DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES ISSUE

2024
June

o . 1 5 1
N 10.95
$
™
The Sandman and Death © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

A star-studded look at
NEIL GAIMAN’s
GAIMAN’s

Sandman Mystery Theatre’s MATT WAGNER & STEVEN T. SEAGLE

Dr. Strange’s nemesis Nightmare • Marvel’s dream-master Sleepwalker
Casper’s haunting horse Nightmare & more
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Volume 1,
Number 151
June 2024

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Michael Eury

PUBLISHER
John Morrow Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond!

DESIGNER
Rich Fowlks

COVER ARTIST
Kelley Jones
(Art originally
produced in 1991
for an unpublished
Wizard magazine
cover. Original art
scan courtesy of
Heritage Auctions.)

COVER COLORIST
Glenn Whitmore

COVER DESIGNER
Michael Kronenberg

PROOFREADER
Kevin Sharp

SPECIAL THANKS
Mark Arnold Andy Mangels
Bret Blevins Brian Martin
Shelly Bond Dave McKean BACKSEAT DRIVER: Editorial by Michael Eury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Bob Budiansky Shawn McManus
Edward Chu Joe Norton PRO2PRO: Neil Gaiman and Alisa Kwitney . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
[Link] Amanda Powers An intimate dialogue between the Sandman author and his former editor
DC Comics Tom Powers
Colleen Doran P. Craig Russell DREAMING OF SANDMEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Mike Dringenberg Steven T. Seagle Meet the earliest Sandmen of comic books in this fun special feature
Martha Frankel Bill Sienkiewicz
Stephan Friedt Jill Thompson BACKSTAGE PASS: The Sandman – Artists Only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Neil Gaiman Charles Vess Thirteen superstar illustrators reflect on their time drawing Sandman
Marc Hempel Matt Wagner
Heritage Auctions John Wells FLASHBACK: Nightmare, the Galloping Horse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Nelson Hoeppner J. H. Williams III Every kid needs a pet… even a ghost boy like Casper
Kelley Jones Alex Winter
Teddy Kristiansen Woodstock Bookfest BRING ON THE BAD GUYS: Welcome to My Nightmare! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Alisa Kwitney Michael Zulli
A villain history of Marvel’s magical Doctor Strange foe
Ed Lute
BACKSTAGE PASS: Sleepwalker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Don’t STEAL our A wide-awake Bob Budiansky discusses his creation of the Marvel Dream Police
Digital Editions! PRO2PRO: Matt Wagner and Steven T. Seagle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
C’mon citizen, The co-writers of Sandman Mystery Theatre revisit their pulp-ish crime series
DO THE RIGHT
THING! A Mom BACK TALK: Reader Reactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
& Pop publisher
like us needs
every sale just to
survive! DON’T
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Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 1

 by Michael Eury

It was August of 1989. I had just arrived at DC Comics as its our imaginations. It didn’t take long before just about everyone
newest associate editor. DC had picked up industry heat over was talking about Neil and The Sandman. For the general public,
the past few years with Crisis on Infinite Earths; major revamps 1989 might have been Batman’s year, but you had to be asleep
of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman; and Alan Moore’s not to notice Sandman’s budding influence.
Swamp Thing and Watchmen. Tim DC published 75 issues of The
Burton’s Batman movie was still Sandman, from 1989 through 1996,
in its first run and had triggered a in its original run. Sandman started
new wave of Batmania (remember as a “Suggested for mature readers”
Prince’s “Bat-Dance” video? Batman book but became the first DC series
cereal? MTV’s “Steal the Batmobile” to be branded under its cutting-edge
contest?) and a bookshelf full of new Vertigo imprint, beginning with
Bat-publications. The world was Sandman #47. The original series has
Batman-crazy. It was a good time to been frequently collected in myriad
be joining the company. formats and in different languages.
A perk of being an editor back Sandman has inspired multiple
then was getting complimentary spinoffs, some written by authors
copies of comic books. Each Friday, other than Neil. Gaiman himself has
DC’s librarian would lug down the since returned to write the Sandman
hall a squeaky mail cart teeming saga in additional comics projects. An
with new releases (including hard- addicted television audience has lost
covers and TPBs!) from every major sleep binging on Netflix’s Sandman
publisher, plopping a stack of comps series starring Tom Sturridge. The
on each editor’s desk. quirky new comic book that first
One of my first comp batches at gave me pause back in ’89 has since
DC included issue #9 of The Sandman, become a multimedia sensation.
from editor Karen Berger’s office a This issue, BACK ISSUE looks back
few doors down. The growing buzz at the early days of DC’s influential
over Sandman was hard to ignore, Sandman, with interviews with its
but I had yet to give it a read. I creator, several Sandman artists, and
wasn’t sure of what to make of it, Matt Wagner and Steven T. Seagle,
as issue #9’s cover, a spellbinding the writing team of the Sandman
triptych by Sandman cover illustrator spinoff Sandman Mystery Theatre.
Dave McKean, seemed more like a To you Sandman fans reading
modern art gallery painting than BI for the first time… welcome!
a comic book. But I couldn’t stop We hope you will continue to
admiring its cover art… just like I visit our fun and informative corner
would have done were the original of the comics universe in the
art hanging on a gallery wall. This TM & © DC Comics. months to come.

wasn’t like any comic book I’d ever seen. And to those of you regular BACK ISSUE readers who may
Its contents similarly haunted me. I had stepped into Part not be intimate with Gaiman’s Sandman—you’re in for a treat.
9 of Sandman’s initial “Master of Dreams” arc. There was no Sandman may seem like a detour from DC’s mainstream, but its
recognizable character—even its title star appeared in a different infusion of familiar characters and lore—from the Sandman of
form in this issue. But from my moment of discovery it was the Justice Society, Wesley Dodds, to the use of mostly forgotten
clear that The Sandman was something different, something characters like Destiny and Element Girl—tethers Gaiman’s
challenging… something special. lyrical creepshow to the established DC Universe.
Other readers felt the same way about this cerebral fantasy/ In this “Dreams and Nightmares” issue we snuggle up
horror comic that starred Dream, a.k.a. Morpheus, the Lord of with more than DC’s Sandman family. We have histories of
Dreams, and his dysfunctional but delightful family of super- two characters named Nightmare—one, a galloping ghost
natural entities, the Endless. Artistically, Sandman’s dark imagery horse and the other, a foe of Dr. Strange, Master of the
embraced the Goth subculture that had mushroomed to a fever Mystic Arts. Plus there’s a look at Marvel’s superhero answer
pitch by the time of the comic’s 1989 debut. It was written by to Sandman, Sleepwalker.
Neil Gaiman, a clever British storyteller who quickly captivated There’ll be no nodding off during the pages that follow!

2 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 interview conducted by Alisa Kwitney

Editor’s note: Sandman creator and bestselling author Neil Gaiman—one of

the top ten living postmodern writers, according to the Dictionary of Literary
Biography—was the keynote speaker at the Woodstock Bookfest in Woodstock,
New York, on March 31 through April 2, 2023. At a special bookfest event on
April 1, 2023, Gaiman was interviewed before a live audience by his friend,
editor, and collaborator, critically acclaimed novelist and writing instructor Alisa
Kwitney. The two met during the early days of Vertigo/DC Comics’ The Sandman,
when Kwitney was hired as assistant editor to Vertigo group editor Karen Berger.
Alisa went on to solo-edit the Sandman spinoffs The Dreaming and Lucifer and
to write the Destiny: A Chronicle of Deaths Foretold miniseries, which was
nominated for an Eisner Award, among other Gaiman-related projects. Kwitney is
currently the co-host of the Sandman podcast Endless.
What follows is a transcription of their interview, edited for publication in this
magazine.
BACK ISSUE wishes to thank the Woodstock Bookfest and its director, Martha
Frankel, for kindly allowing the publication of this edited version of the
Gaiman/Kwitney interview. To learn more about this annual authors gathering,
visit [Link]. Special thanks also go out to Brian Martin for
his transcription of this interview, and to Neil and Alisa for taking the time to
review the manuscript.

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 3

 ALISA KWITNEY: I was thinking, where do I begin with all of this? So, I wanted to start with
when I first met you. It was the first—well, almost my first day at work—and Karen [Berger]
said to me, “What a shame, Neil was just here, and he’s left.” And I was already a Sandman
fan, so I was really disappointed. And then she said, “But you do have the job of packing up
his laundry. ’Cause he couldn’t fit it in all of the books we gave him, so here’s some
of his excess laundry.”
NEIL GAIMAN: It was one of those slightly-mad-but-it-worked things that
actually worked. Susanna Clarke of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel, [was]
asked in an interview what the best advice I had ever given her was, or
probably what [was] the best advice she’d ever received from another
author. She admitted that it was me telling her if you’re doing a book tour
of America, signing books, just mail your laundry home. [laughter]
Because you’ll never be anywhere long enough to actually get
laundry done. So plan ahead to just post your laundry home.

KWITNEY: Do you remember what I did on that first day? I’d just
graduated from Columbia’s fiction writing program, and I was
thinking, “I’m sending this brilliant writer his laundry back.” I (had)
such a temptation to put some of my laundry in, but then I could get
fired. So what I did instead is, I asked Karen if she had some Peds in
her desk. In the old days, women wore sneakers or comfortable shoes to
the office and then sometimes changed into fancier shoes. She did, and
I put them in an envelope that said “Do Not Open Until Christmas” and
put it into the laundry that I sent you. I don’t know if you remember that.
GAIMAN: I was just baffled. [laughter] I thought, “She’s weird. This new
one is very strange.”
My favorite memory of you, the point where I thought, “Oh, I really like
her”… We would have these long conversations about writing. And it’s a weird
thing that if you’re a writer, and if you’re a young writer, you really want to talk
about writing, only you wind up getting led off the subject a lot, and suddenly
you’re talking about agents or your talking about publishers, whatever. And with Alisa,
we’d actually talk writing, we talked the mechanics of plot, we’d talk how to do things.
And we used to talk about other writers, too. And I remember one day I was talking
about a particular author that I was a huge fan of, and I mentioned this author
Robert Sheckley. Science fiction author, very prominent in the ’50s and ’60s.

KWITNEY: An absurdist.
GAIMAN: Absurdist, a very brilliant author, and satirist I think as
well. And Alisa said to me, “What do you think of Sheckley’s
work?”
And I said, “Well, I think that in the ’50s and ’60s he was
writing the sharpest short stories of anybody out there, and
he was a brilliant, funny writer. He influenced what Douglas
Adams did hugely, whether or not Douglas had read him or
not before he did it, he was still doing the same thing. And I
thought he was absolutely fabulous, and then you can kind

NEIL GAIMAN
Kyle Cassidy.
of watch him burning out his brain on recreational pharma-
ceuticals, and he kind of lost it completely.”
And Alisa said, “He’s my dad.” [laughter]
And I said, “I’m… so… sorry… I… said… that.”
And she said, “No, that’s what I think, too!’ And I went, “Oh. Oh, good.” And that was
our first great bonding moment, I think.

KWITNEY: And I think that was kind of fresh in your mind when you were titling one of the
Sandman storylines.
GAIMAN: It was. One of the Sandman storylines is called A Game of You. And that was
shortly after you came on, and nobody, except you and me really, knew that I was
referencing a Sheckley book that I happened to be incredibly fond of that nobody has ever
read called The Game of X, later—here’s one for trivia people—remade by Disney, or made
by Disney, into a film called Condorman, that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the book
Game of X in any possible way except that you get into the credits of Condorman and you
discover that’s where it’s from. And let’s throw in another little Sheckley thing, which is,
last year we went up to the graveyard, Alisa and I.

KWITNEY: The Writers and Artists graveyard here in Woodstock.

GAIMAN: And if you go looking in there, you will find a beautiful slab, a black slab, with a
galaxy on it, and the words “Robert Sheckley” and his dates, and then the word “Writer.”
And he’s here, too.

4 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

KWITNEY: Yeah, he lived in different places, and my half sister, Anya Sheckley, and I,
we decided that the best place to bury him, since he’d come to live here, was in the Writers
and Artists cemetery.
[With Sandman,] let’s go back a little. When I started working as an assistant editor,
I was doing a lot of what was called trafficking. I would get the scripts and send them off to
a penciler. The penciled art would come in—none of this was digital back in the day—and
I would then get it lettered to the script, write where the balloons went, and that would get
sent to the inker, then to the colorist. And my day would begin to end in terms of hustling
and sending things out that were very time sensitive, probably around six o’clock. You
were in England and it was around midnight, and that was just at that time when
you were stopping writing. ’Cause you were a night writer then.
GAIMAN: I wasn’t stopping writing then, that was around the time that I needed
to talk to another human being, to get enough adrenaline to keep going until
probably about four in the morning.
I was a nocturnal writer until I was sort of in my mid-30s. And one day, it went
away. I think it went away about exactly the same time I gave up smoking.

KWITNEY: I remember that time, and I need to ask you something. The scripts
were wonderful for Sandman because you used them as a confessional and
a journal—there’s all these wonderful details you would talk about when
you were writing, and the fact that you couldn’t imagine being a day writer.
So I want to ask, could Sandman, which is so much about dreams—could
you have written that as a day writer?
GAIMAN: I wrote a lot of Sandman during the day. Over the years, probably
as much Sandman was written during the day as was written at night.
But I was a night writer mostly in self-defense. And also because I was in
my 20s, and early 30s, and I was really good at writing in the middle of the
night. I’m not anymore. It takes me sort of five times as much work
and energy to put a decent sentence together at two o’clock in the
morning. I can no longer pull all-nighters. It is wiser for me to go to
bed, get up the next morning, and write.
But back then I would get up about one o’clock in the afternoon,
I would do whatever mail needed to be done. I would go out, do the
shopping, make the dinner, so that at the point where my kids turned
up at about four o’clock, look after them. My wife would get back from
work at about sixish, and there’d be dinner, and then we’d bathe the
kids, read to them, do that stuff, and about nine o’clock at night the
kids would be asleep and I would go off to write. I was basically work-
ing nine to five, it was just the wrong nine to five. [laughter]
And it was really, peculiarly good for my social life, because I had
a handful of people around the world who were still up and they
were all in America, so I made a lot of very good American friends.
There was a lot of talking at midnight, at the point where you’re
sort of doing that first little fade. When I stopped being able to write
at night, I remember, I was sitting typing, and it was two or three
in the morning, and then I lifted my head and I looked down, and
from where my head had been resting on the keyboard, there were
about 300 pages of the letter M! [laughter] And that was the point I
discovered that, okay, I am no longer a night writer.
ALISA KWITNEY
KWITNEY: That is now being published in a limited edition. [laughter]
So the thing that would happen is, at six o’clock a lot of people had left the offices at Meet Our Dreaming Duo
DC. And it was your midnight, and so there was this weird moment when I was just able to (above and opposite) Neil
take a breath. I didn’t have kids at that time, and it was usually just before the other editors
that worked under Karen and I—Tom Peyer and Stuart Moore—would go to the Irish pub Gaiman and Alisa Kwitney, and
which was called the Irish Pub for a beer. And so you and I would talk and we talked, and I some of their works. (previous
felt so inadequate, because until that point I had considered myself fairly well read. And all
of a sudden you would bring up all of these writers and these books that you’d read page) Our opening background
that I’d never heard of: The Secret History by Procopius, the Flashman series [by George is from Dave McKean’s original
MacDonald Fraser], The Golden Ass [by Apuleius]. How did you come to read so many
obscure and wonderful classics? cover art to Sandman #6
GAIMAN: I suppose the best bit about being technically an autodidact—but there (June 1989). Scan courtesy of
are no autodidacts—and the best bit of being an author is, you get to follow your
“obsessions places.” Heritage Auctions ([Link]).
And also, I was ridiculously lucky when I was a young, starving journalist, that several TM & © DC Comics.
places took pity on me and gave me book review columns. And the great thing about
being given book review columns, which are not genre-dependent, is all of the publishers
then send you their catalogs. Or they used to. Which meant that every three months

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 5

 or every six months I’d get all the publisher GAIMAN: My guess on Procopius and The Secret
catalogs. And I’d just go through them and go, History would be that it was a Penguin Classic and
“That looks interesting, that looks interesting, that it looked interesting from the Penguin Classics
Wakeup Call looks interesting.” And then they would arrive! catalog and because I had book review columns
Original artwork by And because we had no Internet back then, I I was allowed to say, “I’ll have that,” and they
Mike Dringenberg would read them all. Everything. Everything that would send it to me.
arrived, I would read. But also, I loved that stuff. And that’s the flip
for a Sandman And, you know… I was a book kid—if not from side of all of it, is, I was, I was a young writer,
house ad appear- birth, my earliest memories that are solid have I’d suddenly discovered, as a 22-, 23-year-old
books in them. I remember the first book that I journalist and writer, that all of the stuff that I kind
ing in DC titles in loved. I remember the first books that my mother of thought was boring in school was absolutely,
late 1988, signed bought me. Some of them I still have! I remember devastatingly interesting if you had any chance of
by both the artist the libraries that formed me. You know, the little going in and finding a story there.
local library where I would go all through the I had not been a history fan, and suddenly I
and Neil Gaiman. summer holidays. I would just get my parents to was devouring history books because I would find
This extraordinary drop me off in the library on their way to work and things in them that I could steal. I was loving myth.
then walk home. It was like a giant, undisciplined research project.
piece commanded And you’d read a lot of rubbish on the way, but the
$96,000 in a KWITNEY: Okay, but none of this explains to me how good stuff would stick.
September 8, 2021 you knew about The Secret History by Procopius! And you know, years and years later, you and
[to audience] How many people here know that I did Norse Mythology together. Originally, when
Heritage auction. book? we started out, we thought your job was probably
TM & © DC Comics. [silence] going to be being my research assistant.

KWITNEY: As you were for Alan Moore.

GAIMAN: I would go out for Alan and go and find
things for him.
And then very rapidly we discovered that
actually, while that was useful, the best thing
you could do was turn up, take my phone away,
be there while I wrote, and then whenever
I would need to know something that would
normally send me off down an Internet rabbit
hole, I would instead turn to you and say, “Such
and such a god, such and such a thing, such and
such a… could you just go and find me what
the Vikings would have used to transport stones
with?” And you’d go away [to do research] and
you’d go, “It’s something called a stone boat,
and this is how it worked.” And I’d go, “Okay,
got it.” Because I knew that if I disappeared off
down there, I would not surface again. And if I
had you there, I would get my thousand words
of Norse Mythology written.

KWITNEY: I still remember the day, because I think

we were in your house and you were in Boston at
the time. There were so many things tugging and
pulling at your attention, which as a writer I
know happens. You were sort of, “Just one more
thing,” and I said, “Can I look at your phone for
a moment?,” which is, you know, a fairly intimate
thing to say to a person. You know, you hand your
phone over and said, “Okay.” And then I said, “I’m
not giving it back until you’ve written five pages.”
And that’s what happened.
GAIMAN: That was Thor’s wedding.

KWITNEY: Thank you, thank you, my finest moment.

One of the other things interesting about
the Norse Mythology book is, we worked on it
together for about seven years in bits and pieces,
and I think it had about three different iterations
or incarnations. And I want to ask you how you
remember it coming together in your imagination?
You know, finding that balance between verisimili-
tude and what you can get, and giving yourself the
freedom to create.

6 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 NEIL GAIMAN’s EARLY DC WORK
In addition to the original Sandman series, Gaiman’s early contributions to the DC Universe include:
• Black Orchid #1 (Holiday 1988)–3 (Feb. 1989)
Prestige Format miniseries reimagining the star of her own short-lived 1970s series in Adventure Comics. Illustrated by
Dave McKean.
• Secret Origins #36 (Jan. 1989)
Poison Ivy origin, “Pavane.” Illustrated by Mark Buckingham.
• Swamp Thing Annual #5 (1989)
42-page story guest-starring Brother Power, the Geek, illustrated by Richard Piers Rayner and Mike Hoffman; and 10-
page Parliament of Trees story, illustrated by Mike Mignola.
• Secret Origins Special #1 (1989)
11-page framing story with a Batman cameo, illustrated by Mike Hoffman and Kevin Nowlan; and 10-page Riddler
origin, illustrated by Bernie Mireault and Matt Wagner.

