u/Dian_Arcane

There's an almost throwaway line in the scene between Larry Belmont and Ross O'Donald where Belmont says he thought Dewey had quashed the unions and O'Donald brings up "Lefke, Gurrah and the whole garment trucking fiasco." The following is all relevant and related to this, I swear. So:

Lefke was the nickname of Louis Buchalter, who rant extortion/protection rackets in the garment district, among many other things. Lefke famously ran an outfit called Murder Inc. where he kept hitmen on retainer and hired them out for a fee to do contract killings. He's also famous for being the only mob boss who was ever executed in the electric chair, but this didn't happen until 1944, so during SMT Lefke would have been alive but incarcerated. Read more about Lefke here:

https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/biography/louis-buchalter

Anyway, Lefke would have been the main spider in this web, while Gurrah was his second-in-command. Borm Jacob Shapiro, but nicknamed "Gurrah" because of people he tried to steal from shouting "Gurrah ("Get out") Jacob" afrer him when he was a teenager. Unlike Lefke, Gurrah was given 15 years to life and died in prison following a heart attack. You can read a contemporary newspaper article about his trial here:

https://www.nytimes.com/1944/05/06/archives/gurrah-in-tears-when-sentenced-racketeer-who-had-others-maimed.html

With the garment district, what those two did was fiendishly clever. They had their people infiltrate the labour unions *and* factory management, which means they could manipulate both sides and create conflict, and famously either threaten huge strikers or actually carry them out. The outcome of this was, as I understand it, that they forced the factory owners to pay them huge sums of protection money to stop the workers from striking.

Now, the Dewey that Larry Belmont refers to was Thomas Dewey, who led the various court cases against them as well as investigating and catching their fellow mob boss Lucky Luciano, whom they had been known to collaborate with. Dewey got Luciano sent to prison, but the catch is that during World War II, the government ended up asking him to use his still-existing connections to the mob to stop the dock workers in New York from striking! Which he did, in exchange for a commuted sentence. So that's another taste of what's to come for the unionized dock workers and their management whom we met in Part One.

You can read about Lucky Luciano here:

https://themobmuseum.org/notable\_names/lucky-luciano/

And about Thomas Dewey here:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-E-Dewey

But in 1939, the unions would be feeling almost invincible. They were free of their mob infiltrators, and only two years earlier, in 1937, workers in the car factories in Flint, Michigan used sit-down strikes inside the factories to force General Motors to recognize their union, the United Auto Workers.

Now, I am wondering if George Cohen, the union boss who hires the Mist through his henchman Happy, might not be based on Lefke. It's the way he wants to keep the Mist/Johnathan Smythe "on the books" as it were, as someone they can call on for a spot of inconspicuous sabotage that reminds me of Murder Inc. And could Happy be a kind of stand-in for Lucky Luciano, who was known to work with Lefke and Gurrah - though never as a henchman/subordinates as Luciano was an extremely high ranking mob boss in his own right. Or maybe he's a kind of conglomerate character, performing Gurrah's function but with a name that was inspired by Luciano?

I would love to know if anyone here has thoughts on this! And if you're an expert on 1930's unions, we would especially love your input here! Same goes if you're a mafia buff!

Note on the pictures: Lefke is on the second set of pictures (mug shots) in the carousel, and Gurrah in on the third.

I find it so poignant and interesting that the Ted Knight we meet in SMT is such a ball of positivity, clearly meant to contract with the version of the character who has worked on the Manhattan Project and is consumed by guilt. It was clearly a deliberate choice, and a very effective one as far as I'm concerned. Just watching Ted do his overexcited presentation for the army committee that Wes has been invited to join, and contrasting that with the broken man we see if James Robinson's Golden Age, is a littlw bit heartbreaking.

But, it's also funny to contrast this with Ted's account of his first meeting with Wesley in Sand and Stars, where he claims they took an instant dislike to each other!

There's a new episode of our favourite podcast out, and this time they're covering the Doctor Death arc:

https://fireandwaterpodcast.com/podcast/justice-society-presents-the-sandman-slept-here-7/

Click on the link and enjoy! Anybody here leaving them reviews, btw? I'm sure they'd love that!

In the melting pot that is the United States, how hard is it to find a native speaker to look over your German dialogue? I'm genuinely curious if this was just impossible for Seagle and Wagner, or if it was just a case of "Well nobody's going to notice if it's wrong". Because as someone who does speak and read German, "Er ist richtig" is completely wrong, ie not "richtig" at all.

