The Sandman (1939 comic series)
The Sandman is the title of a series of comic books published by the American publisher National Publications between 1939 and 1953.
The comics in the series tell the adventures of the millionaire Wesley Dodds, who - armed with a suit, a wide-brimmed hat, a gas mask and an arsenal of narcotic gases (from which he owes his name) - goes on the hunt for criminals. In terms of genre, the stories are almost without exception a mixture of science fiction and adventure.
In terms of publication history, The Sandman comics are regarded as the predecessors of the Sandman series created by Neil Gaiman , which has been published by DC Comics , the successor to National Publications, since 1989 .
Release dates
The first Sandman story was published in the 40th issue of the Adventure Comics series in July 1939 . The makers of this story and creators of the character were the writer Gardner Fox and the illustrator Bert Christman .
Until 1953, National Publications published further stories in the series, which were printed in addition to the Adventure Comics in the All Star Comics series . In addition, another Sandman story appeared in the comic book New York World's Fair Comics on the occasion of the 1939 World's Fair .
Mort Weisinger was one of the later authors of the series, and Paul Norris , Jack Kirby and Creig Flessel should also be highlighted among the series’s illustrators .
In the 1990s, DC published almost seventy other stories about the character in the series Sandman Mystery Theater , which were designed by the author and illustrator Matt Wagner . The issues of this series, which ran from May 1993 to February 1999, were tailored to an adult audience, and accordingly appeared in DCs- "Mature Reader Label" Vertigo . The stories of Mystery Theater were visually in the style of film noir and took place in the 1930s. The One Shot Sandman Midnight Theater , presented by Neil Gaiman in 1995, can finally be seen as the link between the "old" Sandman comics about Wesley Dodds and the new Sandman comics about the Gaiman created modern Sandman character. In this issue, Dodd and Morpheus, the personification of sleep, the main character in Gaiman's Sandman stories, meet in London in the 1930s.
Plot and main character
At the heart of the Sandman comics is Wesley Dodds (Wesley Bernard "Wes" Dodds), a soigned millionaire with an amazing knowledge of biochemistry, and especially an expert on all questions related to dreams and sleep.
Plagued by prophetic dreams, Dodds finally begins to hunt criminals at night as a vigilante practicing vigilante under the code name "Sandman". To do this, he equips himself with a special pistol with which he can spray sleep gases developed by himself in order to eliminate his opponents. In order to hide his secret identity and to protect himself from his own gases, he usually wears a gas mask around his face. Instead of the brightly colored costume common in superhero comics, he dresses in a suit in most of the Sandman stories. The exception to this are some Sandman stories from the early 1940s, in which he temporarily wears a conventionally colorful (yellow-purple), tight-fitting superhero outfit (from Adventure Comics # 69, December 1941).
In the original Sandman stories, Dodds is initially supported by his partner Dian Belmont - an astonishingly independent and assertive woman when measured against the dominant female role model of the "woman in need" in American comics of the 1940s - who gives him advice and action stands. Belmont later dies and is replaced in her role as Dodd's right-hand man by her nephew (Sandy Hawkins), who plays Sandy, the Golden Boy in Dodd's Sidekick , i.e. the usual junior partner of a superhero, similar to Batman's Robin or Flash's Kid Flash, becomes. In other stories, Dodds is nicknamed "Grainy Gladiator", joins the Justice Society of America superhero team and fights the Axis powers during World War II.
The stories of the series Sandman Mystery Theater from the 1990s, in contrast, illuminate the character by playing back Sandman's superhero aspects, especially from the perspective of a mystery material, by letting him experience detective and scary stories that are part of their content , their optics and their narrative style (both the writing style and the visual language) are closely based on the detective films of the "Black Series", which revolve around mysterious entanglements.
In the comic book JSA Seceret Files & Origins # 1 from 1999 it is finally described how old Wesley Dodds commits suicide after the death of his wife and in order not to fall into the hands of the villain Mordru .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Her death was subsequently "withdrawn" in later stories and declared invalid or "out of continuity".