TM & © DC Comics.
GAIMAN: It was a fascinating process. We set a lot of
boundaries at the beginning, and actually wound up keeping
to them. One of my rules was, every one of these stories,
I have to be able to point… I can’t change anything. And
I can’t make anything up. And you and I would, you’d
be like, “Why can’t you make something up?,” and I’m
saying because it would be cheating. It would be like
playing tennis without a net or trying to write a 15-line
sonnet. It wouldn’t be right. The whole point of this is that
I have to take the structure, the scaffold of the stories, and
I’m gonna set rules for myself so I’m only gonna do stories
really from the [Medieval Icelandic literary works known
as the] Edda. I’m not going to dive off into obscurity, I’m
not gonna take stuff that’s later, like Wagner or whatever.
I’m actually just going to stick with the stories in the Poetic
Edda and in the Prose Edda.
And that was really fun, and it meant that there were
choices I could make while I was telling. There was one
story, which I got criticized for in some fancy review or
other and I got to feel very superior. But it was actually that
criticism that made me do the notes in the paperback. The
paperback of Norse Mythology has fancy notes at the back,
pointing out where everything comes from. There were a
few reviews of the hardback where the reviewers knew a
little, knew quite a lot, but had missed the fact that there
is one story that has one version in the Poetic Eddas, and Your Grandfather’s Sandman
one in the Prose Eddas. And the Prose Edda is kind of awful Original Sandman Wesley Dodds cameos in the first issue of
and the Poetic Edda is at least kinder—it’s basically about
a young lady being… in one version she is forced into Sandman. Written by Neil Gaiman, penciled by Sam Kieth,
marriage, and in the other she thinks it’s quite a good idea. and inked by Mike Dringenberg.
And I went with the one where she thought it was quite a
good idea, and got told off for that. TM & © DC Comics.

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 7

 Not Your Grand-
father’s Sandman
Our first clear look
at Dream, from
Sandman #1, by
the series’ original
art team of penciler
Sam Kieth and inker
Mike Dringenberg.
Original art courtesy
of Heritage.
TM & © DC Comics.

8 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 The Time of Her Life
(top) Rare editorial variant of Sandman #8
(Dec. 1989), featuring the premiere of Death.
Cover art by Dave McKean. Gaiman-autographed
copy courtesy of Heritage. (bottom) Inside,
we see Dream’s sister “at work” as she takes a
struggling comedian (who just bombed with
Batman jokes). By Gaiman, penciler Mike
Dringenberg, and inker Malcolm Jones III.
TM & © DC Comics.

KWITNEY: I had an experience that was kind of like that,

because I wrote Sandman: King of Dreams back in… I
think it was in the ’90s or early ’00s. [Editor’s note: It was
published in 2003.] And it was sort of an introduction
to Sandman, and so we’d had the Endless, we’d had
a gallery of the Endless, and I think the original art was
Mike Dringenberg, and Neil wrote an introduction to each
of the Endless. There’s Destiny. Morpheus… And the last
one is Death.
And so I had the idea for King of Dreams that we would
have different art from all the different artists who had done
other versions of these, but we’d go with Neil’s original
Endless, the Endless that are the…I’m assuming everyone
here knows who the Endless are. The Endless are a family
of immortal, sort of older than the gods beings, and
the Sandman or Morpheus is one of them.
GAIMAN: When I first came to America, people would
say, “We love Sandman, we love the Endless, it’s so
amazing to see a dysfunctional family in comics.” And,
I’d never heard that term before. So I remember, after a
while, saying, “What exactly is a dysfunctional family?”
And they would explain it to me. After a while, I figured
out that that’s what we in England call a family. [laughter]

KWITNEY: You wrote and I was working on [DC/Vertigo’s]

Sandman when we were in our 20s, early 30s. You have
revisited the material, and now you’ve created it for a
different format for the Sandman Netflix TV series. What
feels different?
GAIMAN: You know what’s different? Everything’s
different, and everything’s the same. The biggest thing
that is different is… I had no budget restrictions when
I made the comics. I had page restrictions, I had to hit
24 pages unless I could talk everybody into giving me a
couple of extra pages and losing some ads. Sometimes I
could. But whatever I wrote cost the same, because an
artist would draw it, and Todd Klein would letter it, and
Danny Vozzo would color it, and… it cost the same! They
weren’t paying us very much, but that didn’t matter.
Now, trying to make it with Netflix, we have a budget
to hit. And we’re already making it with amounts of money
that are inconceivable to me. And with that, when I talk
to Allan Heinberg, I don’t have to be the showrunner
who does all of the heavy lifting on Sandman. That is my
friend Allan, and he is doing a magical and amazing job.
[Editor’s note: Sandman executive producer/co-developer
Allan Heinberg’s TV credits include the hits Scandal,
Grey’s Anatomy, and Gilmore Girls, plus the screenplay to
2017’s Wonder Woman movie.] I have to do all the heavy
lifting on Good Omens, but on Sandman I get to be the
one to just sort of lean over and go, “You don’t want to
do it like that.” “You sure about that?” “No, no, if you

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 9

want to do it like that…” [laughter] I get these lovely phone KWITNEY: One of your skills has been to write scripts that are
calls from Allan saying, “Okay, Neil, this is what’s going on, so geared a bit for an individual artist’s strengths. I remember your
I want to do this to solve it but I’m not sure about that. What saying, “Well, for Season of Mists we’ve got Kelley Jones. You
do you think?” Or, “You wrote this character, does this work? ask for 5,000 demons, he’ll give you each one a different one.”
Can we get away with this?” And sometimes I’ll say, “Yes,” and You must have had a strong visual sense just starting out. How
sometimes I’ll say, “No.” And if I say no I try and say, “But, did you develop that? How did you develop such a strong visual
what if we did that and stuff?” sense that’s been good for comics, for TV and movies?
But you’re always going, “Okay, we have ridiculous amounts GAIMAN: I didn’t realize there was anything odd about it
of money to make this, and we do not have enough money to until I started working with writers, particularly working with
make it. So how are we going to fix that, and what are we going novelists who loved what was happening in comics and wanted
to do?” And that for me is the, is the weird paradox of making to do comics too. And then suddenly, watching a tiny handful
television as opposed to writing novels where every word I put of them write good comics, and the vast majority of them crash
down costs me the same. And making comics, where everything and burn. And crash and burn kind of painfully. And these were
I ask an artist to draw costs the same. It doesn’t cost any more. my friends and these were people who were brilliant, these were
We’ve been looking at how to do Sandman Overture one day. people who were really good at the thing that they did. But the
And in Sandman Overture, which is also the first Sandman story, thing that they did was all about building pictures in people’s
it’s a giant universe-spanning space opera of unimaginably heads. And I realized that I’m, you know, I’m amphibian.
grandiose proportions. And it’s, “Okay, how are we going to be I think part of it is for me, the thing that drives me is the story.
able to afford to make this thing?” The last thing I was thinking I’m not a novelist. I have written novels. I will write more novels.
when I wrote it was one day we’ll have to do this on television. I love writing novels except for the loneliness and the backache.
But… that’s not what I am. Whereas there are some
people out there who are novelists. They write a
novel. When they finish that novel, they begin the
next novel. And they’re not even short story writers.
And I look at them and go, “How can somebody
not be a short story writer, how can you not want
to take stories, and tell stories in different ways?”

KWITNEY: A lot of books and works from back in

the ’90s and the early ’00s, sometimes they have
strange little warts and things that came from
[the fact that it] was a different culture back then.
Nothing that you’ve written seems to have that
weird “wartiness.” You know, you look at old
episodes of Friends and you think, “Oooh, that’s
a little cringe-y now.” You have managed to avoid
that. Clearly, a part of it is that you follow your own
internal compass and your wonderfully strange
offspring’s imagination. But what else has helped
you avoid those pitfalls? Like, when you were
researching Wanda for Sandman and all of the
material you did, how did you avoid the Friends
trap of looking dated?
GAIMAN: Oh, I don’t think I have. I think you can
go back into Sandman and see places where my
heart may have been in the right place, but, you
know, it’s dated.
Having said that, I think in some ways I was
lucky, and in some ways I was doing my best—
and we all were—to treat people with respect. I
remember, an example of that would be in the late
’80s, all of my lesbian friends, without exceptions,
referred to themselves as “dykes” in conversation.
And I’d put that in a script, and you said, “I need

Little Jed in the Land of

Marvelous Dreams
Writer Gaiman, penciler Dringenberg,
and inker Malcolm Jones III produced this
heartfelt tribute to Winsor McCay’s classic
comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland for
Sandman #11 (Dec. 1989). Original art
courtesy of Heritage.
TM & © DC Comics.

10 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

to check whether that’s an okay thing to say, for
a lesbian to describe herself that way.” And you
went off to a lesbian bar in New York—if it wasn’t
you it was Karen, but I think it was much more
likely that she’d send you! And I got the “Okay, I
looked at their notice board. Everything is sort of
dykes on bikes and dyke picnics, and I think it’s
okay.” [Alisa laughs]
But… there was no intention. It wasn’t that we
didn’t want to offend people, and it wasn’t that
we didn’t want to upset people, because we were
writing Sandman, and if I wasn’t upsetting people,
I wasn’t doing my job. But I wanted to upset the
right people. [laughter and applause]
My favorite back then was a letter that
we got from a group calling themselves the
Concerned Mothers of America, which I still suspect
was one person. And they got very, very angry
about Game of You, and they got incredibly angry
because it had Wanda. It had a trans character,
and that was not okay. And they wrote to us
and they let us know that from now on, the
Concerned Mothers of America and the American
Family Association were boycotting Sandman.
And when we stopped putting these gay and
lesbian and trans and wicked and immoral people
into our comics, we should write to the American
Family Association newspaper, and let them
know that we had repented, and they would start
buying our comic again. [laughter]
And strangely, from that day forward, sales started
going like [motioning upward] that! [laughter]
So we never apologized, and years later when
the Million Moms—who also were an offshoot
of the American Family Association and a direct
descendant of the Concerned Mothers of America,
who renamed themselves the Million Moms—
announced that they were going to be boycotting
the TV series Lucifer, which, of course, was a Sandman
spinoff, because it had Lucifer in it as a main char-
acter. I thought, “All I know is that Lucifer is gonna
be just fine.” Every season they would redouble
their announcement that they were boycotting it,
and every season the viewing figures would go up
and up. And I’m like, “They never learn!” And may KWITNEY: You wrote the novel Good Omens with Helming the
they never learn—I love these people! Just faintly Terry during the time when you were working on
hoping they’ll boycott everything! Sandman. Realm of Dreams
Although the best boycott we got was still GAIMAN: Yup. Lord Morpheus
the Good Omens boycott! There were so many
things that I wished that Terry Pratchett [Discworld KWITNEY: Can you say anything about how that sporting his Helm
author and Gaiman’s Good Omens collaborator— came about, and also, how it was this was your of Dream, in an
ed.] would have been alive for. [applause] I miss first novel?
GAIMAN: Like everybody, I had a novel that I’d undated oil painting
Terry daily. But the thing that I wish he’d been
alive for the most, ’cause he would have loved written when I was 21 or 22 that will remain for- by regular Sandman
it so much, was when a small Catholic group ever in my attic. I pulled it out once, read it to
[daughter] Maddy, and then sent it back to the
cover artist Dave
announced that because we had a Black Adam
and Eve, and God was voiced by a woman in Good attic, going, “It has one decent page.” I wasn’t McKean. Courtesy
Omens, and there’s a demon in it who’s quite sure how I felt about that, because there was one
of Heritage.
nice, that this needed to not be on the screens page where it sounded like me. Everything else
anymore. And they apparently got 20,000 signa- was me desperately sounding like everybody else. TM & © DC Comics.
tures on a petition that they sent to Netflix to tell But yeah, so I had this idea for a book. And I
Netflix not to show Good Omens. [laughter] And wrote the first 5,000 words, and sent it to a handful
Netflix agreed that they would promise not to of friends to see what they thought, one of whom
show Good Omens and they would never screen was Terry Pratchett. And then Sandman took off.
Good Omens, which, seeing that it was an Amazon I was writing Sandman and somewhere in 1989 I
Prime show, [laughter] they were absolutely in a got a phone call from Terry saying, “Neil, that thing
fantastic place to not show Good Omens anymore. you sent me. You doing anything with that?” I said,
I wished Terry had been around for that one. “No.” And he said, ‘Well, either sell me the idea,

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 11

 COVER
GALLERY

All cover art is by Dave [Link] & © DC Comics.

12 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

or let’s do it together, because I know what happens next.” And Streaming Endlessly
I said to him, “Well, let’s write it together.” ’Cause as far as I was
concerned, this was an awful lot like Michelangelo ringing you up Promo poster touting the August 2022 premiere of
and saying, “Do you want to paint a ceiling together?” [laughter] Netflix’s The Sandman series.
I thought, “I will learn things. I will learn how to craft a
TM & © DC Comics.
novel from Terry.” So at the time, I was writing Sandman, and I
was writing Books of Magic at the
same time. From nine o’clock get into the same room and
’til midnight I would write discuss how it was going to
Sandman. From midnight ’til work. And that there were pub-
two o’clock in the morning lishers out there who would write
I would write Books of Magic. enormous checks if we agreed to
And from two o’clock in the do it, which kind of took some
morning until I couldn’t see, I of the fun out of it. But we also
would write Good Omens. Right had a story we wanted to tell…
now, 35 years later, I just look at which, just confusingly, is not
that and go, “I was mad. How the story of Good Omens II. Good
did I do that?” But I did. Omens Season Two is like the
And I’d wake up the next sandwich filler that would allow
early afternoon, and there would us to get to the story that Terry
be a call from Terry Pratchett on and I plotted out in Seattle.
my answering machine, there’d To date how long ago this was,
be a little red light flashing. I’d we were at the World Fantasy
press a button and the tape Convention in Seattle. Good
would rewind… I’m explaining Omens had not yet come out.
all this because I feel like I’m sort It was November 1989, and we
of, you know, we’re in archaic, were sharing a hotel room to
archeological territory here. It save money. In his latter years,
was a machine, it had people’s Terry would buy the hotel before
voices on it! [laughter] And I he got there and have it repaint-
would press the button and ed. But this was back when we
Terry’s voice would say, “Wake were saving… sharing a room.
up! Wake up, c’mon, get out of And Terry went off to bed at a
bed, you lazy bastard! I’ve just sensible hour like 11-ish, and
written a good bit!” And I would I crept into bed when the bar
call him and he would read me closed. You know, creeping
whatever he had written that across the room. He’s on one
morning. And I would read him end of the room, I’m on the
whatever I had written much, other. And I creep across the
much earlier that same morning. room incredibly quietly—you
And then we’d talk about the know, you slip your shoes off as
story and we’d talk about things soon as you get to the room and
and we’d try and make the you tiptoe. And I’d just reached
other one laugh… and then the the bed when a voice from the
aim would be to get back to it and write the next good bit darkness said, “What time of night do you call this, then? Your
before the other one could get there. mother and I have been worried sick about you.” [laughter]
We had an incredible amount of fun. We plotted a sequel, Jetlag had caught up with Terry and he was wide awake and I was
but then never got to write it because I moved to America. pretty awake, so we just sort of lay in our respective beds, plotting
And we sort of figured that we needed to at least be on the the next Good Omens novel. So if I ever get to do Season Three,
same time zone. that will be that story. [applause] And then my obligation to Good
And also there was a level on which Good Omens was some- Omens and to Terry will be done and I can lay that one down.
thing that we had written for fun. I remember about nine weeks
into writing Good Omens, I got a call from Terry. The phone just [Editor’s note: At this point in the interview, the floor was opened
rang and I said, “Yeah.” He said, “It’s me. Listen, Good Omens.” for questions from attendees. What follows are some of the
Which wasn’t called Good Omens at that point, it was called audience’s questions and Neil’s replies, edited for BACK ISSUE.]
William the Antichrist. [laughter] He said, “Look, how long have
we spent on this book so far?” And I said, “About nine weeks.” QUESTION 1: I love The Sandman. You’ve talked a little bit
He said, “What’s the longest we could possibly keep working on about adapting it for TV. I want to ask about Neverwhere,
it for?” I said, “Probably another six or seven weeks, and we’ll which was a television miniseries before you adapted it as a comic
finish it.” And he said, “If nobody buys it, we can swallow that, [six episodes, airing in 1996—ed.]. Have you ever thought of
can’t we?” And I said, “Yeah, we’ll be okay. I think they’ll buy it.” going back to other stories based on the plot of Neverwhere?
And he said, “But if they don’t…” I said, “Well, if nobody buys it, GAIMAN: Neverwhere, unlike everything else, began life as a TV
then we had fun for 17 weeks and we made each other laugh.” show. And it began life as a TV show that I found myself very
And he said, ‘”Yeah, we did.” disappointed with. I’d written these scripts, and I was not seeing
You know, Good Omens was this fun, weird, mad project we what I had written on the screen, as a result of which I went,
did for fun. After that, the idea of coming back and doing more “I’m turning it into a novel.”
Good Omens… We were always very aware that lawyers—people There are lots and lots of people who have approached us
with slim briefcases and very, very slim watches—would have to over the years about turning Neverwhere back into a TV series.

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 13

 There have been scripts written. There was also a
period of about ten, 15 years when there were movie
rights to Neverwhere under option and a number of
film scripts for Neverwhere were written by me and by
other people.
Right now the rights are back with me and Lenny
Henry, ’cause Lenny and I co-created Neverwhere.
We’re definitely looking at turning it back into televi-
sion. I know I don’t want to do it. I guess I feel with
Neverwhere like I would run the risk of turning into
my own typewriter. I wrote it as a TV, six TV episodes.
I turned that into a novel. I turned that into a much
longer novel because my American editor basically
said, “This British novel is written for British people.
Please make this bigger.” And I just don’t want to do it
again. I love the story and I love the characters.
Having said that, the novel that I am halfway through
right now is a Neverwhere novel. It’s called The Seven
Sisters, from Richard’s [Neverwhere character Richard
Mayhew] point of view. It takes place about six months
after the events of Neverwhere, and in world chronology
it takes place about 25 years after the events of Never-
where, because time is kind of weird and screwed up in
it. [applause]

QUESTION 2: Have you always wanted to be a writer?

GAIMAN: I always wanted to be a writer. I didn’t think
I was going to be able to survive, and I didn’t think
it was ever gonna happen. And I guess as an early
teenager, I would think, “Well, am I going to
wind up an English teacher or a librarian who writes
on the side?” Because I admired English teachers and I
admired librarians. And they were the people who I just
thought were the coolest people in the world, so it was
going to be one of those two. But maybe I could write
on the side. And then I never wound up being either an
English teacher or a librarian. But I wrote. I never really
wanted to do anything else.
Occasionally people would say, “Well, if you weren’t
a writer, what would you be?” And that’s kind of
terrifying for me, ’cause you don’t want me driving
your Uber. You really do not want me putting up your
shelves. Eventually I decided that if I couldn’t be a
writer, I would like to be a Freelance Religion Designer.
[laughter] And just have people call me up and they’d
say, “Hello, I’d like a religion, please.” And I would say,
“Okay, is it for you, your family, for an entire nation?
How do you feel about guilt? Do you want a lot of
holidays, and where do we stand on dietary restrictions?”
And, you know, just sort of work with you and design
a religion for you.

