves while she brings religion.

“Coming to America 14,000 B.C.” (p. 412) tells the story of the first settlers who crossed the Alaskan land bridge with their mammoth skull god Nunyunnini and its priestess, who both appeared in a dream on page 58. The short story “Coming to America 14,000 B.C.” reminds us that native Americans were also immigrants to the continent.

None of these stories is about religious persecution or the freedom to believe as one wishes. What are we to make of all these accounts? Simply accept them all in their diversity. The question of who discovered America is obsolete and the novel brings its own solution: America wasn't discovered, it brought people in. Each immigrant experience is singular and interesting in its own right.

Conclusion

I mentioned that myths revealed the structure of societies. The myth that pilgrims founded America told more about the domination of the W.A.S.P. than about American history. Of this history Mr. Ibis says, “For the most part it is uninspected, unimagined, unthought, a representation of the thing, and not the thing itself.” What has been done in this novel is that it has been inspected, imagined and thought. As such it aims to complete the breakdown (literally the breaking in many parts) of American myths.

This multiplicity of America isn't a weakness. When Shadow meets Czernobog, the latter insists that has been a long winter. He's not talking of the season but of a longer period that has now ended and he feels such gratitude that he doesn't kill Shadow like he was going to. An Eastern Europe representative felt at one time his society would bury America but that time is now over.

The old gods were never a danger to the new ones. The power of the new gods in the story expressed the American preference for what is new over what is old. They prefer modernity to tradition and even these modern gods will give way to newer ones. Mr. Nancy sums it up, “The new gods rise and fall and rise again. But this is not a country that tolerates gods for long.” In a world of impermanent myths and of changing societal structures, one has to be able to create a destiny for oneself by choosing one's own myths. Shadow's fake name provides a clue. Mike Ainsel sounds like My Ainsel, which means my own self.

We can see in this novel a reflection on the American identity. This identity has been in crisis during most of the twentieth century. Publishing such a novel on the first year of the twenty-first century was an opportune move.

Traditionally, America claimed its roots from Anglo-Saxons and built a myth around that idea. America started with the Mayflower even though French and Spaniards had earlier colonies. As the WASPs receded from massive nineteenth century immigration, that myth faded. Italians celebrated Columbus Day to assert their own claim as original Americans. In the novel Gaiman drags all the discovery myths or facts about previous settlements. In the Odin-Shadow tension, we can see the resolution of the WASP/mosaic tension. Odin is a Germanic god, a god of knowledge, war, and commerce preoccupied by the end of the world. He represents the Christian and even messianic Anglo-Saxons who find repeated renewals of their national identity in war and the sacrifice of life it implies.

Walter L. Hixson in The Myth of American Diplomacy, National Identity and U.S. Foreign Policy powerfully argues for this identity as I described it. Far from a peaceful nation, he sees a nation conceived in the Anglo-French war, baptised in the American Revolutionary War, confirmed in the War of 1812, etc. Rather than seeing a nation at peace from 1815 to 1914, he sees a nation involved throughout this time in the Indian Wars.

To complete Hixson's view, I would say that if the government declared war on crime in the 1930s, war on poverty in the 1960s, war on drugs in the 1980s and war on terror in the 2000s, it is because war remains a popular concept which can thus be used to qualify government measures in order to gather agreement for said measures. This possibly makes the USA the only western country where “war” is a word that keeps being used to gain public endorsement of government policies. In Europe, World War I, World War II and decolonization made war unpopular.

Shadow, who could be king of America, doesn't have the moral uprightness to think a war righteous. He was in prison for participating in a heist. He doesn't want to be a ruler. He doesn't have the hegemonic identity that Hixson links to America. Rather than a conqueror who oppresses others, Shadow is chosen by the land.

With its theme of magic and of the invoking power of language, we must wonder if the whole novel isn't a sort of spell supposed to put an end to the old identity and bring out the new one. Two of Gaiman's British contemporary comics writers, Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, are practicing magicians (occultists) and believe in the ability of words to produce change. If this was an attempt at abandoning the old Anglo-Saxon bellicose identity, it temporary failed since 9/11 led to two wars. As for the idea that the land is the true God of America, we have have echos of that in Americans' outrage at being attacked on their soil but if a spell it was, it didn't produce immediate change.

Gaiman's own background is interesting in this regard since he must have some occult knowledge. I have uncovered little known information about his background. Though his family has a Polish Jew origin, they converted to Scientology in the sixties and the young Neil grew up as a second-generation Scientologist. His father was a Scientology official, a fact which became public when he died earlier this year. Gaiman was temporarily barred from school when he was seven due to his father's membership in this cult¹⁶. The founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, had occult connections and believed that each individual was a fallen Supreme Being, something that a trained Scientologist like Gaiman would know. I should point that there is no evidence that Gaiman pursued with Scientology on reaching adulthood and it is difficult to state whether he is still influenced by their beliefs.

According to Scientology literature, individual are immortal spirits trapped in human bodies. Originally these spirits were all-powerful. The text The Factors calls them viewpoints, i.e. a point from where to observe. We find a trace of that in Sandman #71 when the Endless prepare the funeral of Dream. A new Dream has been created. An envoy gathers the mourners and picks up Lucien, librarian of the library of dreams who requests a leave of absence from the new Dream. The Envoy asks to Lucien,

“Sir librarian—The young lord in white... Who was he?”

“He is Dream of the Endless.”

“He is? But the wake. The ceremony. I was told that Dream of the Endless was no more.”

“Yes.”

“So... who died?”

“Nobody died.”

“How can you kill an idea? How can you kill the personification of an action?”

“Then what died? Who are you mourning?”

“A point of view.”

This is consistent with Scientology's description of beings as viewpoints in The Factors¹⁷. After reading about mortality we're told that nothing dies. Dream is reborn with a different aspect, while Shadow experiences a resurrection. Myths do the same--they keep changing. Perhaps, then, Gaiman is telling us that we are like myths and that would be why we recognise ourselves in them.

Bibliography:

Primary sources:

Gaiman, Neil, American Gods, HarperCollins, New York, 2001

Gaiman, Neil, The Sandman published serially in 75 issues and collected in ten graphic novels (Preludes and Nocturnes, The Doll's House, Dream Country, Seasons of Mists, A Game of You, Brief Lives, Fables and Reflections, World's End, The Kindly Ones, The Wake), DC Comics, New York, 1990-2006

Gaiman, Neil, Endless Nights, DC Comics, New York, 2003

Journal and articles on the creation of The Sandman and American Gods:

Gaiman, Neil, American Gods blog Feb-Sept 2001 http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Journal/Archives

Gaiman, Neil, “Book Have Genders”

Other stories by Neil Gaiman with characters from American Gods:

Gaiman, Neil, Anansi Boys, HarperCollins, New York, 2006

Gaiman, Neil, “Monarch of the Glen” in Fragile Things, William Morrow and Company, New York, 2006

Gaiman, Neil, “Pages From A Journal Found In A Shoebox Left In A Greyhound Bus Somewhere Between Tulsa, Oklahoma, And Louisville, Kentucky” in Fragile Things, William Morrow and Company, New York, 2006

Books and scholarship on Neil Gaiman, The Sandman and American Gods:

Beatty, Scott et al, The DC Comics Encyclopedia, DC Comics, New York, 2006

Bender, Hy, The Sandman Companion : A Dreamer's Guide to the Award-Winning Comic Series. DC Comics. New York, 2000

ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies Vol. 4 No. 1, “The Comics Work of Neil Gaiman” http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v4_1/#Articles, Summer 2008

Kwitney, Alisa, The Sandman: King of Dreams, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 2003

McCabe, Joe, Hanging Out With the Dream King: Interviews with Neil Gaiman and His Collaborators, Fantagraphics, Seattle, 2005

McConnell, Frank, “Epic Comics: Neil Gaiman's Sandman.” Commonweal 122, no. 18 (20 October 1995)

Rauch, Stephen, Neil Gaiman's The Sandman and Joseph Campbell: In Search of the Modern Myth, Wildside Press, Holicong, 2003

Sanders, Joe (edited by) The Sandman Papers: An Exploration of the Sandman Mythology, Fantagraphics, Seattle, 2006

Schweitzer, Darrell, The Neil Gaiman Reader, Wildside Press, Holicong, 2006

Wagner, Hank et al., Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman, St Martin's Griffin, New York, 2008

Other works dealing with modern gods:

Ellison, Harlan, Dangerous Visions, Sphere Books, London, 1974

Moore Alan, Light of Thy Countenance, Avatar Press, Rantoul, 2009

Another “American Novel” on American identity:

Steinbeck, John, Grapes of Wrath, Penguin Books, New York, 1997

Books on American identity:

Hixson, Walter, The Myth of American Diplomacy, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2008

Huntington, Samuel P., Qui sommes-nous? Identité nationale et choc des cultures, Odile Jacob, Paris, 2004

Lacorne, Denis, La crise de l'identité américaine, Fayard, Paris 1997

Zakaria, Fareed, From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America's World Role, Princeton University Press, 1999

Books on mythologies:

A. America and the modern world

Auden, W.H., Lectures on Shakespeare, Princeton University Press, 2002

Beau, David, Le complot Vertigo, la bande dessinée nord-américaine en quête d'une nouvelle identité (mémoire de lettres modernes sous la direction de Michel Rolland) Cergy, 1997

Cazemajou, Jean et Martin, Jean-Pierre, La crise du melting-pot, Aubier, Paris, 1983

Combesque, Marie Agnès and Warde, Ibrahim, Mythologies américaines : repères pour un autre voyage, Paris, Ed. du Félin, 1996

Dorson, Richard, American Folklore and the Historian, University of Chicago Press, 1971

Dubuisson, Daniel, Mythologies du XXe siècle : Dumézil, Levi-Strauss, Eliade, Lille, Presses universitaires de Lille, 1993

Forbes, Bruce David, Religion and Popular Culture in America, University of California Press, 2000

Heller, Karin, La bande dessinée fantastique à la lumière de l'anthropologie religieuse, L'Harmattan, Paris, 1998

Lévi-Strauss, Claude, Anthropologie structurale, Paris, Plon, 1958

Lewi, Georges, Les marques, mythologies du quotidien : comprendre le succès des grandes marques, Paris, Village mondial : High Co. institute, 2003

Morency, Jean, Le mythe américain dans les fictions d'Amérique : de Washington Irving à Jacques Poulin, Québec, Nuit blanche éd., 1994

Pommier, Frédéric, Comment lire la bande dessinée, 2005

Strazyncski, J. Michael, http://groups.google.com/group/alt.tv.babylon-5/msg/fc782309e6eb9a6f

B. Traditional myths

Barthes, Roland, Mythologie, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1970

Dumézil, Georges, Mythes et dieux de la Scandinavie ancienne, Paris, Gallimard, 2000

