Unrestrained spoilers for the original Nightmare Country, Hellblazer: Dead in America and the original Sandman
Could Elliot Garner- aka Dr. Diablo -be the angel? A proxy for Dream, like those employed by Desire and Despair.
It looks like Garner’s soul was devoured by demons in ‘Dead in America’ but…there is a resemblance between Garner and the “angel” from Nightmare Country.
This theory rests on that resemblance, which is admittedly vague. Garner does not have many moments in ‘Dead in America’ where his face is clearly visible. He always has those thick, owly glasses and there are a lot of flashbacks to him at varying ages while wearing the glasses.
Between the angel and Garner, there is a loose similarity of face, head and body. During the flashbacks to Garner’s younger self, the part of his hair is always combed over. When Garner’s memories return to him in Hell, his hairline sometimes looks like its thinning in the way that the angel’s hair is thinning. At other times in Hell (post-memory recovery), his hair looks like he smoothed it over the thinning spots in the front.
They are both blonde. They both like to wax poetic about the collective subconscious and the use of stories for social engineering. John Constantine is shocked by Garner’s drive to collect and hoard the dream sand without any stated plan for it. The answer could be something so simple that it isn’t factored into the elaborate conspiratorial stuff. Like snorting it to get high.
Now…about Garner’s soul-
Daniel Dream had a clandestine meeting with Garner before he got roped into the plot of ‘Dead in America’. As soon as a demon attempted to rip out the eye of his astral body and eat it, Garner’s soul explodes. We learn, gradually, that the Kindly Ones from the original Sandman began as rebel angels, beside Lucifer, who fell when he did. Etrigan calls them “angels of hate.”
The Kindly Ones evidently escaped from Hell some time before they became the characters we first met back in ‘Preludes & Nocturnes’, when they tell Dream where the pouch, helm and ruby are located. They are not originally dream-kind but they appear to have been enmeshed in a dream-kind psychic environment, like Lucifer in his own SU story.
So Daniel Dream appears to hold Hell responsible for the death of Morpheus Dream and sends them an exploding package to make a point about it. Because of their dream-kind entanglements, Daniel Dream realizes he could summarily wipe the Kindly Ones from existence and only holds back because Constantine convinces him to.
What job did the Kindly Ones originally do in Hell? Guard duty, like Cerberus. They are then returned to this role, leaving John in a good position to ask for a favor later on.
Since the Kindly Ones went back to work while owing a debt to a human…and at least one soul has been empowered to walk out of Hell (Constantine) because of it…
Hell has lately been humbled and subverted by Dream. How much latitude could such a thing afford? Could Dream have just yoinked Garner’s soul back, like a yo-yo? Or at least a fragment of it, which Dream could use to fill in the blanks, as he has in the past with other beings?
One other being, anyway: the Corinthian. After uncreating him in ‘The Doll’s House’, a tiny skull from one of the Corinthian’s mouth-eyes falls to the ground. He picks it up and uses it recreate the Corinthian in ‘The Kindly Ones’.
If Dream were to attempt to restore a fragmented soul by filling in the blanks with dream substance, the human would basically be turned into dream-kind with a bit of human lineage. Dream is empowered to create and uncreate dream-kind but he enjoys creating nightmares, in particular.
(Speaking of: didn’t Dream turn two or three human souls into dream-kind in Nightmare Country? Maybe more if we count things from the original, like Matthew, Lucien or Prez Rickard?)
Once Garner regained his discarded memories in Hell, he remembered that he hid the rest of his limited supply of dream sand in the concrete of the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
If Dream “recreated” Garner as dream-kind based on a fragment, it is possible that the “new” Garner may remember the Walk of Fame. He could potentially re-collect the sand. Would Dream not demand it back, though?
Maybe. Daniel Dream is interested in establishing a reputation and boundaries: to re-dignify his authority after the collapse of his former self.
Like his prior self, Daniel can be far-sighted and goal-driven. Perhaps Garner’s use of the dream sand lines up with Dream’s plans. Or perhaps Garner is allowed to keep it as payment for something. In ‘The Glass House’ (second Nightmare Country volume), the angel’s stash of dream sand appears to be a personal secret.
By the end of ‘The Glass House’, Thessaly knows that Dream is pulling strings in this and that the angel is an apparent ringleader. She makes a move on the angel and is intercepted.
The sand in the possession of the angel could be both payment and strategy. Garner may simply enjoy having it around to snort. Much of Dream’s magic resonates with and attracts other sources of it. Allowing the angel-shaped-dream-kind to keep the sand could unwittingly turn them into a bloodhound, capable of detecting other forgotten dream magic that needs to be dismantled or reclaimed. It would explain why the Smiling Man is always just within the orbit of the angel but never close enough to encounter.
The Smiling Man appears, at times, to be a dream-kind in the company of Mr. Agony and Mr. Ecstasy. A Dreaming-side informant or collaborator. Mr. Ecstasy and Mr. Agony are Desire’s agents in the third dimension. The Smiling Man may be Despair’s agent on the astral plane, covering her half of the plan.
The voice in Mr. Agony’s stopwatch has Morpheus Dream black word balloons and white lettering, just like the Smiling Man. Agony and Ecstasy might not know where the voice in the stopwatch comes from. If it comes from the Smiling Man, than maybe both the Smiling Man and Ecstasy/Agony are equally blind to each other but used for a concerted purpose by Desire and Despair. The angel could represent Dream’s natural and appropriate participation (like the contest for Joshua Norton’s soul in ‘Three Septembers and a January’) or a quiet infiltration of Despair and Desire’s plan. (‘Three Septembers and a January’ is referred to by implication in the first Nightmare Country volume and explicitly in the second).
