Recap / The Sandman (1989) - "Preludes and Nocturnes" Arc

"It is time for me to walk the abyss. Time to reclaim my own."

— Dream

Preludes and Nocturnes is the first arc of The Sandman (1989), covering issues 1-8.

Dream, the Endless in charge of dreams and stories, is captured by the English occultist Roderick Burgess in the early 20th century. Burgess had intended to capture Dream's older sister, Death, but had trapped Dream instead. Frustrated that Dream can't (or won't) agree to his demands to stop people from dying, Burgess keeps him captive.

Come the late 80s, and guardianship of Dream has passed to Roderick's son Alex. When his summoning circle is weakened, Dream is able to muster enough power to escape into the dreams of a dozing security guard and gather enough power to break out of his prison. Dream punishes Alex by giving him endless nightmares, and sets about reclaiming his power and domain ("Sleep of the Just").

In the aftermath of his capture, Dream's domain, the Dreaming, has fallen into disarray, and several of his subjects have left (the exception being his loyal librarian Lucien, as well as Cain and Abel). Dream consults the Three-in-One, who give him hints as to how he can regain his three artifacts of power ("Imperfect Hosts").

Dream's pouch of sand is owned by a young woman in the United Kingdom, which he retrieves with the help of John Constantine ("Dream a Little Dream of Me"). He travels to Hell to retrieve his helm, which is in the possession of the demon Chronozon. Under the eye of Lucifer, ruler of Hell, Dream challenges Chronozon to a mental duel, which the demon loses. Lucifer swears revenge for this humiliation ("A Hope in Hell") Dream's ruby is now owned by Doctor Destiny, who breaks out of Arkham Asylum, retrieves it from a Justice League warehouse, and begins using it to wreak havoc in a small diner, intending to use it to become ruler of the world ("Passengers", "24 Hours").

Dream confronts Doctor Destiny. Though the latter initially has the upper hand, he breaks the ruby in hubris. Its power returns to Dream, who handily defeats him ("Sound and Fury"). Left a bit bereft and purposeless after recovering his power, Dream then spends a day with his older sister Death, who advises him about their purpose as Endless ("The Sound of Her Wings").

This is the volume most steeped in The DCU — Doctor Destiny, who had fought the Justice League in the past, breaks out of Arkham Asylum, and Dream meets DC heroes Martian Manhunter, Mister Miracle, and John Constantine.

Adapted into the first half of the first season of the Netflix series.

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Tropes in this arc:

• A God Am I: Doctor Destiny, wielding the power of the Dreamstone, exhibits this trope in full force. For an entire day, he uses the stone to make innocent people in a diner (and even people on live television) absolutely mad, making them kill, rape, or even eat each other. At one point he even makes them worship him as a deity. When Dream confronts him, Destiny tries to kill him and take his place as the ruler of the Dreaming.
• Ambiguously Absent Parent: Alex Burgess's mother is not around and no explanation is given as to why.
• And I Must Scream: In issue #1, Dream curses the son of his kidnapper to live in an endless cycle of dreams where he believes he's just awoken, only to discover himself in a nightmare, only to seemingly awake again, and so on.
• Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder:
  • When Dream speaks to Nada in "A Hope in Hell", he appears to her as a black person like herself, instead of his default pale-skinned appearance.
  • When Dream speaks to J'onn in "Passengers", he appears as an enormous levitating skull surrounded by flames: L'Zoril, the dream god worshiped in J'onn's culture.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: John Constantine initially dismisses Dream as a fairy story, despite all the supernatural shit he deals with on a daily basis.
• Armor-Piercing Response: Lucifer threatens to keep Morpheus in Hell by force, and asks rhetorically what power dreams have in Hell. Morpheus replies that dreams are the most powerful thing in Hell, which would be nothing if the inhabitants could not dream of Heaven. The response is so effective that he is able to leave without any one of the assembled horde making a move to stop him.
• At the Crossroads: Morpheus performs his Summoning Ritual to confer with the Three-in-One from a crossroads in the Dreaming.
• Bald of Evil: Roderick Burgess is a murderous, power-hungry asshole, and as bald as an egg.
• Been There, Shaped History: Roderick Burgess's imprisonment of Morpheus causes disturbances in both the Dreaming and the waking world, one of the effects is a worldwide pandemic of sleeping sickness.
• Blackmail: After persuading Dr Hathaway to steal the Magdalene Grimoire from the museum's collection, Roderick Burgess uses the threat of exposure to force him to steal other artifacts from the collection for Burgess.
• Candlelit Ritual: Roderick Burgess performs the summoning ritual in a cellar lit by large candles placed at the key points around the summoning circle.
• Celebrity Paradox: Esme, the stand-up comedian who gets killed by a live microphone in "The Sound of Her Wings," appears to be performing a routine about Batman before she dies; however, she talks about Batman like he's a real person, and seems to betray no knowledge that he's really Bruce Wayne, instead imagining that his secret identity is an advertising executive named Ralphie. But then later on, she segues into talking about Robin, and and we hear an Orphaned Punchline that seems to refer to the real-life telephone poll that decided the death of Jason Todd:

  Esme: —'Hey, Ma Bell, reach out and kill someone!' And this deep voice goes 'Well, there's more where that came from!'

• Chekhov's Gun: "Imperfect Hosts" introduces the detail that Morpheus invests part of his power in each of his creations and can reclaim it if he's present when they're destroyed, which turns out to be a significant plot point in "Sound and Fury".
• Continuity Nod:
  • Constantine mentions the band he used to be in, Mucous Membrane, and sings a few lines from their least unsuccessful single.
  • Constantine mentions his acquaintance with the Swamp Thing, remarking that he thinks Morpheus would like him because he also lacks any apparent sense of humour.
• Cruel Mercy: Dream escapes Hell by telling The Legions of Hell that despite evidence to the contrary, dreams do in fact have power in hell: "What terrors would Hell hold if those entombed within could not dream of Heaven?"
• Death Montage: "The Sound of Her Wings" shows Death going on her rounds and helping out everyone who dies that day: an old man reciting his prayers, a baby in a crib, a comedian onstage, and a boy playing soccer. As she puts it, they all get a life, but length doesn't matter.
• Death of a Child: In "The Sound of Her Wings", one of the people Death claims that day is an infant who randomly dies from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
• Death Takes a Holiday: Played with. In the first issue, Dream is captured by mistake by mystics trying to imprison Death. It messes up the Dreaming on Earth, and he points out the terrible consequences had they succeeded in their original plan.
• Deep Sleep: A mysterious disease starts making people sleep uncontrollably, putting them in vulnerable positions at the mercy of their caretakers. In Unity Kinkaid's case, she was raped while sleeping, and her baby was adopted out.
• Depending on the Artist: Doctor Destiny had his appearance dramatically altered by Mike Dringenberg after Sam Kieth left the series. This is especially noticeable, because it happens in the very next issue.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Roderick Burgess. The first issue appears to set him up as the Big Bad, or at least as a major antagonist. Then it turns out that the first issue spans 70 years. As Morpheus points out, patiently waiting a human lifetime is easy for the Endless, and even if he hadn't figured out how to escape, he could've simply waited for the building in which he was imprisoned to crumble to dust. By the time Morpheus gets free, Roderick has died of old age, and his son Alex is a harmless, senile old man. Morpheus leaves Alex in a permanent nightmare and never sees him again.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Although it wasn't Alex Burgess' decision to summon or capture Dream, it was his choice to keep him imprisoned after Roderick's death in fear of this. Ironically he just made things much worse for himself, as thanks to him Dream's captivity lasted more than twice as long as it otherwise might have.
  • All gargoyles have names that start with 'G', so Cain murders Abel (again) when he suggests naming the newborn gargoyle Irving.
• Divinely Appearing Demons: Lucifer appears as a blond, winged humanoid, reminiscent of his angelic origins. All the other demons are, in their own uniquely horrible ways, aversions of the trope.
• Double-Meaning Title: "Imperfect Hosts" references the fact that Cain and Abel are acting as hosts for Dream while he stays with them, but it also alludes to the Horror Hosts that guest star in the story.
• Dream Within a Dream: The Fate Worse than Death that Morpheus inflicts upon Alex Burgess is to eternally wake from a nightmare into what turns out to be another nightmare.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Dr Hathaway commits suicide when an investigation starts uncovering all the pilfering he's done at Burgess's behest.
  • Stefan Wasserman commits suicide to escape the nightmares that constantly plague him after Morpheus's capture.
• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • In "24 Hours", Judy makes a phone call to her friend Rose, who is the central character of the next story arc.
  • Eve's raven appears in a single panel during a montage of the Dreaming's denizens reacting to Dee's rampage. In later story arcs, he becomes a significant supporting character with his own name and backstory.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Early issues were more overt horror stories set in the proper DC universe, with appearances by many staple DC heroes and villains. As the series went on, it grew into a more complex kind of fantasy, and Gaiman more or less excised the DC references, though he would toss one in every so often.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Dream, a mysterious and powerful member of the Endless, is depicted with pale skin and black hair.