You would either say "Er hat recht," meaning "He's right," - literally "He's got it right," OR you would say "Das ist richtig," ie "That's right."

I suspect this was simply carelessness because they also engage in another one of my least favourite things in comics or movies, where "foreign" characters not only speak bad English, they speak bad English *to each other*. In a comic where everything *else* seems to have been researched so well, something that could have been so easily fixed really stands out like a sore thumb.

...or do you think I'm overreacting here?

NOTE: this scene is from the very first scene of the Mist arc.

Page 4 and 5 from issue 37! Note what appears to be the Mist's lost medal from Sand and Stars at rhe bottom of page 5!

In case you are interested in buying these pages, they're from an online art dealer here: https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=476902

Also a quick note about the reread, I am travelling with my kid and wasn't able to bring the next volume along so I am dreadfully behind! Sorry about the delay, but we have definitely not abandoned the reread and I am trying to source a copy from a friend who claims to "have all of it" before I get a digital copy.

In the meantime, do YOU have any thoughts about The Mist and specifically how it ties into Sand and Stars since both OG Starman Ted Knight *and* the Mist show up here?

While SMT has its share of creepy villains, none of them have managed to get under my skin the way the mist has. Anybody else feel like this tioo? It's the teeth for me, that... smile, for lack of a better word. There's just something so damn nightmarish about the Mis storyline t that I've personally only felt reading a few comics, like Garth Ennis' original Crossed series.

Anyway, we get to revisit the Mist now, whee! 😅

Did anyone else notice the, ah, increased size of Wesley's *equipment?* It took me until I'd finished the arc to realise that this was probably Guy Davies' way of showing us (rather than telling us) rhat Wes had upped his game since joining the Justice Society. After all, this story is set *after* the end of SMT, and after Wesley and Dian have returned to America.

It's odd, what we pick up on during re-reads. In my case, it was "That gas gun looks like a super-soaker!"

So I noticed something when re-reading Sand and Stars - they reference the Hourman arc! Wesley tells Jack Knight that he had Jack's father Ted "were never as close as Rex and myself"; implying that Sandman and Hourman really had become friends after their first case together. I checked, and the Hourman arc started on August 10, 1995, while Sand and Stars started in May of 1996. We were so badly deprived when they cancelled this series mid-arc.

Then you have the more spiky relationship between Ted Knight and Wes. It's kind of sad how Ted seems convinced Wes doesn't like him, and in fact resents him for being younger - and meanwhile Wes seems to like Ted just fine, and even talks about their "special bond". It's also kind of sweet how, in the flashback, Wes rushes to Ted's aid, and Ted calls Wes his friend.

It all makes me think of the stories we could have had, when we see Guy Davies drawing Wes in a setting where he's working with the Juice Society. That would have been amazing, and we could almost see them going there in the very final arc, where Hourman shows up again. We were so deprived when they cancelled this series mid-arc.

You ever heard the expression "a murder of crows"? Well. I set out to see if dear old Bagsy was one of those obscure DC characters that had the mothballs blown off them in the 90's... and as far as I can tell, Armitage Hawsley is a bona-fide original to SMT. *However...*

There *are* some other DC characters called Cannon, and although this was meant to be a post discussing Bagsy/The Cannon, I hope you will all find it as funny as I did that we also have:

Peter Cannon, Thunderbolr; a Charlton character who was the direct inspiration for Dr Manhattan.

Henry Cannon, who Peacemaker fans may be interested to know was an antagonist in the Adrian Chase Vigilante series, created by Marv Wolfman, no less.

A 90's extreme style Wildstorm character from Stormwatch. Cannon was his codename; at least he had *that* in common with "our" Cannon.

But now back to Bagsy - love him or hate him? I'm personally in the pro-Bagsy crows; out of the new characters introduced in Midnight Theatre, he was the one I liked best.

Ye gods but I LOVE Teddy Kristiansen's art, what about you?

This link is to a portfolio site of Bruning's, and contains some of the SMT covers with his thoughts about those specific covers.

https://rbruning.myportfolio.com/comic-cover-designs

Keep scrolling and you will see other stuff he's worked on. I thought this might be of interest!

On another note, do any of you know the names of the models Gavin Wilson used to stage these covers?

Here's the reread alternative for everyone who's happier not reading a story that NG has had a hand in.- or by all means, read both if you fancy!