QUESTION 3: When a new story idea comes to you, do

you know what format you want to do it in?
GAIMAN: What a great question. Mostly, I know. But
sometimes I’m wrong. When I got the idea for Anansi
Shop Talk Boys, I thought of it as a film because I could see bits
(top) Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett at a September 1990 of it moving. And I tried writing it as a film a couple of
times and it just didn’t have any life to it, and I didn’t
signing for the first American edition of their novel, Good Omens, know what I was doing. And then I thought maybe
at the legendary DreamHaven bookstore and comic shop in it was a novella. And I mentioned the story one day
Minneapolis, Minnesota. (bottom) A Sandman print by Mike to my editor over lunch, and she started jabbing her
fork at me and going, “That is a novel!” And I was so
Dringenberg, signed by the artist and Gaiman, produced in the terrified I agreed to start trying to write it as a novel
early 1990s by the Utah comic shop Night Flight, where the pair because… fork! [laughter]
There are things that I’ve thought were poems, that
made a promotional appearance together. Courtesy of Heritage. I’ve tried writing as poems that weren’t, and turned out
Photo: Eclief / Wikimedia Commons. Sandman TM & © DC Comics. to be prose. And there were things that I thought were

14 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

probably prose that actually didn’t quite work, but me a cassette, which was a thing we used to have
then flew when they were poems. in the old days. Your parents will explain it to you.
After Midnight
But mostly for me the thing that I think of is, And he handed me a cassette and he said, “This During Sandman’s
does it have a voice? If it has a voice, it is probably is an album done by one of my friends. She sings early years, Gaiman
either a poem or prose. If it’s pictures, if it’s moving about you on there, please don’t sue her.”
things in my head, then it’s probably comics or it’s a And I took the cassette home, along with the would write that
film. If it feels to me like what’s important is actually others cassettes that other people in signing lines series in the day-
seeing things physically move, hearing lines actually gave me. When I got back, this [cassette] was not
said by people, then it’s probably film or TV. Where- ahead of any of the others. I remember the first time then script the
as if I can tell that story in images, but I could do it tape that I’d been given by somebody who was four-issue Presige
in static pictures, then it’s probably comics. very proud of it was like Norwegian sort of Gloom Format miniseries
And then there’s other little bits to it like, okay, Metal. It was sort of an [affecting a Norwegian
if I cannot imagine anybody over the age of four accent in a deep voice] “Oh, lord Morpheus, come The Books of Magic
reading it, it’s definitely a children’s picture book. down from the sky and bring your sister too, she’s in the wee hours of
cute” sort of thing.
QUESTION 4: I know you and [musician] Tori Amos And then the next time I drove anywhere, I put the morning. (left)
seem to have a relationship back and forth. Do you on the one that was a proto version of Tori Amos’ Cover to issue #1
have a favorite reference that you have done of her “Little Earthquakes.” And my jaw dropped. And I
and vice versa? just thought, “This is amazing. This whole thing
(Dec. 1990) by John
GAIMAN: Oh, what a lovely question. I think my is amazing.” And the “Me and Neil hanging Bolton, who also
favorite reference that Tori did of me has to be the out with the dream king” [line] was like, “Oh, illustrated (right) the
one she made before she’d ever met me, because that’s really weird. Everybody else is singing about
that created our friendship. Sandman, and you’ve noticed that somebody issue’s back cover
It was 1991, I was at the San Diego Comic Con- made this thing.” spotlighting Zatara
vention, and a young man named Rantz Hoseley There was a phone number on the back, and she
was in the signing line. And he got to the front of was in the UK at that point, so I phoned the number. the Magician.
the signing line at the convention and he handed And we made friends over the phone, and we’d TM & © DC Comics.

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 15

 The Eyes Have It
(top) This rare 1953 pamphlet (courtesy of Heritage) served
as a prototype for alarmist shrink Dr. Fredric Wertham’s 1954
indictment against comic books, Seduction of the Innocent.
Wertham wielded this “injury to the eye” image—shown here
in a panel from Jack Cole’s Golden Age shocker “Murder,
Morphine and Me!” in True Crime Comics #2—as a calling card
for his mission, in the process driving American moms and
ministers into a fearful frenzy. (bottom) And then this hap-
pened. Neil’s Corinthian, in a tasty cover by Reiko Murakami
for The Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country #3 (Aug. 2022).
TM & © DC Comics.

chat every week. And then she said, “Oh, I’m doing this little gig at
a place called the Canal Brasserie.” And I went there. There was the
owner of the Brasserie and his friends at a table, and a journalist… and
Tori’s publicist, who was chauffeuring the journalist around. And there
was me. And that was the first Tori Amos gig I saw.
And after the gig we walked home and just sort of went off for
this long walk… She was going to film the video for “Silent All These
Years” the next day and she was miming it all out and acting it out for
me in the underground station. And I just thought, “You are going
to be my friend forever.” And here we are, 33, 32 years later, and
we’re still friends. [applause]

QUESTION 5: What made you want to put teeth in the Corinthian’s

eyes?
GAIMAN: Fredric Wertham was a psychiatrist in New York in the
1930s and ’40s and ’50s who wrote a book called Seduction of the
Innocent, which was a book that—using facts and figures that Fredric
Wertham was much later, after his death and people went through his
papers, discovered to have been made up—proved demonstrably that
juvenile delinquency was caused by reading comic books. Wertham
wrote about all of the terrible things that happened in comics, which
then caused the Comics Code of America to be founded, and EC
Comics to be put out of business, and all sorts of things like that.
And one of the things that obsessed Fredric Wertham was some-
thing he called the “injury to the eye motif.” He had lots of panels
showing injuries to eyes or threatened injuries to eyes. And I was
fascinated by that. I’d read Seduction of the Innocent and I’ve also
read its sequel A Sign for Cain and I was fascinated by his fascination
with the fact that comics seemed to be up there with injuring eyes.
So when I started thinking, “I need a great villain, I need a villain,
I’ve never really created a good villain, what do I want to do with
my villain?” I thought, “Oh, the injury to the eye motif. Let’s make
a villain that would have freaked Fredric Wertham out!” [laughter]
And I thought it’s also something that you can do in comics that
allows for interesting places that the story can go. If I do things from
the Corinthian’s point of view, I could have dark glasses which then
get taken off and then, you know, I could show him from his point
of view biting somebody’s fingers or… of course, he’s going to eat
eyeballs. Injury to the eye motif. So that really was the, sort of the
thing that, the engine that powered the Corinthian, was the late
Frederic Wertham. [applause]
Thank you so much—those were great questions. And thank you,
Alisa!
KWITNEY: Thank you.

ALISA KWITNEY is a former DC Comics/Vertigo editor and is the Eisner-nominated

author of graphic novels, romantic women’s fiction, urban fantasy, and young adult
novels. She was the editor of the Sandman spinoffs The Dreaming and Lucifer and
writer of Destiny: A Chronicle of Deaths Foretold miniseries, and is currently the
co-host of the Sandman podcast Endless.

16 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

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 I’M HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN’S OLE LUKØJE, A.K.A. THE SANDMAN.
LITERATURE AND FOLKLORE ARE FILLED WITH GUARDIANS OF DREAMS
LIKE ME -- AND SO ARE COMIC BOOKS, WHICH FOR DECADES HAVE BEEN…

THE FIRST SANDMAN OF COMIC BOOKS,

WESLEY DODDS, PREMIERED IN 1939 IN
NEW YORK WORLD’S FAIR COMICS #1 AND
QUICKLY GRADUATED TO HIS OWN FEATURE
IN ADVENTURE COMICS. ARMED WITH HIS
SLEEP-INDUCING GAS GUN, HE WAS A MEMBER
OF THE JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA.

SANDY THE GOLDEN BOY DEBUTED IN 1941 IN

ADVENTURE #69. FOR A WHILE, SANDMAN DONNED
THIS SUPERHERO COSTUME AND FOUGHT CRIME WITH
HIS SIDEKICK. COMICS LEGENDS SIMON & KIRBY
DID YOU KNOW THAT MARVEL PRODUCED MANY OF THEIR ADVENTURES.
COMICS HAD ITS OWN SANDMAN?
IN 1943?? IN MARVEL MYSTERY
COMICS #41, BOY ADVENTURER
JIMMY JUPITER NARROWLY ZATARA THE MAGICIAN, ONE
ESCAPED THE LAND OF DREAMS’ OF DC’s EARLIEST STARS,
SANDMAN WHILE JOURNEYING ENCOUNTERED THE GOD OF
INTO THE REALM OF FAIRIES. SLUMBER, MORPHEUS, IN ACTION
COMICS #100 IN 1946.

A VILLAINOUS SANDMAN --
ACTUALLY A FEMALE COMMUNIST
AGENT NAMED MADAM MORPHEUS
-- BRANDISHED A SLEEP WEAPON
IN 1954’s PLASTIC MAN #51.

18 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 RUDOLPH AND HIS PAL GROVER VISITED CLOUDLAND IN DC’s
RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER #6 (1955) AND MET THE
SANDMAN, WHO LIVED IN A CASTLE AT THE CORNER OF SLEEPY
ROAD AND SLUMBER CANYON.

A MAN’S OBSESSION WITH BRINGING TO LIFE THE “DREAM GIRL”

HE SKETCHED PROVIDED HIM AN AUDIENCE WITH NONE OTHER
THAN KING MORPHEUS IN DC’s HOUSE OF MYSTERY #69 IN 1957.

MARVEL’S BETTER-KNOWN SANDMAN

HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH DREAMS,
ALTHOUGH HE’S OFTEN TRIED TO PUT
THE WALL-CRAWLER TO SLEEP --
PERMANENTLY. THIS SHAPESHIFTING
VILLAIN DEBUTED IN 1963 IN AMAZING
SPIDER-MAN #4.

IN 1963’s WONDER WOMAN

#140, PRINCESS DIANA
WAS GRANTED THREE
WISHES BY THE GOD OF
DREAMS, MORPHEUS.

BY THE ’60s, WESLEY DODDS HAD RETURNED TO HIS ORIGINAL

SANDMAN COSTUME WHEN MAKING OCCASIONAL APPEARANCES
IN JLA/JSA CROSSOVERS… INCLUDING THIS INGLORIOUS 1966
COVER SHOT ON JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #46!

ALSO IN 1966, A SLEEP- ANOTHER EVIL SANDMAN APPEARED IN 1966, ON

STIMULATING SUPERVILLAIN ABC-TV’s BATMAN. SEASON TWO/EPISODE 33 INTRODUCED
CALLED SANDMAN CREATED ACTOR MICHAEL RENNIE AS DR. SOMNAMBULA, A.K.A. THE
NIGHTMARES FOR THE MAN SANDMAN, WIELDER OF HYPNOTIC SAND.
FROM R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E. IN
ARCHIE COMICS’ LIFE WITH
ARCHIE #58.

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #94 (1971) INAUGURATED ITS

“HALL OF GOLDEN AGE HEROES” FEATURE BY REPRINTING THE
ORIGIN OF THE GOLDEN AGE SANDMAN (AND STARMAN, TOO).

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 19

 SIMON & KIRBY REUNITED TO INTRODUCE AN ALL-NEW
SANDMAN IN LATE 1973. THIS SANDMAN, AIDED BY HIS

Sandman, Sandy, Zatara, Plastic Man, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, House of Mystery, Batman, Blockbuster, Justice League of America, Wonder Woman © DC Comics. Jimmy Jupiter, villain Sandman, Spider-Man © Marvel Comics.
NIGHTMARISH LACKEYS BRUTE AND GLOB, WAS EVENTUALLY
REVEALED TO BE DR. GARRETT SANFORD.

ONE-TIME SIDEKICK SANDY WAS TRANSFORMED INTO

Archie, Betty, the Man from R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E. © Archie Publications, Inc. Hans Christian Andersen Sandman drawing by Vilhelm Pedersen/courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
A SAND-MONSTER IN 1974’s JLA #113.
EVENTUALLY HE WAS CURED, AND AS SANDY HAWKINS
LATER TOOK ON THE MANTLE OF SANDMAN.

THE GOLDEN AGE SANDMAN

RETURNED IN A NEW STORY FOR DC
COMICS PRESENTS #42’s “WHATEVER
HAPPENED TO…?” FEATURE. “WHATEVER
HAPPENED TO SANDY THE GOLDEN
BOY?” FOLLOWED, IN ISSUE #47.

WESLEY DODDS’ EVOLUTION INTO

SANDMAN WAS TOLD ANEW IN 1986
IN SECRET ORIGINS vol. 2 #7.

HECTOR HALL, SON OF THE GOLDEN AGE HAWKMAN AND HAWK-

GIRL, FIRST APPEARED AS SILVER SCARAB IN 1983 ALONGSIDE
INFINITY, INC. HE PERISHED IN ACTION BUT ESCAPED DEATH, IN
1988 BECOMING THE NEW SANDMAN, LORD OF THE DREAM STREAM.

IN 1989 THE SANDMAN

OF COURSE, LONG BEFORE THESE
#1 INTRODUCED DREAM
SANDMEN OF COMIC BOOKS, WINSOR McCAY’s
-- MORPHEUS -- THE LORD
COMIC STRIP LITTLE NEMO IN SLUMBERLAND
OF DREAMS AND ONE OF
(1905–1927) TURNED DREAMTIME INTO STORYTIME!
THE ENDLESS. AND THUS
BEGAN A FASCINATING
SPECIAL THANKS TO
SAGA WHICH CONTINUES
JOHN WELLS AND HERITAGE
TO THIS DAY. AUCTIONS. NIGHTY-NIGHT!

20 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 Shelly Bond
The Sandman and the DC Bullet TM & © DC Comics. Unless otherwise note, artwork appearing in this feature is courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

interviews conducted by

Editor’s note: We certainly won’t disagree with colleague, Shelly Bond, for help. We had earlier
Norman Mailer’s description of Neil Gaiman’s worked together at Comico the Comic Company,
The Sandman as “a comic strip for intellectuals.” and not too long after I jumped to DC, Shelly took
The Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist’s accolade a similar path—although she landed in group
may seem to single out the comic book’s writer editor Karen Berger’s corner while I was working
in its praise. Yet Gaiman, even in his greener with superhero group editors. Shelly eventually
years when Sandman was a new project, became Sandman’s assistant editor and went on
understood that comics is an illustrative to work on numerous DC projects, including many
medium, where words and pictures coproduce bearing the Sandman “brand.”
a unique narrative unlike any other form of art Shelly reached out to many of Sandman’s
or entertainment. From its thought-provoking, artists, asking them all the same questions; you’ll
sometimes startling multimedia cover art by note from their responses that not every question
Dave McKean to its interior artists, beginning went answered. Her first question—“So tell me, do
with penciler Sam Kieth and inker Mike Drin- you prefer rough or smooth, and why?”—merits
genberg, Sandman has always been graced an explanation. As Shelly clarifies,
by some of the industry’s most extraordinary “That was the assistant comic book editor’s
artistic talents. first question when getting ready to send out the
For this issue’s coverage of The Sandman, as edited script and a deadline. One of the perks for
editor I wished to shine a spotlight not only on a penciler getting a job on a monthly series like
the series and Neil Gaiman but also the artists The Sandman was getting free DC Comics art
who brought Neil’s Master of Dreams to life each board. The only dilemma was choosing between
issue. But so many different artists have drawn a rough or smooth surface. It was often a case of
Sandman… where’s an editor to start? And real- consulting with one’s inker, but it begins with the
istically, interviewing all of them for an ongoing penciler being comfortable in talking to the hand
periodical like BACK ISSUE would be a massive which holds the lead that gets it all going, the
undertaking that would jeopardize deadlines and assistant editor’s.”
induce ulcers. What’s an editor to do? A baker’s dozen of talented illustrators
As I had turned to my former DC editorial replied to Shelly’s queries. What follows are
colleague Alisa Kwitney in procuring this issue’s their responses, plus samples of their Sandman
Gaiman interview, I similarly asked another DC artwork.

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 21

 as “Salt Lake Horror.” These earlier Lovecraftian associations also
influenced the choice of background locations that eventually
found their way into Sandman.
Sandman credits: The Sandman #1–4 (inks), 6–11, 14–16,
21, 28 (pencils); Who’s Who in the DC Universe #5 BOND: What’s the one Goth article of clothing or artifact you
(Sandman), 8 (Death), 15 (The Dreaming, The Endless) would swap with a member of the Endless?
Other significant works: Alien Worlds; Kelvin Mace; Doom DRINGENBERG: None. It’s actually the other way around: I often
Patrol; Magic: The Gathering drew the Endless in the style and clothing we usually wore;
in that regard, Sandman remains an artifact of its time. The
style wasn’t specifically “Goth” per se, so much as post-punk,
SHELLY BOND: So tell me, what was it: rough or smooth board
glam-punk, or maybe proto shoe-gazer. Goth style codifications
for you, and why?
happened long afterwards. I took my sketchbook everywhere,
MIKE DRINGENBERG: Rough or smooth was less relevant to me
and figures in Sandman were often drawn from life, or were
than paper size…
taken from photos shot in situ of the people I knew (with eternal
At the time we began work on Sandman, DC was transitioning
thanks to the wonders of same-day film processing).
away from the older 14” x 21” stock (which was afterwards only
used for covers) to the current 11” x 17” standard; I preferred
BOND: Is there one panel you wish you could remake/remodel?
the older size because the art could be more detailed.
DRINGENBERG: There are any number of them, there were so
On the whole, I took a cue from Bill Sienkiewicz (and by
many missed opportunities…
example, Dave McKean) and never limited myself in terms of
A classic example would be the Dream Vortex scenes from
physical media, focusing instead on the emotional impact of the
The Doll’s House... I got the basic idea for this from Dave Sim,
images, on their dramatic aspects. Consequently, I used a variety
from his parody of Nixon’s “The Six Crises” in Cerebus’ High
of substrates while working on Sandman; I enjoyed playing
Society story arc. For the most part, these particular issues were
with photocopiers… In order to achieve certain effects, at one
drawn in such a way as to make the reader hold the book sideways
point early in Doll’s House I made background color holds by
and read the pages downward (which offers some interesting,
photocopying gingham fabrics onto drafting vellum.
more cinematic, possibilities for left-right panel flow). However,
Additionally, I used of a wide variety of marking materials
there is one hilarious passage in which Cerebus staggers into
(pencil, laundry marker, ball-point pens, charcoal, lithographic
his war room partly drunk and reeling with a hangover, which
crayon, etc.). Malcolm Jones was an extremely versatile inker,
forces the reader to fully rotate the book until—as Cerebus gets
but on those occasional panels or pages that I handled myself,
splashed with a bucket of water—the book resumes a normal
my preferred inks were almost exclusively acrylic-based (usually
upright left-right page flow, before finally settling back on its
Faber FW), and only rarely did I use white-out, preferring the
side, and continues to be read downward as before.
19th Century watercolor technique of scraping pigment off the
I love these kinds of structural experiments, and applied it
substrate with a razor blade or an X-Acto knife.
successfully to Sandman for the dream sequences in issue #10.
At the time I lived in a region with a notably arid climate,
The placement and direction of word balloons is critical to
with a very low average humidity. In summer this could easily
pulling off this trick, and having done it once, I decided to have
be as low as 2–3%. In watercolor terms, that meant that a wash
a go at doing it one better for the Dream Vortex. The vortex
could literally evaporate before you had any chance of working
itself was created by smearing mylar acetate with ink (as if it
color into it, which limited the use of traditional “wet” water-
were the glass plate when making a monotype), then splattering
color techniques.
it with cleaning fluid; this was then used to make a color hold.
However, this offered an interesting advantage in that
I’d used this technique earlier on (and in a more restrained
pigments didn’t penetrate very deeply into the substrate, and
fashion) near the end of “Tales in the Sand.”
therefore didn’t really spread its fibers; which meant that color
washes could be layered for intensity and scrubbed or scraped
off to reveal the substrate with little damage to the surface. This Circa the mid-1990s, Sandman co-creator Mike
goes back to my preference for acrylic inks: India inks are more
finely ground and more readily permeate the paper surface, Dringenberg with his friend Cinnamon “Sin” Hadley,
essentially staining it, which in turn necessitates the use of white- upon whom the artist based Death’s appearance.
out to correct mistakes or create white-on-black effects. In that
Dmcgauley/Wikimedia Commons.
climate, however, acrylic ink tended to dry on the surface and
could easily be removed.

