Episode #090: Sandman Mystery Theater
A lot of comics we think of as “Vertigo books”—including Sandman, Swamp Thing, and Hellblazer—started life under the DC Comics banner, but Sandman Mystery Theatre was the first ongoing series designed with the new mature-readers imprint in mind. We begin with a brief history of Vertigo and then segue into how Matt Wagner and Guy Davis piggybacked off the Sandman brand to create a sideways spinoff, influenced more by film noir and gritty pulp magazines than dark fantasy. Wagner and Davis reimagine the gasmask-wearing Golden Age avenger as a bookish young sleuth who’d rather sneak in and out of a crime scene than get into a fistfight. The series is uncompromising in depicting the brutality and injustice of a New York City caught between the Great Depression and World War II, but it’s also one of comics’ greatest love stories, depicting progressive intellectual Wesley Dodds’ evolving relationship with Dian Belmont, a young woman searching for an outlet for her growing social conscience.
Discussed in this episode: Sandman Mystery Theatre #1-16 (containing “The Tarantula,” “The Face,” “The Brute,” and “The Vamp”)
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