Larger	The Sandman Vol. 10: The Wake Author: Charles Vess, Neil Gaiman
	Book Information Publisher: DC Comics Book Type: Paperback Members Wishing: 75 Rating: 25 ISBN-13: 9781563892790 - ISBN-10: 1563892790 Publication Date: 7/1/1997 Pages: 192

Sandman: The Wake is comprised of the last six issues of the regular Sandman comic book series. The first three cover the actual wake of Morpheus, King of Dreams. In this story within a story characters from the series meet to remember and pay their respects to the fallen immortal. In eulogies which alternate between respect, praise and villification, the Dream Lord's character is summed up and his flaws laid bare to, literally, all the world.

In the final chapter of The Wake the reader is returned to an earlier time in the saga of the Sandman, when an aging "William Shekespeare" having just completed his final play "The Tempest," commissioned at the bequest of the Dream Lord, reflects on his life, his struggles, tragedies and a bargain for greatness he made with Morpheus many years earlier. In perhaps the series' most poigniant line, a statement which ironically becomes the Sandman's own epitaph, Morpheus reveals that he made the bargain because

"...I am the King of Stories, but I have no story of my own."