• Erotic Dream: In "Passengers", Morpheus is shown traveling across America by hitching a lift in the bus that someone is dreaming about having sex in the back of.
• Even More Omnipotent: Doctor Destiny, the Justice League villain, has nigh-omnipotent power over peoples' dreams. In "24 Hours", he also has the Dreamstone, which gave him enough mind control powers to make an entire diner full of people mutilate, rape, and eat each other over the course of a single night. When Morpheus, the creator of the stone and Anthropomorphic Personification of dreams shows up to reclaim it, the stone has been so completely corrupted that he can no longer use it, and Doctor Destiny manages to drain part of Dream's life force with it.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: An Arkham Asylum inmate's April Fool's Day joke in "Passengers". Part one is pretending to have hanged himself in the communal dining room. Part two is actually hanging one of the security guards... and sticking a "Kick Me" sign on the corpse's back.
• Expy Coexistence: Roderick Burgess, leader of the Order of Ancient Mysteries, is a rival of Aleister Crowley. You know, like Charles Foster Kane was a rival of Randolph Hearst.
• Eye Scream: Under Dee's influence, Judy puts her own eyes out with skewers.
• Fallen Angel: Lucifer was once among the greatest of the angels before falling, and still retains some of their angelic appearance.
• Fan Disservice: When Constantine catches up with his ex-girlfriend Rachel, there's a splash panel of her posing naked except for a bedsheet that covers only the minimum necessary, which is horrifying rather than sexy because of the ruinous state her body is in, with peeling skin and clumps of hair missing.
• Fingore: When Dee is using the ruby to make the diner's customers worship him as a god, one of them cuts his own finger off as a sacrificial offering.
• Fisher King: Dream returns to his realm to find everything in ruins. Lucien reminds him that he and the realm are fundamentally interconnected, so it began to decay in his absence.
• Foreshadowing: In "Sound and Fury", a hammer and a few nails are shown sitting out on the counter, in a panel where the focus of attention is something else, a few pages before they're shown being put to use.
• Goodbye, Cruel World!: Before committing suicide, Dr Hathaway writes a suicide note confessing to everything he's done and implicating Roderick Burgess as the instigator.
• Gory Discretion Shot:
  • Cain's murder of Abel in "Imperfect Hosts" happens off-panel, with only a spray of blood and the sound effects showing what's happening.
  • Rosemary's murder in "Passengers" is depicted with a close-up of the gun firing and a spatter of blood from off-panel.
  • In "24 Hours", the moment where Judy's eyes are put out is framed so that only the lower half of her face is visible, with blood dripping down but no more direct view of the damage.
• Happily Ever Before: Discussed in "24 Hours."
  All Bette's stories have happy endings. That's because she knows where to stop. She's realized the real problem with stories—if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.
• Gotta Catch Them All: Morpheus undergoes quests to recover his three artifacts of power for most of Preludes and Nocturnes.
• The Hecate Sisters: The Fates are a trio of women, one young, one middle-aged, and one old — but which is which changes from panel to panel.
• Honor Before Reason: Dream is acutely aware of the damage being done as long as he's imprisoned, but refuses to barter with mortals demanding things that aren't his to give.
• Human Architecture Horror: The outer wall of Hell is constructed out of the bodies of the damned.
• Hypocritical Humor: The burglar who breaks into Rachel's house is shown worrying that somebody will steal his expensive car while he's burgling. "There are some real thieves around these days."
• I Love the Dead: Dee forces a woman to admit that she once, as a college student, drunkenly had sex with a corpse at a mortuary... and that nothing since then's measured up.
• Imperfect Ritual: Dream is trapped in an inescapable magic circle for seventy years before his captor's son (now in a wheelchair) accidentally runs over part of the circle, ending the spell.
• Inspiration Nod: Wesley Dodds, the first DC Comics character to be known as "The Sandman", has a cameo appearance in the part of "Sleep of the Just" set in the 1930s. It's established that in-universe he and his look were inspired by dreams of Morpheus and his helm, when in real life it was the other way around.
