Comicsposting
The Hunt (Convergence 1) is a fun little folktale being told to a young lady by her grandfather, about a boy in The Old Country travelling to find a duke's daughter. Very classic, the tie-in to the greater Sandman narrative is that the boy has a book Lucien lost and wants to get back before Dream finds out he lost it, so ends up helping the boy on his quest. None of it features in the adaptation
Soft Places features Marco Polo lost in a liminal space between dream and reality, meeting Fiddler's Green and Rustichello (from his future). This is not my thing and I'm pretty bored by this issue, but it does get some setting stuff down and there is an appearance by Dream as he escaped from his confinement in the first arc and also a mention of his love life at some point in his history. Nothing adapted
The Parliament of Rooks features Daniel travelling into dream, where he finds Gregory, Matthew, Eve, Abel, and Cain. Eve, Able, and Cain each tell him a story, Cain kills Abel, and then Daniel wakes up. It's cute, and it's nice to see more of all of these characters. None of them get enough development in the show, Cain and Abel especially considering how much focus they give them. They're so cartoonish here, like a vaudeville double-act taken to a violent extreme, and that does Not come across in the show at all. They're very boring and flat, there. In this issue we also get some details about Matthew and how he came to be a raven, and the interesting perspective that 'When Dream offered this to me I thought I would be a man in a raven's body, but that's not how it works. I'm a raven through-and-through'.
Nothing here makes it into the show
Brief Lives 1 begins the quest to find Destruction, following first Delirium and then Despair. Much of this is cut and implied in the show -- we do not see Delirium ask Despair for help, but she tells us that she did. The BDSM scene I mentioned in the show react post is not part of Delirium's domain but the waking world, and is appropriately attended by Desire. There is a scene near the end of the issue where we actually see Destruction, as Despair recalls the bubonic plague (a good time for them both). Always love to get some characterization for the Endless, I enjoyed this issue. I think the show will be adapting the next issue more properly, it just took stuff to reference from this one.
As expected Brief Lives 2 is where the show starts this arc, with Delirium going to Dream for help. This story is staying pretty firmly rooted in Delirium as the main character, whereas the show shifted the focus to Dream for obvious reasons. I think it's poorer for it, though. The show also tied Dream's motivations here to finding Nada, where the issue just has him trying to get over a breakup with a nameless somebody, and I understand the change but I think the show would have been stronger if we had more indication that Dream has a long string of lovers rather than the three or so that get mentioned over and over again. In the issue we get a brief flashback to the moment that Delight became Delirium, which is a pity to miss, and in these flashbacks were getting a very strong sense of why everyone feels the way they do about Destruction's disappearance (alternately angry at him for abandoning them and wanting to leave him to his whatever-he's-doing, and wanting him to come back). I think we're going to get a moment with Destruction for each Endless, that will really give us a good read on his character in general, and I think they're all cut for the show except Dream's.
This is a thing I'm coming to see about the adaptation in general is that the comics are not about Dream, per se. They're about the Endless as a whole. The show is about Dream.
Okay I would like to have done the entire arc in one post but I have stuff to do, so I will continue from here later tonight!