In case you haven't heard about this story, it's another crossover arc - this time in in Starman, which was another title DC published in the 90's. (It concluded in the early 2000's.) Starman is Sandman-adjacent since the original Starman, Ted Knight, was in the Justice Society with Wesley in the Golden Age. In Sand and Stars, it's Ted's son Jack Knight who has become the new Starman. Meanwhile, the Wesley of this continuity is elderly and recovering from a stroke. The two of them team up to solve a case that has links to an old case of Wesley's, which we learn about in flashbacks. And the flashbacks are all drawn by Guy Davies.

I'm excited to reread this as I remember loving it to bits, and finding it completely by accident not knowing it existed. Through Sand and Sfars, I discovered Starman, which has become another favourite series of mine. My memories of this arc are fuzzy but what stands out is Wesley's fortitude and bravery, at the age of... I want to say 90? He absolutely feels like a continuation of the SMT Wesley.

Anyone else have fond or not-so-fond memories of Sand and Stars? Please drop us a comment so we can discuss them! :)

No shade to those of you who are sitting this one out.

Also, please pardon any spoilers to this 30-year-old comic that will pop up here. I'm kind of going on the assumption that most of us have already read it 😉

So, Midnight Theatre in a nutshell: Dian's gone to visit her friend Annabel, now Lady Annabel Forbes-Whitten, in the UK. Her main reasons for going are that, a) while she loves Wes, she desperately needs a break from him and b) she needs to be around people who don't have double lives and secret identities for a while. Let's just say the trip doesn't live up to her expectations, since Wesley follows her to England - ostensibly to investigate the blackmail of his father's friend Linus Bentley that led to Bentley's suicide. But there is also something else pulling him towards the epicentre of the blackmail scheme; a country estate called Fawney Rigg...

What frustrates me, personally, about this standalone story is that it changes nothing. I am guessing that advertising for Midnight Theatre had phrases like, "At last - the Fated First Meeting of the two Sandmen!!" But it just seems meaningless that this meeting, which the series has seemingly been foreshadowing since the very beginning through Wesley's prophetic dreams, makes no genuine difference to Wes or his mission at all. And the same goes for Dian - she hops on that ship because Wes frustrates the everloving bejeezus out of her, but does he change his behaviour in any significant way? Nope. Does she go back to the States with him anyway? Yup. This story reminds me so much of 90's TV shows and how they would always have a magical reset button at the end of every episode. So maybe it's just a product of that era...?

There are plenty of things to love about this mini arc, of course. It's hard not to like Bagsy, but the real star of the show (for me) is Teddy Kristiansen's moody, angular art.

And also - who wrote what, and how much? This is a question that's been on my mind since I pulled every Gaiman-authored trade except Midnight Theatre from my shelves in 2024. It's not like knowing that would change the story in any way, it's not like knowing NG "only" helped with the plotting would make holding onto this book any more or less okay. I just can't stop wondering...

But, what do YOU think about Midnight Theatre? Please let us know in the comments!

Given how some of us might need a little extra time to consider which one to choose for their reread, I am posting this a day early.

A full reread gives you perspective on a series, as in: I personally don't think I *could* skip Midnight Theatre after the scene at the end of the Python with Dian on the ship.

HOWEVER, on kind of a personal note: The Annual had several ads for Sandman graphic novels and whatnot, with Morpheus on all of them. And after cleansing my life and my shelves of anything NG related, including my copy if Midnight Theatre, in 2024, those adds had the effect of a jumpscare.

I am not out to judge anyone and am in fact a bit annoyed at myself for dumping my copy of Midnight Theatre since I'm now going to reread it anyway. I just want to make sure each of you who is taking part in the reread is mindful of their own wellbeing and don't read it if you don't feel it will be good for you.

Sand and Stars is a wonderful crossover featuring an older but no less heroic Wesley Dodds. It's also a great introduction to the 90's/00's Starman series, which I discovered thanks to this crossover. It's a lot of fun, and features Guy Davies' art in all the flashbacks.

Once you decide which one of these to go with for the reread, or if you want to read both, please consider letting me know in the comments to this thread? It would just be nice to get an idea of the numbers.

