Monday, 24 December 2012

Hope

The Sandman no 4 is called A Hope In Hell. On entering Hell to retrieve his helmet, Morpheus reflects that he might fail but adds:

"...I have the pouch. I have a modicum of power. I have hope." (Neil Gaiman, Preludes And Nocturnes, New York, 1995, p. 109)

When he plays "Reality" against the demon Choronzon, their exchange, summarised here, is:

Choronzon: wolf.
Morpheus: horse-back hunter.
C: horsefly.
M: spider.
C: snake.
M: heavy footed ox.
C: anthrax.
M: world.
C: nova.
M: universe.
C: entropy.
M: hope.
C: don't know.

So Morpheus wins with a word that was present in the title and repeated on the third page of the story. I will have to confirm this when I retrieve some comics from a box in the cellar but I think that Gaiman does something similar with the word "hope" in his Miracleman.

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