BOND: What’s a favorite memory or lost tale from your years

working on The Sandman?
DRINGENBERG: Sandman has a lot of lost tales… most of them
don’t bear remembering. I suppose there is one I can relate,
having to do with the deeply strange nature of Salt Lake City…
When I was still in college, some years before I ever began
work on Sandman, my friends and I enjoyed playing a board
game called Arkham Horror (for any gamers who might be reading
this, this was the original Chaosium version, not the one currently
available). It was an excellent beer-and-pretzels kind of game, and
on one occasion we noticed that there was an analogous location
in SLC for almost every one depicted on the game board: GilGal
park; the Old Saltair Pavilion (which featured prominently in the
1962 supernatural horror film, Carnival of Souls); the LDS temple
complex made a good stand-in for Lovecraft’s Temple of Dagon.
This prompted us to make our own version of the map and play it

22 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 Death doing her
job, from Sandman
#8 (Aug. 1989).
Original art by Mike
Dringenberg and
Malcolm Jones III,
signed by
Dringenberg and
Neil Gaiman.
The final panel’s
shot of Death was
clearly influenced by
artist Dringenberg’s
friend, Cinnamon
Hadley.

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 23

 My original intention was that the reader begin catharsis. Metaphysical intentions aside, I was fas-
to rotate the book until they were fully holding cinated by the way this changed the performance
it upside down, but now reading it right-to-left, dynamic and through that lens, I saw Dave’s struc-
like a manga (which—inverted—still preserves tural experiments (which actively involved the
the “normal” left-to-right page flow); then the reader in the process of creating the narrative) as a
rotation continued, following Rose and her way of creating a greater intimacy with the content.
dreaming housemates around the spiral vortex Were I to redraw The Doll’s House, there’d be
until Morpheus appears in the lower-right corner a lot more of that kind of thing. When originally
of the page, restoring order—and the pages to drawn, I hadn’t yet developed a full understanding
An introspective their usual sequencing. Sadly, I can only assume of image resonance, or how to manipulate within
my notes about balloon placement were lost, and the work… There’s more to it than that, but
Death in a 1991 the text ended up printed conventionally, with looking back on it, it wouldn’t have been at all
Dringenberg left-to-right flow. DC has subsequently continued difficult to expand on the epic scale while forming an
to print it this way, but hopefully we can correct at ongoing Stimmung, a sense that it was all one
painting, originally
some point in a revised edition. interconnected dream.
conceived as the Prior to working on Sandman, I’d read Antonin
proposal art for Artaud’s The Theater and its Double, a collection BOND: What was the album most likely to be on
of essays and lectures in which he proposes an your turntable or CD player while drawing a page
the character’s “alchemical” theater, in which the audience from a Sandman story?
first miniseries, becomes actor—an active participant in the DRINGENBERG: When I’m composing a page
performance, and the actor on stage becomes layout (or any image, really), visualizing it in my
Death: the High a kind of modern shaman guiding the audience mind’s eye, I tend to prefer quiet; sometimes
Cost of Living. through the performance, the play, to a communal Baroque chamber music (especially Bach or
Vivaldi; maybe Albioni, Telemann, or Scarlatti’s
guitar suites); nothing vocal. Classical guitar is also
a favorite when I have some thinking to do.
When I get around to fleshing it out or inking
it, the soundtrack could be almost anything
depending on my mood. I’ve always had very
eclectic and wide-ranging musical tastes… I might
just as easily listen to jazz (my dad was a Miles Davis
fan, so I heard a lot of jazz growing up), classical,
delta blues, R&B, ’60s blues rock, ’70s prog rock,
glam rock, punk rock, Krautrock­—which trends into
industrial (by which I mean groups like Tiergar-
ten, SPK, Cabaret Voltaire, and Faust), new wave,
dub, ska, or reggae. As far as “new” music went,
at the time we were very lucky to have had a local
record store with a fairly direct pipeline into what
was happening in London. We usually had new
releases from Factory, 4AD, Mute, and other indie
record labels within a couple of weeks of their
release in the UK.
Sometimes my “work soundtrack” went pretty
far afield… I drew Sandman #6 more-or-less on
location at Bill & Nada’s, an all-night diner (now
long gone) that served as the backdrop for 24
Hours. Bill & Nada’s had a very surreal atmosphere
at 3 a.m., as if the embedded cigarette smoke
layered over the wall murals took on a life of its
own... Old Bill McHenry, painted as young rodeo
star, riding his palomino; all slightly seasick under
the fluorescent lights. I got through that issue with
a ton of coffee and French fries (the only things
on the menu that I knew were killed-dead); Hank
Williams, Gene Autry, and Peggy Lee were all on
the jukebox. Fittingly, so was Dinah Washington’s
“What a Difference a Day Makes.”

BOND: The Sandman 3000: Underwater, outer

space, or otherwise?
DRINGENBERG: None of them. Maybe underwater,
but only if it somehow retells the dream-like 2nd
Canto of Lautréamont’s proto-surrealist mas-
terpiece, “Le Chants de Maldoror,” in which the
vampiric Maldoror, embodied paean of Evil and
cruelty, makes love to a shark in admiration of their
mutually violent natures.

24 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 Sandman credits: The Sandman cover artist, 1989–
1997; The Sandman (Netflix television series) end
credits
Other significant works: Arkham Asylum: A Serious
House on Serious Earth; Hellblazer; The Tragical Comedy
or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch
For more info: [Link]

BOND: Reveal something else you were juggling parallel/in

tandem while working on your legendary cover run.
DAVE McKEAN: Arkham and Sandman put me on the
desks of art directors at record labels, so I started
doing a lot of album covers, usually for bands
with names like Needlessly Killing Badgers
and Scrape All the Things or Just Unpleasant.
If you look at some of them—Mullmuzzler,
Testament, Fear Factory, Paradise Lost,
Machine Head—they make up a parallel
series of Sandman-ish covers.

BOND: Is there one cover you wish you could

remake/remodel?
McKEAN: Hard to say, but I think probably
#3 and 63 are the only ones I would not
want to remake/remodel if I was doing dave mckean
them again.
Niccolò Caranti.

BOND: What was the album most likely to be on your turn-

table or CD player while working on The Sandman covers?
McKEAN: That’s over seven years, so a lot of albums were
listened to during that time. In 1989, for number one I
was probably listening to Carla Bley, Joni Mitchell, and
King Crimson. By the last issue in 1996, I was probably
still listening to Joni Mitchell, but also Conlon Nancarrow
and Jake Thackray.

(above) A 2012
portrait of Morpheus
by Dave McKean,
painted in oil over
sections of photo-
graphic paper.
(bottom) Original
cover art to the
1991 trade paper-
back The Sandman:
Preludes and
Nocturnes. Mixed
media master Dave
McKean blended
shadowbox images
and random objects
including stones for
this inventive cover.

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 25

 BOND: So tell me, what was it: rough
or smooth board for you, and why?
KELLEY JONES: Rough. Always rough.
Sandman credits: The Sandman #17–18, 22–24, 26–27 More happy accidents and unknowns
Other significant works: Batman; Batman and Dracula: Red Rain; Deadman; happen on rough paper because of
Conan: The Book of Thoth the “tooth” that it has. Drybrushing
For more info: @kelleyjonesart and control of the lines for inking is far
greater.

BOND: What’s a favorite memory or

lost tale from your years working on
The Sandman?
JONES: The sound of Neil’s omnipresent
computer in the background when we
spoke about the story planning. And the
spinner rack at my local Tower Books
with an empty slot where Sandman
#18 should be after I asked if they any
more, and the clerks saying, “Did you
read the cat issue?”… never knowing
I drew it. [Editor’s note: Sandman
#18’s story was titled “A Dream of a
Thousand Cats,” Part 2 of the Dream
Country arc.]

BOND: Reveal something else you were

juggling parallel/in tandem while work-
ing on your storyline.
JONES: Drawing a couple issues of
Grimjack for John Ostrander.

BOND: What’s the one Goth article of

clothing or artifact you would swap
with a member of the Endless?
JONES: I look terrible in any Goth regalia!
But I’m pale, so there’s that.

BOND: Is there one panel you wish you

could remake/remodel?
JONES: Not one thing, except I’d have
added the sketchy Sandman doodle by
a Production guy on the second-to-last
panel in the German edition of Calliope
rather than leaving it blank like it was
in the story.

BOND: What was the album

most likely to be on your
turntable or CD player
while drawing a page
from your Sandman
stories?
JONES: Deep by Peter
Murphy and Bete Noire
by Bryan Ferry. (They are
still on my turntable.)

BOND: The Sandman

kelley jones 3000: Underwater, out-
er space, or otherwise?
Gage Skidmore.
JONES: All Cats by ten…
they finally had the same dream.

BOND: Fill in the blank: If only Neil…

Lord Odin negotiates with Dream on this deliriously detailed JONES: …put a golden ticket in one
issue of Sandman and we made a story
original art page from Sandman #28 (July 1991). about that winner’s real dreams.
Pencils by Kelley Jones, inks by George Pratt.

26 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

BOND: What’s a favorite memory
or lost tale from your years working
on The Sandman?
CHARLES VESS: A favorite memory Sandman credits: The Sandman #19, 62, 75; The Dreaming #47
took place in, I believe, 1989, at Other significant works: Heavy Metal; Spider-Man: Spirits of the Earth; Swamp
[San Diego Comic-Con], this being Thing; The Books of Magic; A Midsummer’s Night Dream; Stardust; Blueberry Girl
before Neil was NEIL. We bumped For more info: [Link]
into each other for the very first
time in an aisle in the dealer’s
room, and were able to have a
lengthy conversation as people
hurried by on either side of us.
At first we gabbed about various
fantasy authors we liked, then
about a certain comic book series
that he happened to be writing. I
think at that point there had
been only five or six issues
published of The Sand-
man, which I’d read
because they came
in the comp bundles
that DC was then
sending to all their
freelancers. I was
busy running those
early stories (whose
themes were mainly
gothic or contempo-
rary horror, certainly charles vess
not my cup of tea,
then or now) through Wildwose.
my mind when Neil, unexpectedly,
asked me if I would be interested
in drawing an issue of his comic.
I politely begged off, saying that I
already had too many projects on
my plate. We continued talking for
a bit and then went our separate
ways.
Back at home, the [Sandman]
issues kept appearing on my door-
step. Curiously, I would look each
one over. Then, the poetry of “The
Sound of Her Wings” [Sandman #8]
took me completely by surprise,
followed closely by the African folk
tale issue. Both excited me to no
end. I realized that Neil had a vehicle
that he could take anywhere he
wanted it to go. I believe I called
him (there was no email in those
pre-internet, far-gone days) and
said that I would be happy to draw
one of his tales. He, in the mean-
time, had come upon an edition of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream that I
had illustrated. He asked, “Would you
be interested in working with that
play again, but this time I’d like to
interpret the cast of characters a
bit differently?”
Of course, I said yes.

From the final issue of the series’ first run, Sandman #75 (Mar. 1996), William Shakespeare, his daughter by his side,
pens The Tempest at the behest of Dream. Pencils and inks by Charles Vess.

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 27

 with Malcolm Jones III inking my stuff, probably
rough; he was such an amazing talent and could
do incredible things with ink textures. I learned so
Sandman credits: The Sandman #20, 24; The much from him.
Sandman: Dream Country; Sandman: A Gallery
of Dreams; The Death Gallery; Lucifer #62; BOND: What’s a favorite memory or lost tale from
Sandman 20th Anniversary Poster (2008) your time working on The Sandman?
Other significant works: A Distant Soil; DORAN: Just getting to know Neil. We had many
Legion of Super-Heroes; American Gods; late-night phone calls about the story “Facade”
Snow Glass Apples; Amazing Fantastic [Sandman #20 (Oct. 1990), featuring Urania Black-
Incredible Stan Lee well, Element Girl from the Silver Age Metamorpho
For more info: [Link] series—ed.] in particular, working closely on mood
and body language, which was especially important
BOND: So tell me, what was it: rough or smooth since everything in the story was basically people
board for you, and why? sitting around talking. If the acting didn’t work,
COLLEEN DORAN: Smooth. I prefer smooth the story didn’t work. We would stay on the phone
paper in general unless the art is being very late, sometimes for hours, and that was
printed directly from the pencil. Tonal back before calling plans and so on. It
A deliriously work generally works best on paper could get expensive and none of us
with some texture, ink without. But were making any money back then.
delightful Death Neil is incredibly smart, inspiring, so
color illustration much fun to talk to.
I don’t talk to him as much as
produced by Colleen I used to because we don’t have
Doran in 2012. good cellphone service where I live,
but I can still get his audiobooks to
hear his voice whenever I want!

BOND: Reveal something else you

COLLEEN DORAN were juggling parallel/in tandem
while working on your storyline.
MayCauseDrowsiness.
DORAN: A lot. I was not only
self-publishing at the time, I was just over-
worked in general. Back then I just didn’t
make much money, and I would sometimes
work on a half-dozen projects at a time. Trying
to self-publish and work in the mainstream
was crazy-making. I don’t know how I lived
through it… I worked constantly, no days off,
and was always getting in deadline trouble. If I
had a time machine, I’d go back and tell myself
to do whatever I had to do to come up with the
money to not have to overbook.

BOND: What’s the one Goth article of clothing

or artifact you would swap with a member of
the Endless?
DORAN: Death’s hat. I think I actually owned all of
the other clothes, including Delirium’s skirt.

BOND: Is there one panel you wish you could

remake/remodel?
DORAN: All of them. I wish I could draw better
back then.

BOND: What was the album most likely to be on

your turntable or CD player while drawing a page
from your Sandman story?
DORAN: I didn’t have a stereo then, I probably
just had the TV on.

BOND: The Sandman 3000: Underwater, outer

space, or otherwise?
DORAN: Otherworld.

BOND: Fill in the blank: If only Neil…

DORAN: I can’t think of anything he lacks. I wish
he could live forever, I guess.

28 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 BOND: So tell me, what was it: rough
or smooth board for you, and why? The Endless’ Desire
SHAWN McMANUS: I preferred the
rough DC board. For me, the rough Sandman credits: The Sandman #31–33, 35–37; exits the stagecoach
paper was better for penciling The Dreaming #31, 39, 50; Sandman Presents: on the last panel of
because the pencil bit into the The Thessaliad #1–4; Sandman Presents: Thessaly:
board better than the smooth paper. Witch for Hire #1–4 this intricate page
The problem with the rough paper Other significant works: Saga of the Swamp Thing; by penciler/inker
is that the pencils smudged easier The Omega Men; Dr. Fate; Fables; Cinderella: From
than the smooth paper. My solution Shawn McManus
Fabletown with Love
to this was to tape off the whole For more info: [Link] from Sandman #31
page except for whichever panel
that I was working on, then (Oct. 1991).
do the same for the next
panel and so on.

BOND: Is there one

panel you wish
you could remake/
remodel?
McMANUS: All of
them.

BOND: What was the

album most likely to
be on your turntable SHAWN MCMANUS
or CD player while League of Comic [Link].
drawing a page from
your Sandman story?
McMANUS: Probably the Police.

BOND: Fill in the blank: If only Neil…

McMANUS: …would adopt me.

The Lord of Dreams in watercolor

and colored pencil, in a 2009
specialty illo by Shawn McManus.

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 29

 BOND: So tell me, what was it: rough or smooth
board for you, and why?
JILL THOMPSON: Both! For different reasons/
Sandman credits: The Sandman #40–49; The Dreaming #13, 14; The inking tools at different times.
Little Endless Storybook; Death: At Death’s Door; The Dead Boy Detectives;
Delirium’s Party: A Little Endless Storybook BOND: Reveal something else you were juggling
Other significant works: Wonder Woman; Black Orchid; Scary Godmoth- parallel/in tandem while working on your
er; The Invisibles; Beasts of Burden storyline.
For more info: [Link] THOMPSON: I was in an improv troupe and
often performing three to four nights a week in
addition to drawing comics!

BOND: What’s the one Goth article of

clothing or artifact you would swap
with a member of The Endless?
THOMPSON: Well, I do love a
cloak… but I wouldn’t trade my
motorcycle jacket for anything!

BOND: What was the album most

likely to be on your turntable or
CD player while drawing a page
from your Sandman story?
THOMPSON: I literally watched
JILL THOMPSON soap operas every day while
drawing Sandman… but Craig
© Luigi Novi /
Wikimedia Commons. Russell had me listening to some
real opera as well. I’m a person
who draws with podcasts on now, so the equivalent
back then was having the TV on one channel in
the background!

BOND: The Sandman 3000: underwater, outer

space, or otherwise?
THOMPSON: Outer space… what do those
who left Earth dream of?

(above) How can you not fall in love with Jill Thompson’s
delightful Little Endless? Original art to page 21 of Delirium’s Party:
A Little Endless Storybook (2011). (right) Endless siblings Dream and
Death in a 2011 mixed media illustration by Jill.

30 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 Sandman credits: The Sandman #50; The
Sandman: Endless Nights; The Sandman: The
Dream Hunters #1–4
Other significant works: Elric; Killraven;
The Ring of the Nibelung; Night Music;
The Jungle Book
For more info: [Link]

BOND: So tell me, what was it: rough or smooth

board for you, and why? RUSSELL: “Ramadan” [Sandman #50 (June (left) Dream, in
P. CRAIG RUSSELL: Smooth for penciling, and 1993)—ed.] was the single best original script I’ve
especially inking. I use micron pens now, and rough ever been gifted with. Its triple ending is a unique an undated (circa
paper eats them alive. But if I’m doing a series of scenes that grow increasingly dark, 1990s) ink illo by
color piece, I prefer rough. The color moving from colorful fairy tale to that of
modern-day bombed out Baghdad.
P. Craig Russell.
goes on much more smoothly and
doesn’t streak. I could have used a more photo- (right) She’s
realistic style for those final panels.
everything you ever
BOND: What’s a favorite memory
or lost tale from your years work- BOND: What was the album most wanted! Desire of
ing on The Sandman? likely to be on your turntable or the Endless, in a
RUSSELL: I think that would be CD player while working on The
doing the research for The Dream Sandman? pinup by Craig
Hunters. A Japanese fairy tale RUSSELL: Mostly music from the produced for
needs authenticity as to costumes, 19th and early 20th Century, the
architecture, and a general feel for Romantic era with its wild and Sandman Special #1
Japanese art. I’ve always been a bit p. craig russell colorful orchestration, not the more (Nov. 1991).
mad for Japanese art, and so I had refined and civilized Classical era.
Portrait by Michael Netzer.
an excuse to buy a whole armload
of books for reference. BOND: Fill in the blank: If only Neil…
RUSSELL: …would write me an original script
BOND: Is there one panel you wish you could set in a fantasy universe with magic spells and
remake/remodel? fantastic architecture.

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 31

 that I am a better artist than he is, but I wouldn’t
tell him that.
Sandman credits: The Sandman #50, BOND: Is there one panel you wish you could
53, 70–72; A Death Gallery #1; The remake/remodel?
Dreaming #8; Sandman Presents: Love ZULLI: Yes, I’d like to do an expanded edition of
(left) Destiny, the Street #1–3 the Desire short story that Neil and I did, plus one
Endless’ possessor Other significant works: The Puma Blues; crowd scene from The Wake. [Editor’s note: The
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; Alice Cooper’s Wake is Gaiman’s story arc in The Sandman #70–75
of the Book of Souls The Last Temptation (Aug. 1995–Mar. 1996).]
and one-time host of For more info: [Link]/artists/
Michael_zulli BOND: What was the album most likely to
DC’s Weird Mystery
be on your turntable or CD player while
Tales, in a portrait drawing a page from your Sandman
BOND: So tell me, what was it:
by Michael Zulli. rough or smooth board for you, story?
and why? ZULLI: Eno, Here Come the Warm
From the collection Jets. Roxy Music, Viva Roxy Live.
MICHAEL ZULLI: Smooth. I was
of Edward Chu. never much with a brush while Roxy Music, Avalon. Brian Ferry,
working in comics (Puma Blues, Mamouna. Everything by the
(right) Morpheus Cocteau Twins.
etc). A smooth plate finish was
and Delirium of faster and left a better line. No one
ever gave me a chance to use ink on BOND: If only Neil...
the Endless in ZULLI: …had written me one
any of the work, though I had for
“Delirium’s many years already. more issue of The Wake.
MICHAEL ZULLI
Pavillion,” a
BOND: What’s the one Goth article Kyle Cassidy.
2003 specialty of clothing or artifact you would swap with a
painting by member of the Endless?
ZULLI: Destruction’s linen poet’s shirt. I promise
Michael Zulli.

