Death: the High Cost of Living (Paperback)

Sexton is sitting at his computer typing out his suicide note when his mother obliviously sends him out for the afternoon because she has taken the day off to spring clean their apartment. When he literally falls into a garbage dump, he meets a cute and saucy Goth girl named Didi, not knowing that she is Death walking in flesh for a day. She takes Sexton back to her apartment to mend her torn jeans, and now the story begins its long slide downhill.

Mad Hattie confronts Death and threatens to cut off Sexton's nose if Didi (Death) does not go out to find her missing heart. So Didi and Sexton set off into the city at night, to have some fun and search for Mad Hattie's heart. And unexplained thread unravels as Didi (Death) continually is offered free goods by kind people. I didn't get it, and Gaimen never explained it. They go into a "hot" club (for free), and once inside with them, we are subjected to some extremely cheesy lyrics sung by lesbian acoustical guitarist.

Outside the club, a strange blind man and his minion do unexplained things to find Didi in the club, and when the minion lures them out, Death follows as bovinely as a cow does into the slaughtering pens. It gets worse. Once Sexton and Didi are trapped in the cellar, the story becomes even more aimless, filled with pointless conversations which all build up to a ridiculous and anticlimactic ending.

For me, Death lost her charm as Didi when she became so naively helpless and stupifyingly frivolous in her actions and speech. I was interested in Death presented as a charming Goth girl, but I expected her to have more power, more intelligence, more drive, and something more to say. Oh, and I have never met a Goth girl who babbled like a Valley girl...another disappointment.

To top off my disgust, this unsatisfying story is followed by a brutally inane short in which Didi (Death) lectures us on condom usage. I never thought that I would be subjected to a cartoon character putting a condom onto a cartoon banana, but it happened and I shudder every time I think of it.

I love stories of Death, and if you do too, I would caution you to glance through this particular graphic novel in the bookstore before laying your hard earned cash down on the table. This was very disappointing.

The strangest thing about this volume is a 6 page, Public Service Announcement of sorts found at the very end. In this PSA, Death gives a full blown lecture on safe-sex, AIDS, and even gives a demonstration of proper condom insertion utilizing a banana! A bit weird, no doubt and in the end very much dates this book as somewhat of a relic from the mid-90's.