Rating: 
Summary: Finally! An American comic-turned-manga done right!
Review: After other US comics have failed to be made into a decent manga, Jill Thompson finally succeeds with this little "miqual" to the DC Comics/Vertigo Sandman universe. In the world of the Dreaming, Dream is given the keys to Hell after Lucifer decides to retire from torturing the damned. Dream now has every other divine being coming to him bidding for the keys. Meanwhile, his sisters Death, Delirium, and Dispair have their hands full dealing with all the lost souls who were cast out of Hell now that its temporarily closed for business. So they're all crashing at a big party at Death's joint. Dream resolves the issue of who is Hell's new grand poobah, and life(or really the afterlife)returns to normal for Death. This is probably the best chapter in the Sandman storyline, mostly because its real fun and gives a whole new flavor to the supporting characters. Definately get this one, whether your a manga fan or not!
Rating:
Summary: Great fun!!!
Review: After reading the article about shoujo manga in Time, I went down to the local comic store that Saturday and bought this! I loved it, and I reread it every day! :) Basically, Death has to deal with zillions of dead people when her dear older brother, goes to Hell to rescue his one true love, and sending her there after a spat! The humor is quite sarcatic, and is similar to that seen in a Tim Burton movie. Death is really cool as a lead character, and this is a good manga to read! One caveat: Due to the fact that there is a good amount of blood and nudity, and references to religion, I would say that if you wanted to read this, you should be over the age of 16. Other than that, awesome comic!
Rating: 
Summary: Great sidebar... not a great intro
Review: As well-done and entertaining as this little book is, I'm afraid it won't help to knock down walls for American Manga the way some reviewers seem to hope. Don't misunderstand; "Death: At Death's Door" is clever, funny and beautifully drawn. The "1" on the spine seems to indicate there are more books in this series intended, and I for one will get each and every one of them, because if anyone is qualified to continue the tales of the Endless with Neil Gaiman gone, it's Jill Thompson.The only flaw, the thing that may keep this from being 100 percent accessible to new audiences, comes in the form of the story Thompson has chosen to tell. This story is, in essence, a sidebar to "Sandman: A Season of Mists," and because of that, feels kind of clunky. The scenes that directly parallel the earlier volume don't quite fit in tone with the rest of the book (although Thompson does make an admirable effort at showing some of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans we didn't get to see when we read the story from Dream's perspective). If you haven't read ASOM, chances are this book will be more than a little confusing... like you're reading just the subplot of a much larger work. Still, Thompson's art style is great and her writing is sharp and funny. The idea of Edgar Allen Poe falling in love with Despair had me rolling. I hope in the future she is allowed to let loose and tell more stories completely on her own instead of relying on a preexisting Gaiman story as her hook.
Rating: 
Summary: Stretching Sandman too far
Review: Death: At Death's Door is a retelling of the Sandman storyline Season of Mists. But this time the story is told from Dream's sister Death's point of view. Jill Thompson did a great job in the Sandman story The Parliament of Rooks applying a manga-influenced style to a short, two-and-a-half page tale, so I was looking forward to this book. She has again done a great job capturing the style of Japanese manga with her art and storytelling. But unfortunately, this Death's story is just too thin for the 200 pages. Get this book to complete your Sandman collection and for the great art. But this book is not a good introduction to Sandman nor a good stand-alone book.
Rating:
Summary: Blink and you'll miss it.
Review: I actually stumbled across this book on the New Paperback table at my local book store....It's a red cover with a manga-style Death on the cover. And to camoflague the book even futher, it's paperbacked sized, not Comic size, in which the rest of the Sandman Series has been printed. In fact, I'm not sure where my bookstore knew where to place it. It never showed up in the Graphic novel section, and it's not in the Sci-fi/fantasy section.
So despite not being able to find it easily, I loved this book. Jill Thompson knows the characters and loves them, and it shows in this labor of love. (Many Japanese mangas are done by a studio of artists, while Jill simply had herself and layers of duotone.) The only bad part was that it was over far too quickly. If you're a fan of Sandman, this book is a wonderful little side note into that world.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, but nowhere near perfect
Review: I got this book as a Christmas present, which is just as well as it was on my list of books to buy once I win the lottery. This is a good book. The art is pleasant to look at, and I like the idea of seeing the events in Sandman: Season of Mists from the point of view of another of the Endless, but there are some major flaws. First of all, the artistic style isn't consistent. Some panels will be detailed and realistic, with characters drawn in perfect proportion, while others will be distinctly child-like and cutesy. I know that in manga it's traditional to change the style of a panel to suit the emotional mood of the panel, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. Sometimes, Death and Delerium will be engaging in silly banter in one style, and then the style switches with the next panel of silly banter, with no apparent break in the mood. The other quibble, this one a bit more serious, is that not much happens in this book. It's a 192-page book that could have been done with half the pages and only added excitement and interest to the plot. It could best be summed up as "while we see scenes of Season of Mists again, Death, Despair and Delerium phumpher about Death's apartment with a whole bunch of lost souls." You could certainly tell 192 pages of good story from that, but the phumphering takes up too much space and we end up with great art and a tiny, tiny plot. I've heard that Jill Thompson is planning on doing another volume, this one retelling another chapter of Sandman from the perspective of another of the Endless. Based on this volume, I look forward to the sequel, but I think I'll wait until I've flipped through it before putting it on my Christmas list.
