Unlike most personifications of death, she also visits people as they are born, according to Destruction in the Sandman Special: The Song of Orpheus.

In The Sandman, Death instead appears as an attractive, pale goth girl dressed in casual clothes — often a black top and jeans.

Blackest Night has resolved this apparent contradiction or ambiguity, with Nekron no longer being referred to as an aspect of death but instead as a construct formed of darkness in response to the emerging light of the emotional spectrum.

A more traditional version of Death, a skeleton in a bluish or purplish cloak, appeared as a host in such DC titles as Weird Mystery Tales, House of Secrets, Ghosts, Weird War Tales (including being in the story in issue #94), DC Comics Presents #29, etc.

Superman referred to the earlier Death with the term "Grim Reaper", so perhaps that could be regarded as a distinct character.

Death first appeared as a woman in The Witching Hour #56 (July 1975) in a tale told by Mordred (written by Carl Wessler and illustrated by Ruben Yandoc).

Maggie is blonde and bears only minor physical resemblance to Gaiman and Dringenberg's version, though her compassionate nature is a similarity.

The current incarnation of Death first appeared in the final chapter of Sandman's first story arc Preludes and Nocturnes, "The Sound of Her Wings", (issue #8) where she gave Dream direction and a degree of understanding.

At the end of the ninth Sandman story arc The Kindly Ones, there is a lengthy and noteworthy appearance from Death, in which she finally brings her brother peace.

According to Gaiman, the initial visual design of Death was based on a friend of Dringenberg's named Cinamon Hadley.

[9] From The Sandman Companion: Death is the only major character whose visuals didn't spring from me; that credit goes to Mike Dringenberg.

Later that day, Dave McKean and I went to dinner in Chelsea at the My Old Dutch Pancake House and the waitress who served us was a kind of vision.

[2] Death is an incomprehensibly powerful entity having been shown (in a flashback in Brief Lives) to be virtually omniscient and able to intimidate the Furies, who show no fear of the other Endless, simply by raising her voice in The Kindly Ones.

A brief glimpse of her realm can also be seen in The Little Endless Storybook, when Barnabas visits her, although this time in her "apartment suite".

Gaiman reportedly took issue with this depiction, feeling that portraying her as merely an aspect of death diminished her importance.

In Endless Nights (2003) Gaiman shows Death several billion years ago, with a markedly different personality — forbidding and joyless.

She also appears in The Books of Magic (first volume, 1991, also written by Gaiman) at the very end of time, where her function is to set things in order and close the universe down.

2 #3-4), in which she lets Timothy Hunter hang out at her house and hold her teddy bear, Cavendish, while he is recovering from the venom of the Manticore.

She also appeared in Mike Carey's Lucifer series when the eponymous main character was wounded and nearly died.

In Madame Xanadu, the title character calls out to her while chained up and denied access to her youth potions during the French Revolution.

Gaiman helped write Death's dialogue to ensure that her characterization remained consistent with The Sandman.

In the AIDS-awareness eight-page comic Death Talks About Life by Gaiman and McKean (which was first included in various Vertigo titles, and later released as a stand-alone giveaway pamphlet), Death demonstrates safe sex by placing a condom on a banana held by John Constantine.

Marvel's version of Death appears alternatively as a coldly beautiful woman in a purple robe or a walking skeleton (sometimes male and sometimes female in form, depending upon the context).