Thermidor is the ancestor-Constantine/Orpheus interlude, which the show tied more directly to the find-Destruction plot. Here it's a between-arcs story, which the show obviously didn't have the liberty of doing. It's otherwise basically a straight adaptation, I have no real comments on it. Oh, except that the comic has fucking handwritten cursive for blocks of text and I always hate that, please never do that
August is another between-arcs story about Augustus Caesar pretending to be a beggar because Dream told him (in a dream) that if he did so, he could make plans without the gods seeing what he was up to. These are interstitials that I think happen just because Gaiman has an interest in history, and it doesn't have any particular bearing on the greater plot except maybe for some implications in how the world works. It also makes it harder to tell what issues are going to turn out to be super relevant later, which is a plus for a long-running comic series, but not so much for a two-season netflix series. Obviously this one doesn't appear in the adaptation
As an aside I sure am noticing how much of what Gaiman writes features rape in some way, which prior to a year ago I would have attributed to edgy 90s comics writing, but now. Well. It probably is also edgy 90s comics writing.
Three Septembers and a January features the life of Joshua Norton I, first emperor of the United States, in a Job-like role with the younger Endless making a bet against Dream that they can draw Norton into their domains before he dies. Dream gives Norton the dream of being emperor of the United States, and this role contents Norton and protects him against Despair's, Delirium's, and Desire's attempts to seduce him into despair, delirium, or desire. It's not a great story, to be honest, but the immaturity of the younger Endless is something to note, as well as Dream's susceptibility to it (he is perhaps not so elder as he would like to think), and this is where Desire vows to make Dream "spill family blood" (a kind of out-of-nowhere threat, really)
Another aside here, while we're talking Problematic™ things, is that I'm not going to try to analyse potential racism or other negative caricatures because I do not feel like I have the ability to accurately and fairly do so, and I don't think it's germane to do for a comic series from the 90s whose author has already been cancelled. But there's definitely some stuff in this issue that's making me go yikes
Anyway the Norton issue also does not appear in the adaptation
Slaughter on Fifth Avenue (Game of You 1) follows up on events from the Doll's House arc, and is an arc that I was really looking forward to seeing adapted, in part because I really wanted ash to get to experience it. Unfortunately it did not make it to the show. In it we find that Barbie's hit a rough patch after the events of the dream vortex, and also has apparently stopped dreaming. Her friend Wanda, who is unfortunately an unflattering caricature of a trans woman, but fortunately is also a very sympathetic character, takes Barbie out to breakfast while we have some meanwhile shots of some dream characters in extremely dire straits. One of them somehow escapes into the waking world to get Barbie's help and does not survive the expedition, but does find Barbie, who has a panic attack about her dreams coming to life and goes back to her apartment to be upset about that and her friend's death. We know from Doll's House that, when she dreamed, she dreamed a continuing story every night, and the story has apparently continued without her, to the detriment of said story.
Some of Wanda's dialogue about being trans gets lifted from here and given to her in the show, but other than that I don't think there's anything in particular that the show takes from this arc, and that is likely to continue through the rest of the issues of it, since the show skipped it over and all that. I will continue my reread here and talking about it because I like this arc!
Lullabies of Broadway is a fun one; we get a bit of character development for the other people in Barbie's apartment building: Wanda, two lesbians (one of whom is having a pregnancy scare, the other has a tie to a character from 24 Hours), a bookish woman, and an unfriendly man. We see the dreams of all the characters in fun sequences (Gaiman is honestly pretty good at writing dreams) except for bookish woman (Thessaly) and unfriendly man (George). George turns out to be full of evil birds which he has sent to give nightmares to the others, and Thessaly manages to escape this fate in a way that frankly implies she might be a witch. Meanwhile, Barbie reunites with her old friends in her dreams, who are all pretty pessimistic about the odds of succeeding in their quest.
