Sandman Mystery Theatre Compendium One!

For all its popularity, I've never read Sandman from DC...with a few exceptions. I've read the Golden Age stories by Simon and Kirby and the later reboot by that same team. I've read a few of the Golden Age stories by other talents as well. And I've read a few installments of the DC/Vertigo series Sandman Mystery Theatre. I was searching for some variety in the 1990's in my comics reading after years of steady Marvel consumption and found this weird dark comic among many others. It deals with the established Golden Age hero but transforms him into an exceedingly mortal Wesley Dodds, living in a gritty urban environment filled with crime and bizarre murder. Dodds gets dreams and is forced to act upon those bewildering messages, to find the answers and solve the puzzles those dreams present. He is aided by Dian Belmont, the daughter of the District Attorney and in many ways the center of many of the stories. All the stories with a few exceptions are transmitted in four-issue arcs, giving the creators a good expansive canvas to spin their creepy yarns. 

The first four-issue tale is titled The Tarantula and offers up an exceedingly creepy series of murders and tortures committed by a weird, hooded individual. We meet a strange family and realize they are connected in perverse ways to the deaths. It's in this first sequence that we first meet Wesley Dodds, a wealthy man fresh from the Orient who is taking over his recently deceased father's expansive businesses. He's a quiet, even meek man who puts on a gas mask and invades city hall to gather data for his investigations. We meet Dian Belmont, a well-to-do young woman who is seeking not only pleasure but meaning and she and Wesley seem attracted to one another. Also on hand in this first one is police detective Lieutenant Burke, a hard-nosed racist and sexist cop who brings a distinct edge to the storytelling. All the stories in the series were written by Matt Wagner and Steven T. Seagle and drawn by Guy Davis, with some exceptions I will take note of as necessary. 

The Face shifts the action into Chinatown and involves both Dian Belmont and The Sandman with the Tongs. Actually, the villain is a killer who can shift his looks. We learn a great deal about Dian and about her former romances. The art by John Watkiss offers the reader a much more idealized hero than Guy Davis presented. 

The Brute gets The Sandman involved with the boxing game, in particular with a boxer named Ramsey who refuses to take a dive and is forced to flee with his ill daughter to escape the revenge of some mobsters. The titular "Brute" in this story is an enforcer with a particular secret. This story does an excellent job of counterpointing the extreme poverty present in the 30's with the creature comforts of the world both Dian and Wesley inhabit. The art on this sequence was by R.G. Taylor. 

The Vamp focuses on Dian Belmont again, this time her friends. Bodies drained of blood are turning up all over the city and getting to the bottom of this lurid mystery is The Sandman's focus. The repressive social morals of the era are highlighted in a story which gives us a villain who operates as do so many from pain and regret. 

The Scorpion brings the "Wild West" into the urban world of The Sandman. We are treated to a range of characters, from country singers to grasping oil executives. Wesley is pressured to participate in a financial scheme he has grave doubts about, meanwhile as The Sandman he attempts to stop a killer who leaves a scorpion brand and uses scorpion venom to slay his victims. 

The Sandman Mystery Theatre Annual is a treat as we get many chapters focusing on a mugger in Central Park. Each chapter gets a distinctive artist all its own. The talents in this one are John Bolton, David Lloyd, George Pratt, Alex Ross, Peter Snejbjerg, Stefano Gaudiano, as well as regular series artist Guy Davis. 

Dr. Death offers us a killer who uses perverse medical skills to do in his victims. The social ill focused on in this sequence is sexism and the brutality of men to women. These issues are counterpointed nicely by the increasingly complex relationship between Dian and Wesley. 

The Butcher, as the name implies, is to date the most gruesome of the sequences in the series. It is in fact the first of the storylines I followed back in the 90's when I plugged into the series. Burke gets a focus as he attempts to bring to ground a brutal killer who seems to wander the city at will unseen. What he leaves behind is nauseating. The Sandman is up against it when he finally has to confront the killer. 

The Hourman is about exactly what you think it's about. The broader DC Universe is tapped into as Rex "Tick Tock" Tyler debuts in the series as "The Man of the Hour". I've always liked Hourman and it was nifty to see this "origin" story. Tyler is a man who seems to genuinely want to help people with the talents his "Miraclo Pill" has granted him. He is unclear how to do that. He and Sandman do a proper team up and it's great to see. 

The Python closes out this first of two volumes reprinting the series. The Sandman finds himself investigating a strange series of bizarre strangulations, and the search takes him into the world of celebrity and the health industry. Dian for her part becomes integral to the story when she ends up at a remote health farm, one in which clothing is optional. It's all handled with taste. The art for this sequence was produced by Warren Pleece. 

I haven't commented on the covers for these stories. Art and photography are combined by Gavin Wilson for all the covers with the assistance of Richard Bruning on some. These offbeat covers give the series a bizarre but distinctive look. I'm not sure how effective they were, because I likely hesitated originally on the series by judging the book by its covers. I've come to appreciate them more as the years have rolled by. 

