I gifted my niece a copy of The Wee Free Men to get her started with Tiffany Aching. Discworld is a great place to spend some leisure time. For me, this means that I can enjoy it a lot when in the right mood but tend to know right away if I am in the mood for it or not. I agree with your summation about Pratchett's trust of his readers. I really like this and I like how he conveys that it is supposed to be a fun, if wandering visit for the reader and not a labor the way that some lesser writers can make their digressions.

I like your interpretation of Desire and Despair arising out of the garden incident. As to Delight/Delirium, perhaps. I think we later get an indication that the change occurred more recently. One hypothesis is that the change is related to the changing relationship between the "normal" world (with its superheroes and whatnot!) and the home of the fey; interactions have become rarer and often more tragic. It will be good to get your take as things progress.

I had forgotten about those ads, so thank you for posting them! The smirk that Dream has in the first one, coupled with his red eyes, does evoke quite a bit of horror. Which is somewhat in contrast to how we first encounter Dream in the comic itself (trapped in his globe). As to the versions we are working off of, we both have collections from the late 90s and early 2000s as well as the Omnibus. I think the Omnibus has the same re-done art as you are seeing in the Absolute collections. In some later episodes we do talk some about the difference that some of the coloring makes (it can change the tone in many panels, I think), although I agree with you that generally the re-color tends to look better in many instances.

Great catch on Death as change in the Tarot; that's a really good point. Until this issue, we've seen Dream somewhat "on rails." He was a captive and then he tried to recover the physical items that were taken from him, but now he is left without the clear next step of going after the next McGuffin on his grocery list. Having to actually decide on what to do with himself now that he doesn't have a clear next step leads him to be kind of miserable until he is forced to walk (float?) along with the other shoes (boots?) of his sister, the change agent made manifest. As we work our way through the series, I think it will be interesting to think about when Dream is affirmatively making choices/taking actions vs. someone/thing else pushing/pulling him along. Alan Moore's Swamp Thing would be a great project. Either as a standalone or alternating with other great works from Moore. I'm envisioning the enjoyable whiplash of switching between his Swamp thing and Promethea or Top Ten.