• It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: Dream, narrating his journey through the outskirts of the Dreaming, begins: "It was a dark and stormy nightmare."
• I Want My Mommy!: Played for Drama with Ellie, one of the victims of the sleeping sickness:
  She has woken twice in the last decade. Each time she cried for her mother. She still thinks she is eight.
• I Would Say If I Could Say: When John Dee is visited in Arkham Asylum by his mother, who he hasn't seen in years, he says that it's a reunion he would have dreamed of if he were still capable of dreaming.
• Jack up with Phlebotinum: A former girlfriend of Constantine swipes an artifact that he has, thinking that it's drugs. It turns out to be Morpheus's Bag of Sand. This is a very bad thing, as it basically turns her life into a literal living nightmare.
• Karma Houdini: When Dream gets his powers back after Doctor Destiny shatters the Dreamstone, he ponders killing him before deciding to return him to Arkham Asylum, much to the surprise of Doctor Destiny (and likely the reader), consider all the terrible stuff he's done.
• Losing Your Head: At the gate of Hell there is a disembodied human head on a stake, which is conscious and capable of calling out to alert the inhabitants when a visitor arrives.
• Magical Homeless Person: The immortal, homeless Mad Hettie who is a Mad Oracle to boot.
• Meat Moss: Dream and John Constantine find a room where the walls are covered with the gooey remains of a body, probably the father of Constantine's ex-girlfriend Rachel.
• Mistaken for Disease: While Dream is imprisoned in the opening issue, the disruption to the Dreaming results in random people around the world either suffering permanent insomnia or (more commonly) gradually lapsing into coma-like states. Not knowing what to make of it, doctors believe this pandemic to be the result of a disease, eventually labelling the condition Encephalitis lethargica or "Sleepy Sickness."
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Doctor Destiny has Morpheus at his mercy, having corrupted the Ruby Dreamstone and used it to drain his life force. He then crushes it, thinking he's killing Morpheus. Instead, he simply releases all of its stored power and returns it to Morpheus.
• Never Split the Party: Morpheus and Constantine go into a dark house. Constantine is thinking "Movies. Old dark house. Horrible menace on the loose. 'Let's split up.' Muffled screams in darkness..."
  Constantine: Uh... We'll stick together, won't we?
  Morpheus: Of course.
• Non-Indicative First Episode: Preludes And Nocturnes is dubbed the prototype for the series in the introduction, and its Darker and Edgier style is worth mentioning. The series as a whole is a dark epic fantasy, with occasional horror elements. The first volume, however, is horrific enough to be a Hellraiser movie.
• Noodle Incident: When Morpheus tells the Fates that he needs their help, the Crone remarks that when they wanted his help with Circe he didn't give it.
• The Oathbreaker: Roderick Burgess, upon realizing that his second-in-command has stolen his mistress and a good chunk of his cult's treasury: "As this blood is shed, so spills your blood, Ruthven Sykes, adept of the 33rd, whose secret name is Ararita... Traitor and Oath-Breaker." Cue skull implosion.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Dr. Hathaway lost his son Edmund in the Great War, which motivates him to give Roderick Burgess the Magdalene Grimoire despite having initially decided not to.
• Peaceful in Death: At Constantine's solemn request, Morpheus gives the dying Rachel a dream where she ends up having a happy life with John, allowing her last moments to be happy ones.
• Pet the Dog: Played with in "Imperfect Hosts". After establishing that Abel is afraid, with considerable justification based on past experience, that his gift from Cain is something horrible and lethal, it turns out that it's perfectly nice, and Cain explains that he's been making an effort lately to resist the temptation to kill Abel so much. The warm fuzzy moment lasts for about three panels before an innocent comment from Abel sets Cain off and he murders him again.
• Prophecy Twist: The Fates warn John that he will end his days back in the madhouse he left, but also that he will steal all of Dream's power and crush his life in his hands. This motivates him to challenge Dream for possession of his realm. He absorbs Dream into the ruby and crushes it but his actions only free Dream, who puts him back in the madhouse.
• Pumpkin Person: In one panel, Dream is seen chatting with a denizen of the Dreaming who has a pumpkin for a head.
