World's End is the seventh story arc and eighth volume of The Sandman (1989), covering issues 51 to 56.
Brant Tucker is an ordinary Seattle native driving with his colleague Charlene through the night. When an uncharacteristic snowstorm crashes their car, Brant and Charlene find themselves at the mysterious inn called the World's End, where they encounter other fantastical creatures from other times and worlds awaiting the end of the "reality storm". The group tells stories to pass the time. An older man called Gaheris tells a tale of a man who lived in a city, who becomes entrapped in his city's dreams ("A Tale of Two Cities").
The Cluracan tells the next story. He is sent to the once glorious Ancient Rome-like city of Aurelia to represent Faerie and prevent the formation of an alliance. After being imprisoned and rescued by Morpheus, he rouses the people of Aurelia into a rebellion against their power-hungry leader ("Cluracan's Tale").
The next tale is told by Jim, a teenager from 1914. After running away and riding on various sea voyages, he encounters Hob Gadling on a ship called the Sea Witch en route from Bombay to England. On the ship, an Indian stowaway tells a story about a king who was given a fruit that would bestow immortality among its eater. The fruit passed hands until it ended up back with the king, who ate it, abdicated, then left. The crew survives a storm, then a sighting of a sea serpent. When they dock in Aden, Hob admits to Jim that he owns the ship, and that he knows Jim is a girl ("Hob's Leviathan").
The fourth story is told to Brant by a mysterious Asian traveler. In an alternate universe, Richard Nixon is succeeded as POTUS by an idealistic and charismatic 19-year-old named Prez Rickard. Prez accomplishes a lot, but is haunted by the mysterious Boss Smiley. After his fiancee is killed by a woman obsessed with Ted Grant, Prez declines Smiley's offer to resurrect her, quietly retires, and eventually dies. Morpheus allows him to wander different worlds after his death ("The Golden Boy").
The final stories deal with the Necropolis Litharge, a city dedicated to death and funerals. Petrefax, a "prentice" from this city, tells stories told to him by other masters. Hangman Billy Scutt maneuvers his way into a natural death. Destruction tells the residents that the first Necropolis was destroyed for failing to properly arrange the funeral of the first Despair. Another master tells of Mistress Veltis, who had four other tales to tell ("Cerements").
In the end, the inn's visitors observe a grandiose funeral, attended by the Endless and other supernatural beings. Charlene and Petrefax decide not to return to their worlds, while Brant tells a bartender that he has no record of the experience other than his memories ("World's End").
Tropes:
- Actionized Adaptation: Invoked. Cluracan swears his story really happened except for his dashing sword fight, which he embellished with since he thought the story was otherwise boring.
- Adipose Rex: Mairon, the unpleasant and power-hungry political and spiritual leader of Aurelia, is drawn obese, wrinkly, and covered in acne.
- Art Shift: Each story is told in a different art style.
- Broken Aesop: Invoked. The Kipling-quoting "Indian Gentleman" tells his companions a tale he hopes will "prove" that women are inherently evil in "Hob's Leviathan." But, as Hob and Jim point out, the sum Aesop of the story seems to be more along the lines of "men and women are both capable of deeply hurting each other."
- Cold Iron: The fae Cluracan is imprisoned in Aurelia with cold iron.
- Cosmic Horror Story: "A Tale of Two Cities", the first story in Worlds' End, is consciously told in the style of a Lovecraftian ghost story (it even uses the word "cyclopean"). The Eldritch Abomination that it reveals is of a particularly surprising, and unsettling, nature: the city itself, whose dreams he winds up trapped in, and by extension ALL cities. "I fear what will happen when the cities wake up" indeed.
- Darker and Edgier: "The Golden Boy" is essentially a darker retelling of Prez.
- Eagleland: The theme of "The Golden Boy". An idealistic 19-year-old becomes president and accomplishes a great deal: he solves the energy crisis, investigates corporate pollution, reduce the deficit, stops the arms race, and even gets John Belushi clean. He is so beloved by Americans that there are efforts to keep him ruling in perpetuity, which he declines. After his death he is widely mourned and in the afterlife becomes the embodiment of what America could be (the American Dream, if you will).
- Genius Loci: "A Tale of Two Cities" posits that cities are living entities of some sort that can dream.
- High-Class Call Girl: The woman who gives the fruit back to the king is clarified to be a courtesan, not a "raggedy-ass prostitute".
- Homage: As stated in the introduction to the collection, World's End was an attempt to emulate The Canterbury Tales, where different people tell different stories in each installment.
- Inn Between the Worlds: The World's End inn is one of four where people lost in spatial-temporal abnormalities and supernatural creatures with more control over their destinations eat, drink, and share stories. It passes the time.
- Insistent Terminology: Boss Smiley informs Prez that "[he's] not God, [he's] not the devil, [he's] just Boss Smiley."
- Multinational Team: Jim describes the crew of the Sea Witch (a German, a Norwegian, a group of black men from Africa, America, and the West Indies, an Irishman, a Scotsman, and an American) as being from every land under the sun.
- Mystical India: The story-within-a-story of Jim's tale is set in the court of an Indian king, where a fakir gives him a fruit that can make him live forever.
- Nested Story: Every issue has at least one story told by a character within it, and some of these stories have stories within them.
- The story about the city was told by a man Gaheris met.
- Jim tells a story of an Indian king who tells another story.
- Prentice Petrefax tells of a campfire where each master there told a story. The final one was about a woman who told even more stories.
- Finally, the entire anthology is being told by Brant to a bartender.
- Only One Name: Klaproth.Brant: Is that your first name, or your last?
Klaproth: Just Klaproth. - Reality Is Unrealistic: In-Universe, when the other characters object to a seemingly miraculous magical event in Cluracan's story and ask how it's possible, he responds: "How should I know? I didn't make it up, I lived it."
- Satanic Archetype: Boss Smiley, who repeatedly appears to Messianic Archetype Prez Rickard and tries to tempt him into serving him. He even offers Prez dominion over the Earth while standing on a hill, a direct parallel to the third temptation in the Gospel of Matthew.
- Sea Serpents: The crew of the Sea Witch encounters a giant green sea serpent in still waters. Jim wants to tell the world at the next dock; Hob doesn't think anyone will believe them and is content to let the matter lie.
- Spiteful Spit: Cluracan speaks a prophecy to Mairon. In response, Mairon hatefully spits on him and throws him into the dungeon.
- Sweet Polly Oliver: Jim, the protagonist of "Hob's Leviation", is a teenage girl who dresses as a boy to go on all sorts of adventures on the sea. An offhand comment by Hob is that she might be the in-universe inspiration for the shanty "The Handsome Cabin Boy".
- Unreliable Expositor: Cluracan insists at length that his story is dry and dull and that he almost shouldn't bother telling it in the first place, then goes on to tell a swashbuckling adventure story about how he deposed a tyrant.
- Unreliable Narrator: Each of the stories in Worlds' End is offered by its teller as ostensibly true, but it's anyone's guess how trustworthy the teller is. Cluracan in particular seems unreliable, and he's deliberately coy about his adding and removing bits of his story to make it flow better; the only thing he outright admits to making up is a random sword-fight with the palace guard in order to spice up the narrative. At the same time, in the story Cluracan is still an amoral ditz and a drunk who gets himself in trouble, requires Dream to save him, and dethrones the ruler out of revenge rather than duty, none of which is out of character.