32 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 (top) An intro-
spective Dream in
Sandman credits: The Sandman #57–61, 63, unused cover art by
65–69; The Dreaming #34, 50; Lucifer #55
Other significant works: Mars; Jonny Quest; Marc Hempel for a
Breathtaker; Gregory; Tug & Buster The Sandman: The
For more info: [Link]
Kindly Ones collected
edition. (bottom)
BOND: So tell me, what was it: rough or smooth board
for you, and why? Sink your eyeteeth
MARC HEMPEL: Definitely rough; the surface texture into this startling
grabs the pencil better, making it easier to lay down
a heavy line… and it holds India ink better as well.
page from Sandman
For what it’s worth, I’ve always preferred #65 (Dec. 1994),
kid/vellum/rough finish Bristol board for featuring Matthew
comics.
the Raven and the
BOND: What’s a favorite memory or lost Corinthian. Signed
tale from your years working on The
Sandman?
by Neil Gaiman
HEMPEL: Early on, I was feeling a bit and penciler Marc
insecure about my drawing, as DC Comics Hempel. Inks by
was at that time forwarding some hate
mail from readers who weren’t connecting Richard Case.
with my more expressive approach to
comics storytelling. Anyway, I was on
marc hempel
the phone with Neil for some reason
(probably at one in the morning)
and mentioned the letters. He asked, “Do you really
care what people think?” Good friends always ask the
important questions!

BOND: Reveal something else you were juggling parallel/

in tandem while working on your storyline.
HEMPEL: I’d just finished writing/drawing Gregory
IV: Fat Boy by the time I began work on The Kindly
Ones, so that worked out perfectly, schedule-wise.
I believe that the only other major project I was working
on during that 1993–1995 time period was my
humor comic Tug & Buster, then in the development
stage. For what it’s worth, I was also immersed in
my then-current hobby and obsession, 3D photog-
raphy, and was also playing drums in my first band,
Psychotic Reactions (which shows up on a flyer taped
to the wall inside the Lux nightclub in part four of
The Kindly Ones).

BOND: What’s the one Goth article of clothing or artifact

you would swap with a member of the Endless?
HEMPEL: I’d let Dream borrow my black fedora. Is he
size 7⅜?

BOND: Is there one panel you wish you could remake/

remodel?
HEMPEL: Yes. Quite a few, actually (though I won’t say
which).
That said, I’m happy to say that—in my opinion—
most of my work on The Kindly Ones still holds up nicely,
almost three decades later.

BOND: What was the album most likely to be on your

turntable or CD player while drawing a page from your
Sandman story?
HEMPEL: Most likely vintage jazz from Miles Davis,
John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Django Reinhardt, Sarah
Vaughan…

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 33

 BOND: So tell me, what was it: rough or smooth board for you, and why?
TEDDY KRISTIANSEN: Rough, always, because I like to feel the
grittiness when drawing, both with the pencil and the pen nib and
Sandman credits: The Sandman #64; Sandman brushes. I also liked the way it could take painted color. It was lovely
Midnight Theatre #1; The Dreaming #36–39 paper to work on.
Other significant works: Grendel Tales: Four
Devils, One Hell; House of Secrets; [Superman:] It’s BOND: What’s a favorite memory or lost tale from your years working
a Bird on The Sandman?
For more info: [Link] KRISTIANSEN: First one was getting the call if I wanted to do Sandman
Midnight Theatre (no or very little emailing in those days, so I had crazy
expensive phone bills), and second was getting the call for the regular
Sandman series. We (at least I) didn’t really know how popular the series
was, and I only went in to my work on the project as a WHO IS DOING
INTERESTING STUFF IN THE MEDIUM comic reader, and liked what
both Neil and Matt [Wagner] were bringing to the medium: playful
and with a passion for other mediums, but also a passion for what
pictures and words can do together.
Another memory was when I had drawn Morpheus walking in a wet
dream universe (Neil´s script notes) and I had made a collage of bums
and breasts, made less clear with a painted color over the collage, but in
the corner a very small Ronald Reagan, thinking that someone out there
must have wet dreams about the ex-president, but it got censored and
blurred—not the breasts and bums, but the ex-president.

BOND: Reveal something else you were juggling parallel/in tandem

while working on your storyline.
KRISTIANSEN: My initial idea was working from our idea, our imprinted
idea of the 1940s, which we know through our exposure to black-and-
white film and photos, so I worked in a muted palette hoping that this
would bring the time period easier to the reader. If it works for the
reader and brings that sense of time, you never know as we each bring
different memories and ideas to what you are reading.
But that was my initial idea I worked from. With issue #64 on the
regular series, I tried to do make sure that a guest-artist issue on a
storyline, the artwork wasn’t too far from the regular artwork on that
storyline, to make sure that the reader wasn’t too distracted, but also
trying to add my own little touch.

BOND: Is there one panel you wish you could remake/remodel?

KRISTIANSEN: Not really, but once you have completed a book
you’ve learned so much of how to work with the characters and the
environment, the mood and tone of the book, your drawing and
painting approach, and would like to start over again, but have to go
on to the next book, but with that knowledge and learning in your bag.
But there are panels that I have loved to make as commissions, mostly
the meeting between Morpheus and Wesley Dodds, and the splash
panel from issue #64 with Morpheus.

BOND: What was the album most likely to be on your turntable

or CD player while drawing a page from your Sandman story?
KRISTIANSEN: I listened to a lot of Kate Bush (still high on my
list), her Hounds of Love album the perfect mixture of abstraction
and pop; she’s a master in my eyes. But I have always listened to
a list of varied music, depending on the problem I am trying to
crack that day. So any music from soft pop, to jazz, to fusion jazz,
to guitar heavy music, to classic. These days the playlist
has been a mix of the Paper Kites from Australia (ROS-
TEDDY KRISTIANSEN ES), Trentemøller (Live from Copenhagen), Diesel Park West
(Shakespeare Alabama), Echo in the Canyon (from Jake Dylan), etc.

BOND: The Sandman 3000: Underwater, outer space, or otherwise?

KRISTIANSEN: Morpheus in the realm of Death, I would love to draw.
A reflection on that.

Original painted artwork by Teddy Kristiansen BOND: Fill in the blank: If only Neil…
KRISTIANSEN: …would write me a kiddie story. He wrote me a Deadman
for a Sandman card from Skybox’s 1994 DC story for my [DC Comics’] Solo issue that I loved doing, but I have always
Vertigo trading card set. wanted to do something silly with him. So a kiddie book, Neil! :-)

34 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 Instead it was the exact opposite. He would
write, then he would write less. I would extrapo-
late upon what he wrote and play with visuals and
Sandman credits: The Endless Gallery; The then Frank would bounce off of my work and he
Sandman: Endless Nights graphic novel would rewrite pages. We played and challenged
Other significant works: Moon Knight; New and collaborated like this on Elektra: Assassin and
Mutants; Elektra: Assassin; Stray Toasters it was hands-down the method that spoiled me
For more info: [Link] for any other writer.
Until Neil. Whereas Frank gave me plot points
to expand upon, Neil gave me dream logic, the
BOND: So tell me, what was it: rough or smooth
loveliest and creepiest and most beautiful
board for you, and why?
whispers of suggestions of implications of
BILL SIENKIEWICZ: I’m going to be “that
possibilities of endless maybes to run
guy” and say I like and prefer them both
as well as many other kinds of surfaces
with for our Delirium story. Delirium, as
So I did. delineated by Bill
like canvas, illustration board, and
And I worked and toiled and
even plastic paper. So it depends
was pleased and frustrated with Sienkiewicz, from
entirely on what the project is, what
what I was coming up with that— the 2003 graphic
I’m endeavoring to say with the
dammit—weren’t working or felt
work via the surface and texture novel The Sandman:
too clever by half and not emotion-
(each has emotional and psycho-
ally true enough on subconscious Endless Nights.
logical effects on the reader/viewer).

BOND: What’s a favorite memory

or lost tale from your years work-
ing on The Sandman? BILL SIENKIEWICZ
SIENKIEWICZ: Hands down, work-
© Luigi Novi /
ing with Neil. We have been close Wikimedia Commons.
friends since before he even began
working for DC Comics, before even Black Orchid.
Neil and I had often talked about absolutely
needing to work together on something at some
point, but also discussed life and were equally
fascinated with entire concept of obsession and
what drives artists of every stripe to create.
Of course, schedules and life being what they
were and are, we didn’t really get the opportunity
to work together until the Endless book. Neil called
and asked, and I said absolutely yes.
I’d worked with many of the best writers in
comics: Doug Moench, Chris Claremont, Frank
Miller, and Alan Moore chief among them. Each
was different and brilliant in their own way. Doug
preferred writing full scripts, but became amenable
on our run on Moon Knight for me to plot and him
to write dialogue. Chris was the master of brevity
with his plots. He gave me just enough to inspire
me and run with. Alan wrote tomes. Everything
was incredibly dense and deep, and I remember
drawing several pages featuring background
characters who would never appear again (with no
dialogue) having an animated argument while the
protagonist’s story and word balloons were front
and center. Alan had taken great pains to write out
the entire argument they were having in my script
so I could best convey it.
Needless to say, Alan’s scripts were structures
like a fine timepiece, and so I could not and would
not deviate from what was written (doing so
meant I was inspired to “collaborate!”). Meaning
mental associations were made; I would go off on
seeming tangents visually yet tie everything into
the script. It was absolutely jazz to me.
This is how I worked with Frank. He began
writing full scripts, and I was so excited by them I
did my run riot with them. And I began to worry
that I had gone so far “out there” that I feared
Frank’s response would be “WTAF, dude.”

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 35

 levels and I turned in as many pages as I rejected.
And Neil, bless his heart, asked for all of my rejects and ran
with them, inserting them and turning our collective dreams
into the Delirium story that saw print. It was a like a beautiful
horrible exorcism for me.
Neil not only wrote and rewrote and rewrote yet again
saying both less and infinitely more with every iteration based
on what I had provided, he had done something Frank had
not: he rearranged the order of the pages; I mean, completely.
He flipped scenes, juggled and rejiggered, and put this over
there and twisted it all about and it All. Came. Together.
I was actually speechless.
I’m incredibly proud of what we did together. And when
we’ve talked about it, I know we both loved the intensity of our
collaboration, thrilled it was received so well (it was so very us),
and actually relieved we survived it, but I think we both suspect
doing something like that again might just release a Dream-
scape mashup of the Kraken Cthulu and Hello Kitty, with a lot of
Charlie Parker and Miles Davis mixed in.
But I digress.

BOND: Reveal something else you were juggling parallel/in

tandem while working on your story.
SIENKIEWICZ: I was doing some film work for Miramax; poster
work for a James Gray film called The Yards (with James Caan,
Mark Wahlberg, and Charlize Theron). So imagine all of the
literal Delirium above and then toss in dealing with Harvey
f***ing Weinstein.
’Nuff said.

BOND: What’s the one Goth article of clothing or artifact you

would swap with a member of the Endless?
SIENKIEWICZ: It would have to be swapping one of my many
toasters for one of Delirium’s fish. Luckily I believe both items
operate via the technology Nikola Tesla was working on when
he passed. Minus any interactions with pigeons.

BOND: Is there one panel you wish you could remake/remodel?

SIENKIEWICZ: Many of them. Too many to mention, as a
matter of fact.
Now I’m depressed. Thanks a lot. ❤

BOND: What was the album most likely to be on your turntable

or CD player while drawing a page from your Sandman story?
SIENKIEWICZ: Oh, without a doubt, anything by the Cure. Robert
Smith is a f***ing genius poet, so most definitely Disintegration,
and the track from that album would absolutely have to be “The
Same Deep Water as You”—on continuous repeat. I have never
ever tired of that album or that song. (I just had to stop here and
put that song on.) “The Same Deep Water as You” is a living,
breathing mantra for me. It fits my creativity such as it is, my
work and the ebb and flow to and from “the zone” perfectly.
Also, any solo album by Robert Plant (I’m a dyed in the wool
Led Head, but especially a fan of Plant’s perpetual quest for
artistic beauty and stretching of boundaries and identity. Songs
would likely have been “Slow Dancer,” “Big Log,” and “Stranger
Here…Than Over There,” to name but a few). And, of course,
Laurie Anderson and anything at all from [Link] especially
the original soundtracks for Blade Runner and The Bounty.

BOND: Fill in the blank: If only Neil…

SIENKIEWICZ: …lived closer. It’s a selfish answer. But there you go.

From 2011’s The Absolute Sandman vol. 5, a spellbinding

Death portrait by Bill Sienkiewicz. Original art from the
collection of Nelson Hoeppner.

36 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 Last page from The Sandman: Overture #1 (Dec. 2013),
illustrated by J. H. Williams III and colored by Dave
Sandman credits: The Sandman: Overture #1–6 Stewart. Overture was Neil Gaiman’s six-issue prequel
Other significant works: Detective Comics; Batwoman;
Promethea; Chase to the Sandman saga.
For more info: [Link]

BOND: So tell me, what was it: rough or smooth board for you,
and why?
J. H. WILLIAMS III: I tried using whatever it was that DC
used to send me for ages, usually not happy with the rough
or the smooth. But there was a period of time where some-
how there had been a between surface, a semi-smooth,
during part of the Promethea days, which I felt was really
ideal to work on. But then at some point during that
time a new batch of boards arrived that no longer were
semi-smooth, and Editorial really couldn’t find answers
about it, with no record of there ever being semi-smooth
offered—quite strange.
So I ended up going on a quest to find that semi-smooth
finish on my own, which I did. And I never went back to the
company stuff. Only it doesn’t come with pre-ruled production
lines or marks. So, I do that myself.

BOND: What’s a favorite memory or lost tale from your time

working on The Sandman?
WILLIAMS: There are several. But two things that stand
out the most are wonderful conversations with you, Shelly,
about music and TV culture, and the other is a cherished
moment with Neil.
While working on a next chapter’s script for Overture, he read
parts of it to me over the phone for about 30 minutes or so.
It was my own personal story-time with Neil, his soothing voice
enhancing the joy of it.

BOND: Reveal something else you were juggling parallel/in

tandem while working on your storyline.
WILLIAMS: Probably the biggest thing to navigate at the
time was the turbulent relationship I had found myself in
with DC over conflicts that had arisen from my time on
Batwoman. Compartmentalizing my work on Sandman
from other issues involving the company was not easy.
But I was invested in what Neil and I and the rest of the
team were doing to not let those rough times get
in the way.

BOND: What’s the one Goth article of clothing

or artifact you would swap with a member of
the Endless?
WILLIAMS: Morpheus’ ruby. Or, perhaps
Destiny’s hooded robe, because all good WILLIAMS: Probably anything by David Bowie.
wizards deserve a hooded robe. But I doubt
there’s anything I have that Morpheus or Destiny BOND: The Sandman 3000: Underwater, outer
would take in trade. space, or otherwise?
WILLIAMS: How about underwater on an
BOND: Is there one panel you wish you could alien world that exists in a parallel dimension,
remake/remodel? J. H. WILLIAMS III where we meet a version of Dream that lives
WILLIAMS: That’s a loaded question. Ultimately, © DC Comics. as some form of aquatic tentacled sentient
I’m never satisfied with my work enough, any being that must face a dark tide plague capable
of it, to narrow it down in that way. But my lack of satisfaction of destroying the dreams of an undersea kingdom. And it’s
is interesting, in that I just try to set it aside, that the work this Dream’s interaction with the plague that causes it to use
was as good as I could do at that time, and try to tell myself Dream’s own powers to erase/consume dreams.
the next set of pages will hopefully be better.
BOND: Fill in the blank: If only Neil…
BOND: What was the album most likely to be on your turntable WILLIAMS: …wasn’t such a genius, just for one year, so more of
or CD player while drawing a page from your Sandman story? us could maybe catch up.

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 37

 Original art by J. H. Williams
III for a variant cover for
Locke & Key/The Sandman:
Hell & Gone #1 (Nov. 2003),
a two-issue miniseries
crossing over the Sandman
characters with Joe Hill’s
Locke & Key. From the
collection of Mikail Lotia.
Locke & Key © Joe Hill.

Former Sandman assistant editor SHELLY BOND could spot Jones, and Cecil Castellucci. Currently, Bond is the editor-
talent and smell a rat sleeping through a deadline at 50 feet. at-large and co-owner of Off Register Press, a Comics & Design
And yet, she always said she didn’t envy the freelance art life. Lab she runs with her husband, artist Philip Bond. For the
She was once quoted, “If it came to it, I would be the worst past four years, Bond has been creating unprecedented
freelancer on Earth, sleeping all day and listening to music graphic memoirs on the art and craft of editing comics. Filth
all night!” & Grammar: The Comic Book Editor’s (Secret) Handbook
Bond spent over two decades at DC Comics’ Vertigo and Fast Times in Comic Book Editing were brought to
imprint with credits on Eisner Award darlings including The fruition thanks to the power of crowdfunding. Bond is
Sandman and Fables, and comic books to TV series i-Zombie, currently working on i-Doppelgänger: Portrait of the 21st
Bodies, and Dead Boy Detectives. She created Minx, the Century Comic Book Editor, the final part of her editing
first young adult imprint at DC Comics that launched the trilogy. She lives in Los Angeles, and has become the worst
careers of superstar talents including Mariko Tamaki, Joelle freelancer on Earth.

38 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 $1,000,000 PAID
FOR ORIGINAL
COMIC ART!
COLLECTOR PAYING TOP DOLLAR FOR
“ANY AND ALL” ORIGINAL COMIC BOOK
AND COMIC STRIP ARTWORK FROM THE
1930S TO PRESENT! COVERS, PINUPS,
PAGES, IT DOESN’T MATTER!
1 PAGE OR ENTIRE COLLECTIONS SOUGHT!
CALL OR EMAIL ME ANYTIME!