• Punny Name: The grimoire in which Alex discovers who Morpheus is and what he does is called the Paginarum Fulvarum, Canis Latinicus for "Yellow Pages". In-universe, it's presumably just a description, but out-of-universe it's a reference to the Yellow Pages telephone directory that listed people by their occupations.
• Real Event, Fictional Cause: The 1916 - 1926 Encephalitis lethargica pandemic is here caused by Dream's capture.
• Really 17 Years Old: Stefan Wasserman is so keen to serve his country that he lies about his age so he can enlist early — he's thirteen. He doesn't live long enough to genuinely reach enlistment age.
• Resurrective Immortality: Every time Abel is killed by Cain, his body gradually knits itself back together. Apparently it hurts a lot but is still better than being dead.
• Rhymes on a Dime:
  • As established in his own series, the demon Etrigan speaking in rhyming verse.
  • The demon Squatterbloat also speaks in rhyming verse. At one point, he questions Dream about who he is and why he's come, and uses the answers on the fly to create the rhymes he needs. (Although in the circumstances, it's entirely possible that he already knew what the answers would be before he asked.)
• Sand In My Eyes: Abel, after he's come back to life but before all his wounds have healed up, sits telling Goldie the gargoyle about his life with Cain. At one point, something drips from his eye, and he quickly says that he's not crying, it's just blood.
• Say Your Prayers: In "The Sound of Her Wings", Death comes for an old Jewish man, Harry. They have a friendly talk until he realizes who she is and that she's come for him. He then recites the Sh'ma, a prayer that Jews are traditionally supposed to say as their last words before dying.
  Harry's Ghost: It's good that I said the sh'ma. My old man always said it guaranteed a place in Heaven. If you believe in Heaven...
• Shapeshifter Showdown: The contest between Dream and Choronzon is a semi-metaphorical version of this. They themselves don't actually transform, but they physically affect each other as if they had.
  Dream: [narrating] I feel the grass beneath my hooves, the flanks between my legs. All is real. Nothing is real. Choronzon's move.
• Shout-Out:
  • Roderick Burgess says that if he succeeds in summoning Death, Aleister Crowley will have to start taking him seriously.
  • Ellie Marston's mother is reading her Through the Looking Glass, specifically the chapter about the Red King's dream.
  • One of the guards in the 1960s has a Daffy Duck T-shirt.
  • Ernie the guard is reading a Stephen King novel, IT.
  • All the denizens of the Dreaming introduced in "Imperfect Hosts" are inspired by characters who hosted old DC Anthology Comics. Cain presented House of Mystery, Abel hosted House of Secrets, Lucien the Librarian presented Tales of the Ghost Castle^note in which he was the only remaining inhabitant of a castle abandoned by its former lord, Eve presented Secret of Sinister House, and the Mad Mod Witch (who Lucien describes as one of the past incarnations of the Fashion Thing) featured in The Unexpected. Cynthia, Mildred and Mordred, the aspects of the Three-Who-Are-One who answer Dream's summons, were the hosts of The Witching Hour. Gregory the gargoyle was a supporting character in House of Mystery, and the new gargoyle Goldie is named after a supporting character in House of Secrets (mentioned by Abel here as "a friend of mine who went away").
  • When Morpheus asks the Three what names he should address them by, the Maiden jokes that Diana, Mary and Florence would do as well as anything.
  • "Passengers" opens with a couple of guards failing to notice a prisoner's escape because they're watching a late-night rerun of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The quoted bit of Hitch's monologue identifies the episode as the thematically-appropriate "Don't Interrupt".
  • Also in "Passengers", when John Dee learns Rosemary's name, he misquotes the line about rosemary from Ophelia's mad scene in Hamlet.
  • In "Sound and Fury", the television in the diner is showing The Addams Family in one scene and The Wolf Man (1941) in another.
  • Also in "Sound and Fury", Dee forces his victims to entertain him by doing a song-and-dance number to "Spread a Little Happiness" (originally from the musical Mr Cinders, but in this case probably a reference to its use in the horror film Brimstone And Treacle).
  • During Dee's soothsayer dream in "Sound and Fury", the soothsayers quote from Macbeth ("a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing") and misquote the soothsayer's warning from Julius Caesar ("beware the ideas of March... beware the march of ideas").
