The story examines the relationship between images of an imagined World Apocalypse and the experience of one man's personal, individual apocalypse. In it a film-maker learns he is suffering from a terminal illness, and imagines a last film which he will never have time to make before he dies. There have been two adaptations of the graphic novel into other media: in 1996, Gaiman adapted his own story for a BBC radio broadcast, with music by McKean; and in 1999, a stage adaptation written by Marc Rosenbush and Robert Toombs was mounted in Chicago with Gaiman's cooperation.