Dumézil, Georges, Loki, Paris, Flammarion, 1995

Dumézil, Georges, Mythes et dieux des Indo-Européens, Paris, Flammlrion, 1992

Eliade, Mircea Mythes, rêves et mystères, Paris, Gallimard, 1989

Eliade, Mircea Le mythe de l'éternel retour, Paris, Gallimard, 1995

Eliade, Mircea Aspects du mythe, Paris, Gallimard, 2001

Eliade, Mircea Histoire des croyances et des idées religieuses, Paris, Payot, 1989

C. Newspaper articles

Los Angeles Times, March 8 2007

Newsweek, March 19, 2007

Time Magazine, March 26, 2007

U.S. News and World Report, March 19, 2007

Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2007

Appendix A

“immaterial girl living in a material world” (p. 376, refers to a Madonna song)

3M (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation with a worldwide presence, p. 318)

4-Runner (p. 267, 295, 384, 392, Toyota SUV)

Alka-Seltzer (p. 249, 315, 320)

Amsterdam, Morey (p. 174, actor)

Apple Johnny (p. 350, = Johnny Appleseed, folklore hero who introduced apples to Ohio, he drinks apple cider in the novel; John Chapman was his real name)

Bakelite (p. 222, plastic)

Beatles, The (p. 263, 394, 440)

Bic lighter (p. 442, 525)

Bleak House (p. 584, novel)

Blockbusters (p. 293, video rental store, the term blockbuster is American and its usage coalesced in 1975 around Steven Spielberg's Jaws, and came to be perceived as something new: a cultural phenomenon, a fast-paced exciting entertainment, almost a genre. Audiences interacted with such films, talked about them afterwards, and went back to see them again just for the thrill. It created the “blockbuster era” and also consolidated the “summer blockbuster” trend, through which studios and distributors planned their entire annual marketing strategy around a big release by July 4.)

Borglum, Gutzon (p. 341, sculptor of Rushmore Memorial)

Brooks, Louise (p. 429, silent era movie star, like old gods she has been forgotten and both Shadow and Mr. Town have no idea who she is. This oblivion is likely related to her status as a “silent” star)

Budweiser (p. 511)

Buick (p. 511)

Burberry (p. 507, clothing with a distinctive plaid pattern)

Burger King (p. 46, 49, 194, 421)

Canada Bill Jones and George Devol (p. 285, two con men of the nineteenth century)

Cap'n Crunch (p. 428, cereals breakfast)

Carrie (p. 450, movie adapted from a Stephen King novel)

Cary Grant (p. 440)

Cheers (p. 405, sitcom 1982-1993)

Chevy Nova (p. 161, 230, 259, car)

Chi-Chi's (p. 17, 493, Mexican restaurant chain that ceased to exist in the US in 2004)

Chicago Sun-Times (p. 581)

chili, recipe of (p. 33)

Chrysler (p. 251)

Clean U-Up Kit (p. 44)

Cline, Patsy (p. 35, singer)

Coke (p. 35-36, 39, 52, 177, 436, 437)

Coke machine (p. 5)

Conan (p. 227, though this is here an Irish character, the name is now identified with American author R.E. Howard's famous creation, Conan the barbarian, the most popular hero of heroic fantasy, for whom stories are still being made to this day in comics, novels and video games.)

Country Chicken (p. 70, restaurant)

Dallas and Dynasty (p. 276, 80s TV shows)

Dick Van Dyke Show (p. 173, TV program)

Disney's Hercules (p. 278, an animated film and TV series, a typical Disney bastardization of European myths to conform to American taste, for instance this Hercules is the legitimate son of royal couple Zeus and Hera instead of the product of Zeus' extramarital affair with Alcmene. )

Disneyland (p. 477)

Dixie Cups (p. 33, music band)

Doublemint (p. 428, chewing gum)

Dumpster (p. 53, 223, 375)

eagle stones (p. 290, 295, 527)

Elvis (p. 394)

faces on the milk carton (p. 341, refers to the American practice since the 1980s to put faces of missing children on milk cartons)

Ford Explorer (p. 495-499, 521-529)

Four Seasons (p. 431, world famous restaurant in New York)

Frisbee (p. 441)

Fugitive, The (p. 393, TV series)

Garland, Judy (p. 429)

Get Smart (p. 345, TV comedy series by Mel Brooks satirising the spy genre)

Gravity's Rainbow (p. 473, Thomas Pynchon's postmodern novel)

Greyhound (p. 8, 242-243, 249, 256, 264, bus lines)

Grisham, John (p. 60, novelist)

Guinness (p. 36)

Harlequin (p. 297, romance books)

Herbie the Love Bug (p. 377, the sentient Volkswagen Beetle in a number of films)

Houdini, Harry (p. 180, 320, 561)

House on the Rock (p. 117-141, 148)

Humvee (p. 430, 435, 439, 442, 448-449, 493, High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle)

hush puppies (p. 192, deep-fried ball of cornmeal commonly eaten in the Southern United States and at fish and chip restaurants across the USA)

I Love Lucy (p. 174, TV series)

inside the Beltway (p. 345, refers to Capital Beltway, i.e. Interstate 495, a circumferential highway circling Washington, D.C., the phrase refers to the offices of the federal government, etc.)

It's a Wonderful Life (p. 192, movie)

Jack Daniel's (p. 21-24, 36, 40, 285-287, 445, 453)

Jameson Gold (p. 226, 229)

Jameson Irish (p. 223)

K-9 (p. 316, refers to a variety of entries, most related to dogs. The term originated in the military, where designations such as G-2 are common, making K-9 a rare official pun, being similar to “canine.” The term, originally referencing war dogs, has since carried over to police, and sentry and assistance dogs as well. From Wikipedia. Neil Gaiman would have first discovered the name from watching the TV show Doctor Who where this is the name of a robotic dog.)

Kelvinator (p. 202, refrigerator)

KFC (p. 210-211, Kentucky Fried Chicken)

Kinko's (p. 107-108, Copy Center)

Kleenex (p. 183)

Laveau, Marie (New Orleans practitioner of Voodoo who has entered folklore, p. 334)

Leno, Jay (p. 403, host of The Tonight Show)

Levi's (p. 215)

Lincoln Town Car (p. 281, one of the best-selling American luxury cars, America's most used limousine and chauffeured car and the most expensive American luxury sedan)

Lucille Ball (p. 174, TV series character)

Lucky Strikes (p. 35, 424, 525, cigarettes)

Ludlum, Robert (p. 297, thriller author)

Luxor and Tropicana (p. 285, casinos in Las Vegas)

M*A*S*H (p. 173, TV series)

M&I Bank (p. 314, largest Wisconsin-based bank)

Mall of America (p. 352, super-regional shopping mall of Minneapolis)

Man from U.N.C.L.E. (p. 345, famous spy TV series)

Manson (p. 440, Charles, serial killer)

Marlboro (p. 487, cigarettes)

Marquis, Don (p. 394, humorist, journalist and author)

MasterCard (p. 243)

McDonald's (p. 193, 306, 436, 441)

Men in Black (government agents covering UFO conspiracies, p. 396)

Miata (p. 512, Mazda roadster)

Milky Way (p. 184, first filled candy bar, created in 1924)

Mister Ed (p. 394, a talking horse from a 1960s sitcom)

Monroe, Marilyn; The Beatles; Elvis (p. 394, show-biz legends)

Tyler Moore, Mary (p. 174, actress)

Motel 6 (p. 242, 244, 578, largest owned and operated hotel chain in North America)

Motel America (p. 47-60, 299)

Mount Rushmore (p. 340, “that is a holy place”)

New York Post (p. 183)

Newsweek (p. 400)

Night's Inn (p. 173, reference to Knights Inn?)

Nissan (p. 223, car manufacturer)

Nokia (p. 30, mobile phone)

NutraSweet (p. 352, brand name for aspartame)

Odd Fellows (p. 241, society)

Onion, The (p. 575, satirical newspaper)

Oshkosh B'Gosh (p. 452, clothing manufacturer)

Paramount Hotel (p. 181, a famous landmark, redesigned by Philippe Starck)

Paul Bunyan (p. 352, giant mythological lumberjack, created by an itinerant news reporter, the myth was popularized by advertising pamphlets for the Red River Lumber Company)

pay-per-view (p. 173)

Plexiglas (p. 185-186, 477)

Pop-a-Top Lounge (p. 178, restaurant)

Popsicle (most popular brand of ice pop in the U.S., p. 275)

RC Cola (p. 428, Royal Crown Cola, 3^rd most popular cola drink)

Reader's Digest (p. 80-81, 211-212)

Ricardo, Lucy (p. 174, actress)

Rock City (p. 485 and following)

rootbeer float (p. 441, a type of ice cream soda)

Rose Marie (p. 174, actress)

Sitwell, Edith (p. 394, poet)

Steel, Danielle (p. 297)

S.W.A.T. team (p. 347)

Santa Claus, Easter Bunny (p. 394)

Saran Wrap (p. 225)

Scientific American (p. 197)

Scooby-Doo (p. 462, cartoon character)

Snickers (p. 147, 158, 159, 361, best-selling chocolate bar of all times)

Songbirds of North America calendar (p. 4)

Southern Comfort (p. 35, fruit, spice, and whiskey flavored liqueur)

Sports Illustrated (p. 400)

Stone, Sharon (p. 439, actress)

Stranger in a Strange Land (p. 359, the 1961 science-fiction novel by Robert Heinlein which inspired the counter-culture of the late 1960s)

Super 8 Motel (p. 234, world's largest budget hotel chain)

SUV (p. 271, 343, 494, 552)

Taco Bell (p. 172, restaurant)

thunderbirds (p. 290, 295, 302, 304, 313, 354, 522, 523, 526, 527, 529, 530, 560, mythical native American birds)

Taylor, Liz (p. 439)

Tonight Show (p. 306, 405, third longest running entertainment program starring Johnny Carson for 30 years and Jay Leno since 1992)

Toyota (p. 25, 267, 271, 487)

Treasure Island (p. 286, attraction in Las Vegas)

Tupperware (p. 222, 225, 226, 229, 306, 351)

U-Haul (p. 487, equipement rental company)

Velvet Underground (p. 39, rock band)

Virginia Slims (p. 60, cigarettes)

Wal-Mart (p. 193, 318)

War of the Worlds (p. 394, though the novel was British, both the 1938 Orson Welles' radio adaptation and the 1953 movie imprinted it on American consciousness)

Washington Post (p. 524)

Wendt Phoenix (p. 251, 255, car brand)

Whiskey Jack (p. 350, Wisakedjak, also called Inktomi, American Indian trickster god, also the name of the gray jay, the character in the novel has a nephew called Harry Bluejay)

Winnebago (p. 340-359, 511, 535, vehicle, but it's also the name of a tribe now called the Ho Chunk, p. 355)

Wizard of Oz (p. 388, movie)

Woolworth (p. 193)

X-Files (p. 345)

Zippo (p. 53, 217, lighter)

Appendix B

A calculation of the distance covered by Shadow is 23000 miles. Here is the list of points described:

Unknown location (Prison) - local bus station - unnamed airport - St. Louis Airport - unknown location (about 250 miles from Eagle Point) - Nottamun - “Jack's Crocodile Bar” - Eagle Point - Chicago - Madison - Spring Green, Wisconsin - unknown location - Muscoda - El Paso, Illinois - Middletown - St. Louis - Red Bud - Chester - Cairo, Illinois - Super 8 Motel south of La Crosse - northern central Wisconsin - Pinewood - Lakeside (southwest of Michigan state) - Madison - Las Vegas, Nevada - Lakeside - San Francisco - Lakeside - Wisconsin - Minnesota - North Dakota - South Dakota - Reservation Country - “Backstage” - Reservation - Sioux Falls - gas station 25 miles outside of Lakeside - Lakeside - Rhode Island - Seattle - Dallas - Boulder - Lakeside - Minneapolis - Kentucky - Humansville - Kansas - Cherryvale, Kansas - Lebanon, Kansas (Center Of America) - Princeton, Missouri - the worldtree an hour south of Blacksburgh, Virginia - Rock City on Lookout Mountain, Georgia - Fort Pierce, Florida - Lakeside - Madison - Chicago - Reykjavik, Iceland.

