The Annotated Sandman Edited and largely written by David Goldfarb Issue 55: "Cerements" Fifth story in anthology, "Worlds' End" Neil Gaiman, Shea Anton Pensa, Vince Locke, Bryan Talbot, Mark Buckingham Disclaimer: Sandman and all related characters are copyrights and trademarks of DC Comics Inc. Sandman and this annotation are intended for mature audiences only. Notice: Commentaries and additional information should go to goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu (Internet) or goldfarb@UCBOCF.BITNET. This material is posted by the editor directly to rec.arts.comics, and is licensed to appear on Compu$erve and GEnie. It is also available via anonymous ftp from theory.lcs.mit.edu in pub/wald/sandman. Please contact the editor if you see this material on any other forum. Reproduction in any form without permission of the editor (as agent for the contributors) is forbidden. Page 1 panel 6: Brant is counting to try to determine how far away the lightning struck. The rule of thumb is one mile for each five seconds elapsed between the flash and the thunderclap. Page 2 panel 8: "Petrefax" is Latin-derived, and means either "one who turns things to stone" or else "thing made of stone". "Kyrielle" is from the Greek "Kyrie", "Lord". "Eucrasia" is an obsolete medical term for "good health" and derives from Greek "eu", "good" and either "krasis", "mixture", or "krasi", "temperature". page 5 panel 2: "Polycarp": from Greek "poly", "many", and "karpos", "fruit". page 7 panel 1: Air burial is practiced in Tibet, just as we see it depicted here, including the eating afterwards, although not the storytelling. page 9 panel 3: Similar to stories of people starting work in ship's engine rooms being sent to find a left-handed monkey wrench. panel 8: A story within a story within a story... page 14 panel 3: All but the very newest readers will recognize this as Dream's wayward brother, Destruction. page 15 panel 4: And here, a story within a story within a story within a story. page 16 panel 1: Looking at the six figures of the Endless in the foreground, the missing one seems to be Despair. It was mentioned in issue #48 that Despair had died and been replaced. page 17 panel 2: "Sithcundman" is an old title of rank for a king's companion, probably Old English. page 19 panel 2: "Angkou": According to _A Dictionary of Ghost Lore_, by Peter Haining, an _ankou_, or "graveyard watcher", is a ghost that guards cemeteries, and there are _ankou_ stories from all over Europe. Whenever a new graveyard was created centuries ago, it was the custom to bury some unfortunate person alive in the first grave. The ghost of this person became the _ankou_ -- frightening off anyone or anything, living or dead, that would disturb the peace of the graveyard. panel 6: It only makes sense for a city populated entirely by morticians to put morticians in their fairy tales, I suppose... The runes on the cup include "th", "r", "s", and "e" as the first, fourth, fifth, and sixth respectively. The third might be a "u". I can't identify the second at all. page 20 panel 1: A recursion: the fourth-level story is identical to the top-level framing tale. page 21 panel 4: Somewhat reminiscent of Exodus 4:6-7, in which Moses' hand is transformed and then restored as a proof of God's power. page 23 panel 7: "Bagulkal": no refs. page 24 panel 7: Several netters had speculated exactly this. Gaiman has stated that he drew inspiration from old horror anthology movies; the punchline at the end of the framing story was often that the characters were dead. Release history: Version 1.0 released 24 May 94. Version 2.0 released 18 Jul 94. Credits: Greg "elmo" Morrow (morrow@physics.rice.edu) created the Sandman Annotations and forwarded much useful information about "Worlds' End". He also corrected the lightning-distance rule of thumb. Col. G. L. Sicherman (gls@hrcms.att.com) commented on the journeymen's names and referenced "sithcundman". Kenneth Chang (kchang@ncsa.uiuc.edu) referenced Tibetan funeral customs. Andrew Solovay (solovay@netcom.com) noted the Biblical story. Lance "Squiddie" Smith (lsmith@cs.umn.edu) relayed information concerning Amicus horror films. Julie LaBomascus referenced "Angkou" via Byron Go (byron@netcom.com).