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Classic Comic Compendium: DEATH – THE HIGH COST OF LIVING

Sometimes the simplest things are the most profound.

06/26/2023 11:00 am

Throughout history, death has taken many forms. Whether mythological representations of death deities or death’s avatar in fiction. Ranging from the classic of a hooded skeleton carrying a scythe to Brad Pitt. And things weirder in between. Like giant serpents. Or in some comics Death is a perky Goth girl. Because of course she is.

“I can see the problem. There’s a refrigerator on your legs.”

In those heady early days of Vertigo, along with the continuing series under the new imprint, they started off with a bang with a spin-off mini-series from Sandman. A story taking a spin on the Death takes a holiday premise, Death: The High Cost of Living from Neil Gaiman, Chris Bachalo, Mark Buckingham, Steve Oliff & Olyoptics, and Todd Klein.

With this series, we’re introduced to Sexton Furnival. He’s a teenage boy contemplating suicide who ostensibly dies in an awkward, unintentional way. He’s found by Death after accidentally getting crushed by a refrigerator. Only at this point Death is experiencing life as a teenage girl herself, Didi, to better understand humanity.

Wacky hijinks ensue. Including a great nod to the Koshchei fable in how Mad Hettie has hidden her heart. Couple it with interactions with characters from A Game of You, and possibly Books of Magic, and there’s a sort of ambling After Hours feel to the story.

I feel like with the two Death mini-series, this is some of Neil Gaiman’s funniest comics work. It’s the kind of oblique, clever humour that I’d typically associate with Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. Incidental and sometimes absurd little witticisms that get funnier when you think about them. Sarcasm that isn’t mean-spirited. It mirrors the upbeat nature of Death herself.

“I think the whole world has gone mad.”

“Uh-uh. It’s always like this. You probably just don’t get out enough.”

Shifts in how the story is told, from Sexton’s suicide note to the unique voice of the Eremite gives Todd Klein a chance to show his usual flair and ability to create just about any kind of lettering style that works for the story at hand.

This is one of my favourite periods for Chris Bachalo’s artwork. I still quite like the more fanciful layouts and approaches Bachalo took through Generation X and Steampunk, and his circle back to a more structured style of storytelling (albeit often without panel borders, which achieves an entirely different feel), it was in projects like Death where he married the detail and adventurousness of his characters and designs with a feeling of structure from multiple ordered panels and grids. Along with some interesting patterns for page borders and the like. I’m not sure how much is Bachalo himself and how much is the collaboration with Mark Buckingham (who also tends to have interesting page borders), but the end result is absolutely gorgeous work.

The colours from Steve Oliff help keep things grounded. He uses a fairly natural colour palette here. There’s an occasional detour into brighter yellows and oranges during a more hallucinatory sequence, which reinforces the idea of the ordinary. That much of this being nothing special is what truly makes it special.

“Everybody tells tales, Sexton. It’s just the dead talk more quietly than other people.”

A friend, some food, conflict for flavour, and a bit of a quest, a sense of purpose. All little things that go to make up a life. Simple, some almost trivial, that demonstrate what makes life worth living. Like in Brief Lives, Gaiman, Bachalo, Buckingham, Oliff, and Klein with Death: The High Cost of Living reveal how rich and important all those moments are to understand humanity. Sometimes the simplest things are the most profound.