Appendix C Characters in The Sandman

The Sandman began as an offshoot of the DC universe, drawing characters from the long history of the publisher, in particular hosts from horror anthologies appearing from the late sixties to the early eighties. However it evolved into its own universe. In many cases Gaiman reinvented the characters to ground them in mythology. Thus Eve, Cain and Abel became the biblical characters, the three witches became the Triple Goddess, etc. The following appendix from Wikipedia's List of Characters in the Sandman was retrieved on the 20^th of September 2009 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_characters_in_The_Sandman). I have shortened and edited it to remove characters that Gaiman never used and to omit mentions to stories written after The Sandman. Mentions of the characters before Gaiman used them have been kept to show, on the one hand, the debt Gaiman owes to DC creators from the late sixties and early seventies under Joe Orlando, to Jack Kirby and Alan Moore, as well as to works of literature by Milton and other fantasy writers and, on the other hand, Gaiman's own work in reinventing the characters.

The Endless

The Endless are a family of seven anthropomorphic personifications of universal concepts, around whom much of the series revolves. From eldest to youngest, they are:

Destiny
Death
Dream (formerly Morpheus, succeeded by Daniel)

Destruction
Desire
Despair
Delirium (formerly Delight)

All debuted in the Sandman series, except Destiny, who was created by Marv Wolfman and Berni Wrightson in Weird Mystery Tales #1 (1972). A more traditional version of Death had appeared in various previous stories, however.

Dreams and nightmares

These inhabitants of the Dreaming are often former gods, myths, and even ordinary human beings who later became dreams.

Cain and Abel

Cain and Abel are based on the Biblical Cain and Abel adapted by editor Joe Orlando with Bob Haney (writer) and Jack Sparling (artist) (Cain), and Mark Hannerfeld (writer) and Bill Draut (artist) (Abel). They were depicted together in Abel's first appearance, and they parted to their respective Houses at the end of the story, the House of Secrets having been recently moved, with Cain promising things not to go the way they happened before. Although Cain would abuse Abel, he was not shown killing him until Swamp Thing vol. 2 #33. In Elvira's House of Mystery #11, Cain expresses shock at having killed his brother in recent times. In the same issue, a contest-winning letter establishes that Cain and the House exist both in the dream world and the real world, and that only the dream world Cain continues to harm Abel. In The Sandman, Cain is shown to kill Abel quite often. Even then, in issue #2, Lucien says that the pair recently got stranger, which is followed immediately by panels of disagreement and murder.

Before The Sandman

Originally they were the respective “hosts” of the horror comic anthologies House of Mystery and House of Secrets, which ran from the 1950s through 1983—Cain debuting in House of Mystery #175 (1968) and Abel in DC Special #4 and House of Secrets #81 (both 1969). During the 1970s, they also co-hosted the horror/humor anthology Plop! They were also both recurring characters in DC's Elvira's House of Mystery (1986–1988).

In 1985, the characters were revived by writer Alan Moore, who introduced them into his Swamp Thing series in issue #33, retelling the original Swamp Thing's origin story from a 1971 issue of House of Secrets.

However, it was Neil Gaiman's series The Sandman that more fully developed the “reinvented” characters into more mature, post–Comics Code version of themselves, and who helped fully drag them out of obscurity.

In Gaiman's Sandman universe, the biblical Cain and Abel come to live in the Dreaming at Dream's invitation. This is based on the verse in the Bible which says that Cain was sent to live in the Land of Nod.

They live as neighbours in two houses near a graveyard, Cain in the broad House of Mystery and Abel in the tall House of Secrets. According to their appearance in Swamp Thing, the difference is that a mystery may be shared, but a secret must be forgotten if one tries to tell it.

Gaiman's Cain is an aggressive, overbearing character. He is a thin, long-limbed man with an angular, drawn face, glasses, a tufty beard, and hair drawn into two points above his ears. He has been described as sounding “just like Vincent Price.”

Gaiman's Abel is a nervous, stammering, kind-hearted man. Abel is somewhat similar in appearance to Cain, with a tufty beard and hair that comes to points above his ears, though his hair is black rather than brown. He is shorter and fatter than Cain, with a more open face. It is eventually learned that the only time he does not stutter is when he is telling a story or when he is dead.

Cain frequently kills Abel in a kind of macabre form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, re-enacting the first murder. In the Dreaming, Abel's death is temporary, and he recovers after a few hours. Cain seems unable to control his frequent murders of Abel, and occasionally expresses remorse over them; there is a genuine bond between the two, beneath the surface contempt. Abel remains dedicated to Cain, and frequently dreams of a more harmonious relationship between the two.

Cain and Abel own a large green draconic gargoyle named Gregory, who also made his debut in House of Mystery #175. In the first appearance of the characters in Sandman, issue #2, Cain gives Abel an egg that soon hatches into another gargoyle, a small golden one. Abel is delighted and names the gargoyle “Irving,” but Cain forcefully insists that the names of gargoyles must always begin with a “G.” When Abel resists, Cain murders him. After Abel revives, he renames the gargoyle “Goldie,” after a friend of his who “went away.” Goldie was an invisible/imaginary friend to whom Abel told his early House of Secrets stories, but the idea was eventually dropped. A letter in issue #91 was attributed to Goldie, who claimed that it was her depicted on the cover of issue #88.

The main function of Cain and Abel throughout The Sandman is as comic relief. However, the two play significant (though not key) roles at several points in the series; it is they who take Dream in until his strength is restored following his 72-year-long imprisonment. In the fourth story arc, Season of Myths, Cain is sent to Hell to give a message to Lucifer because the mark of Cain protects him from all harm. Cain and Abel also aid the Corinthian with the child Daniel during The Kindly Ones, the penultimate story arc of the series. Abel is also one of the victims of the Furies in this series, and is brought back to life by the new Dream.

Corinthian

The Corinthian is a nightmare created by Dream, of human appearance but with two mouths instead of eyes. His escape from the Dreaming is hinted as the cause for the appearance of serial killers in the 20^th century as he is a sort of inspiration to them.

Eve

Eve is based on the biblical Eve, the mother of humanity and wife of Adam.

Eve originally appeared in Secrets of Sinister House #6 (August–September 1972); she was the series' principal host, often in stock images, usually with her raven. After issue 15, in which Eve reveals in the letter column that her raven, Edgar Allen [sic], is an enchanted deceased human, editor Joe Orlando departed from the series and so did she, the series focusing on “sinister houses”. That month (December 1973), she started hosting one story per month in Weird Mystery Tales.

She became the principal host of Weird Mystery Tales with issue #15, Destiny having moved to Secrets of Haunted House as principal host. In Plop!, Eve, Cain, and Abel each tell one story per issue. She also makes a few appearances in House of Mystery and House of Secrets. In her early appearances, she appears only as a crone, is often referred to as a witch, and has a tendency to be snappy and mean. In her first appearance, she scares Cain and Abel, and shouts at them, “Get out of the kitchen when it gets too hot, you cowardly mortals! Old Eve doesn't care...” Her letter column, which was answered in character, was called “Witch's Tales”. She appeared as a principal character in stories in Secrets of Sinister House #9 and #11 and Weird Mystery Tales #18. In issue #9, she stays in an apartment building under an assumed name (she denies it is her in the letters column of issue #13), where the smell of her cooking causes her neighbor to report her to the superintendent, so she curses the neighbor to repeat a day--which begins wonderfully and ends in two deaths--over and over again.

In Weird Mystery Tales #3 (November–December 1972), Destiny insisted that Eve, Cain, and Abel are not their Biblical counterparts, whom he says he prefers. When she is shown in Sandman #2, Lucien's comment about her addresses her unfriendly nature prior to Dream's return, stating that she confines herself to nightmares.

She is one of the many representations in The Sandman of the triple nature of womankind (maiden, mother and crone), based on the three distinct “Eves” in some versions of the Genesis story: Lilith, who was created as Adam's equal; a nameless one created of flesh and blood; and Eve, fashioned from Adam's rib. As such, while she is an individual with her own personality, she is also one another representation of The Three, along with the Fates, Graces, Gorgons, and Furies. This is comparable to the way the series' protagonist, Dream, is on one level a character in his own right, and on another level merely a symbol or representation of the larger concept of dreams.

Eve lives in a cave in the Dreaming, and is often accompanied by Dream's raven. The first Raven, Lucien, taught her how to bury Abel after Cain murdered him and she has been accompanied by a Raven ever since. She is kind and has a maternal nature, though she retains her assertiveness that might have been seen more as snappiness in her old stories. Most of the time she appears as a black-haired woman of indeterminate age. However, her appearance also mirrors her triple nature; she sometimes shifts between being a young, attractive maiden, a middle aged mother, and an elderly crone. When we first see her in The Sandman #2, she looks little different from her original appearances. Next, in, #26, she has put on much weight, has a friendlier face, and shows her ability to de-age as she embraces Matthew for the first time. Her largest appearance is in #40, where, storyteller once more, she appears young and beautiful for the first time.

Fiddler's Green

Fiddler's Green is a place in the Dreaming which all travellers (specifically sailors) apparently dream of someday finding. It sometimes likes to take human form and go wandering, using the alias Gilbert during one of these trips. His most common form is as a kind, portly man who strongly resembles G. K. Chesterton. Dream attempted to resurrect him in The Wake, but the almost-alive Gilbert stated that if he did “my death would have no meaning.” Acquiescing, the new Dream stopped the process. He also accompanied Rose Walker on her journey to find her brother Jed, and gave her the means by which to summon Dream to rescue her when she was assaulted. At the end of the series it is implied, though not outright stated, that he was “in love, a little” with Rose.

