Monday, March 9, 2015

Despairing Man # 11 (illustrated by Max Rugers)

In Brief Lives, Despair visits Dream after Orpheus dies.

After Dream leaves and returns to his kingdom, Despair expresses regret for not helping Delirium search for Destruction.

Once Delirium returns to her realm with Barnabus, Despair also returns home to find Desire waiting for her.

Despair’s realm is filled with mirrors and mist and in each of the mirrors she can gave into the hearts and lives of humanity. She can witness them despair.

This man is one of the people in her mirrors.

He is standing in front of a tombstone, visiting a loved one.

He appears in Sandman # 49, on page 9, in panel 5.

When looking for characters for this project I initially thought this might have been Hob Gadling, who was seen in a graveyard in the third chapter of The Kindly Ones, mourning the death of his wife, Audrey. I decided that this was probably not Hob. I doubt that Neil would have added this into the script and it was not mentioned in the Annotated Sandman. I suspect that this background character was put there by Jill Thompson without any guidance from Gaiman.

Max did a fantastic job with this portrait. I love the gray background he used and then framed the mirror with paper to reflect the character in the published comic. I really like the expression on this man’s face. He seems incredibly sad and is not presented with an exaggerated sense of despair.

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