31 Days of Scans - Favorite PoC Character: Nada

[lego_joker]

Damn, a lot of my posts in this series wound up owing themselves to The Sandman. Never would've expected that.

Anyways - Nada. She's one of the many, many unfortunate mortals throughout The Sandman who get tangled up in the games of the Endless and various other immortals, and I would say that she's the one who wound up the worst off. Granted, I've only read about half of the series, so if you disagree, please don't drown me in spoilers.

But by the end of her saga, she delivers what might be the most badass mortal moment in the series so far.

Nada first appears, with little warning or explanation, in a single page during issue four. Dream passes her by on his journey into the heart of Hell, and... well, see for yourself.



You may or may not have found Dream's actions during the first three issues reasonable, but is the point where you really begin to suspect that Dream might be kind of a dick. I know that most people (including Gaiman himself) consider The Sandman's first eight issues to be it's weakest, but it's fascinating to see Gaiman laying the groundwork for later arcs and development.

Nada's story is expanded on right after the first story arc, in the prologue to The Doll's House. This was the first issue to feature Dream entirely as an object of discussion rather than any kind of participant, fitting in with Gaiman's obsession gentle fascination with the importance of stories.

The framing device is that it's a manhood initiation ceremony in some remote part of Africa, in which a youth is told the origin myth of his people:



One night, Queen Nada spots a stranger beneath her palace. Fascinated, she chases him all the way to the edge of the world, to his own domain. Only to find that the mystery man is one of the Endless, and it's apparently some law of the Universe that a mortal must never get it on with one of them.





Now Nada is fleeing, with Dream her pursuer. Eventually, the pair succumb to their baser thoughts and do, in fact, engage in the horizontal mambo. The result? Nada's entire city is now a smoking ruin.

Dream doesn't seem too bothered by this. Nada is.







For one reason or another (possibly some bit of symbolism that you'd need three literary PhDs to figure out), this myth ends right there, and the youth (on the left side of the fire) even complains that it's "not a proper story". We, the readers, though... we know exactly what Nada chose.

Fast-forward to Season of Mists, where Dream's basically been guilt-tripped by his big sister Death into getting Nada out of Hell. After a convoluted (and awesome) series of events, he succeeds.

Now for the hard part: actually facing her.







Ho. Ly. Crap.

Nada, a mortal with no powers whatsoever, just slapped one of the Endless. Please note that she's doing this in Dream's own domain, and that right before this, Dream effortlessly cowed several different pantheons into submission.

Lady does not put up with crap like his.





In the end, Nada is gracefully reborn into the world (possibly as a favor from Death), as an infant in Hong Kong. This may or may not be the last we see of her (again, no spoilers please.)

Comments

[alicemacher]

Nada standing up to Morpheus is indeed one of the most excellent moments in the series. I do wonder though whether she still let him off too easily because even his eventual sincere, non-qualified "I'm sorry" still kind of pales in the light of, y'know, 10,000 years in Hell. But at least in her new life she wouldn't remember that anymore.

[tianyulong]

I can't exactly blame her. The last time she bruised his ego he banished her to 10,000 years of damnation, how far is she willing to push her luck this time?

[bewareofgeek]

I'm pretty sure we do see her one last time in the final story arc. If memory serves, it's on a bridge, holding a balloon. No dialogue.

By your own request, I can give no more information.

[icon_uk]

Aside from the finale bewareofgeek mentions, she makes one tiny sort-of little cameo appearance when Dream does his rounds in Sandman #64.