Gate Keepers

A wyvern, a griffin and a hippogriff who are the guardians of Dream's castle. The hippogriff has a horse's head instead of the traditional eagle's head. They derive all their power and authority from Dream, so when Dream was captured and lost his power, they could no longer guard or protect the Dreaming. They are not Dream's creations, however, because when the griffin was destroyed by the Furies, Dream did not remake him, but asked the gryphons of Greek myth to send one of their own to serve in the destroyed guardian's place. In classical mythology Morpheus' dream world is protected by the Gates of Morpheus, which had two monsters capable of becoming one's fears, a method to drive one away.

Gregory

A large green gargoyle, the pet of Cain. Gregory communicates in “grunts” which inhabitants of the Dreaming appear to understand. He is also a good friend of Goldie, and helps Goldie put Abel back together every time Cain kills him. He first appeared as the baby of two stone gargoyles in House of Mystery #175. His parents perched on the House of Mystery until they were able to kill their sculptor, a boarder in the house who had murdered their designer, and left without their egg.

Goldie

Goldie is Abel's pet gargoyle.

Goldie is a pet (baby) gargoyle, given to Abel by his brother Cain in Sandman #2. Abel originally intended to name him “Irving,” but Cain insisted that gargoyles' names must all begin with a “G.” Cain then proceeded to murder Abel over this, after which Abel names the gargoyle Goldie, after a friend who went away (in fact Abel's “imaginary” girlfriend, who appeared on the cover of The House of Secrets #88, and to whom he addressed many of his stories).

Lucien

Lucien is the chief librarian in The Dreaming, and is a tall thin, bookish man.

Like Cain and Abel, Lucien, created by Paul Levitz, Nestor Redondo, and Joe Orlando, was originally the host of a 1970s “weird tales” comic, specifically the three-issue Tales of Ghost Castle (May/June–October 1975). In that series, he is portrayed as the guardian of a castle in Transylvania abandoned by both sides during Worlf War II, watching over its forgotten library with his companion, a werewolf named Rover. In his first appearance in Preludes and Nocturnes (issue #2) this is retroactively revealed to be Dream's castle.

Lucien is the effective keeper of the Dreaming in Dream's absence, and becomes one of Dream's most faithful and trusted servants after proving his loyalty by never abandoning his post during that period. His primary function is to protect the Library, wherein are contained all the books that have ever been dreamt of, including the ones that have never been written. The titles of some of these books, many of which are sequels to real works, are visible. He is, despite his frail appearance, apparently quite capable in combat, “[dealing] with” several unpleasant creatures who escape imprisonment during the events of The Kindly Ones.

In issue 68, it is revealed that Lucien's existence in the Dreaming began as serving the role of Dream's first raven. An allusion to “Mr. Raven,” the ghostly librarian in George MacDonald's novel Lilith, may be intended.

Matthew

Matthew is the raven companion of Dream of the Endless.

Matthew was originally Matthew Cable, a long-time supporting character in the Swamp Thing series created by Len Wein and Berni Wrightson and later used by Alan Moore, but because he died while asleep in the Dreaming, he was offered the chance to become a dream raven and serve Dream if he wished, and he accepted.

Matthew is not the first of Morpheus' ravens. Former ravens include Aristeas of Marmora, who returned to his life as a man for one year at one point, and Lucien, the first of the ravens. The purpose of the ravens is debatable. Morpheus seems to keep the ravens around out of some sort of unspoken need for companionship, though he also sends them on occasional missions.

Matthew's word balloons and font style are scratchy and uneven, probably to represent a hoarse, cawing voice, and perhaps as an indicator of his crude, smart-aleck personality. Underneath his frequently irreverent manner, Matthew is actually very loyal to Dream, and he is one of the characters who takes it the hardest when Dream perishes, initially seeking release from his service, but eventually coming to terms with his loss and choosing to remain as Daniel's raven.

Mervyn Pumpkinhead

Mervyn Pumpkinhead is Dream's jaded, wise-cracking, cigar-smoking janitor. As his name implies, he has a pumpkin for a head, and his overall appearance is similar to that of a scarecrow combined with a jack-o'-lantern. He resembles Jack Pumpkinhead of L. Frank Baum's Oz books.

Mervyn apparently drove a bus in dreams for a time during Dream's extended absence, and is first seen in Preludes and Nocturnes when Dream hitches a ride with him and chats for a while. Merv is in charge of the construction, maintenance and demolition work in the Dreaming, though he sometimes complains that his job is superfluous since Dream can change any of it at will. One issue of the “Dreaming” spin-off comic focuses on a dreamer who enjoys working under Merv's supervision.

Mervyn was one of the few who actively took up arms to fight the Furies in The Kindly Ones but is easily killed. He is returned to life by the new Dream in The Wake.

In a past incarnation shown in The Wake, Mervyn was seen to have had a turnip for a head instead of a pumpkin, as pumpkins were not then known in Europe.

Minor dreams

• Brute and Glob: A pair of troublemaking nightmares who try to gain power during Dream's absence. They originally appeared in Jack Kirby's 1974 Sandman series, as sidekicks to the title character, and continued to serve that role when Hector Hall became the Sandman. In the original comics, Brute was similar to the character The Thing from the Fantastic Four (co-created by Kirby), shouted “It's clobberin' time!” and often brought up his Uncle Harry. In The Doll's House, it is revealed that they were manipulating the Sandmen in order to have a new Lord of the Dreaming under their control. Dream punished Brute and Glob for fleeing his realm by casting them into “the darkness” (a place of imprisonment and, presumably, torture, within the Dreaming). Near the end of The Kindly Ones, the Furies tell Dream that they have released his prisoners from the darkness, but Brute and Glob are neither mentioned nor seen in this volume or in The Wake.
• The “Cuckoo”: A parasitic dream who lives in Barbie's dreamworld and eventually takes over there. She assumes the form of a childhood version of Barbie until she successfully escapes from Barbie's world, at which point she transforms into a beautiful black-feathered bird.
• The Fashion Thing: A minor character whose form changes based on popular fads. She is based on The Mad Mod Witch, created by Dave Wood and Jack Sparling as the host of The Unexpected, another DC horror title. At the time of her first appearance in Sandman, however, she is a “Mad Yuppie Witch.” First appearance: The Unexpected #108. Most of her appearances are relegated to a few panels. She is shown flying on her broom as a Yuppie briefly in issue #2, shown riding her broom in a top hat and tails with bare legs and feet in issue #22, and shown topless serving a meal to Delirium and Dream in issue #42. She also appears in The Kindly Ones.
• Ruthven: A minor character, a vampiric rabbit who is often seen in the background of the Dreaming and occasionally talked to by the other characters. His speech is written in a demonic font as if his voice is very dark and powerful. He is killed by the Kindly Ones, but resurrected by Daniel in The Wake. He is named from Lord Ruthven, the vampiric character based on Lord Byron and created by his secretary.
• Taramis: The head of the kitchen staff, Taramis is a tall skinny man with a large head, an exceptionally long Fu Manchu moustache, pink eyes and vampire teeth. He wears a red matador vest, a white shirt, and a black bow tie, with a sash for a belt.

Gods, demigods, and major personifications

Bast

Bast, the cat-headed goddess of cats, is the DC Universe version of the goddess Bast of Egyptian mythology.

She was once a major goddess, but the loss of her believers over time has significantly reduced her powers. She is quite flirtatious with Dream, and seems to have previously developed a mutual attraction with him which ultimately came to nothing. He sometimes goes to her for advice or companionship. Dream is almost affectionate with her, and in her own words she adores him.

Gaiman also used Bast in his novel American Gods.

The Presence/Yahweh

The Presence or The Creator is the Sandman universe's equivalent of a supreme monotheistic God figure, the Abrahamic God (although from a deistic viewpoint) such as almost never taking a physical form, being a creator-deity and having unmatched power.

However, despite these indications that all the mythologies in The Sandman are ultimately subordinate to the Judeo-Christian God, Gaiman has on several occasions stated that he never intended the Creator to be any specific religion's god, just as he makes it clear in the first appearance of the abode of the angels, the Silver City, that it “is not Paradise. It is not Heaven. It is the Silver City, that is not part of the order of created things.”

Loki

Loki is a callous and deceptive trickster god who first appears in Season of Myths.

He is temporarily freed from his punishment by Odin to help with their negotiations for the rulership of Hell. He manages to deceive Odin and Thor into taking another ambassador in his place using his illusionary powers, but fails to fool Dream. Dream says that although his victim must be freed, he allows Loki to go free, and will place a dream-illusion in Loki’s place.

Loki returns in The Kindly Ones. He works with Puck to kidnap Daniel, and harbours deep resentment about being in debt to Dream. The Corinthian and Matthew eventually find Daniel, and Loki takes on the form of Dream. The Corinthian is not fooled, and strangles Loki who assumes the form of a monstrous dragon, then that of The Corinthian himself, then Daniel, then his own. The Corinthian then proceeds to break Loki's neck and consume his eyes. Loki, now blind, is taken by Odin and Thor back to his punishment. He attempts to goad Thor into killing him, but Odin prevents this, leaving Loki to his fate worse than death.

Loki appears, when in his own form, as a tall, thin man with yellow eyes and long red hair that resembles flames.

Loki is based on the Norse god Loki.

Odin

Odin appears as an old man wearing a wide-brimmed hat and cloak and carrying a staff. He is usually depicted as a dark, mysterious figure, missing one eye and accompanied with his two ravens, Hugin and Munin (“thought” and “memory”), and two wolves, Geri and Freki.

Odin is based on the Norse God Odin.

Three

The Three is an entity unique to The Sandman, something like a god and something like a dream and completely mutable in appearance, seeming to exist as a sentient concept or symbol in the form of any group of three women, particularly when they represent the Mother, the Maiden and the Crone, the three aspects of the Triple Goddess in many mythologies. Sometimes they appear in the form of the three witches from DC's horror anthology, The Witching Hour: Mildred, Mordred, and Cynthia.

In The Sandman

The Three repeatedly appear throughout The Sandman for many different reasons and fulfilling different functions at different points in the story. Their first appearance is in The Sandman #2, where they appear as the three witches, Mildred (mother), Mordred (crone), and Cynthia (maiden) from the DC horror anthology The Witching Hour. They later take many different forms over the course of the series, and the “three women” symbol remains an extremely common one, often blurring the lines between when characters are supposed to be merely themselves and when they are supposed to be representations of the Three.

The Three represent the female principle, prophecy, and mystery, and they are often a vaguely menacing and enigmatic presence in the series. As a three-in-one mystical being, they can be seen as contrasting with the commonly-used triple-male Trinity. Indeed, legend and mythology play a much larger role throughout the series than religion does, though some segments suggest a supreme monotheistic God at work behind the scenes.