Some framing concerns-
When Daniel Dream shows up at the end of ‘The Glass House’, the angel asks “do you know what I am?”
Dream says that he knows what he is and what he has been saying he is. We then learn that- in this instance -the demon Azazel was shape-shifted into the angel’s appearance. So Dream was simply calling out Azazel.
When Thessaly tries to squeeze the angel for answers at the end, she is intercepted by Mr. Agony and Mr. Ecstasy who promptly beat the crap out of her. This is revealing, in and of itself. Thessaly is a three-thousand year old witch who may well have no equal among mortals. Among humans, she is unstoppable. The last time we saw her get snatched and jerked around (SU Dead Boy Detectives) it appeared to be the work of one of the Endless (Despair). She can only be outstripped by god or Endless tier beings.
Anyway-
Mr. Agony says “This is the witch. The one we mustn’t kill.” So they leave Thessaly curled up on the pavement.
The pair wanders over to the angel- rescued but hardly any more at ease for it. Mr Agony says “And this, Mr. Ecstasy, this is the one we mustn’t hurt.”
Mr. Ecstasy, to the angel: “Our employer is well aware that you have been playing with their things. That you wanted a piece of their power. (…) They know what you want, and have told us to tell you that you can have it. (…) But you will have to do it for them.”
Angel: “What if I say no…what if I won’t be that thing’s pawn?”
Mr. Ecstasy: “In that unhappy circumstance we would have to hurt you terribly. But I think you’ll find if you look inside your heart, that you’re not quite as intransigent as you previously believed. (…) I think you’ll find you want to help them.”
The angel screws his eyes shut in frustration and opens them- now relaxed and rather curious.
Yes, Dream could have rescued Garner through re-creation but we actually saw John get out of Hell, right? If Dream was going to recruit a proxy, wouldn’t John be a better choice?
Maybe, Maybe not. Death, the eldest sister of the Endless, is respected and feared among her family. When she tries to collect John’s soul, he does his little confidence game shtick in Hell with the passive cooperation of the Kindly Ones, returns to Death and then disappears under her nose. If John won’t get in line for Death then how is her little brother supposed to pull it off? To say nothing of the fact that John told Daniel to his face that his smile is creepy.
The fate of John in ‘Dead in America’ also raises questions about canon. Neil Gaiman met Alan Moore in the mid-eighties, when Moore was working on Swamp Thing. The two knew each other around the time that Moore created Constantine for that story. I could go on, or you could just go to the ‘comics’ section in the menu and read my Swamp Thing reaction. Put simply: there is a ton of world-building connections between Swamp Thing and The Sandman which feel too authentic to be a coincidence.
If we acknowledge this relationship…that leaves John Constantine in a rather tight spot.
A recurring theme in the original Sandman are the long-term consequences of things that ‘felt normal at the time’. In ‘The Kindly Ones’, Delirium says that- if one of the Endless travels to Earth and stops to look at a lightening strike -people will be stopping in that place and looking up for generations. Dream’s realization of the size and scope of these entanglements was a factor in his eventual suicide.
On his secluded island, Orpheus was guarded by generations of Greek caretakers because Morpheus inspired them through their dreams.
If we take this seriously, we admit that Morpheus may have affected Constantine’s bloodline simply by associating with his ancestor Johanna. If we factor in the short-lived Lady Constantine comic, then Lady Johanna eventually acquired the Wych Cross estate, to be renamed Fawny Rig; the name it bore when Morpheus Dream was imprisoned there.
The shared universe between The Sandman and Swamp Thing may have existed in a nascent state before Jamie Delano made Constantine the main character of Hellblazer. This makes it possible that John’s life would not have turned out the way it did if Morpheus had never met Johanna in the eighteenth century. In the Sandman Universe comic run, the echoes of cause-and-effect surrounding Morpheus are beginning to reach Daniel in indirect (and at times inverted) ways. In ‘Waking Hours’, Daniel is assessing this. In Hellblazer: Dead in America and the two Nightmare Country books, Daniel has moved on to acting on his assessments. ‘Dead in America’ sees him exercising direct control over both Swamp Thing and John.
Then there’s the prophecy mentioned by Clarice Sackville in the first SU Hellblazer volume which describes “the true death of John Constantine.”
Meanwhile, old currents of cause-and-effect from Morpheus are appearing around Daniel. Daniel might decide to take charge of those currents and either contain or neutralize them. Of course John is going to get swept up and of course it’s going to have consequences. If John originated in the shared universe of eighties Moore and Gaiman, he could easily meet his end in that universe.
This reminds me of the online buzz when ‘Dead in America’ was first published. There were rumors that DC/Vertigo was choosing to officially merge the Hellblazer canon with the Sandman canon. If there was anything to that speculation at all, then it sounds like DC/Vertigo intended to officially recognize that shared universe. The SU Hellblazer stories are no longer digressions: they are the main plot, sort of how the Rick Veitch Swamp Thing comics are included in the Hellblazer omnibuses.
I find that intriguing but…DC has welched on stuff like this before. They tried to perma-kill Superman in the early nineties and brought him back due to fandom reactions. This “final” Hellblazer story could be subverted just as easily. John’s whole presence in the Sandman Universe comic run hinges on the timeline split in Books of Magic. If DC wanted to retcon it, all they would have to do is say “Nevermind; that was a divergent timeline.”
AilixChaerea 