I swear, this idea came to me as an April Fool's joke. Changing the topic and design of my Black Canary blog for one day and reviewing some random issue of Sandman Mystery Theatre. I had some time to kill, so I made up a new header design that I liked. Really liked. As in, didn't want to waste it on a single day.
It took about ninety seconds for the flight of fancy to break orbit as a full-blown idea. A blog for the Golden Age Sandman. I barely had enough time for the one blog I already ran, and now I wanted to double that workload? Not a chance!
But there was a compromise: updating the blog weekly instead of daily, using it to complement Flowers & Fishnets rather than rival it. And so Sandman Saturday was born. Every weekend starting in January, I'll review an issue of DC/Vertigo's Sandman Mystery Theatre or one of the classic Wesley Dodds tales from the Golden Age.
Enjoy reading... and pleasant dreams!
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| Sandman by Francesco Francavilla. |
I must confess I don't really know all that much about the Sandman...of course we al know Jack 'King' Kirby's influence on creating him when he had that purple and yellow costume and had a kid sidekick Sandy.
ReplyDeleteMy first [only? It was a long time ago] exposure to the Sandman was back in the 70s in an old JLA Super-Spectacular, when some monster escaped from a galss cage and the Sandman [in his gas mask and overcoat combo] tried to stop the JLA from hurting him, because the monster was his sidekick Sandy, somehow transformed [I forget the specific details].
My second Sandman appearance was in Wonder Woman 300 in 1983, and I believe this was a different Sandman altogether, not Wesley Dodds. This version came in for some criticism for Keith Giffen changing his origin due to a popular movie coming out at the time, and DC editor Karen Berger opposing it but it went ahead anyway, not sure what all that was about.
The character's history in the '70s and '80s is pretty confusing. Kirby and Simon created an entirely different character in the early '70s, who was then retconned by Roy Thomas, and then retconned again by someone else. His identity changed multiple times. At one point, Hawkman's son, Hector Hall, was the Sandman before he took over for Doctor Fate.
ReplyDeleteIt was all overly complicated, and I probably won't touch on that part of his history unless I'm still doing this blog in three years and I've run out of Wesley Dodds material to cover.
Yes that's the thing that always confuses me - Hector Hall...I can never recall if he was Hawkman;s son or Wesley's and why he took over as the new Doctor Fate, the connections are a bit obscure.
ReplyDeleteI've only read some of All-Star Squadron and none of Infinity, Inc. so a lot of the JSA legacy characters are vague or confusing to me.
ReplyDeleteI highly recommend Sandman Mystery Theatre, though. You can get most of the issues in collected editions or digitally on ComiXology for $1.99 US.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Count
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