Common incarnations of the Three include the Erinyes (Furies) in their vengeful aspect and the Moirae (Fates) or Weird Sisters in their divinatory aspect. They also sometimes subtly appear in the form of other characters (such as Eve) or groups of characters.

Other gods

• Ishtar: An exotic dancer who happens to be the goddess Ishtar. She is revealed to be a former lover of Destruction, and kills herself after speaking with Dream when the latter traveled with Delirium in search of his lost brother.
• Pharamond: a former god, last of his pantheon, and friend of Dream. At Dream's suggestion that he change with the times or fade like many other gods (similar to his novel American Gods), he became somewhat of a god of travel (“in his own little way”). Pharamond now runs a travel agency in Dublin, under the alias “Mr Farell.” He helps Dream and Delirium find their brother.
• Thor: The Norse god Thor, a ridiculously muscular and dim-witted redhead drunkard who likes to brag about how big he can make his “hammer” grow. Thor first appeared in DC Comics in House of Mystery #68 (November 1957), illustrated by Jack Kirby. There, he looked like a traditional viking with red hair, and his hammer looked identical to the way Kirby would draw it for Marvel Comics. That story was reprinted in DC Special #4 (July 1969), which also contains Abel's debut. Kirby also pitted Wesley Dodds against someone claiming to be Thor in Adventure Comics #78 (September 1942). (It must be noted that the Thor seen in The Sandman doesn't resemble the one seen in the other DC comics.)

Angels, fallen angels, and devils

Azazel

Azazel is a former ruler of Hell, reigning for a time alongside Lucifer and Beelzebub. He appears as a twisting, torn mass of black flame, like a window into space, filled with numerous eyes and mouths.

He was cast out after Lucifer abandoned Hell, and made the mistake of threatening and attacking Dream to try to gain ownership of it. Dream keeps him in a bottle in a chest of trinkets and mementos.

He is based on the demon Azazel.

Azazel first appeared in DC Comics battling Madame Xanadu in the story intended for Doorway to Nightmare #6 (it was cancelled after #5) that was eventually published in The Unexpected #190. As with Lucifer's previous appearance in The Brave and the Bold, he looked more like a traditional devil, but was referred to as an incubus, which in the story, was a creature who steals people's dreams and imprints them on to tapestries that give him power and cannot be destroyed without killing the victims.

Beelzebub

Along with Lucifer and Azazel, Beelzebub was the third King of Hell. He often appears as either a gigantic green fly, or a fly's head on two short human legs. Sometimes a human face can be seen between the fly's eyes. His constant buzzing slurs his speech (for example, “Bbbbut nooo. Itzzz a Triummmvirate.”) He is based on the demon Beelzebub.

Choronzon

Choronzon is a former duke of Hell who served under Beelzebub. He has pink skin and two mouths, one under the other.

He had possession of Dream's helm, but lost it in a challenge. He later reappeared briefly as one of Azazel's tactics to gain ownership of Hell.

He is based on the demon Choronzon, a demon or devil that originated in writing with the 16th century occultists Edward Kelley and John Dee within the latter's occult system. In the 20th century he became an important element within the mystical system of Thelema, founded by Aleister Crowley, where he is the Dweller in the Abyss, believed to be the last great obstacle between the adept and enlightenment. Thelemites believe that if he is met with proper preparation, then his function is to destroy the ego, which allows the adept to move beyond the Abyss of occult cosmology.

Duma

Duma is a fallen angel.

Duma's name means “silence,” and he is based on the angel Duma from Jewish mythology. In those tales, he is the angel of silence and death's stillness. According to these same stories, he is the guardian of Egypt and the prince of vindication. Based on this, one could speculate that he was the angel who killed the firstborn Egyptians in Moses' time. Some sources also name him a “Prince of Hell,” which would mean that at some unknown point in time he displeased God and fell from grace.

The Zohar, a book of Jewish mysticism, describes his position in Hell as such that he had “tens of thousands of angels of destruction” under him, and that he was “chief of demons in Gehinnon with 12,000 myriads of attendants, all charged with the punishment of the souls of sinners.”

Dumah is also the name given to the guardian of the 14th gate, through which the goddess Ishtar passed on her journey to the underworld in Babylonian mythology. Dumah may or may not be related to Duma.

It is unknown how much of Duma's background from Jewish mythology was actually incorporated into the character by Gaiman. Many theories and interpretations have been put forward, but nothing is concrete.

In Season of Mists, we find that Lucifer has closed down Hell in frustration, handing off the key to the bemused Dream. Eventually, after much squabbling between various gods, Duma and Remiel receive a message saying that they are to watch over Hell. Remiel immediately rejects it, but Duma silently accepts the key, and the guilt-stricken Remiel joins him in ruling Hell. Remiel subsequently attempts to redesign Hell, transforming it from a place of punishment to a place of rehabilitation for lost souls, but Duma's interest in these changes is unknown, as is his true opinion on many things.

Lucifer

Lucifer is the Miltonian former ruler of Hell, a charming, intelligent, and utterly ruthless fallen angel.

He is one of the most powerful beings in existence, said at one point to be surpassed only by his Creator.

He is based on the fallen angel Lucifer, whose story was created by John Milton in his Paradise Lost.

Neil Gaiman also used the character Lucifer in his short story “Murder Mysteries.” In this format, Lucifer was a captain of the Silver City, with Azazel as his protégé.

From the book Hanging out with the Dream King (a book consisting of interviews with Gaiman's collaborators), one of Gaiman's artists, Kelley Jones, states that Lucifer is based on David Bowie, image-wise. In the interview, Jones states the following:

“...Neil was adamant that the Devil was David Bowie. He just said, 'He is. You must draw David Bowie. Find David Bowie, or I'll send you David Bowie. Because if it isn't David Bowie, you're going to have to redo it until it is David Bowie.' So I said, 'Okay, it's David Bowie.'...”

Lucifer's previous appearances in DC Comics were more traditional.

Mazikeen

Mazikeen is a fictional character from Neil Gaiman's Sandman mythos. The name “Mazikeen” comes from that of a shapeshifting demon of Jewish mythology.

Mazikeen first appeared in The Sandman, where she was Lucifer's consort while he reigned in Hell. At the time, half of her face was normal, but the other half was horribly misshapen and skeletal, causing her speech to be nearly unintelligible. (Gaiman wrote Mazikeen's dialogue by trying to speak using only half of his mouth, and writing down phonetically what came out.)

When Lucifer resigned, Mazikeen left Hell and ended up following her master, becoming part of the staff at the “Lux” (Latin for light, and the first root word in “Lucifer”), an elite Los Angeles bar that Lucifer had opened and played piano at. To conceal her demonic nature, she covered the deformed half of her face with a white mask and rarely spoke.

Remiel

Remiel is an angelic character in the comic book series The Sandman based on the angel Remiel. He first appears in Season of Mists.

Remiel, along with Duma, is sent to observe when Dream is given the key to Hell. Dream ends up offering the key to Remiel and Duma, making them the new rulers of Hell, but Remiel refuses to accept it, wishing to return to the Silver City. In doing so, Remiel disobeys the Creator, and as a result can never return to the Silver City anyway. Duma accepts the key, however, and the two angels descend to Hell to rule over the countless sinners and demons there. Whether Remiel is a fallen angel or not (he is described as having tripped or stumbled more than fallen), and whether he truly has the free will to ultimately disobey the Creator's wishes, is left somewhat ambiguous.

While reigning in Hell, Remiel attempts to organize the domain into a great soul-cleansing machine. However Remiel never fully gets over his fall from the Silver City and tries to return the keys to Lucifer, in The Kindly Ones.

Etrigan the demon

A character created by Jack Kirby in 1972 in a short-lived series. In 1984 Alan Moore used the character in Swamp Thing where he had him speak in rhyme. The demon appears in Preludes and Nocturnes (specifically in Sandman #4: “A Hope in Hell”), escorting Dream from the front gate of Hell to meet Lucifer. During their journey, Dream comments on Etrigan speaking in rhyme as a result of a promotion. In Season of Mists episode 1, Lucifer makes a passing reference to a recent event where “one of the minor demons—some little yellow rhymer—thought to declare himself a king of hell.” This is a reference to The Demon vol. 3 #6 and #7.

Immortals, witches, and long-lived humans

Hob Gadling

Robert “Hob” Gadling is a human who was granted immortality and meets with Dream once every hundred years.

Hob's was granted immortality in a pub named the White Horse in 1389 when he simply declared that he “had decided never to die.” Death agrees, at Dream's request, to forego her responsibilities in Gadling's case, so that Dream can meet him every century to hear about his experiences. At their 20th century meeting, Dream finally admits - after initially rejecting the idea violently - that the purpose of the exercise was simply for him to have a friend.

Hob is originally an extremely callow character, a soldier of fortune with no respect for anyone else's well-being. He takes to a variety of occupations over the centuries, including slaving, and periodically reinvents himself as a descendant of his previous persona. Gradually, he acquires a conscience, and by the 20th century has become a thoughtful and caring man, full of remorse at his past deeds.

In The Wake, Death meets Gadling at a Renaissance Fair; out of respect for her late brother Dream she offers to end his six-hundred-year life, but Gadling refuses.

Orpheus

Orpheus is the son of Dream in The Sandman. He is based on the Orpheus of Greek mythology.

After traveling through Hades, losing his beloved (twice), and being torn apart by the Bacchanae (the beloved madwomen of Dionysos), as in the legend, Orpheus spent a long time traveling around the world as a disembodied head. Johanna Constantine helped rescue him from Revolutionary France. He was eventually "put out of misery" by his father, an event which fulfilled the prophecy of Desire, Dream's sibling, that he would spill family blood and trigger a sequence of events leading to his destruction. The vengeance of the Furies was brought upon Dream for the mercy-killing of his son, Orpheus, in The Sandman: Brief Lives.

Thessaly

Thessaly is the last of the millennia-old witches of Thessaly. She makes her first appearance in A Game of You, in which she is shown to be an amoral, cold-blooded, proud, and ruthless character, though not a malicious one.

Neil Gaiman named this character after the land of witches, Thessaly, in Greece. Later in the series, Thessaly changes her name to Larissa, which is the capital of Thessaly. Larissa was actually the local fountain nymph, after whom the town was named. It is suggested however that Thessaly is even older than this civilisation and may date from neolithic times.

Thessaly returns in the later volumes, where she is Dream's lover for a time, but this relationship ends unhappily for both and is never actually shown in the series. When it is alluded to in Brief Lives Thessaly is never mentioned by name, so only in The Kindly Ones is this romance revealed. Also in The Kindly Ones, Thessaly provides Lyta Hall with protection and sanctuary from Dream, who is being targeted for death by the Furies, using Hall as a vessel.