Bad Moon Rising is where a lot of the criticism of Wanda's character comes from -- not at all all of it, but the way Wanda is treated as not-really-a-woman by characters and narrative understandably doesn't sit right with some people. In this issue, everyone (but Barbie) wakes up from their nightmares and Thessaly shows up to check on them. They all end up going to check on Barbie, who they find is still asleep, clutching a glowing dream-stone to her chest (reminiscent of the dream-stone Dee had in 24 Hours). Thessaly gets Wanda to carry Barbie up to George's apartment, and everyone else follows along -- there they discover that Thessaly has murdered George and stashed his body in the bathtub. Wanda tries to leave, and is unable to due to some magic Thessaly has cast on either the complex residents or the apartment itself -- everyone is stuck there with her. She cuts George's face off to compel him to give her some answers from beyond the grave (he was promised Barbie by the Cuckoo if he did as it commanded, which was to feed everyone else in the apartment complex to said Cuckoo), and then enlists the lesbians to help her draw down the moon so they can travel into Barbie's dream to save her. This is where much of the issue lies -- Wanda cannot help, with the strong implication being that she cannot help because she's "a man", and Wanda is stuck in the apartment, guarding Barbie, while Thesally, Hazel, and Foxglove disappear. I want to note here that the pencil artist for this issue is a different person than the last one, and it both looks much better to my eye in general and also Wanda is drawn much less offensively, which is nice to see.
Beginning to See the Light has a lot of Barbie's quest, including some delightfully fucked up deaths, and ends with Barbie approaching (against her will) the Citadel of the Cuckoo. Meanwhile more transphobia for Wanda, which comes almost exclusively from George, who is, you know, an asshole and antagonist, but 'it's coming from a bad guy, it's fine' rings a little hollow when the only person to defend the trans person is the trans person herself. We're also back to that other artist, yay.
Oh also there's an adorable scene where Nuala's like 'Hey Dream I know you said not to interfere, but I interfered' and Dream is like 'I see.' and starts to walk away, and Nuala is obviously worried that she's in big trouble but then Dream comes back and tells her she did the right thing and she's so happy
Over the Sea to Sky gets us to the climax of one plot and close to the climax of the other -- it turns out that The Cuckoo, the antagonist that Barbie has been questing against -- is a creature that has inserted itself into her psyche and taken up residence in the dreams and memories she left behind as she got older. The Cuckoo wants to escape from the dream, and to lay eggs in the dreams of hundreds of mortals, and because the Cuckoo has the ability to hypnotise people into wanting to nurture it, Barbie agrees to die for its cause. The Cuckoo takes Barbie and the dream-stone to an obelisk, where it is found by Thessaly and the lesbians, who attempt to kill the Cuckoo but are tricked into killing the last of Barbie's dream-friends instead and then fall under the Cuckoo's spell. The Cuckoo successfully enacts its plan to destroy Barbie's dream land (which will, it believes, enable its escape), and Dream shows up to follow through on the compact of the land's destruction. Meanwhile the apartment Wanda, George, Barbie's body, and a homeless woman Wanda invited inside to take shelter, is destroyed by the hurricane caused by Thessaly and the lesbians calling down the moon. End of issue!
In transphobia-land this issue features a mention of another trans woman who has been supported by her family, is happy, and is saving up for gender-affirming surgery, except oops she was killed in a brutal hate crime. Didn't really need that to be in the story, thanks! Just kind of getting the message that it's pointless for trans people to try to be happy.
Aside from that, I continue to enjoy this arc, and I love the Cuckoo.
Christ I forgot Wanda's surname is fucking Mann. Of course it is
So we conclude the story in I Woke Up and One of Us Was Crying, which is part denouement for the Cuckoo story (Barbie uses a boon to wish everyone back home safe and sound, the Cuckoo flies off to live its life somewhere else) but mostly Wanda's funeral (she died in the hurricane), which means the issue is mostly Wanda's family being transphobic assholes about her. This is the issue that has the iconic scene of Barbie crossing Wanda's deadname off her headstone and writing Wanda on it in Wanda's favourite colour of lipstick, a moment that in 2025 rings like kind of a small gesture but was pretty important back in the day. The (black, mentally ill) homeless woman also dies in the hurricane, which feels about as great as the queer person dying. I like this story for the Cuckoo plot, it's very fun and well-written and has neat concepts, but the plot in the waking-world is. Not great! And really unnecessary.
As far as the adaptation is concerned, we do also get all of the funeral stuff in the show, and it does change in that it's Dream talking to the family, not Barbie, and that the aunt is more misguided-but-sympathetic than outright transphobic. Tell you what I am not a fan of how the show treats Wanda, I honestly think it's less well-done than the comics.