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comics & merch for the jet-set.
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 by Mark Arnold

Nowadays, when comic book collectors think of Nightmare is a female white ghost horse with
Nightmare, they probably think of the Ziff-Davis/ pale blue fur. Her mane is piled up high as to
St. John publication from 1952–1953, or the resemble a powdered wig or bouffant hairdo.
Marvel villain’s miniseries from 1994–1995, or the Many people think Nightmare is a male ghost
black-and-white Skywald Horror-Mood magazine horse, but a mare is a female horse, hence the
Boo-back Rider from 1970–1975. “punny” name. Even still, there are occasional
And you thought Certainly, unless they are a fan of Harvey Harvey stories where the writers goof up and call
Comics, most fans wouldn’t think of Nightmare, Nightmare a “him” and “he.”
Mr. Ed was cool. the Galloping Ghost horse, who was the friend Many of Nightmare’s adventures were written
Detail from the and companion of Casper the Friendly Ghost, by Ralph Newman and drawn by Warren Kremer,
Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost, and Wendy the but other writers like Stan Kay and other artists like
cover of Harvey Good Little Witch. Howard Post and Ernie Colón helped out, too.
Comics’ Casper and Every kid needs a pet, even a kid ghost named Nightmare, the Galloping Ghost was created by
Casper. So what better pet for a ghostly kid than Harvey Comics in the vein of many other Famous
Nightmare #30
a ghostly pony? Of course, Nightmare was Studios characters. Though it is not known for
(Nov. 1970). Art by created when Westerns were all the rage on TV sure, she may have been created by artist and
Warren Kremer. and in films, so a horse character totally seemed writer Marty Taras, the veteran animator who also
appropriate rather than, say, a dog or a cat for created Baby Huey. Nightmare made her debut in
TM & © Classic Media LLC. Casper, although Casper did befriend plenty Casper the Friendly Ghost #19 (Apr. 1954) in a story
of those and other animals over the years. But called “Horse Laughs,” drawn by Taras. This debut
somehow, Nightmare stuck. story sees Casper traveling to Scotland (because

40 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 Horsing Around
Detail from the original art
from “Horse Laughs,” the story
introducing the Galloping
Ghost. First published in
Harvey Comics’ Casper #19
(Apr. 1954). Art by Marty
Taras. Courtesy of Heritage
Auctions ([Link]).
TM & © Classic Media LLC.

that’s where Shetland ponies come from) and

meeting a ghostly steed that’s teaching the local
ponies to raise a ruckus. By the end of five pages,
Casper and Nightmare had become fast friends,
and Nightmare soon became a regular in Harvey’s
comics for the next two decades.
Nightmare rounded out the cast of ghost and
witch characters that inhabited the Enchanted
Forest, along with the Ghostly Trio, the Witch
Sisters, and Poil (Pearl).
Nightmare starred in ten issues of Harvey Hits:
#37 (Oct. 1960); #45 (June 1961); #52 (Jan.
1962); #56 (May 1962); #59 (Aug. 1962); #62
(Nov. 1962); #65 (Feb. 1963); #68 (May 1963);
#71 (Aug. 1963); and #75 (Dec. 1963). All were
subtitled “Casper and Nightmare.”
Nightmare graduated to her own title called
Nightmare and Casper, debuting with the cover
date of August 1963. The title was changed
with the sixth issue (Nov. 1964) to Casper and
Nightmare, where it continued on through #45
(June 1973). The 46th issue later came out with an
August 1974 cover date. A final issue was released
many years later as part of the Casper and… series
with #4 (June 1988). in The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper, Saddling Up
Nightmare was also a regular backup feature which ran from 1996–1998. She spoke in the
in various issues of many Casper, Wendy, and original cartoons, but not the latter, and she was for Fun
Spooky titles. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, voiced by Frank Welker. Great sight gags by
Nightmare was frequently paired up with Harry Like any other ghost, Nightmare has displayed
the ability to fly; however, she is considered cartoonist Warren
Horsefly in a series of mostly one-page gag strips.
There are very few appearances of Nightmare speedier than the average ghosts, even displaying Kremer on the
after the 1974 cancellation of her own title. This is a faster-than-light speed when she took Casper to
covers of Casper
a shame, as she is quite a dynamic personality a distant planet. This explains why there are many
and has more of a temper at times than goody- images of Casper riding Nightmare… but it begs and Nightmare #42
goody Casper. the question, do ghosts get tired? (June 1973) and 44
The New Casper Cartoon Show introduced Nightmare appeared on a lot of merchandise
Nightmare in animated form in its opening theme during her glory days. She was in her own (Oct. 1973).
song: “And the horse’s name is Nightmare, she Kenner Give-a-Show projector strip and also TM & © Classic Media LLC.
will keep you all amused,” and also gave a name as part of various Harvey Comics card games
mention on the closing credits theme song with that came out in the late 1950s and early
“Goodbye from Nightmare.” 1960s, and also in various puzzle and coloring
The first animated appearance of Nightmare book images. There was even a Nightmare
was in “The Flying Horse.” The original press Halloween costume.
release for the episode reads as follows: “Night- In recent times, Nightmare has made some
mare, the Galloping Ghost, is captured by Ali Boo cameo appearances in the latest incarnation of
Boo on his magic carpet. With help from Wendy, Casper comic books as published by American
the Good Witch, Casper comes to the rescue of Mythology from 2017 through 2020.
Nightmare. During their efforts they are taken
MARK ARNOLD is a Pop Culture Historian. He has written two
prisoners. Finally, Wendy and the little horse are books on the history of Harvey—The Best of The Harveyville
recovered and out of the goodness of his heart, Fun Times! and The Harvey Comics Companion—as well
Casper saves Ali Boo Boo’s life.” as many other books. He is currently working on a book
She made several appearances in The New Casper called TV Cartoons That Time Forgot. He also hosts the
Cartoon Show from 1963, and one appearance Fun Ideas Podcast.

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 41

“Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t
as real as the here and now?”
— John Lennon

With his chalk-white skin and wild green hair,

clothed in his green body suit and flowing,
ragged cape… often with his black, demonic,
horned horse Dreamstalker, Nightmare, Master
of the Dream Dimension, was a character that
artist Steve Ditko unleashed as envisioned by
writer Stan Lee in Marvel Comics’ Strange Tales
#110 (July 1963) in a battle against Dr. Strange
in Stephen Strange’s first appearance, “Doctor
Strange, Master of Black Magic!” For the
Marvel reader this was also was Nightmare’s first
appearance, but according to Dr. Strange, he
was already an “ancient foe.”
Marvel’s official description of Nightmare
([Link]/characters/nightmare) reads
like this: “Ruler of his own Nightmare World
within the Dream Dimension (linked to and
shaped by humanity’s collective unconscious),
Nightmare is a Class Three demon who
influences the dreams of living beings as they
sleep, feeding on humanity’s psychic energies
in particular. Nightmare occasionally singles by Stephan Friedt
out souls for special tortures, sometimes trap-
ping their dream-selves in his realm. He has
even sought to absorb the entire waking world
into his own realm, though never with lasting
success. Humanity’s chief defender against
Nightmare is the sorcerer Doctor Strange, who
has fought the demon so often that Strange
routinely casts a protective spell on himself
before sleeping.”
Nightmare would have a brief appearance in
that first Dr. Strange story, tormenting a man
with bad dreams. The man seeks the Master of
the Mystic Arts’ help, but the astral assistance
in the dream world puts Strange’s physical
body in peril. Thanks to the help of the Ancient
One, Strange escapes Nightmare’s dream realm
and finds out the man deserved bad dreams
for the crimes he’d committed.
While seemingly underused as a major villain,
Nightmare would go on to appear in dozens
of stories by a bullpen of different writers and
depicted by dozens of artists over the decades,
clear up to the present day.

Malevolent Master of the

Dream Dimension
You know Nightmare’s a threat when the
Sorcerer Supreme skedaddles at his arrival!
Detail from Dan Adkins’ eerie cover art to
Marvel’s Doctor Strange #170 (July 1968).
TM & © Marvel.

42 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

RECURRING NIGHTMARE
Nightmare would return five issues later in Strange Tales #116
(Jan. 1964) in “Return to the Nightmare World!,” again by
Lee and Ditko. As a “last resort,” the police ask Dr. Strange
for help with a group of victims that can’t wake up. Strange
investigates and finds that Nightmare has learned how to
capture humans and bring them to his world while they are
sleeping. The two battle again and Dr. Strange wins.
In Strange Tales #122 (July 1964), in Lee and Ditko’s “The
World Beyond,” Dr. Strange falls asleep and forgets to cast a
protective spell, which results in becoming a captive of Night-
mare in the Nightmare World. Nightmare soon becomes
bored with Strange and wants to go in search of other victims.
Strange summons Gulgol, a creature that never sleeps, Night-
mare’s one fear. In return for releasing Strange, Stephen makes
the Gulgol disappear… or so it seems. Strange had hypnotized
Nightmare, and the whole thing was a con. Stephen wakes up.
It would be a few years before Nightmare would resurface.
In Doctor Strange #170 (July 1968; the series’ numbering
continued from Strange Tales), Nightmare returns in the story
“To Dream… Perchance to Die,” thanks to writer Roy Thomas
and artist Dan Adkins. Dr. Strange would battle Nightmare
for the consciousness of the Ancient One.
Roy would bring the character back in the story “Eternity,
Eternity” in Doctor Strange #180 (May 1969), with interior
art by Gene Colan (pencils) and Tom Palmer (inks). In the
beginning of what would be a three-issue arc, Nightmare
attacks on New Year’s Eve and reveals he has captured Eternity.
This issue would feature a cameo of real-life journalist and
author Tom Wolfe. In Doctor Strange #181, Strange enters
the Dream Dimension to battle Nightmare and free Eternity…
but Nightmare turns the Eye of Agamotto against him. Roy
Thomas wraps up the story arc in “And Juggernaut Makes
Three…,” in issue #182, with Dr. Strange pulling the Jugger-
naut from the Crimson Cosmos. Juggernaut and Nightmare
throw spells around and, in the chaos, Eternity is released.
Eternity changes Dr. Strange’s name from “Stephen
Strange” to “Steven Sanders”… but it only lasts through
the next issue, primarily because the next issue was the
last issue of this run. Dr. Strange would not have a series
until three years later.

NIGHTMARE IN THE 1970s

Dr. Strange was back in the Marvel lineup with his return in
the tryout title Marvel Premiere. Marvel Premiere #3 (July 1972)
saw the return of Strange in “While the World Spins Mad!,”
with cover and interior art by fan-favorite Barry Windsor-Smith
(inked by Dan Adkins), and the story suggestion by Stan Lee

It’s Been a Spell

(top) The Strange/Nightmare enmity is revealed for
the reader’s benefit in the first Dr. Strange story in
Strange Tales #110 (July 1963). (middle) In issue #116
(Feb. 1964), the Sorcerer Supreme enters Nightmare’s
Dream Dimension. (bottom) Dr. Strange’s revival in
Marvel Premiere #3 (July 1972) pits the Master of the
Mystic Arts against Nightmare. Try not to faint from
awe as you ogle this stunning original art page by the
master, Barry Windsor-Smith, with Dan Adkins inks.
Courtesy of Heritage Auctions ([Link]).
TM & © Marvel.

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 43

 (scenario) and Barry Windsor-Smith (script). Barry essentially takes over
the character of Dr. Strange for this issue and pits him against his “oldest
foe,” Nightmare. This time, Nightmare turns the tables on Dr. Strange
and makes him think he’s awake and being tormented when he’s
actually in the hospital unconscious after being hit by a truck.
The Master of the Mystic Arts would once again regain his own
title with Doctor Strange #1 (June 1974). With Doctor Strange #10
(Oct. 1975), Nightmare returns as well in “Alone Against Eternity…,”
written by Steve Englehart and drawn by Gene Colan. Englehart’s
Nightmare is tormenting the insane Mordo and harassing the Aged
Genghis while Strange is dealing with Eternity, who is determined to
end the world. Englehart would carry this story arc for three more issues.
Tony Isabella (script) and Don Heck (art) would use Nightmare in a
flashback in Champions #2 (Jan. 1976), revealing Nightmare’s joining of
the Hell Lords, rulers of Dark Dimensions. From the Marvel Fandom website
([Link]/wiki/Nightmare_(Earth-616)#Further_Schemes):
“Nightmare was one of the many rulers of the dead that joined Pluto’s
alliance to strongarm Zeus Panhellenios into allowing the arranged
marriages for Hercules and Venus to maintain peace for their realms,
or else they would invade Olympus.”
Nightmare would not surface again until Doctor Strange #13
(Apr. 1976), “Planet Earth Is No More!” After battles with versions
of himself and Eternity destroying the world, Dr. Strange figures out
that it’s Nightmare behind Eternity’s dream of destroying the world.
Strange enters the Dream Dimension, defeats Nightmare, and the
Ancient One convinces Eternity to restore the world.
It would be Doctor Strange #32 (Dec. 1978) where writer Roger
Stern would bring back Nightmare in “The Dream Weaver!” Stern
gives us the revelation that the story’s “Dweller in the Darkness” is a
“cousin” of Nightmare’s, and Dweller travels to the Dream Dimension
to enlist his aid against Strange. Nightmare declines, wanting to defeat
Dr. Strange on his own. The Dweller instead settles for taking control
of the soul of San Francisco native Barbara Robb. He grants Robb
mystical powers and she transforms herself into Dream Weaver, who
can use magic to make her dreams reality. Roger keeps Nightmare in
the loop in the next issue, #33 (Feb. 1979), “All My Dreams Against
Me,” though only in a brief cameo. Clea is tormented by nightmares,
so obviously Strange suspects Nightmare and
travels to the Dream Dimension to confront him.
Nightmare denies it and hints that he should be
seeking a “dweller” as the responsible character.
With Doctor Strange #34 (Apr. 1979), in “A
Midsummer’s Nightmare!,” Ralph Macchio takes
over the scripting, Rudy Nebres offers a great cover
with Nightmare and mystic Cyrus Black, and the
interior art is a Tom Sutton (breakdowns) with

What’s Up, Doc?

Acclaimed novelist William Rotsler penned a
Doctor Strange vs. Nightmare novel published
in 1970. (top) From Heritage’s archives, John
Romita, Sr.’s cover rough for Marvel Novel
Series #7. (inset) The Nightmare novel’s
published cover, painted by Bob Larkin.
(bottom) Nightmare and the galloping
Dreamstalker—a more frightening hellish
horse than Casper’s galloping ghost Night-
mare, for sure—square off against Dr. Strange.
Original art by Bill Sienkiewicz and Joe Rubin-
stein, illo’ed for the month of February for the
1980 Marvel Calendar. Courtesy of Heritage.
TM & © Marvel.

44 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 Stern Stuff
(top left) Not to be confused with the Gary
Wright song from ’75, Dream Weaver
conjures problems for the Sorcerer Supreme
in Doctor Strange #32 (Dec. 1978), from
writer Roger Stern. Cover art by Keith Pollard
and Rudy Nebres. (top right) Stern brings
back Nightmare in DS #52 (June 1982).
Cover by Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin.
TM & © Marvel.

P. Craig Russell (finished art and inks) for their

interpretation of Nightmare. Ralph has Dr. Strange
being pulled into the Dream Dimension to battle
Nightmare’s new protégé, Cyrus Black, a former foe
of Strange and the Defenders. Cyrus nearly bests
Strange and when he fails, Nightmare joins in and
instructs Black to kill the Sorcerer Supreme. Black
switches sides, saves Strange, and commits suicide
to release himself from Nightmare’s grasp, which
allows Strange to escape the Dream Dimension.
To round out 1979, Dr. Strange and Night-
mare would be the subjects of the seventh Marvel
prose novel from Pocket Books. Written by William
Rotsler (1926–1997) and with a striking cover by
Bob Larkin, this was Rotsler’s second contribution
to the Marvel Novel Series, his first being an Iron
Man/MODOK book for the sixth novel in the series
just the month before. Rotsler would vividly bring
the spirit of Stan Lee’s dialogue and Steve Ditko’s
art into the world of prose and merge it with later
Strange/Clea interpretations into an interesting tell-
ing of the doctor’s origin, meeting with Clea, and
battle with Nightmare in the Dream Dimension.
Rotsler was an interesting choice for the stories.
According to a biography found on Wikipedia,
William started his colorful life as a science-fiction NIGHTMARE IN THE 1980s Universal
fan and contributed art to several of the early fan- In the 1980s, Nightmare branched out and was
used in more stories. Nightmares
zines, dating back to 1948. He started in the adult
film industry in 1958, first as a stills photographer His first recorded interaction with any heroes If you think of Night-
and later writing, filming, starring in, and writing other than Dr. Strange was with the tiny titans mare exclusively as
about adult films. He created the magazine Adam of toy fame, the Micronauts. Nightmare would
Film Quarterly, later known as Adam Film World, surface again in Micronauts #29 (May 1981) in a Dr. Strange villain,
where he would often novelize adult films. In 1969, “To Sleep… Perchance to Dream!” Here, artist Pat dream on! The
Harlan Ellison suggested that William try his hand Broderick would give us his version of Nightmare Master of the
at writing sci-fi stories; Harlan credited Rotsler and would co-plot the story with scripter Bill Mantlo.
with the title of his short story “I Have No Mouth, As the Micronauts are trying to help Commander Dream Dimension
and I Must Scream,” which Harlan borrowed, Rann, Doc Samson has them shrink, enter Rann’s has become a
with permission, from a panel illustration of William’s brain, and enter various dreams all controlled by
Nightmare. After successfully healing Rann’s brain,
go-to Marvel
of a ragdoll with no mouth. Rotsler would win sci-
fi’s Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist four different Nightmare leaves and the Micronauts win. menace. His
times in 1975, 1979, 1996, and 1997; and was Nightmare would promptly return in Dazzler 1980s appearances
nominated for a Hugo and a Nebula for his short #4’s (June 1981) “Here Nightmares Abide!” Tom
DeFalco would provide a script for Frank Springer include: Ghost Rider
story “Patron of the Arts” in 1972, which was later
expanded into a full-length novel in 1974. Rotsler to illustrate (cover and interior). Dr. Doom kidnaps #78 (Mar. 1983);
wrote novelizations for Futureworld (1976), Sinbad and sends Dazzler to Nightmare’s realm in search Incredible Hulk #298
and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), Vice Squad (1982), of the “Merlin Stone.” Dazzler battles Nightmare
and wrote the DC novelization of Blackhawk and he decides the Merlin Stone isn’t worth it and (Aug. 1984); and
(1982). Under the house name “Victor Appleton” allows her to take it back to Dr. Doom. Sleepwalker #12
he co-authored with Sharman DiVono six Tom Swift Nightmare again makes a brief appearance
in Doctor Strange #50 (Dec. 1981). Roger Stern
(May 1992).
books in 1981–1982. He also entered the world
of Star Trek with novelizations of The Wrath of and artist Marshall Rogers give us the action in a TM & © Marvel.
Khan (1982) and The Search for Spock (1984); he’s story with no title. While looking for the missing
credited with creating Lt. Uhuru’s first name, Nyota. Clea and Morgana Blessing, Strange stops in the

