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This recent question stirred a vague memory.

I'm sure it is a different work to the one in the linked thread. It was a comic, not prose.

Basically, I have an image of someone cutting away someone's shadow with a big pair of scissors, then rolling up the shadow and putting it in his pocket.

I think it must have been somewhere between 1990-2000 that I read it.

I'm pretty sure it was a short story. Single issue, or just a few pages. Or a minor subplot if it was in a longer story.

It may have been in 2000AD, or Neil Gaiman's Sandman. But I can't swear to it.

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    This stirred a memory in me as well. I didn't read Sandman during that time, but I was an avid 2000AD reader (as well as JDM) during the 90s, so it may have been in there.
    – GeoffAtkins
    Commented Feb 9, 2022 at 13:13
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    This sounds familiar to me too. I think the one doing the cutting was a Joker/Jester type figure
    – Dragonel
    Commented Feb 9, 2022 at 16:43
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    In Sandman: Brief Lives, a character known as the Alder Man cuts off his shadow and has it pretend to be him (while he hides as a bear)
    – Valorum
    Commented Feb 9, 2022 at 18:31
  • That's a pretty common trope. If you want it narrow like that, than what Valorum said.
    – Mithoron
    Commented Feb 9, 2022 at 19:45
  • The Alder Man chews his shadow off, and the shadow then walks off on its own. Your description, on the other hand, reminds of a scene from Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, though it's a feature-length animation. But maybe the same scene was present in a manga of whatnot
    – Gallifreyan
    Commented Feb 10, 2022 at 17:47

2 Answers 2

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The Sandman, Brief Lives, chapter 3 (issue 44) has something similar. In it, the alder man (a sort of laponic shaman) realizes that he is about to die if he remains human. So he transforms into a bear then claws and eats part of his own shadow, to sever it from himself.

Alder man picture one

Then his shadow walk in his shape, in an attempt to fool death.

Alder man 2

In one of the later issues, Fates use scissors to cut a thread of life.

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  • Interesting. I don't think that's what I remember. But thanks for the suggestion.
    – Pete
    Commented Mar 21, 2022 at 9:33
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This was an element in a storyline in Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol.

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    Can you pinpoint any specific issues? This would be a much better answer with more details, or best of all, some actual frames from the comic.
    – DavidW
    Commented Feb 19, 2022 at 4:50
  • Thanks for the suggestion. I've never read Doom Patrol, so I don't think that's it.
    – Pete
    Commented Feb 19, 2022 at 11:13

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