Sandman #73
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeSandman #73, 'An Epilogue — Sunday Mourning,' is the final chapter of the four-issue 'Wake' arc proper, and it closes out the six-century friendship between immortal Hob Gadling and the dead Morpheus in a way the grand funeral issues could not: on a human, even comic scale, at a Renaissance festival rather than in the halls of the Dreaming. By choosing Gadling — Dream's oldest friend and the series' most persistently mortal-yet-immortal figure — as the lens through which readers grieve and move on, Gaiman delivered one of the most emotionally grounded conclusions in mainstream comics, demonstrating that an epic mythology can be dismantled just as powerfully through a beer-drinking Englishman at a cheesy Ren Faire as through gods and Endless. The issue also completes Gadling's thematic arc on mortality, history, and guilt — weaving together echoes of his slave-trade past and his grief over Dream — making it one of the most critically discussed single issues in the run.
In "The Wake: An Epilogue Sunday Mourning," Neil Gaiman and Michael Zulli deliver a quiet, haunting chapter in The Sandman saga, as Robert Gadling—immortal yet burdened by time—finds himself at a Renaissance Fair, caught between past and present. Amid the pageantry and fleeting joy, he meets Death, facing a moment of profound choice, all rendered in the evocative, painterly style of Zulli and the subtle, dreamlike colors of Daniel Vozzo and Digital Chameleon. The cover, a striking piece by Dave McKean, captures the mood of melancholy and fleeting beauty that defines this poignant story.
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Gaiman disclosed in Hy Bender's The Sandman Companion that he had wanted to write a Renaissance festival story for Hob Gadling for years, drawn to the inherent absurdity of placing an actual medieval survivor inside a modern American imitation of his own era. Artist Michael Zulli rendered the issue entirely without an inker — as he did for issues #70–73 — working directly in pencils and color, a production choice that gave the chapter a soft, autumnal quality distinct from the harder lines that characterized earlier arcs. Unusually for a recurring character who had been drawn by multiple artists across the series, Zulli modeled Hob's appearance in this specific issue on a real person: Ian Anderson, lead singer of Jethro Tull. The story was published on October 17, 1995, with a cover date of December 1995, as part of the Vertigo imprint's closing months of the run.
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- Full title is 'The Wake: An Epilogue — Sunday Mourning'; it is the fourth chapter of the six-issue Wake arc (issues #70–75) and the final Hob Gadling story in the original series.
- Written by Neil Gaiman; art and inks by Michael Zulli (working without a separate inker, directly from pencils); colors by Daniel Vozzo; letters by Todd Klein; cover by Dave McKean; edited by Karen Berger and Shelly Bond for DC/Vertigo.
- Published October 17, 1995 (cover-dated December 1995) under DC's Vertigo imprint.
- Issues #70–73 of The Wake were produced without an inker — rendered solely in pencils and color — a deliberate production choice that unified the arc's visual tone.
- Michael Zulli based Hob Gadling's physical appearance in this issue specifically on Ian Anderson, lead singer of the rock band Jethro Tull — the only time in the series Hob's likeness was modeled on a real person.
- The issue represents Hob Gadling's final appearance in the original 75-issue Sandman run; Gadling had first appeared in issue #13 ('Men of Good Fortune') and recurred across seven issues spanning in-story centuries.
- Plot: Hob attends a 20th-century American Renaissance festival with his girlfriend Guenevere, is visited by Death who offers him release from his immortality pact following Morpheus's death, declines, then dreams of walking on a beach alongside Morpheus and Destruction — a scene Gaiman has cryptically confirmed is 'never just a dream.'
- The issue is collected in The Sandman Vol. 10: The Wake (trade paperback and hardback, 1996) and in The Absolute Sandman Vol. 4 (collecting issues #57–75, November 2008).
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Reprints
Reprinted in Dust Covers: The Collected Sandman Covers #[nn] (1997), The Sandman: The Wake #[nn] (1997), The Sandman: The Wake #[10] (1997), The Sandman: The Wake #[10] (1997), Dust Covers: The Collected Sandman Covers #[nn] (1998), The Sandman [Sandman Library Edition] #10 (1999), Sandman #[17] (2007), The Absolute Sandman #4 (2009), The Sandman #7 (2011), The Sandman #10 (2013), The Sandman Omnibus #2 (2014), The Annotated Sandman #4 (2016), The Sandman #10 (2019), Biblioteca Sandman #10 (2022), The Sandman: The Deluxe Edition #5 (2022), The Sandman #4 (2022)
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