Hob Gadling

In the Sandman comics sequence described in source summaries, Hob Gadling is a mortal Englishman first encountered in 1389 at a tavern (the White Horse) in the area that will become London's East End. After Hob argues that he will not accept death, Death encourages her brother Dream to listen to him; Dream and Hob then reach an arrangement in which Dream agrees to allow Hob to continue living and to meet him again at the same inn every one hundred years. The arrangement is presented in the narratives as an interpersonal pact between human (Hob) and personified figures (Death and Dream) rather than as a conventional mythic origin or magical rite recorded with procedural detail in the sources.

Canonical descriptions in the provided sources are limited but consistent: Hob is portrayed as a man of middling height and is repeatedly recognizable across centuries. Neil Gaiman has said he based Gadling's speech pattern on the British actor Bob Hoskins, and summaries note Hob as having slightly receding red hair in visual portrayals. Beyond these notes, the sources emphasize that he is a recognizable, pragmatic Englishman rather than supplying an exhaustive, fixed physical catalog — his look is evoked across eras rather than defined by a single costume or set of attributes in the cited summaries.

Hob's principal anomalous attribute is persistent longevity/non‑aging: he continues to live across centuries and appears at agreed centurial meetings in 1389, 1489, 1589, 1689, 1789, 1889 and 1989 as recounted in the available summaries. He is not described as possessing inherent supernatural powers beyond this externally arranged continued life; otherwise he functions as a pragmatic human — soldier, printer, merchant, sailor — whose skills and behaviors are mundane. He forms a long-term friendship with Dream, requests favors (including asking for a resurrection which Dream refuses), and over time exhibits moral reflection and regret for past actions (for example, involvement in the Atlantic slave trade is noted and later regretted). Dream occasionally intervenes in human affairs (for instance, making the killer of a loved one aware in dreams), but such interventions are presented as favors by an anthropomorphic personification rather than as Hob's own powers.