Rating: 
Summary: Why?
Review: I like Jill Thompson's Scary Godmother and I like a lot of manga. But this is a case of two great tastes coming together like dirt. There are many problems with this book. For one, the art is not consistent. The same characters on one page look completely different on the next. Even the cover with Death looks unlike the design for Death on the inside! Everyone seems more like a distortion of many different anime styles. It's a nice effort but it seems wasted, when the forced style looks just like something small press publishers in America would have put out in the early 1990's. In other words, it looks unprofessional compared to Jill's beautiful Scary Godmother. This book is more like fan art. Overall, I have to wonder why she even made this book in such a forced style when she could have done something more like her Little Endless Storybook, a cute "anime-like" style that still looks like Jill Thompson's best, not so forced and hard on the eyes like this one. I guess DC Comics wanted to hit the "manga" band wagon like Marvel, but man, it just hurts to look at. "Real manga" is about individual expression, not just inconsistently copying what's been done before. Jill Thompson could have just made this whole book in her regular style and and it would have been more of a "real manga" than this.
I suppose the writing is nice, but the art made we want to hold it at a distance. This is an "American Manga" done wrong.
Rating:
Summary: Why?
Review: I like Jill Thompson's Scary Godmother and I like a lot of manga. But this is a case of two great tastes coming together like dirt. There are many problems with this book. For one, the art is not consistent. The same characters on one page look completely different on the next. Even the cover with Death looks unlike the design for Death on the inside! Everyone seems more like a distortion of many different anime styles. It's a nice effort but it seems wasted, when the forced style looks just like something small press publishers in America would have put out in the early 1990's. In other words, it looks unprofessional compared to Jill's beautiful Scary Godmother. This book is more like fan art. Overall, I have to wonder why she even made this book in such a forced style when she could have done something more like her Little Endless Storybook, a cute "anime-like" style that still looks like Jill Thompson's best, not so forced and hard on the eyes like this one. I guess DC Comics wanted to hit the "manga" band wagon like Marvel, but man, it just hurts to look at. "Real manga" is about individual expression, not just inconsistently copying what's been done before. Jill Thompson could have just made this whole book in her regular style and and it would have been more of a "real manga" than this.
I suppose the writing is nice, but the art made we want to hold it at a distance. This is an "American Manga" done wrong.
Rating:
Summary: What happens with this book is weird
Review: I like Sandman a lot, I like Death a lot. I sometimes like manga. However, there's something not quite right about this book. It may be seeing the Endless lose their temper, it may be the many many pages without such a good story, or it may be the use of cheap blinks at sandman fans just to win them over but without really making good use of stuff like, for example, green mouse and telephone icecream. Dream screaming may have done it for me. From that moment on I just didn't take the book or the story too seriously and I ended up having more fun with it. After all, it is what it says it is: A party at Death's door held pretty much by Delirium... What would you expect?
Don't get me wrong, I liked the book. Some of the drawings, especially of Death, are great, and I laughed at the jokes about the perky goth girl. It's just that I think the book isn't really at Sandman level and I expected a bit more from Jill Thompson (though I do give her points for drawing AND writing it) because it sometimes looked like fanfic.
Still, a Sandman fan must. (Though I certainly do not crave for a second part (it says "N° 1" on the cover))
Rating:
Summary: What happens with this book is weird
Review: I like Sandman a lot, I like Death a lot. I sometimes like manga. However, there's something not quite right about this book. It may be seeing the Endless lose their temper, it may be the many many pages without such a good story, or it may be the use of cheap blinks at sandman fans just to win them over but without really making good use of stuff like, for example, green mouse and telephone icecream. Dream screaming may have done it for me. From that moment on I just didn't take the book or the story too seriously and I ended up having more fun with it. After all, it is what it says it is: A party at Death's door held pretty much by Delirium... What would you expect?
Don't get me wrong, I liked the book. Some of the drawings, especially of Death, are great, and I laughed at the jokes about the perky goth girl. It's just that I think the book isn't really at Sandman level and I expected a bit more from Jill Thompson (though I do give her points for drawing AND writing it) because it sometimes looked like fanfic.
Still, a Sandman fan must. (Though I certainly do not crave for a second part (it says "N° 1" on the cover))
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