“It would be really neat if death was somebody, and not just nothing, or pain, or blackness. And it would be really good if death could be somebody like Didi. Somebody funny, and friendly, and nice, and maybe just a tiny bit crazy.”

Sexton Furnival, one of the main characters of Death: The High Cost of Living, shares this sentiment with me—and perhaps also with legions of other Sandman readers when they meet Death of the Endless for the first time in Preludes and Nocturnes. It’s a nice thought, or a profound wish if you will, and it only proves that Gaiman created one of the best unconventional characters that touch the readers’ hearts.

Death: The High Cost of Living is a spin-off of the Sandman series. I just finished rereading the sixth volume, Fables and Reflections, and I would have reviewed it and gone on to Brief Lives…except that I’m craving for a lot of Death perkiness and peachiness that I decided to skip to this novel first. It contained no spoiler for the rest of the graphic novels anyway.

This triple-issue miniseries tells one of those “days”, when Death walks the earth as a mortal so she could taste the “bitter tang of mortality”, some kind of a requirement for being the divider between life and afterlife. Here, Death takes on human flesh as a girl named Didi, and she literally stumbles upon Sexton Furnival, a suicidal boy. In a whole day they spent together, both took from each other important lessons about life and the value of it.

There is nothing much to say about the plot; even if there is an antagonist of sorts in the form of the Eremite, the spotlight is on the Death incarnate and Sexton. Didi clearly treats the requirement of being a mortal as a gift, as she seems to enjoy the company of people, the food, the music, and other trivialities that most humans take for granted. Sexton wants to commit suicide because—of all the other deeper reasons he could possibly think of—he is bored. He doesn’t love anyone, doesn’t hate anyone, he isn’t a hero and there isn’t a bad guy out to get him; in short he thinks there isn’t anything interesting happening in his life and he might as well be dead. What I find amusing is that Sexton, deep inside, must not really want to die. The first thing he ever does when a refrigerator falls on him in the garbage dump is scream for help.

In the end, after interacting with Didi/Death, he admits to thinking of life so much after the day they spent together. In such a short time, he matures and values life more. Didi on the other hand admits to wishing her one-day life could have never ended, but her Death-self (which enigmatically exists in another plane) says that’s what gives life value: its ending.

All in all it’s a very interesting read, an account in a day-in-a-life-of-this-someone format. The premise, as I’ve said, isn’t really meaty at all, but the witty banters and the extreme charisma of Didi give the story a sheer gravity. Plus the art is gorgeous too. :)