When Lyta wakes up after Dream's death, Thessaly calmly advises her to leave. Thessaly suggests that many people, including herself, would be more than happy to murder Lyta for her part in Morpheus' destruction.

Minor immortals

Mad Hettie: A London tramp born in 1741. At the time of Sandman #3, she was 247 years old. She appears frequently in other DC comics such as Hellblazer. She also had a large role in Death: The High Cost of Living, where she is shown to be rude, miserly and constantly complains about the lack of knowledge that present day youths have. She has been accused of being a witch, and also appears to have abilities as a haruspex, however she merely states that “you don't get to your two hundred and fiftieth without learning a few tricks.”

Fair folk

Inhabitants of Faerie.

Cluracan

The Cluracan is a courtier of the Queen of Faerie and the brother to Nuala, the Dream King's fairy servant. An amoral, gay (in both the literal and modern sense of the word) rogue, Cluracan features in Season of Mists, World's End, The Kindly Ones, and The Wake. He is strongly reminiscent of the “trickster” archetype also associated with Loki. Following the events of The Kindly Ones, Cluracan manages to offend his queen so badly that she sends him to the court of Llinor, where tradition demands that he marry a lady of the royal house. Fortunately, Cluracan's nemesis - who is identical to the faerie in every way except his sexual preference - had grown weary enough of solitude to take Cluracan's place.

The Cluracan is based on a drunken leprechaun of Irish mythology, the Cluricaun.

Nuala

Nuala is a faerie gift to Dream at the end of Season of Mists. She appears initially as a beautiful woman, but this is the result of her faerie glamour. When Dream removes the glamour, her true appearance—a small, brown-haired, plain-looking girl—is revealed.

From this point on, Nuala takes on the housekeeping duties of the Dreaming, only stopping when her brother Cluracan brings her back to Faerie in The Kindly Ones. When she leaves, Dream grants her with a boon as a reward for her years of servitude, allowing her to call on him if she needs to. Nuala had been nursing a crush on Dream for some time, so she finally calls him, asking him to love her. Dream is unable to do this, but he says that he can at least “send you a dream of my love.” Nuala responds, “I already have that, my lord.”

Auberon

Auberon is seen for the first time in Sandman #19 as Auberon of Dom-Daniel, and again in issues of The Books of Magic (also created by Gaiman).

The character is showed to be the inspiration for Oberon of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Titania

Titania is the queen of the fay; she first appears in issue #19.

The character is showed to be the inspiration for Shakespeare's Titania in the play A Midsummer Night's Dream. There is some speculation that she in the past was a lover of Dream's, although this is never explicitly stated.

Puck

Puck is a brown-furred trickster and hobgoblin also called Robin Goodfellow who appears several times in the series. Puck aids the Norse God Loki in kidnapping Daniel, playing a small role in the death of the Sandman and Daniel's subsequent assuming of the title.

The inspiration for the character is shown to be the Puck of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, but within the context of the series, the character in the play was inspired by Puck.

Mortals

Alex Burgess

Alex Burgess is the son of Roderick Burgess, mother unknown (but probably Ethel Cripps, and therefore half-brother of Doctor Destiny). He is taught by his father, and takes part in his rituals. Upon Roderick Burgess' death, Alex inherits his estate, including his magical order. He keeps Dream imprisoned, as his father did, trying to bargain for power and immortality in exchange for his release. The Order enjoys a resurgence in popularity in the 1960s, but by the 1970s it is in decline again. Alex passes ownership of the Order on to his boyfriend, PaulMcGuire (formerly a gardener at the estate), and becomes obsessed with his prisoner and with his father. Finally, in 1988, Dream's guards fall asleep, and Dream escapes. He puts Alex into a nightmare of “eternal waking,” in which he is forever dreaming he is waking up, and each waking degenerates into another horrible nightmare. This nightmare lasts for years, ending only with Dream's death in the ninth collection in the series, The Kindly Ones.

Alex is quite tall and near-sighted. He has brown hair which he wears in a variety of styles throughout his life, but by old age he is bald and has come to resemble his father very closely. His relationship with McGuire is deep and heartfelt, but his obsessions with his father and with Dream eventually come to rule his life. In The Wake, he appears again as the child that we see in his first appearance.

Alex is in many ways a tragic figure, perhaps the first statement of the theme that Desire explores in The Wake: “The bonds of family bind both ways.” Had Alex not been born the son of his father, inheriting the imprisoned Dream, his life might have been much happier. However, he is finally able to find some measure of fulfillment in his old age, following Dream's death.

His name almost certainly derives from Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, the protagonist of which is named Alex, but could also be a nod to Aleister Crowley, whose original middle name was Alexander and who was mentioned in the first issue.

Roderick Burgess

Roderick Burgess (1863–1947) was the Lord Magus of The Order of the Ancient Mysteries. Born Morris Burgess Brocklesby and known also as The Daemon King, his magical fraternity was based in “Fawney Rig” in Sussex, and was initially funded by his inherited industrial wealth. Burgess is a magician rather in the vein of the real Aleister Crowley, and within the DC world is Crowley's rival.

The series begins with Burgess' attempt to capture and bind Death, which fails, capturing Dream instead. Burgess keeps Dream trapped in a glass globe for the rest of his (Burgess') life, attempting to bargain with Dream, but Dream remains silent. Burgess dies of old age still attempting to get a response out of Morpheus. His order passes on to his son, Alex.

Burgess is a bald-headed, slightly pot-bellied man with a large hook nose and something of the look of a gypsy about him. He is ultimately self-centred; his sole purpose for the Order is to bring money and power to himself, and he is consumed by his desire to achieve immortality. His relationship with his son is only briefly touched on, though it is implied that it is unhealthy, with Burgess pushing his son to spend his life pursuing his father's dreams.

Johanna Constantine

Lady Johanna Constantine is an 18th century supernatural adventuress. Dream encounters her several times, once to ask her to recover the head of his son, Orpheus — a mission she performed so successfully that part of its after-effects was the ending of the French Revolution.

In the Hellblazer Special: Lady Constantine graphic novel, an ancient evil refers to Johanna Constantine as “the Constantine,” the “laughing magician,” and the “constant one,” all titles that have been used (usually by other ancient evils) to describe DC's middle class magician John Constantine (a character created by Alan Moore). The evil taunts her, saying “did you think to trick us with a new form?” There is the implication that throughout all times there have been recurring incarnations of Constantine who contain the spark of magic. In the story Johanna Constantine learns that “the Devil and the wandering Jew” meet once every hundred years in a London pub; this meeting is actually between Dream and Hob Gadling, as she discovers when she interrupts the meeting. The story's conclusion shows Johanna Constantine inheriting a property she calls “Fawney Rig,” after the con job wherein a gilded ring is sold as though it were solid gold... the implication being that she attained the property through trickery. This property was later owned by Roderick Burgess, the mage who captured Dream in the beginning of The Sandman story.

Johanna is presumably intended as an ancestor of John Constantine, although this has not been explicitly stated.

John Constantine

John Constantine is a con man and magician who accompanies Dream on a quest to find his pouch of sand.

John Constantine has his own series, John Constantine: Hellblazer, which occasionally has guest appearances by Cain and Abel. He is also prominently featured in another series, Swamp Thing, from which he originated when the series was written by Alan Moore.

Ethel Cripps

Also known as Ethel Dee, Ethel Cripps is the mother of John Dee. She was the mistress of Roderick Burgess until she fled with Ruthven Sykes.

Her last joy was her son, John Dee, whom she sought for 10 years. She discovered that he had become a living corpse. Despairing, she killed herself by removing the one thing keeping her alive—an amulet in the shape of an eye which granted its user protection.

Once dead, this and the Sandman's Ruby was entrusted to her son after stealing it from Ruthven Sykes, who had stolen it from Roderick Burgess, who had stolen it from Dream.

Doctor Dee

John Dee, also known as Doctor Destiny, is a DC Comics villain whose powers were derived from his use of Dream's Ruby. His name is almost certainly a reference to the real-life John Dee (magician of Queen Elizabeth I). He was incarcerated in Arkham Asymu, with other Batman villains such as the Scarecrow and the Joker, until freed by the amulet given to him by his mother, Ethel Dee, former mistress to Roderick Burgess. He had previously fought the previous Sandman (Garrett Sanford) alongside the Justice League (the DC team made of their most famous super-heroes such as Superman and Batman).

John originally named himself “Doctor Destiny” to protect his mother's surname, but after her death changed it back. The Ruby had drained away his mental and physical state until he was no longer able to sleep or dream without it. This had the unpleasant effect of turning him into a browned, living corpse.

Being able to control dreams, he used the ruby to bring out the “darkness” and “bestiality” of many people across the world. He originally sought power, money and mostly the restoration of his human body, but the madness brought about by overuse of the relic drove him to savage, monstrous acts of depravity using the ruby. To quote: “I think I'll dismember the world and then I'll dance in the wreckage.”

While doing this, over a period of 24 hours he focused the energy of the ruby on several people in a café, one of them a friend of Rose Walker and an ex-lover of Foxglove. He used them as puppets, horribly having them murder and degrade each other as if toys, until all were dead.

Dream double-bluffed him into destroying the ruby, which Dee believed to be Dream's life. It actually only stored some of his energy, and with it released Dream instead became even more powerful than before. Easily overpowering Dee, Dream decided not to destroy him, and instead returned him to Arkham. Dee was finally able to sleep, and his sadism and depravity faded as he now could again dream.

Wesley Dodds

Wesley Dodds, also known as Sandman, is the original costumed crimefighter who used the name. He was created in 1939 by writer Gardner Fox and artist Bert Christman and was the first DC character to bear the name of the Sandman. According to Gaiman, he was merely filling a hole in the universe in a similar way to a process of evolution, in which animals fill up a niche—for instance, what should fly. He is first seen in The Sandman series in a two-panel cameo in issue #1, and another cameo in issue #26. Dream occasionally appeared in dream sequences in Dodds's own series, Sandman Mystery Theatre. The two finally met for real in Gaiman's Sandman Midnight Theatre. Dodds appeared out of costume during The Sandman: The Wake (#72). The reason for his prophetic visions is explained as him being embodied with a small portion of Dream's essence. His reasoning for assuming his role as The Sandman is given as nightmares of Dream in his helmet that plague him, until he begins his career as a crimefighter after which “Wesley Dodds sleeps the sleep of the Just.”

Foxglove

Foxglove (Donna Cavanagh) is a lesbian writer and musician who first appears in A Game of You.

In The Sandman

She is mentioned in Preludes and Nocturnes as the girlfriend of Judy, one of the patrons at the diner who dies in the story concerning John Dee, titled “24 Hours.” In A Game of You, Foxglove is going out with Hazel McNamara, and the two help Thessaly rescue Barbie.