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 45

Dream Dimension. A brief battle with Nightmare and Strange
concludes that the missing people aren’t there, and he moves on.
Doctor Strange #52 (Apr. 1982), “Life-Times,” has Stern and
Rogers again using Nightmare briefly, followed by having him
help Strange in Doctor Strange #53 (June 1982), sending him back
to Ancient Egypt to interact with Rama Tut (Kang incarnation)
and the Fantastic Four!
Nightmare would next torment Ghost Rider. J. M. DeMatteis
(script) and Bob Budiansky (art and co-script), in Ghost Rider
#77 and 78 (Feb. and Mar. 1983), bring Nightmare into
interaction with Ghost Rider (Johnny Blaze) as well as Mephisto
and Zarathos. The conflict requires the inclusion of Dr. Strange,
the Son of Satan, and Dr. Druid.
Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema would sneak Nightmare into
a story arc for The Incredible Hulk #292–299 (Feb.–July 1984).
Nightmare gives the Hulk increasingly bad nightmares that
cause Bruce Banner to lose control of his alter ego.
Nightmare would meet the Wall-Crawler in Web of Spider-Man
#7 (Oct. 1985), when Nightmare enlists the aid of Spider-Man’s
subconscious mind to stop a dream manifestation of the Hulk,
thanks to Peter David (script) and Sal Buscema (art).
Writer Bill Mantlo, with the help of artist Bret Blevins, would
again use Nightmare, but this time against Cloak and Dagger
in Strange Tales #3 (June 1987), in a reboot of the Strange Tales
series which combined the recently cancelled Doctor Strange
and Cloak and Dagger series into one split-book title. The story
arc with Nightmare as the antagonist would run through Strange
Tales #7 (Oct. 1987) and include the Dr. Strange half of the book
in the finale. Gruesome Gathering
Bob Harras (script) with Dan Reed (art) and Marie Severin A boastful Nightmare, before his fellow Fear Lords, in the
(inks) would bring Nightmare back to the Ol’ Greenskin’s pages
in Incredible Hulk #360 (Oct. 1989) for a one-off story involving backup from Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme #32 (Aug.
a team-up of Nightmare and D’Spayre to torment Betty Banner 1991). Written by Roy Thomas, Dann Thomas, and Jean-
in her dreams.
Beginning in Alpha Flight #57 (Feb. 1989), in the “Wrath of Marc Lofficier, with art by Larry Alexander and Tim Dzon.
the Dreamqueen” story arc by James Hudnall (script), Hugh TM & © Marvel.
Haynes (art), and Gerry Talaoc (inks), it is revealed that Alpha
Flight antagonist Dreamqueen, the ruler of the dimension
“Liveworld,” is actually an offspring of a “succubus” named GAUNTLET plotline) might be subtitled ‘Fear in the Marvel
Zhilla Char, and Nightmare, the ruler of the Dream Dimension. Universe.’ The Dweller in Darkness was prominent in DR. STRANGE
She can influence and alter both dreams and nightmares though (second series) #32. As for the others at his secret conclave: The
Lurking Unknown spooked Jane Foster in THOR #136; Kkallakku,
she is not really a succubus. This arc would run until Alpha Flight
#70 (May 1989). Nightmare made appearances in the first and the Fear Eater is from MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS #1–4; this
last issues of the arc. particular Scarecrow debuted in DEAD OF NIGHT #11 and
fought alongside the Thing in MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE
NIGHTMARE IN THE 1990s #18 and fought Kalumai again in MARVEL SPOTLIGHT
The decade of the 1990s would find Nightmare #26; D’Spayre first appeared in MARVEL TEAM-UP
in frequent use by writers in the Marvel Bullpen, #68, and Nightmare in the very first Doc story
even receiving his own miniseries. in STRANGE TALES #110, while Nox (Greek for
His first appearance was in a short story ‘night’) is a new creation, of whom you’ll see
included in Marvel Fanfare #51 (June 1990), more in near-future issues.” Roy is at his best as he
a brief one-off by Dean Schreck (script), Gene ties together several story arcs over the years into
Colan (art), and Al Williamson (inks) that has what reads like a coherent combination of them
Nightmare tormenting humans in their dreams. all. This arc would run as a backup through Doctor
Nightmare next plagues the teams Excalibur Strange: Sorcerer Supreme #33 (Oct. 1991).
and Power Pack in Excalibur #29 (Sept. 1990), As Roy Thomas reveals to BACK ISSUE, “I
thanks to Michael Higgins and Seth Kruchkow roy thomas always found Nightmare one of the most inter-
(script), Chris Wozniak (pencils), and Josef esting of Dr. Strange’s foes, yet I don’t feel I ever
Super Festivals.
Rubinstein (inks). More torments were in store as cracked the secret of how to best utilize him,
Nightmare plagues Ghost Rider/Danny Ketch in Ghost Rider vol. 3 since he didn’t have any human background, etc. I feel I should
#11 (Mar. 1991) in “Nightmares of Truth,” thanks to the talents have worked harder at it.
of Howard Mackie, Larry Stroman (art), and Mark Texeira (inks). “In his very first plot for Dr. Strange, Steve Ditko clearly came
Roy Thomas and Jean-Marc Lofficier would co-write a back- up with Doc’s ideal foe,” Roy continues. “Stan Lee recognized
up story in the “A Gathering of Fear, Part 1” story arc in Doctor that and wanted him brought back from time to time... but
Strange: Sorcerer Supreme #31 (July 1991) that involves the Fear they, too, seemed content to have him remain a somewhat
Lords, including Nightmare. As explained in the letters column superficial character, albeit a visually effective one. At least they
of that issue: “The sequence of ‘The Book of the Vishanti’ (which (Ditko?) came up with the wonderful note that Nightmare rode
begins in this issue and leads into the upcoming post-INFINITY a horse—a night ‘mare,’ I take it.”

46 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 The anthology title Marvel Comics Presents (MCP) #79 (Sept. 1992) and “If the Enchantress Should Fail…” The following
(June 1991) includes a short story of Dr. Strange dealing with issue pits Nightmare against Amora (Enchantress) as she seeks
Nightmare as envisioned by Robert Campanella (script), Steve to rescue Heimdall from Nightmare’s clutches. Both stories are
Geiger (pencils), and Mark McKenna (inks). MCP #90 (June illustrated by Geof Isherwood.
1991) would take a different approach with “…Fangu Lives!” Howard Mackie continues using Nightmare in a run of
Steve Buccellato and Marc McLaurin provided a script for Steve Marvel Comics Presents #117–122 (Dec. 1992–Feb. 1993), pitting
Buccellato’s pencils and Ian Akin inks that flashes back to him against Wolverine, Venom, and Professor X, all issues
the classic days of Marvel’s monster stories, this time featuring the artwork of Sam Kieth.
with Nightmare as your host and narrator. In a crossover running through Morbius, the Living
In the hands of Gregory Wright (script), Vampire #8–9 and Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme
Denys Cowan (pencils), and Mike Manley (inks), #52–53 (Apr.–May 1993), Nightmare takes over
Nightmare would take on the Deathlok the Morbius’ physical body, attacks Dr. Strange,
Demolisher by controlling Deathlok’s human and subsequently takes over the Master of the
persona, Michael Collins, in his dreams, causing Mystic Arts himself! Nightmare soon made mere
the cyborg to go on a rampage only to battle cameos: in Secret Defenders #2 (Apr. 1993) and
Ghost Rider (Danny Ketch). This would last two Marvel Comics Presents #146 (Jan. 1994).
issues, Deathlok #9–10 (Mar.–Apr. 1992). Nightmare would receive his very own four-
Howard Mackie would once again utilize issue limited series with Nightmare #1–4 (Dec.
Nightmare in a pair of issues of Marvel Comics 1994–Mar. 1995). Writer Ann Nocenti would
Presents. “Hauntings,” in MCP #99 (Feb. 1992), howard mackie provide the script, with artwork by Joe Bennett
would feature Nightmare haunting Wolverine’s and Mike Witherby. The miniseries would be
Gage Skidmore.
dreams. In the next issue, #100, Nightmare is tor- a gothic romance—well done by Nocenti, but
menting Dr. Doom, who tries to utilize Wolverine and Ghost Rider probably not what most true Nightmare fans were looking for.
to free himself from Nightmare’s antagonism. This issue does not In an email to BACK ISSUE, writer Ann Nocenti explains,
have a flip cover (a standard of MCP), nor is this a true anthology “I can only guess at what I was thinking 30 years ago, but I
issue, as all stories in this issue are interlinked. The anthology imagine what I was trying to do was to give Nightmare a taste
format and the flip covers would return with the next issue. of being human. And since Goth was a ‘thing’ in the ’90s,
“Nightmare really has always been one of my dream characters perhaps I figured Nightmare could leave his realm, walk New
(pun definitely intended),” jokes writer Howard Mackie to BACK York City, and blend in with ease.
ISSUE. “I am an unapologetic fan of the early Doctor Strange
stories by Stan and Steve, and Nightmare’s design grabbed
me right away. To me, Nightmare is a writer’s dream. When
I’m writing any character—like Ghost Rider’s host Danny Ketch
or Peter Parker/Spider-Man—and have him drawn into Night-
mare’s realm, it allows me to really can really peel away the
layers to find what makes a character tick. Exploring a character’s
greatest fears—the things that haunt him when he closes his
eyes—is a truly fun experience for me as a writer.
“Utilizing Nightmare in a story always gave me personal
insight into these things that dwell in the darkest recesses of my
own mind… the things that only emerge when the lights are
low, the eyes close, and sleep descends.”
Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme #38–40 (Feb.–Apr. 1992)
finds Nightmare and the Fear Lords battling against Dr. Strange
and Clea in the capable hands of writers Roy and Dann Thomas
and R.J.M. Lofficier and artists Geof Isherwood and Jim Sanders
III, in the arc titled “The Great Fear.”
Bob Budiansky writes the next story to involve Nightmare,
in Sleepwalker #12’s (May 1992) in “Dark Dreams and Darker
Schemes!” Nightmare tries to convince Sleepwalker to return
to “Mindscape.” Joe Quesada supplies the pencils, and Michael
Bair with Jimmy Palmiotti on inks.
Howard Mackie returns Nightmare into another conflict
against Ghost Rider and Danny Ketch in Ghost Rider #30 (Oct.
1992) in a story arc called “Claws and Webs.” The difference this
time is, the cover and interior art are by penciled by Andy Kubert
and inked by… his father, the master himself, Joe Kubert!
Tom DeFalco would use Nightmare in a Norse Gods
backup story, “Enter the Nameless Dimension,” in Thor #451

Wake Up, Wolvie!

Logan is haunted by Nightmare in Marvel Comics Presents
#99 (Feb. 1992). Plot by Rob Liefeld, script by Howard
Mackie, art by Larry Alexander and Bud LaRosa.
TM & © Marvel.

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 47

 “He meets his match in the ‘real world’ echo of the egotistical
horror director, who makes money off, and seems to enjoy, the fear of
others. Just like Nightmare. Horror films can be seen as reflections
of what people and society fears, like nightmares.”
This miniseries featured Club Fear, a haven for horror
buffs, and its virtual-reality Nightmare Chairs. “With Club
Fear, I imagine I was trying to leave a door open, a
portal between Nightmare’s realm and New York City,
so he could come and go, if any writer in the future
needed such a portal, or wanted to pick up on the
twisted romance with [horror actress] Roxanne.” And
as with The Sandman’s Endless over at DC, Marvel’s
Nightmare limited series included its own frightening
pantheon. “Then with the nonsense supporting cast
creatures from nightmares—Doggerel, Dementia,
ann nocenti Paranoia, Neurotica, etc.—I imagine I was trying to
manifest Nightmare’s own nightmares.”
© Luigi Novi /
Wikimedia Commons. In summing up the Nightmare four-issue series,
Nocenti contends, “The story is as zany, illogical,
and twisty as a nightmare! I have no idea if that was intentional, but
reading a few pages of it 30 years later, that’s how it felt to me. And
wow, the art team is phenomenal! Perfect art for Nightmare.”
Nightmare would continue to appear and persecute Marvel heroes
through the rest of the 1990s: Generation X, Spider-Man, and Excalibur,
finishing out the decade in Captain America #8–11 (Sept.–Dec. 1998)
would run the story arc “American Nightmare,” with Nightmare
possessing Captain America in the final three of the four issues.
Nightmare made a total of 160 appearances in comic books up to
2011 and has continued to appear ever since. He would even be seen
on television in animation: in The Super Hero Squad Show episode “Blind
Rage Knows No Color!” (original airdate: 1/15/11), where he is voiced
by Jim Parsons of Big Bang Theory fame; and in the Ultimate Spider-Man
episode “Strange Days” (original airdate: 7/8/12), where he is voiced by
Mark Hamill, who is known for voicing villains such as the Joker.
Nightmare plagues heroes’ dreams and wishes to turn the real
world into a division of his own Nightmare
Realm in the Dark Dimension. As many fans
over the years have noted, whenever anyone
‘A Killer of a Love Story’ in the Marvel Universe has a bad dream,
In writer Ann Nocenti’s (top row) four-issue Nightmare is always involved. And Nightmare
Nightmare limited series (Dec. 1994–Apr. 1995), always loses.
(bottom) the villain leaves his Dream Dimension Haunting the wilds of Oregon, now semi-retired so he
can devote even more time to uncovering the gems of
to experience life in the “real” world. Cover art comic book history and empty-nesting with his wife,
and interior pencils by Joe Bennett, interior inks STEPHAN FRIEDT helps with entries at [Link] and
[Link], and provides editorial consultation
by Mike Witherby. and an occasional writing assist for Defective Comix Studio
TM & © Marvel. at [Link].

48 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 The Marvel Universe comic book scene of the 1990s is regarded
by some as a creative wasteland. Contrary to that opinion,
the decade offered readers the breathtaking work of Kurt
Busiek and Alex Ross on Marvels, the outstanding Thunderbolts
with one of the greatest first-issue surprise endings ever, and the
just-plain-fun Untold Tales of Spider-Man.
While not remembered as fondly as those titles, Sleepwalker
was an underrated series that stood out from the grim-and-
gritty books that overtook the comic racks at the time.
So, why didn’t Sleepwalker gain the traction that the other titles
did? That’s what BACK ISSUE is going to explore in this hopefully-
not-sleep-inducing article about the series, its origins, and its
outstanding cast of original B- and C-level villains.

IN MY DREAMS
Everyone reading this issue knows that Morpheus, a.k.a. the
Sandman, controls the Dreaming in the DC Universe. Who
protects the dreamers in the Marvel Universe? The Sleepwalkers
do. But what happens when one becomes trapped inside the
mind of a college student? That’s the premise behind Sleepwalker,
by Ed Lute created and written by Bob Budiansky.
Sleepwalker #1 (June 1991) introduced readers to college
student Rick Sheridan and his supporting cast of characters,
including his faithful dog, Rambo, and his girlfriend, Alyssa. Rick’s
dreams were haunted by a mysterious purple-and-blue-clad
figure that looked like an alien. To combat having these night-
mares, Rick tried his best to stay awake. Unfortunately, that would
only last so long until his body shut down from a lack of sleep.
During a robbery attempt at a local convenience store, Rick was
attacked; too tired to fight back, he was knocked out. At that time,
the alien-like creature from his dreams appeared and defeated
the robbers. The creature told Alyssa that he is a Sleepwalker.
Subsequent issues revealed that Sleepwalker was not an
alien, but a member of a police force that protects people’s
dreams. He had been tricked by Cobweb (another denizen
of his home realm, the Mindscape) into entering Rick’s mind,
where he became trapped. Sleepwalker could only come
out when Rick was asleep.
Although Sleepwalker first saw print in 1991, the
concept for the series started half a decade earlier.
According to Bob Budiansky, “The idea for what
would become Sleepwalker first sparked within
me during one of the weekly editorial meetings I
attended when I was a Marvel editor and which
were chaired by former Marvel editor-in-chief
Jim Shooter. This particular meeting probably
happened in 1985 or ’86. Among the things that
Jim talked about was how, in the real world,
Superman would be treated by the nations of
bob budiansky Earth if he actually existed. He said that rather
than being welcomed by most nations of the
Facebook.
Earth as a hero because of his good deeds and
good looks, nations would instead unite to figure out how
to defend themselves against and, if necessary, defeat this
near-omnipotent alien being. They would look upon Superman
A New Hero Hits the Streets as a threat to their very existence!
Marvel’s “Evildoers’ Worst Nightmare,” created by Bob “And so the thought occurred to me that simply because
Superman happens to look like the stereotypical all-American male
Budiansky, premieres in Sleepwalker #1 (June 1991). of that era, people have no hesitation to accept him as the hero
Cover art by Bret Blevins. he is despite the fact that it’s common knowledge he’s an alien.
But what if he is still heroic and looks like a true alien—a creature
TM & © Marvel.

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 49

that doesn’t look like us, and, in fact, appears repellent to us? too monstrous because I wanted readers to be able to relate
How would humans react to him if that’s how Superman looks? to him, so I made him humanoid but not human. My second
“So Sleepwalker began as the anti-Superman,” Budiansky goal was more of a challenge—why would someone not from
continues, “instead of an alien who just happens to look like our world decide to act like a hero when he arrives here? The
the perfect human. I made him an alien who is a green-skinned, answer I came up with was that it was it was in his training to
bug-eyed monster, at least to our eyes. And he’s heroic. At first act that way—he acted heroically in the world he came from,
I wanted to name my character ‘Alien.’ But the more I thought so upon arriving on Earth he continued to act the same way.
about it, the more I realized that Alien was a poor choice He was one of many Sleepwalkers, whose mission was to guard
because it had already been used for the 1979 movie of the the dreams of sentient beings, such as humans, from intrusion
same name, which is probably the reason others mistakenly by beings with evil intent.”
think I came up with the [Sleepwalker] idea in the 1970s. The creator drew further inspiration from yet another DC
“With that germ of an idea in mind, I evolved the character Comics character—make that characters. “A major part of my
in my head over the next few years. I came up with the name inspiration for the Sleepwalkers came from a comic that was
Sleepwalker and tied his origin and abilities to dreams, which one of my favorites when I was a kid—Green Lantern,” Budiansky
was an interest of mine. Instead of coming from an alien reveals. “Earth’s Green Lantern was but one of a protective corps
planet, like Superman, Sleepwalker would come from an alien of Green Lanterns that spanned the galaxy. Once Sleepwalker
dimension. I began writing the backstory for Sleepwalker and arrived in the conscious world—ours—and acquired a better
sketching out his look probably around 1989.” understanding of it, he took it upon himself to continue his
Sleepwalker and his design fit in nicely with the rest of mission, except in a different realm with different adversaries.
the Marvel Universe. While most of DC’s heroes look heroic, I also decided Sleepwalker needed a human connection to
this isn’t always the case with those from Marvel. Much create more character conflict, connect him more intimately to
like the Thing and the Hulk, Sleepwalker definitely doesn’t our world and give readers another character to relate to and
look like a traditional hero. Budiansky explains, “I wanted to hopefully care about. So I trapped Sleepwalker in the mind of
accomplish two things with the character that were more college student Rick Sheridan.”
important than anything else: he looked monstrous to human The late 1980s and early 1990s were a time of grim-and-gritty
eyes and he was a hero. heroes and anti-heroes throughout the comic book industry.
“The first goal was easy—just design him to look monstrous,” Sleepwalker was none of those things. Why did Budiansky feel
explains Budiansky. “So I did. But I didn’t want him to look this was the right time to bring Sleepwalker to fans?
“I don’t know if 1991 was the ‘right time’ for Sleepwalker to
see print,” Bob replies. “Sleepwalker went against the grain of
what was popular in Marvel Comics in those days.”
As noted earlier, Budiansky’s development of Sleepwalker
dated back to 1989. “Eventually, I completed a treatment that
included Sleepwalker’s backstory, a description of his abilities,
profiles of the cast of characters I planned to surround him with,
and sketches of what Sleepwalker and his supporting cast would
look like.” Events at Marvel in the very early 1990s opened the
door for Bob’s new creation. “At that time, Marvel had a New
Projects Committee comprised of several editors that had been
appointed by editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco,” explains Budiansky.
“The committee’s job was to review submissions for new comic
books. If a majority of the committee liked a submission, it
would be kicked upstairs to Tom for his review. If it made it all
the way through the approval process, Tom would green-light
the submission for publication as a Marvel comic.
“Sleepwalker went through this review process. I was
actually the head of the New Projects Committee, however
I recused myself from reviewing Sleepwalker. But the other
editors liked my treatment and passed it on to Tom. Tom liked
it too, but asked me to make a few revisions. The primary
change he requested was to give Sleepwalker more interesting
super-abilities. That’s when I added his warping power, his
ability to warp inanimate objects. I thought the surreal nature
of that power was a good match for a being who came from
a dream dimension. The paintings of surrealist Salvadore Dali
were the partial inspiration for that idea. So after I submitted
another one or two drafts, Tom finally approved, the book
was added to Marvel’s publishing schedule and the first issue
came out in 1991.”

Man of My Dreams
Sleepwalker #1’s opening scene wastes no time in estab-
lishing the dream-link between teen Rick Sheridan and
the series’ creepy protagonist. By Budiansky and Blevins.
TM & © Marvel.

