The Annotated Sandman Edited and largely written by David Goldfarb Issue 61: "The Kindly Ones:5" Neil Gaiman, Marc Hempel, D'Israeli 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 1: Every Hempel-drawn issue of "The Kindly Ones" has had a string of some sort in the very first panel. Here, a strand of spider silk. panel 4: As mentioned previously, the hero Perseus. Page 4 panel 6: Hollow? Empty? One might almost say heartless... Page 5 panel 1: Zelda was last seen in issue #15, "The Doll's House" part 6. She was blond in that issue, although her hair could have been bleached. "The Doll's House" featured a gay man named Hal, who moved west; before this, many people on the net thought that Rose's dying friend was him -- almost certainly an intentional bit of misdirection on Gaiman's part. Given the theme of gender that runs through "The Kindly Ones", Rose's friend would have to be a woman, though. panel 4: An echo of 15:2:4. Page 8 panel 7: Note the water glass is identical to the one that the Gorgons gave to Lyta. Page 10 panel 1: The raven Jessamy appears in issue 29, "Thermidor". That story took place in the late eighteenth century. Page 11 panel 1: Previous to the "Crisis on Infinite Earths", Superman's home planet of Krypton had a glass forest similar to this one. Page 12 panel 2: Titania's was last seen in issue #52. Her appearance here is identical to that of issue #18, "A Midsummer Night's Dream". This is especially notable because in four Gaiman-written stories it is the first time she's had the same form. Page 14 panel 3: I must confess I have no idea what this is supposed to mean... panel 6: Auberon, in issue 18, is shown with ram's horns. A man whose wife is unfaithful is also traditionally referred to as "horned". Page 15 panel 1: I'm sure Geryon is simply petrified at the prospect... panel 2: Scenes in the waking world have white gutters and page border; scenes in the Dreaming are in grey. Note what happens to the border here. panel 4: I don't know what significance claws of brass have. "Nimbic glimmering" is perhaps derived from "nimbus", a halo of light denoting power. Page 21 panel 4: An echo, perhaps, of page 9 of issue 12 ("The Doll's House" part 3). Page 22 panel 3: In Norse myth, Ragnarok was brought on when Loki killed the god Balder with, yes, a sharpened sprig of mistletoe. Three years of constant winter ensued, and then the end of the world. Page 24 panel 6: This echoes the death by fire of Ruby the driver in #44 ("Brief Lives" part 4); and both of these echo the destruction of Nada's city seen in issue #9. Release history: Version 1.0 released 1 Nov. 94. Credits: David R. Henry (dhenry@plains.nodak.edu) mentioned cuckold's horns. Greg "elmo" Morrow (morrow@physics.rice.edu) created the Sandman Annotations.