After The Sandman

In Death: The Time of Your Life, Foxglove has become a pop superstar after being seen by a promoter in Death: The High Cost of Living. She is raising a child with Hazel named Alvie. Alvie dies of cot death, leading Hazel to make a deal with Death. However, even in the world of the Endless there's no such thing as a free lunch, and another character's life has to be sacrificed for the child's.

Daniel Hall

Daniel is the son of Lyta Hall, and the successor to the role of Dream of the Endless.

Lyta Hall

Hippolyta “Lyta” Hall is a major character in The Sandman, the mother of Daniel. She was created in 1983 by Roy and Danette Thomas and Ross Andru as Fury, the daughter of a World War II super-heroin. In her previous adventures, she had become pregnant and joined her deceased husband, Hector Hall, in the Dream dimension, where Hector's soul had taken the identity of Sandman, guardian of dreams. Upon Morpheus' return, Hector's soul was released and Lyta was sent back to Earth where she gave birth to their son, Daniel. After this incident, Lyta hated Morpheus and blamed him for her husband's death (although he was already dead to begin with). Morpheus visited the child and informed Lyta that he was destined to be in the Dreaming. When Daniel later mysteriously disappeared, Lyta lost her mind and sought to destroy Morpheus, aided by the mythical Furies. Ironically, it was this that began the chain of events which lead to Daniel becoming the new Lord of the Dreaming.

Showing up at the the wake held for Morpheus, Lyta was still very much mentally unhinged. She eventually met her son in his new role; unlike the old Dream, who would have enacted some kind of revenge, he instead gave her his protection (which she sorely needed, having earned the wrath of numerous beings/forces for her role in the death of Morpheus). Lyta was returned to the waking world, her experiences having changed her.

Hazel McNamara

Hazel McNamara is Foxglove's lover. She appears in A Game of You and Death: The High Cost of Living.

She has a son, Alvie, from her one heterosexual encounter. It is likely that Alvie is named after Wanda (see below). In Death: The Time of Your Life Alvie dies of cot death and Hazel makes a deal with Death to bring him back.

Unity Kinkaid

Unity first appears as one of the victims of the sleepy sickness that follows Dream's capture in the first collection of issues in the series, Preludes and Nocturnes. Following his capture, she sleeps until he escapes. While asleep, she is raped and gives birth to a daughter, Miranda Walker.

It is later learned that the father of this child was Desire. Unity was supposed to be a “vortex of Dream,” a special entity that appears only very rarely, with the ability to connect the dreams of other beings, a dangerous ability that can eventually cause the destruction of the Dreaming. The only time Dream is allowed to take a human life is to kill a vortex. Desire's intervention confuses the issue, and eventually Unity's granddaughter, Rose Walker, becomes the vortex. Desire does this so that Dream will be forced to kill a person of family blood, thus bringing the vengeance of the Furies on him.

However, just before Dream can kill Rose, Unity appears, explaining that she should have been the vortex, and asks for Rose's heart. The heart is a red glass one (reminiscent of the green heart-shaped piece of glass that appears in the opening tale of this series). Taking the heart, Unity becomes the vortex, and dies.

Unity is of medium height, with reddish-brown hair that she wears long and loose in the self-image she uses in the final dream-meeting between herself, Rose, and Dream; as the old woman we meet at the start of The Doll's House, she has grey hair and wears a curiously old-fashioned dress. She seems kind, and smiles a lot.

Prez Rickard

Prez Rickard is a fictional character who first appeared in Prez #1 (December 1973). He is the subject of the story “The Golden Boy”, in Sandman #54, where he is the first 18 year old to be elected President of the United States.

Ruthven Sykes

Ruthven Sykes is a bespectacled Afro-Caribbean man with short hair.

He is Roderick Burgess' second-in-command of the Order of the Ancient Mysteries until November 1930, when he steals a number of treasures (including Dream's helmet, ruby and pouch of sand) and £200,000 in cash from the order and flees to San Francisco with Roderick's mistress, Ethel Cripps. In December 1930, he trades the helmet to the demon Choronzon for an amulet that looks like an eyeball on a chain. This amulet protects him from the magics of Burgess until 1936, when Ethel Cripps leaves him, taking the amulet with her. He is then killed.

Jed Walker

Jed Walker, created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, first appeared in The Sandman, vol. 1, #1, where he was protected from nightmare monsters by the titular hero. In Neil Gaiman's revisionist version of The Sandman, Jed is the brother of Rose Walker and the grandson of Unity Kincaid and Desire. He was raised by his grandfather, Ezra Paulsen, then taken and imprisoned by his aunt and uncle at the behest of Desire. Once Rose rescues him, he is revealed in The Wake to have become close to her.

Rose Walker

Rose Walker makes her first appearance in Sandman #10, part one of The Doll's House story arc. She is a young blonde with red- and purple-dyed streaks in her hair. In later issues, she is shown as having red hair with a blonde streak. In The Kindly Ones, several characters remark that Rose looks much younger than her actual age; Rose's responses to these comments imply that while she may not be a true immortal, she is aware that she is aging more slowly than normal.

Clarice and Barnaby

Clarice and Barnaby, aunt and uncle of Jed and Rose, were introduced in The Sandman vol. 1, #5, created by Micheal Fleisher and Jack Kirby. The pair mysteriously show up on Dolphin Island a few hours after the drowning death of Jed's grandfather, fisherman Ezra Paulsen. They take him to live with their own children, Bruce and Susie. They treat him as a personal slave not unlike Cinderella, with minimal food even as he does all the cooking. Eventually, their treatment of him is revealed to have become much more abusive, placing him in a basement dungeon with no toilet. This is told in issues 5 and 6 of the first series, The Best of DC #22, and recapped in Rose's diary in issue #11 of the Gaiman series. In issue #12, their mysterious appearance is revealed to have been because they were being paid an $800 monthly stipend by an agent of Desire in order to keep Jed alive. In issue #14, they are revealed to have been killed.

Historical figures

• Haroun al-Raschid: The King of Baghdad during the time that Sindbad the Sailor was written/set. Worrying about his beloved city, he sells the city to Dream to keep it alive forever, but with a catch; the city lives only in dreams, and never existed except in the famous stories, the One Thousand and One Arabian Nights.
• Caesar Augustus: The first emperor of Rome. In The Sandman he is revealed to carry psychological scars from being continually raped by his uncle, Julius Caesar. Dream gives him a way to deal with it without the gods (“The Divine Julius” is suspected to be one of their number after his death) finding out.
• Julius Caesar: The last Dictator of the Roman Republic.
• Lycius: A dwarf, born of the Roman nobility, who lived in the time of Caesar Augustus. Augustus had banned the nobility from working as actors upon the stage, but he made an exception for Lycius, who had few other opportunities.
• Joshua A. Norton: An English-American believing himself to be Emperor of the United States in “Three Septembers and a January.” Dream gives him his delusion as part of a challenge issued by his three younger siblings: Despair, who tries to make him fall into her realm by making his life increasingly difficult; Delirium, who makes a half-attempt to actually send him into insanity, but is refuted by the fact that “his madness keeps him sane;” and Desire, who uses The King of Pain to tempt him with a real palace and a Queen. In the end, however, Joshua Norton remains delusional, but lives a happy and dignified life. He is so well-liked and respected that, when he dies, thousands come to see him off.
• Mark Twain: American writer who shares his storu about a jumping frog (The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County) with Emperor Norton.
• Thomas Paine: American radical who, after participating in the French Revolution, is imprisoned in the Luxembourg Palace and briefly encounters Johanna Constantine.
• Louis de Saint-Just: Orator of the French Revolution and supporter of the Terror, he is deposed after Orpheus sings a song that saps his ability to articulate.
• Maximilien Robespierre: Leader of the Committee of Public Safety and instigator of the Reign of Terror. An extreme dreamer, he seeks to destroy the head of Orpheus due to his wish to destroy all myths, but is in turn destroyed by it.
• Marco Polo: The famous 13th-century explorer and trader. He is lost in a part of the Dreaming that connects to the real world, and encounters Rusticello, a friend of his future self, Fiddler's Green, and Dream, shortly after he had escaped from his prison. Marco offers him water. In return, Dream uses up the last of his energy in granting an otherwise forbidden passage home (explaining why he collapsed upon entering the House of Secrets). Upon waking Marco is unable to remember any of his encounters.
• Rustichello da Pisa: The publisher of Marco, he encounters a younger self of his friend in a dream in the Desert of Lop.
• William Shakespeare: The famous 16/17th-century English playwright. Dream gives him the inspiration for many of his plays in exchange for Shakespeare writing two plays for him: A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest.
• Christopher Marlowe: A famous 16th-century playwright who is depicted discussing Shakespeare's terrible writing and Marlowe's Faust. Shakespeare tells Marlowe, “God's wounds! If only I could write like you!”
• Geoffrey Chaucer: The famous 14th century poet and author of The Canterbury Tales is seen in the White Horse Tavern in 1389 A.D. in part four of The Doll's House, where Dream first meets Hob Gadling. It is mentioned in the tavern that people don't want, “filthy tales in rhyme about pilgrims” a reference to The Canterbury Tales.
• John Belushi: Appears briefly in the Samurai Delicatessen skit when Prez hosts Saturday Night Live. In this timeline, the encounter so affects him that he stops doing drugs and lives to old age.
• Richard Nixon: Visits Prez in his sleep to give him advice on the Presidency.
• Ben Jonson: Poet and friend of William Shakespeare.

Minor mortals

• Chantal and Zelda: Apparently lesbian roommates in the house Rose Walker was staying at in The Doll's House. They dress in white and collect dead spiders. Of the two, Zelda relies on Chantal for strength, and she rarely if ever speaks. In The Doll's House, it was unknown if they were lovers, friends, or related because they hardly ever socialized. When they dream, Zelda dreams of her childhood, where it is implied that she collected bones. Chantal's dreams are self-repeating loops, trying to explain something of nothing. In a later issue Chantal has died, while Zelda is dying of AIDS, which she contracted from an organ transplant.
• Richard Madoc: An author, director and playwright who imprisoned Dream's ex-lover Calliope, a Muse, as a source of inspiration for his works. When Dream punishes Madoc for his treatment of Calliope he destroys his fingers to record in his own blood the innumerable ideas foisted upon him, only to have his imagination go blank entirely the moment Calliope is released from imprisonment. In The Wake he is seen attending Morpheus' funeral whilst dreaming, and it is inferred that after Morpheus' death, Madoc's blank mind is slowly healing.
• Paul McGuire: Good friend and lover of Alex Burgess.
• Wanda: A transsexual woman featured in A Game of You who is Barbie's best friend. She dies in the freak storm caused by Thessaly's magic and is buried as Alvin (her parents dress her as a man), though Barbie rectifies this by crossing out Alvin on her gravestone with lipstick and writing Wanda. Wanda is later seen in Barbie's dream, now apparently with a biologically female body, and waves goodbye to Barbie with Death.
• Nada: A beautiful African queen, Nada is cast into hell by the Dream King (known to her as Kai'ckul) when she refuses to stay with him and become his queen because "It is not for mortals to love the Endless". She was asked three times, but refused each time. Nada first appears in "Preludes and Nocturnes" when Dream is escorted to Dis. Her story is revealed in the beginning of "A Doll's House". An argument over her unfair punishment prompts Dream's initial actions in "Seasons of Mist," and eventually Dream begs her forgiveness and lets her choose her own fate. Nada chooses to be reincarnated as a baby boy in Hong Kong, and Dream comes to her cradle, holds her new form, and promises that she will always be welcome in the Dreaming, no matter what form or body her soul is in.

