Issue 16: "Lost Hearts"

Neil Gaiman, Mike Dringenberg, and Malcolm Jones III

• Seventh part of long storyline The Doll's House
• Eighth story reprinted in trade paperback The Doll's House
• Audible Act I Chapter 16

Page 4#

• Panel 6

  An unusual case of anthropomorphism, for a place to become a person.

Page 5#

• Panel 1

  Dream's assertion that vortices are mortals directly contradicts Lucien's assumption, issue ten page 14, that the vortex was an "it", a thing.

• Panel 5

  I suppose I should start keeping a "Canonical list of Sandman danglers". This would obviously be one. It was eventually resolved with Overture.

Page 9#

• Panel 5

  We need not worry that Fiddler's Green was the historical Gilbert Keith Chesterton (born 29 May 1874 in Kensington), as here he says he was not even a "very good copy of a human" [emphasis his].

Page 11#

• Panel 4

  The Audible narration says this young woman looks familiar to Rose, she could almost be Rose's reflection in a looking glass.
  

Page 12#

• Panel 4

  The Audible version changes Dream's line here to "I do not know who you are..." This makes his bafflement on the next page possibly make more sense.
  

Page 13#

• Panel 2

  Dream is not very bright, indeed. He has great knowledge, born of age and, perhaps, his status, but he is not even as capable of insight as a human.

Page 17#

• Panel 3

  That's an Iggy Pop CD on the bottom of the panel, The Idiot. Neil mentions that Lou Reed's Berlin didn't make it into the panel.

  Audible also names The Cowboy Junkies' The Trinity Session
  

• Panel 4-5

  Barbie's life will be more fully explored in a later storyline.

• Panel 6

  Two books have readable titles: Empire of the Senseless and Sleeping in Flame.

  • Sleeping in Flame is by Jonathon Carroll, an American writer often writing from Vienna who writes surreal, fantastic, and often horrific fiction. This particular book is a modern retelling of the Rumpleskiltskin fairy tale. Carroll has a reputation for using dreams or fictions becoming reality, and it is rumored that Neil Gaiman had to rework the plot of The Doll's House after reading a Carroll book that used his original idea.

  • Empire of the Senseless was written by Kathy Acker in 1988. Perhaps coincidentally, she dedicates the book to her tattooist. It is described as a postmodern novel, and "not a pretty story."

  Neil indicates that Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle and M.R. James' Ghost Stories of an Antiquary were in the script but didn't make it into the panel. He notes that this should help people identify Zelda's short story extract from Sandman #15 and the title of this issue.

  The Audible narration adds the above missing books, plus A Distant Mirror to the stack.
  

Page 18#

• Panel 2-3

  We saw Judy, and the massacre, in Sandman #6. We will see Donna in a later storyline.

• Panel 6

  A genuine photo of G.K. Chesterton, who was the inspiration for "Gilbert". Note the signature at lower left.

  The Audible narration adds a caption - "G.K Chesterton. 1874-1936"
  

Page 19#

• Panel 1

  (right caption): Talking about dolls probably relates to the title of this storyline.

• Panel 2

  Note Rose's namesake tattoo.

• Panel 7

  "And then she woke up" is the conclusion to, among other things, Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland and the movie [blech!] version of The Wizard of Oz.

Page 20#

• Panel 6

  Earlier editions say "..a fox's set in the wood" - A fox's "set" is hunter's jargon for a den. It is therefore unusual for Jed to use it, and later edits agree, changing it to "..a fox's den..."
  

Page 21#

• Panel 5

  Note that Desire's sigil is different from issue ten, and that the order of sigils is peculiar (Desire to the left of Death).

Page 22#

• Panel 1

  Desire's costume is in many ways reminiscent of Catwoman's, a villain of Batman's. However, felinity often seems to have an erotic effect, and that may be its purpose here.

  It is also a reference to events that will happen (/have already happened) in Overture

• Panel 7

  Another of the unspoken rules that govern the Endless, apparently. Disaster of some sort would strike were Dream to slay kin of the Endless. We saw a possible hint to this in Sandman #10, where Rose is warned of the "Kindly Ones", and a later issue also uses the Eumenides as a threat.

Page 23#

• Panel 4

  Delirium is the name of the Endless whose sigil is the swirly one to the right of Despair's on issue 10, page 4.

Page 24#

• Panel 5

This arc ends back where it started, overlooking The Threshold

Credits

• Originally collated and edited by Greg Morrow.
• Col. G. L. Sicherman gls@cbnewsh.cb.att.com defined "set."
• David Goldfarb goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu, Viktor Haag vehaag@crocus.waterloo.edu, and Jim W Lai jwtlai@watcgl.waterloo.edu combined to identify Rose's reading material.
• Neil Gaiman, via Tanaqui C. Weaver cen@vax.oxford.ac.uk expanded on material in Rose's room.
• David Goldfarb goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu speculated on the nature of an Endless disaster.
• Ralf Hildebrandt added more details.
• Richard Munn included a better quality copy of the G.K. Chesterton photo, added the Overture references, and noted how the arc begins and ends.

Last modified by Richard Munn on 2023-08-21 - Fixed some formatting, and improved blockstyle plugin behaviour
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