More to come in volume two later this month. 

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Night Raven - From The Marvel UK Vaults!

Where Brooding Darkness 

Spreads Its Evil Wings 

The Night Raven Stings!

That is the mysterious and ominous message left by Night Raven after he's put an end to some injustice he comes across in his nightly patrols in the big city. It's the olden times of crime run wild in the streets as honest men and women must pay protection to keep the wolves from their throats. Extortionists, robbers and murderers prowl the night, but they are not alone. The Night Raven is an avenger in the style of the classic pulp heroes who hidden behind his mask stalks the villainy that makes civilized life so difficult. His adventures are gathered together in Night Raven - From the UK Vaults. 

Created by Dez Skinn, the character's adventures were written by Steve Parkhouse and drawn by David Lloyd. Lloyd had yet to create his masterpiece V for Vendetta when this strip started in the back pages of Hulk Comic in 1979. The stories are short punchy events told in three-page snapshots. In the earliest yarns the Night Raven, who is given no origin nor any secret identity, puts stop to gangsters seeking them out in their haunts as they play cards or hide. He hunts them down when they try to run protection scams on innocent shopkeepers and murder to enforce their terror. In later tales he is hunted down by a paid assassin but is able to win the day barely in the end. Lloyd drew all these tales, but artist John Bolton takes over when Night Raven goes up against a "Dragon Lady" and her deadly Tong. As masterful as Bolton is, Lloyd's version of the character is definitive to my eye. Borrowing shtick from the pulp hero The Spider (slapping deadly brands on the foreheads of criminals), this comic book character is in the grand tradition of The Shadow. 

I first read the adventures of Night Raven in the 1990 Marvel Graphic Novel which gathered his first adventures from the pages of Hulk Comic numbers one through twenty. It's a slim read, coming in at a mere sixty pages. Since that time a new graphic novel has been created as well as other appearances of Night Raven as a guest star. But this is clearly a character who works best in his original milieu, the savage streets of a city writhing with crime. 

I didn't really have much of an idea what had happened to the Night Raven in the prose pages of many British publications. The idea of a comic was abandoned and driving right the roots of the character, his nightly adventures were presented in prose form with spot illustrations. These are grity stories, deep in character. Stories are told form multiple viewpoints, almost never Night Raven's. We see his deadly struggle against crime as things get more brutal. We learn that he is poisoned by his arch-enemy but that the poison also gives him immortality but at the cost of immense pain. We follow Night Raven through the decades, as he struggles to keep his sanity and fulfill his mission. There are stories by the likes of Alan Moore and Jamie Delano, among others. These were of surprising quality as I'm used to dismissing text in comics, but here are solid noir tales that would've been welcomed in many a pulp magazine back in the day. 

I came to this collection because of the great comics, but I recommend it mostly now because of the outstanding short stories. 

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MiracleMan Book Two: The Red King Syndrome!

The Red King Syndrome is the title of the second "Book" of Miracleman stories and focuses on our hero's conflict with his creator Emil Gargunza. In the fanciful Marvelman comics of the 50's Gargunza was the Dr. Sivana figure, a gnomish scientist with everlasting evil intent, and in these new tales for a fresh audience in the 80's he's not changed all that much. His motivations have deepened, he's a product of the Fascist states and now has his own agenda to breed superhumans so that he somehow will be able to live forever. He is a ghastly and bloodthirsty figure as presented in these stories, a man utterly concerned with his own wants to the utter exclusion of all others. Not all our characters will survive this tribulation. 

While Miracleman is attempting to save his pregnant wife from the clutches of the mad doctor, Johnny Bates is dealing with his own demon, Kid Miracleman. We are privy to his mind as the two personalities vie for control. The extended story ends with a birth which is presented in quite graphic terms. Not unlike the exploitation movies of the 30's these scenes merely show the biological process, but nonetheless require a warning for readers who might be shocked by such imagery. 

The artwork in these stories is passed among several diverse hands. Alan Davis handles the thrust of the first several chapters, but he is replaced by Chuck Austen who is in turn supplanted by Rick Veitch. John Ridgeway also delivers a very winsome story starring the late Young Marvelman. 

The last Warrior magazine to feature "Marvelman" in a painting by Mick Austen. 

The series moves past its Warrior magazine origins and slips over to Eclipse Comics who reprint the earlier chapters before beginning new material changing the name to "Miracleman". These books feature cover art by Jim Starlin, Paul Gulacy, Tim Truman and John Totleben among others. 

The Red King Syndrom was collected in this handsome volume touting a John Bolton cover. 

Marvel reprinted the stories decades later with mostly Alan Davis covers thought others took part as well. These stories are for mature audiences for the graphic representation of both life and death. A comic book hovers dangerously close to real life, the fantasy becomes almost too potent for many. Good stuff indeed! 

Next time we visit Olympus!

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