• Shrug Take: One guy merely shrugs when a nude Morpheus bursts in, steals his fried chicken, and runs out. It helps that he knows he's dreaming.
  Dreams. Go figure them.
• Sick Captive Scam: Morpheus escapes his prison by pretending to collapse and then overpowering the guards when they get worried and open the prison to check if he's dead. (He has to wait until Alex Burgess, who knows perfectly well that Morpheus isn't vulnerable to mortal ailments, hands oversight of the prison over to Paul McGuire, who doesn't entirely believe in magic and has never accepted that Morpheus is immortal.)
• Silent Treatment: For 70 years, Dream staunchly refuses to say a single word to any of his captors.
• Single Tear: Unity sheds a single tear when she wakes from her decades-long sleep.
  Unity: I dreamed I had a baby.
• Sinister Schnoz: The evil Roderick Burgess has a large, prominent nose.
• Stand-In Portrait: In "Imperfect Hosts", Cain has a conversation with Dream while standing near a painted portrait of his brother Abel. Partway through the conversation, the portrait comes alive and climbs out of the frame to join the conversation.
• Summon Binding: The Hermetic Magic circle used to summon Dream also keeps him trapped within it and suppresses his powers. This is the limit of the summoners' control, so Dream simply waits until someone gets careless and scuffs the circle.
• Summoning Ritual:
  • Roderick Burgess's magical ritual involving artifacts, special ingredients, and chanting to summon and entrap Death. He gets Dream instead.
  • Dream performs a ritual involving special ingredients and conditions to summon the Three-Who-Are-One.
• Take That!: In "Imperfect Hosts", the Three-Who-Are-One explain to Dream that in their current aspect they are known by the names Cynthia, Mildred and Mordred, and Mordred complains that it would have made more sense for her to be Morgaine.^note In the legends of King Arthur, Morgaine is a sorceress and Mordred is a male knight. This is a poke at the writer who gave them those names in the earlier DC comic The Witching Hour.
• Title Drop: In "Sleep of the Just", several characters are mentioned as having bad dreams or uneasy sleep after Morpheus is imprisoned. The only one who is mentioned as having better dreams is Wesley Dodds after he tries to help fill the Morpheus-shaped hole in the world; he's described as "sleeping the sleep of the just".
• Transflormation: In the fourth issue, Morpheus muses on how Hell has changed just before coming upon the wood of suicides (as seen in the Inferno). He hears one of the trees say he thought taking pills would stop his pain and notes there were once so few suicides that they only took up a grove. Since his last visit, there are so many of them that they make up a forest.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: After escaping from imprisonment, avenging himself on his captors, and regaining his kingdom and his tools, Morpheus goes to Washington Square Park and mopes because he does not feel as satisfied as he thought he would. His older sister snaps him out of it.
• Villain Episode: "24 Hours" focuses on John Dee as Morpheus is unconscious for most of the time after being knocked out by the ruby in the previous issue.
• Visual Pun: In "The Sound of Her Wings," Esme, the stand-up comedian, says the words "reach out and kill someone" as part of her joke, just as she reaches out to grab the improperly grounded microphone that will kill her.
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: As Dee's malign influence spreads, a kids' show host suddenly starts encouraging his audience to commit suicide, and the program is suddenly cut off and replaced with a technical difficulties notice.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The amulet of protection that Dee's mother gives him. It's clearly visible strapped to his wrist at the beginning of "24 Hours", but it disappears at some point in the course of the issue's events, and its absence is not acknowledged nor is it ever mentioned again.
• When the Clock Strikes Twelve:
  • Roderick Burgess begins his ritual to summon Death at midnight.
  • Morpheus causes it to be midnight in the Dreaming when he begins his ritual to summon the Three.
• Wizard Duel: The Oldest Game, the contest between Dream and Choronzon for possession of Dream's helm.
• Yet Another Baby Panda: A news broadcast detailing how the world is suffering under Dee's malign influence ends with a cute item about a duck that has been taught to tapdance.
• Your Head Asplode: When Burgess's death curse on Ruthven Sykes hits home, there's a gory panel of his head exploding and his eyeballs flying out.

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