So how do we feel about this annual? I love it, and feel like it is the perfect annual - a self-contained story in a portable format, the kind that you can slip into your bag when you go on holiday, or bring along to read on a park bench/in your garden if you have one. There's just something very summery and nostalgic to me about an annual, so it feels fitting that this story is set in the summer. In the New York of 1938, the nights are warm, and people are flocking to Central Park even after dark to try and cool down. But there's a mugger in the park who knows to take advantage of this, and his costume is strikingly similar to that of the Sandman...

​

The Annual is divided into 9 chapters, with 8 different artists. Guy Davies opens and closes out the book, which ties it all together in a very neat way. I am including the list of artists from the contents page, and note that this list includes Alex Ross(!). It's a real, ahem, All-Star Squadron of talent.

​

So, what was your favourite chapter? Did you also think that the image in that central pink cloud on the cover was the Sandman? (It's not.) And what did you think about the solution? Or, for that matter, about Burke and DA Belmont sharing an indirect kiss in the Alex Ross chapter? ;) Check the carousel if you don't believe me, heh. I will include one image from each of the chapters.

The man, the legend... Honestly, Humprhries really is a total legend. From rescuing that chamber maid from his former boss to (spoiler) getting into a fight with the biggest dude in the Communist party for his daughter Etta's sake, we know Humphries is not afraid to throw down. Then there are his rock hard ethics (refusing to tell Wes the name of his evil former employer), and his caring side, like when he not only wakes up Wes from his super intense nightmare but also puts his glasses on Wes' nose! Not to mention Humphries' 'bone dry wit, or the fact that he is even prepared to shave his mustache, *and* his legs, and dress up as a woman to help Wes crack a case! Move over Alfred, Humphries is the king of all fictional butlers.

​

(All the pictures here are from the annual, which has cemented my opinion that Humphries is amazing.)

"So I was breaking into Wesley's house - my evil foster dad made me do it - and I was supposed to crack his safe, but then Wes heard me! And he knocked me out cold! So then I woke up on his sofa and Wes was like, "Omigod miss, I am so sorry," and he was being so gosh-darn cute that I just told him the truth, and then cracked his safe anyway. Just to impress him, you understand. And I totally didn't look inside it, so I definitely didn't see the Sandman costume he keeps in there. I mean, I totally did, but Wes was being all adorably dramatic about how I absolutely mustn't look, so, you know... What's a little white lie when you've already broken into the guy's house, right?"

​

Ahem. I was not expecting Golden Age Wes and Dian's first meeting to be *quite* like this. What I was expecting was for there to be some kind of pursuit with a motorboat that Wes has to leap into, because that's what they put on the cover, but nah. Minor spoiler: The whole story takes place on dry land.

​

Now, an actual spoiler is waiting below the dotted line. But before we get to that, if you have already read Adventure Comics #47, please do tell us your thoughts!

​

SPOILER:

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

​

In this story, Dian was kidnapped as a baby and raised by a famous criminal to be a master safe cracker. Through the course of the story, Wes reunites her with Larry Belmont, who in this story has a personality - and a mustache - that reminds me more of a certain other character from SMT... Look at the very last slide to see what I mean.

Let's shake things up a little in the reread! In an effort to keep us on an even keel with the Sandman Slept Here podcast, I thought it would be fun if we devote *just one week* to rereading the annual, instead of the usual two. Also, I know everyone won't have access to the other comic they are covering, which is Adventure Comics #47 and features Dian Belmont's first appearance! But if you also have a copy of the Golden Age Sandman 1 from DC Archives, and I think a few of us do, it will be in there. (And of course, it can be found via other routes...)

​

Then, exactly one week from now, those of us who feel comforting reading Midnight Theatre in spite of it being co-written by NG will start on that, while anyone who doesn't want to do that can pick up the Sand and Stars arc from the 90's Starman series. That way nobody feels left out, and we will have separate threads for both arcs of course. (And of course you should also read both if you want to!)

It is starting to become really noticeable in this series that villains - or antagonists, in one case - have been abused by a parent, and that this serves as a motivating force behind their crimes. And obviously, this kind of abuse as a young child could shape someone's entire psyche and leave huge scars. It is just striking how often that has come up in SMT. We have Celia Goodmanin The Tarantula, Nathan Lane (not outright a villain, but very questionable with stuff like the power dynamics with his handsome young employees) and most recently The Python himself, who was abused by his own mother. Lane's breakdown got what, half a page? But by the time they published The Python, the creative team had whittled the revelation time down to two panels.

​

What does this storytelling choice tell us about the time and/or cultural landscape SMT was written in? What are YOUR thoughts on this recurring trend?