Superheroes

• Batman (Bruce Wayne) and Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) are shown briefly in a flashback in issue #2 (Preludes and Nocturnes) capturing Doctor Destiny, representing the Justice League, who defeated him. In issue #8, a comedian tells a joke about Batman that is clearly in-universe, as the comedian makes speculations about Batman's out of costume life that are far from correct. He also makes a brief appearance in issue #71 (The Wake).
• Phantom Stranger and Doctor Occult appear briefly in The Wake, chatting with John Constantine. Constantine says “Nice trench coat,” a reference to the similar design of the three characters, who are unofficially known as The Trenchcoat Brigade and initially appeared together in Gaiman's The Books of Magic.
• Mister Miracle (Scott Free) informs Dream that his ruby is no longer kept at Justice League headquarters. (#7, Preludes and Nocturnes)
• Martian Manhunter (J'onn J'onnz), last member of the original Justice League lineup, gives Dream the details of the storage unit where the JLA's old trophies, including the ruby, are kept. (#7, Preludes and Nocturnes). Also makes an appearance alongside Batman, as does Clark Kent, in issue #71 (The Wake).
• The Sandman (Hector Hall): The walking dead father of Daniel Hall and successor to Garrett Sanford, whose death is noted. Hall's only previous appearances as the Sandman were in Infinity Inc. #49–51. (#11–12, The Doll's House)
• Element Girl (Urania Blackwell): Death, coming for an upstairs neighbour who has fallen off a ladder, visits her, sensing her longing to die, but is unable to take her, though she informs her that Ra (the sun) can take her power back so she can die. (#20, Dream Country)
• Hawkman (Carter Hall): Along with Wesley Dodds (The Sandman), he is offered to Dream by Odin in a repeating Ragnarok in which the Justice Society of America is trapped (Crisis on Infinite Earths Special: “Last Days of the Justice Society”). Odin says that one of them contains some of his essence. As Hall is the grandfather of Daniel, it is deliberately obscure just which of the two he means. (#26, Season of Mists)
• Wildcat (Ted Grant) appears in #54, “The Golden Boy;” however, in Prez Rickard's world, he is merely a professional wrestler rather than a member of the Justice Society of America.

Appendix D

A. Other Norse myths

1. Thor and Tyr

In addition to Odin, the Norse landing brought Thor and Tyr to the Americas. While no sacrifice is made to them, they are mentioned obliquely and this is apparently enough within the parameters of the novel for a god to materialise in a place. The Norsemen praise Thor for the thunder and note that they arrived on a Tuesday (day of Tyr, also known as Tiwaz).

Thor is revealed as having committed suicide in 1932. He was brought to America along with Odin. His death is necessary to the plot since Odin wants to sacrifice a son. In Norse myths, Thor also dies during Ragnarök, slayed by Jormungand.

2. Frigg/Freyja

On page 70, Wednesday says, “Friday is a free day, a woman's day.” Friday means “day of Frigg” though in most Germanic languages and in Old Norse it means “day of Freyja.” In any case the two female deities are frequently identified. Frigg is the wife of Odin and mother of the gods while Freyja is the goddess of love, beauty and fertility.

3. Yggdrasil

Yggdrasil is the name of a tree, an important part of the Norse cosmology; it ties the nine worlds together with Asgard (the land of the gods) at the top, Midgard (the Earth) in the middle and Hel (the land of the dead) at the bottom. It is therefore called the World-Tree. It is the tree on which Odin was hanged for nine days as a sacrifice to himself. Wednesday wears a representation of it on his tie pin as confirmed on page 453. It is customarily an ash tree but the tree in Chapter Fourteen is only described as silver-grey in color, in a farm with a sign “ASH” on its gates.

4. The Norns

That same sequence presents three women. These have to be the Norns. In the novel one of them is called Urtha or Urder. This fits with the three Norns that guard the well of Urd, Urdr, Verdandi and Skuld.

The name Urðr (Wyrd, weird) means “fate”. Both Urðr and Verðandi are derived from the Old Norse verb verða, “to become” (werden in German). While Urðr derives from the past tense (“that which became or happened”), Verðandi derives from the present tense of verða (“that which is happening”). Skuld is derived from the Old Norse verb skole/skulle, “need/ought to be” (shall/should in English); its meaning is “that which should become, or that needs to occur.” The origin of the name norn is not certain, but it may derive from a word meaning “to twine” and which would refer to their twining the threads of fate.

In the legend, they take water from the well and water the tree with it to prevent it from rotting.

Yggdrasil is also central in the myth of Ragnarök, the end of the world. The only two humans to survive Ragnarök (there are some survivors among the gods), Lif and Lifthrasir, are able to escape by sheltering in the branches of Yggdrasil, where they feed on the dew and are protected by the tree.

5. Ratatosk

In the tree where Shadow is hanged, there is a squirrel making the noise “ratatosk”. Ratatosk is the name of the squirrel living in Yggdrasil. Another inhabitant of the tree is a hawk called Vedrfolnir. In the novel the hawk is the Egyptian god Horus.

B. Other Gods

1. Gorgon

On page 365, in Rhode Island, Shadow and Wednesday visit a woman in a “darkened bedroom” who will not let them see her face. She keeps baby mice and crickets in her refrigerator. Combined with the information on page 536 that her hair has “writhing green snake-coils,” this suggests that she is one of the three Gorgons of Greek mythology, monstrous creatures who would turn to stone anyone who looked at them, and the crickets and baby mice are for feeding the snakes on her head.

2. Kitsunes

On page 366, Wednesday and Shadow have a “meal of pleasantries and politeness” with “five young Japanese women” in Colorado. On page 518 a dead white fox turns into a woman. So they are most likely kitsunes, Japanese fox spirits, which are legendary tricksters, and often disguise themselves as young women. In Gaiman's “The Dream Hunters,” one of the main characters is a kitsune.

3. Golem

The Polish character with the word for truth on his forehead is the golem.

4. Queen of Sheba

Bilquis is the name of the Queen of Sheba according to Muslim tradition (she is unnamed in the Bible and Koran). She earns her living as a prostitute and gets customers to worship her, which has the effect of absorbing them. She is run over by the technical boy though she curses him, causing his ultimate death. Her feeding through sexual relations is similar to Ishtar's work as an exotic dancer.

5. Czernobog and Bielebog

Czernobog (black god) is an attested Slavic deity and Bielebog (white god) a reconstructed one, nothing is known of them and Gaiman revealed in an interview that he created the details of that religion, such as the use of the hammer to make sacrifices. He chooses black at checkers. He shares the same body with Czernobog becoming Bielebog at springtime. This could be why he spares Shadow's life. He says he'll choose white at checkers from now on.

6. Anansi

Anansi is a spider-god from Africa. He is a culture hero rather than a god and is a trickster like the coyote in American Indian folklore. Gaiman commented that he came up for the story about Anansi first, but wrote it after (in Anansi Boys).

7. Kobold

Hinzelmann is the name of a kobold, responsible both for the prosperity of Lakeside and for the yearly death of children for more than a hundred years. He appears as a kind old man whom nobody would suspect. He apparently causes his own death rather than wait for modern police methods to discover him.

C. Forgotten gods

One of the themes of the novel is that gods get forgotten as they lose believers. On page 58, in Shadow's dream sequence we see such gods: Hubur, Leucotios and Hershef. They are the kind of gods that only scholars know about.

1. Hubur:

Also known as Tiamat, she is a Babylonian primordial goddess. “Mummu Hubur” is her title and means “Mother of Monsters”, in her quality as progenitor of the creatures of the zodiac. So, beyond the trivial nature of dropping her name we can theorise that if Tiamat is forgotten, the creatures of the zodiac are of course still remembered and indirectly believed in through astrology.

2. Hershef:
Also called Arsaphes or Herishef, he is an Egyptian god of water and fertility, depicted as a ram. Egypt is not thought of as a land of water and fertility anymore which may account for the passing of this god. Correlated to this semantic shift, Mr. Ibis says that he doesn't recognise himself in the name Egyptian as they used to call themselves People of the Nile.

3. Leucotios:Celtic god of lightning. He is described in the museum of forgotten gods as carrying a drum, fitting for a lightning god (since thunder accompanies lightning). What can be said here is that the inhabitants of the British Isles and their descendants in America have displaced this deity to replace it with Thor, mainly in the word Thursday but also in the popular comic book Thor (since 1962). In native American belief, the thunderbirds (characters in the novel) are the cause of thunder.

1As in the 1996 movie The Fan where baseball is not just a sport but a philosophy of life for the De Niro character.

2Los Angeles Times, March 8 2007; Newsweek, March 19, 2007; U.S. News and World Report, March 19, 2007; Time Magazine, March 26, 2007; Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2007

3 Commonweal magazine, quoted in The Sandman, Season of Mists, Titan Books, London 1992, back cover

4a wave function is a mathematical tool used in quantum mechanics to describe any physical system. It is a function from a space that maps the possible states of the system into the complex numbers. The laws of quantum mechanics describe how the wave function evolves over time. The values of the wave function are probability amplitudes — complex numbers — the squares of the absolute values of which give the probability distribution that the system will be in any of the possible states.

5Heller, Karin, La bande dessinée fantastique à la lumière de l'anthropologie religieuse, p. 14

6 Beatty, Scott, The DC Comics Encyclopedia, p. 115

7Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN3143303120090831

8http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff/Essays/Essays_By_Neil/All_Books_Have_Genders

9http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v4_1/#Articles

10Clark, Jerome. The UFO Encyclopedia, volume 3: High Strangeness, UFO’s from 1960 through 1979. Omnigraphis, 1996.

11http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff/Essays/Essays_By_Neil/All_Books_Have_Genders

12Nickerson, Al. "Who Really Created Spider-Man?” P.I.C. News, 5 February 2009. Accessed 2009-02-17.

13Suzanne Saïd, Approches de la mythologie grecque, Nathan, 1993

14Huntington, Qui sommes-nous? p. 244

15 Share in the Light, Native American Stories of Creation by Terri J. Andrews

16http://cosmedia.freewinds.cx/media/articles/tim130868.html

17http://www.bonafidescientology.org/Append/01/page03.htm