In Neil Gaiman's world, the Grim Reaper isn't so grim.
Death is a perky teen-age girl in a tank top.
Her pale, mop-topped brother Dream, on the other hand, can be a real downer with his incessant brooding. Death, Dream and their siblings Desire, Delirium, Destiny, Despair and Destruction make up a kind of cosmic Brady Bunch whose otherworldly adventures are chronicled in DC Comics' popular monthly title The Sandman. Gaiman's Sandman stories have earned him literary awards and the respect of writers outside the world of comics. Stephen King drove down from Maine to meet Gaiman at an autographing session last fall in Boston. Clive Barker and Harlan Ellison have written introductions to Sandman collections.