Ah, the late eighties/early nineties. I was all about the Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus, the Cure and the Vertigo line of comics. My favorites were the Neil Gaiman Sandman series and Mike Carey’s Lucifer. Reading Carey’s new novel The Girl With All the Gifts (The gift is this astonishing book) made me want to dive back into that world. But would it be 
as good as I remember? Would the passage of time and life experience enhance or hinder this experiment? Then I decided I was waaaaay overthinking this and dug up my old copy of Death: The High Cost of Living. It did not disappoint. From the introduction by Tori Amos, to the PSA “Death Talks About Life”, this book brought that era into sharp focus for me.
Death, for today only known as Didi, is back for her yearly foray into Life on Earth. She meets your typically disaffected and depressed teenaged boy, named Sexton and takes him along on her adventures. Making their way around NYC, they have experiences of high drama and the mundane, all the while that great city goes on about them.
I have to say I was pleasantly surprised that the material held up for me. You never know when you are delving back into your past if you can recapture the feel of the time, or at least appreciate what you must have enjoyed about it back then. I got that and then some. In fact, I had so much fun that I am going to go back and revisit the whole Sandman series. Time to dig out my Dr. Martens and the walkman mixtapes!
