DEATH	BIOGRAPHY
Created by Neil Gaiman and Mike Dringenberg

Death; Art by Chris Bachalo

PERSONAL DATA

Aliases: Didi, Teleute
Occupation: Bringer of death; Anthropomorphic personification
Known Relatives: Dream/Morpheus (brother; deceased), Dream II (brother), Destiny (brother), Despair (sister), Desire (brother/sister), Delirium (sister), Destruction (brother)
Base of Operation: The Sunless lands; Everywhere.
Group Affiliation(s): The Endless
Gender: Female
Height: Inapplicable
Weight: Inapplicable
Eyes: Black
Hair: Black
First Appearance: Sandman Vol. 2 #8 (August 1989)
Creators: Neil Gaiman and Mike Dringenberg

When the first living thing existed, I was there, waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave. - Death Quote taken from Sandman Vol. 2 #20

HISTORY

Death is one of the eldest of the Endless, a family of seven conceptual entities. In the beginning, when the first living being came to existence, she was there. And since then it has been her job to separate the living from all that has gone before, and all that must come after.

Back when the universe was new, people didn't mind dying. Back then, living and dying were new things, and people did them with enthusiasm. They were pleased to see Death, and tell her all about it. And then, after a bit, it got harder. People just wished Death would just go away, and that made her very sad, so one day she just gave up, she stopped taking lives. Nothing died, not people, not animals, not bacteria, not ideas. The chaos and the pain got bad, so the people send a man to talk and plead to her. Death looked at what she had done and decided to start doing her job again. She hated it, but it was better than the alternative. Death became cold, hard, and brittle inside; she didn't like how people were always upset when they saw her.

One day she took the life of a little girl, she did it all icy, distant and vain. The girl looked at Death and said "How would you like it?" Death didn't know, so from then on she decided to take a day to live every hundred years, to see how she would like it. She lived her first day and died, and then she met herself, and she noticed she was a coldhearted bitch, and she noticed that was the last thing people wanted to see after they died. People needed a friendly face and kind words, so she decided to give them just that. From that day on, Death became a much friendlier and happier person. She even started to like her job, she liked to meet new people, talk to them and help them on their way to the Sunless Lands, and she is happy because she gets to meet everybody. - Vertigo: Winter Edge #2 and Death: The High Cost of Living #1

Her happier nature is probably also what ignited her curious hobbies. She likes to sing (but only when she is alone) and she likes to collect floppy hats, a hobby that probably started when she met Norton, Emperor of America and Protector of Mexico, who had one of these hats. She also loves Disney films, and loves to talk about them. Mary Poppins is one of her favorites.

Death usually meets any being two times. The first time when they are born, and she talks to them, but nobody ever remembers that. And of course, she meets them when they die. When Death comes to claim someone at the end of their life she instantly knows of everything that happened after she first visited them at the beginning. She knows everybody and she loves everybody, mostly because it's hard to hate someone you know deeply. According to her, nobody is really really bad if you look at them from the inside. Death's unconditional love for all beings is also the reason why people fall in love with her very easily.

Death is also very capricious, and she is the only member of the Endless who can bend or break the rules. Something she has done quite a few times already. She turned Hob Gadling, a normal human from the 14th century, into an immortal on a whim. She let two young boys stay on Earth as ghosts because they complained and didn't want to go with her. And she has been known to make deals with people; despite this, she claims Death doesn't make deals. With this kind of Death, it's no wonder so many people return from the dead.

It has been said that unlike the other Endless, who live in their own astral realms - Death dwells in a house on Earth. However, while Death's home looks like a normal apartment, she can change it and make it look like what people would expect to see although it generally looks the same no matter in what era she's in, which would suggest that her house is indeed in an astral realm of its own existing outside of time and space.

Some of the other Endless have theorized that Death will be the only of them to survive the current version of the universe and possibly continue her work in the new version. After all, it is her job to put everything in order before locking down the old universe before she leaves. Leave and go where? Nobody knows.

She always wears black, except to funerals of members of her family.

POWERS AND WEAPONS

She is Death, and she can choose when and where to take lives. Her power is not limited to humans and she can simultaneously manifest herself to innumerable dying and newly born beings throughout the universe. She is also in charge of taking the lives of any other living being, as well as ideas, concepts, worlds and universes. Anything that can end ... which is, after all, everything.

Death's sigil is the ankh she wears. The ankh allows her to communicate with the other Endless.

CHRONOLOGY

For a definitive list of appearances of Death in chronological order click here

PROFILE REFERENCES

Who's Who in the DC Universe #8 (April 1991)