Hob Gadling
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Hob Gadling is a fictional character from the Sandman comic book by Neil Gaiman .
Gadling first appears in issue 13, vol 2, as a soldier of the Hundred Years War, arguing with friends in an inn somewhere inside the modern borders of London. He is arguing that, if he refuses to die, he will have eternal life; dying is merely a habit of mind, something people do because everybody does it. This catches the ear of Dream and Death, passing by for reasons not explicitly stated, but which can be guessed by a fragment of their conversation: Death wants to show her brother the way of mortal life, which she knows from the day she spends as mortal once a century. Death agrees, at her brother's request, to grant Gadling eternal life. Dream justifies his whim stating that 'it might be amusing', but it becomes clear in the course of the story that his true purpose is to find a friend. In the ensuing conversation, Gadling agrees to meet Dream in the same inn once every hundred years.
The remainder of the issue recounts the five meetings of Dream and Gadling. Gadling becomes rich, gets married and knighted, falls in disgrace after the premature death of his wife and child, enters the slave trade to become rich for the second time, and exits it when Dream shows him the immorality of it. The first and last meetings each have a scene where snippets of conversation around the inn can be seen; though the scenes are in 1389 and 1989 respectively, the conversations are very similar. For example, "No, of course the plague isn't God's punishment" matches "Don't be a pillock, Darren, of course AIDS isn't a punishment from God." This statement of 'the more things change, the more they stay the same' is echoed in the penultimate issue in Daniel's Latin phrase: "Omnia mutantur, nihil interit" (everything changes, yet nothing is truly lost).
Gadling violates a major cliché of fantastical stories: physical immortality almost invariably turns out to be a curse in disguise, with the recipient eventually longing for death. To Gadling, however, it is a blessing; some speculated that perhaps only Death has the power to bestow immortality without unpleasant strings attached, but in fact there is a number of other immortal men in The Sandman, and they usually appear to be quite satisfied with their condition. Thus, it appears a major belief of Neil Gaiman, or at least an important foundation of the series, that men can in fact appreciate an unnaturally long life.