50 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

DREAM A LITTLE DREAM OF ME
A major component of the Marvel Age is that
the heroes are portrayed as real people with
real-life problems, thus making them more
relatable. Problem-plagued Peter Parker is the
poster child of this and was on Budiansky’s
mind as he developed the series—especially
the main characters.
Budiansky divulges, “One thing I always
liked about Spider-Man, at least the one I grew
up reading, was that Peter Parker usually found
being Spider-Man a burden, which created a lot of
interesting conflict for him. Being a hero interfered
with his family life, his romantic life, his academic
life... every significant aspect of his life was a mess
because of his alter ego.
“I wanted to bring some of that perspective
into Sleepwalker, but double down on it, at least
at first. In the beginning, Rick didn’t understand
Sleepwalker. All he knew, at least from the news
reports he was hearing, was that a terrifying
monster was roaming the city and he, Rick, was
somehow responsible for releasing it into our
world while he slept. And the only way he knew
that he could prevent this from happening was to
not fall asleep, which, of course, was impossible. I
think the dire situation Rick found himself in added
a lot of depth to his character while simultaneously
making him more sympathetic to the reader. How
could you not feel for this poor kid’s predicament?
“Once Rick began to understand that Sleep-
walker was not the menace he thought he was, he
had to figure out a way to get on with his life while
coexisting with this entity within him. But this new
relationship had its own stresses that Rick had to
cope with, and he often failed to do so successfully.”
The phrase “stranger in a strange land” imme-
diately comes to mind when considering the
predicament of Sleepwalker. He was cut off from
the other Sleepwalkers and the Mindscape into this
weird place where he found himself trapped inside
the mind of one of the local inhabitants.
“Meanwhile, Sleepwalker had his
own learning curve to deal with:
he found himself mysteriously
trapped in Rick’s mind,” continues
Budiansky. “He felt imprisoned.
He was only able to escape it Rick and Sleepwalker couldn’t Don’t Fret—
when Rick was unconscious. To co-exist in the same place at the
make matters worse, he escaped same time, so they needed a way It’s Bret!
into a strange world that wasn’t to communicate. While they found Sleepwalker’s early
his and where most people reacted different ways to connect with each
other as the title progressed, issues benefited
to him with fear and violence,
just because of how he looked. So one of the more inventive ways from the artwork
Sleepwalker found his situation bret blevins was to leave answering machine
messages for each other. of Bret Blevins, as
extremely frustrating. Even when Facebook.
he did have the freedom to move this surreal splash
around in our world, he had a poor understanding BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS page from issue
of its ways, and had to learn on the job, so to The Sleepwalkers were from the Mindscape, a
speak. Eventually, he, too, figured out how to dimension that humans’ minds visit when they #2 proves. Note
more peacefully coexist with Rick, even walking are asleep. They are the police force of the Budiansky’s creator
his dog when necessary, but their relationship dimension and patrol it to protect those visitors
continued to be stressful for both. The two were from the denizens of the Mindscape including credit. Courtesy of
inextricably linked, and although they learned to Cobweb and the other demons such as the Heritage Auctions
cooperate and care more about each other, they Mindspawn and the Agents of Despair. Although
would have been much happier if they could the Mindscape may sound similar to Dr. Strange ([Link]).
figure out a way to free themselves from the ties foe Nightmare’s Dream Dimension [see the TM & © Marvel.
that bound them together.” Nightmare “Bring on the Bad Guys” article in

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 51

 this issue—ed.], it was another dimension entirely of mine from my childhood was The Flash. One
and created specifically for this series. of the things I really liked about that book was
“In Sleepwalker’s origin story, I established that Flash’s so-called ‘Rogues’ Gallery.’ He had a very
Sleepwalker’s he came from a dimension in which a group of colorful cast of villains that took turns attacking
Sleepwalkers guarded people’s dreams,” Budiansky him issue after issue. And the villains had a wide
Rogues’ Gallery reveals. “So I had to come up with a name for range of abilities; only a few of them had abilities
(top) Sleepy vs. this place. The obvious name, ‘Dreamscape,’ had relating to speed. So the Flash’s Rogues’ Gallery
already been taken by a recent movie [the 1984 inspired to me take a similar approach when coming
Cobweb, from issue science fiction/horror film Dreamscape—ed.], up with Sleepwalker’s villains: create a diverse,
#3. (bottom left) so I came up with Mindscape instead. I believe colorful cast of villains unique to Sleepwalker.”
somewhere in the Nightmare story I wrote After a quick cameo appearance on a TV news
Follow the arrow’s that the Mindscape and the Dream Dimension reports in the first issue, 8-Ball made his first full
point to the villain of were very close to each other [Sleepwalker #12 appearance in issue #2 (July 1991), along with his
(May 1992)]. Perhaps they were different neigh- gang. 8-Ball/Jeff Hagees wore a black costume with
Sleepwalker #4 (Sept. borhoods in a greater dimension. I decided early an 8-ball for a helmet. His main weapon was (you
1991), Bookworm. on to not have Sleepwalker come from the same guessed it) a specially designed pool cue. He was
place as Nightmare; I figured that place belonged accompanied by his gang including 9-Ball (yellow
(bottom center) to Dr. Strange’s mythos. I wanted Sleepwalker to costume), 11-Ball (red costume), and 6-Ball (green
The Chain Gang have a home dimension of his own.” costume). While 8-Ball would return to menace
Even though most of the action in the series Sleepwalker, the others wouldn’t be seen again.
rattles our hero in
took place on Earth, some took place in the While there were many new villains created
Sleepwalker #7. Mindscape. for the title, only 8-Ball found a home outside of
(bottom right) the series. Budiansky states, “8-Ball was the first
DREAM WARRIORS one I came up with, and I designed his look as
Lullaby’s got Sleepy One of the standouts from this series was its vast well. I think in terms of pure wackiness, he was
on a string in array of original offbeat villains that Sleepwalker probably the wackiest of all the villains I created.
faced, foes such as 8-Ball, Bookworm, Cobweb, Maybe that made him extra appealing and was
issue #9. Covers and the Chain Gang, amongst others. Although the reason other writers used him in their books.”
by Blevins, except this book was populated by many newly created 8-Ball also appeared in She-Hulk #5–6 (Sept.–Oct.
baddies, it also featured a few pre-established 2004) and Daughters of the Dragon #2 (Apr. 2006),
for #4’s, which is villains that helped connect the title to the wider amongst others.
penciled by Rick Marvel Universe. Cobweb was one of the most powerful demons
Budiansky tells BACK ISSUE, in the Mindscape and had been plaguing the
Leonardi with inks “Another favorite comic Sleepwalkers for millennia. Sleepwalker had been
by Blevins. chasing the villain when he entered Rick Sheridan’s
mind. Cobweb quickly left Rick’s mind leaving
TM & © Marvel.
Sleepwalker trapped inside. “I decided Sleepwalker
needed a primary antagonist from his home
dimension, the Mindscape,” Budiansky states, “so I
created Cobweb—he was creepy and nightmarish-
looking, he preyed on the dreams of people, and
he was responsible for trapping Sleepwalker in
Rick’s mind. He also served as a vehicle that al-
lowed me to reveal more about the Mindscape to
Sleepwalker’s readers and add to his mythology.”
Is the pen mightier than the sword? That’s a
question that issue #4 (Sept. 1991) examined, as
the cover blurb read: “In Battle with Bookworm…
He’s Lonely! He’s Literate! He’s Lethal!” With a
cover tease like that, you just had to pick it up!
Socially awkward, lit-loving graduate assistant
Nelson Gruber was caught in the crossfire when
an experiment went awry. He gained the powers
to make the characters in his precious books come
to life. Sleepwalker, with Alyssa’s assistance, found
a unique way to stop Bookworm’s villainous ways.
Sleepwalker #7 (Dec. 1991) was an Infinity
Gauntlet crossover in which Rick was gone as a result
of the events of that classic miniseries. In fact, the
splash page depicts Sleepwalker (now free anytime
because Rick isn’t there) walking Rick’s dog, be-
cause someone’s got to do it. The issue also debuted
more additions to Sleepy’s Rogues’ Gallery. An
accident (what else?) gave powers to four escaped
convicts turning them into the Chain Gang (Weak
Link, Master Link, Missing Link, and Uplink).
In issue #9 (Feb. 1992), Sleepwalker first
encountered Felicity Hopkins, a.k.a. Lullaby. Hopkins

52 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

could sing her victims to sleep and then control their actions. used special effects to commit his crimes much like Spider-Man’s
While it appeared that Hopkins had Sleepwalker under her foe Mysterio. The then-recently-introduced Danny Ketch
control, that wasn’t the case. On the final page, he revealed that manifestation of Ghost Rider was riding high behind a hit
“Sleepwalkers never sleep!” comic series [see BI #124—ed.], so it’s no surprise that he was
The “Color Blindness” story arc in #13–16 (June–Sept. 1992) chosen to guest-star in Sleepwalker. He appeared in issue #11
introduced Selena Slate, who became the villainous Spectra (Apr. 1992). An Avengers team featuring Black Widow, Vision,
in issue #14. She became romantically linked to Sleepwalker Black Knight, Crystal, Hercules, and Sersi made appearances in
later in the series. This issue also introduced the Thought Police a two-parter in issues #26–27 (July–Aug. 1993), helping cement
(Nightstick, Cuffs, and Wiretap) to the growing list of Sleepwalker Sleepwalker’s place in the Marvel Universe.
adversaries. Sleepwalker wasn’t confined to his own book during this time,
Although Sleepwalker faced off against many original making appearances in other titles as well. The “Portals of Power”
adversaries, he did encounter several Marvel mainstays. storyline was a three-issue crossover between Sleepwalker and
One that fit nicely with Sleepwalker and the series’ theme of Darkhawk. Like Sleepwalker, Darkhawk made his debut in a
dealing with dreams was the Dr. Strange villain Nightmare self-titled series in 1991. The story began in Darkhawk #19 (Sept.
in issue #12 (May 1992). Nightmare “was a natural fit as an 1992) before moving to Sleepwalker #17 (Oct. 1992), and finally
antagonist for Sleepwalker,” Budiansky reveals. “Rather than concluding in Darkhawk #20 (Oct. 1992). As usual when heroes
create a similar villain and leave myself open to accusations of meet, they fight before they realize they have the same goal. Spider-
copying, I just decided to use the original... with the permission Man was a busy guy during this time—not only was he starring
of the Dr. Strange editor at the time, of course.” in four titles on his own, he also guest-starred in this event.
Nightmare wasn’t the only previously established villain Sleepwalker, like most other books from Marvel during the
to make an appearance in the series. The Hobgoblin made a ’90s, wasn’t immune from the gimmick cover phenomenon.
visit during one of the more memorable storylines. The six- While not as clever as Ghost Rider’s glow-in-the-dark cover for
part “Mindfield” storyline ran in issues #19–24 (Dec. 1992– issue #15 (July 1991), or the foil-embossed cover to Silver Surfer
May 1993) and contained a Freaky Friday vibe as Rick and #50 (June 1991), which did a nice job emulating the look of
Sleepwalker switched bodies. Rick (in Sleepwalker’s body) the character, the cover to Sleepwalker #19 (Dec. 1992) was a
encountered other Sleepwalkers in the Mindscape while Sleepy cardboard cover with an image of the title character. There were
had to deal with Rick’s problems on Earth. To make matters perforated sections where readers could punch out the eyes and
worse, Alyssa’s mind had visitors as well. 8-Ball also made a mouth to make a Sleepwalker mask.
return appearance. The interaction between the two villains was
another highlight of the arc.
Budiansky discusses the genesis of the storyline: “They were
already sharing space in Rick’s mind. It just seemed like a natural
progression to have them switch bodies. I thought it would make
for a fun story to have each experience life as the other one.”

SWEET DREAMS (ARE MADE OF THIS)

Being a part of the Marvel Universe means not only that you
exist within that fictional enclave, but that you interact with
other heroes. Sleepwalker was no exception to this.
Issues #5 and 6 featured guest appearances by Spider-Man in
a storyline called “Web of Confusion.” The two-parter teamed
up the heroes to fight against Spidey’s villain the Kingpin
and the newly introduced Sleepwalker baddie Crimewave
(Carl Wilkinson). Crimewave didn’t last long as an underworld
villain in the Marvel Universe, though. Issue #6 was his last
appearance—which is too bad, because even though the MU
has a plethora of criminal overlords, Crimewave was a fun
villain that could have made his mark as a standout amongst
Silvermane, Hammerhead, and the others.
Budiansky relates, “I was a long-time fan of Spider-Man,
so I was itching to write a story in which I could guest-star
him, and, in fact, I devised a two-parter. At the same time, my
editor was encouraging me to feature even more guest-stars
to help keep sales up, so I wrote stories that included some of
the rising Marvel stars of that era, including Deathlok, Ghost
Rider, and Darkhawk.”
The Michael Collins incarnation of Deathlok appeared in
Sleepwalker #8 (Jan. 1992) as the heroes fought against Mr. FX,
another newly created adversary that, as his name suggests,

Dream Teams
Sleepwalker was firmly engrained into the Marvel
Universe, with Deathlok, Ghost Rider, Darkhawk, Spider-
Man, and the Avengers among the heroes dropping by.
TM & © Marvel.

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 53

 To Dream No More
Sleepwalker concluded its run with issue #33 (Feb. 1994),
with this terrifying cover by the series’ final artist,
Kelly Krantz. Inks by Art Nichols.
TM & © Marvel.

YOUR WILDEST DREAMS

The art on the series was fantastic and perfectly captured the
feel of Budiansky’s stories. With characters as idiosyncratic as
Sleepwalker and his foes, you needed an artist would could
capture that and still provide the action that readers craved.
With Budiansky behind the writing desk, it left artist Bret Blevins
the task of bringing these characters to life on the page.
“When I first met with the editor who would oversee
Sleepwalker, Don Daley, I told him that Bret Blevins was my
number one ideal choice to be the artist,” Budiansky relates.
“Don agreed to my suggestion, we asked Bret, and, to my utter
delight, he agreed.
“As the Sleepwalker artist, Bret was everything I hoped he
would be—he brought energy, imagination, brilliant storytelling,
action, humor, superb draftsmanship... I could go on and on
listing Bret’s contributions to the book. The downside was that
Bret’s work on Sleepwalker helped raise his profile among the
other Marvel editorial offices, and eventually another editor
offered him a book with better sales—I think it was Ghost Rider—
which meant more royalties for Bret.
“So, Bret departed after issue #17. By that point in Sleep-
walker’s publishing tenure, sales had cooled off, which meant
declining royalties, so it wasn’t considered an attractive
destination for established pencil artists. Instead, editor
Don Daley offered it to newcomer Kelly Krantz, who did the
best he could illustrating the book until its cancellation. My
impression was that Kelly found illustrating my stories
challenging when he first took the assignment, but he
improved as he gained more experience.”
While not as polished as Blevin’s art, Krantz’s work on the
book was solid and kept the unique feel of the book keeping it
set apart from the other titles available at the time. Krantz’s first referenced the Distinguished Competition’s title. Was Sandman
issue was the Infinity War tie-in Sleepwalker #18 (Nov. 1992). He in the back of Budiansky’s mind when developing the book?
remained with the series until the final issue #33 (Feb. 1994). “When I created Sleepwalker, I wasn’t thinking of DC’s
Sleepwalker continued to face a variety of villains from his Sandman at all,” Budiansky tells BI. Regarding those house ads,
own Rogues’ Gallery throughout the rest of the run of the book. Bob surmises, “My guess is [Marvel was] trying to ride on the
Cobweb and 8-Ball continued to return to menace our heroes coattails of a book they considered successful at the time of
and Spectra even made a return appearance, but this time Sleepwalker’s publication. But the two books are nothing alike.
as love interest to Sleepwalker. The last issue featured a final I certainly wasn’t trying to compete with Sandman.”
showdown with Cobweb. The question on many readers’ minds Sleepwalker was a unique book during a time when most
was, Did Sleepwalker ever get free of Rick’s mind? You’ll have to were trying to fit into the grim-and-gritty mold. The characters
read the story to find out. stood out and the villains were eclectic. The artwork perfectly fit
“Sales had dropped to the point that Sleepwalker was the tone of the title. All in all, this is a title that readers shouldn’t
no longer considered profitable, so Marvel cancelled it,” sleep on. If you haven’t read this book, get out of bed and find
laments Budiansky. yourself some back issues.
Budiansky exclaims, “Getting Marvel to publish my creation,
DREAM ON Sleepwalker, was one of the highlights of
Although his self-titled series was gone, Sleepwalker was far from my career in comics!” For you and for us
forgotten, even though it would take until the next decade for as well, sir!
him to reappear. Marvel Team-Up vol. 3 #15 (Feb. 2006) saw his
return, with a prominent cover appearance to boot. This would Thanks go out to Bob Budiansky for his invaluable time
lead to several more appearances throughout the new millen- and assistance with this article. Thanks also to Bret
Blevins, who responded to a request for an interview
nia. Although Sleepwalker never gained the same status he did but unfortunately couldn’t schedule an interview time
with his own series, he remains a part of Marvel’s pantheon prior to deadline. A special thank-you to Joe Norton for
of original characters. the loan of some Sleepwalker issues that were missing
When the series was originally released, it was at a time that from my collection.
DC’s The Sandman was on the stands and gaining a popular
Educator, freelance writer, and comic-book historian
following. It was obviously on the radar of Marvel’s Marketing ED LUTE lost sleep to bring you this article. Hopefully,
Department because some of the house ads for the series directly the nightmares will go away now.

54 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 mATT WAGNER
Michael Rhode.

conducted by To m P o w e r s
transcribed by Amanda Powers

STEVEN T. SEAGLE
© Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons.
TM & © DC Comics.

On February 28, 2023, I had the honor of talking to Sandman Wesley Dodds and his partner Dian Belmont. Without further
Mystery Theatre co-writers Matt Wagner and Steven T. Seagle attention-grabbing adieu, I am raising the curtain on this
via Zoom regarding their superb collaboration on this long- enthralling conversation…
running Vertigo superhero-crime series featuring vigilante – Tom Powers

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 55

TOM POWERS: Matt, why did you want to bring Sandman I also had briefly discovered a big interest in contemporary
Mystery Theatre to Vertigo? crime fiction with the classics like Dashiell Hammett and
MATT WAGNER: Initially, it was not Vertigo. At the time I started Raymond Chandler but also the more hard-edged stuff like
to talk to Karen Berger about it, Vertigo was still just gestating Jim Thompson, James M. Cain, and David Goodis. And Karen
in her mind. Sandman Mystery Theatre was just going to be a thought that was a great idea.
DC title, and then the imprint got launched, and it just became What really sealed the deal, though, was that Guy had
its second title. I also really wanted to do something with Guy done up three to four pages of character designs wherein he
Davis. I was a big fan of his book Baker Street that he did for established this more contemporary, realistic look to the
Caliber Press, which was a small press publisher in the 1980s. Sandman’s costume. He even had a schematic of the gas gun,
If someone hasn’t seen Baker Street, it is a contemporary punk, which we included in the first collected edition. It just looked so
female version of Sherlock Holmes, and Guy’s art was just great, and Karen bought into it right away.
terrific on the book, and I really loved the humanity and the I had a couple other aims with the series, one of which was
sense of atmosphere, so I contacted him via his publisher and to treat pulp literature through a more contemporary lens in the
said, “Look, man, I’d love to do something with you. You deserve fact that when you look at a lot of crime fiction, it tends to be: A)
a bigger audience, and I’ve got a pretty good in at DC. Why pretty macho, and B) fairly rightwing in its outlook. I wanted to
don’t you just go through the DC Who’s Who and send me some show that progressive ideals didn’t just pop up in the 1960s in
ideas on characters you might want to play around with?” There America. They have been around for a long time. Of course, in
was no great surprise that the four characters he sent me were the late 1930s and early 1940s, as fascism was sweeping across
all people wearing cloaks and hats! [laughs] Europe, there was a huge fascist movement sweeping America
One of those happened to be the Golden Age Sandman, and too. There was a giant meeting of the American Nazi Party that
Guy said, “I know they won’t let us do this because of Gaiman’s filled Madison Square Garden in 1939, so we wanted to portray
Sandman.” I said, “No, that’s why they will let us do it,” a character who was kind of enlightened, which Wesley is. Also,
because, at that point, they were trying to capitalize on the we wanted to have a realistic romance in that most comic book
success of Sandman, but, of course, what made it special was romances are tortured and kind of clichéd. We wanted to have
Neil’s writing, and unless you could clone him and get two a situation where a couple genuinely liked each other and
or three times his output, he couldn’t write a whole lot more functioned well as a couple. That was spawned from the
books. In the first issue of Gaiman’s Sandman, he had made a fact that I had reread the original Golden Age adventures of
brief reference to Wesley Dodds as the Golden Age Sandman, Sandman—the original stuff from back in the late ’30s—which
and the fact that Morpheus was mystically imprisoned during was very unlike almost any other costumed character at the
this time period is what screwed up Wesley’s psyche and his time, and Dian Belmont knew Wesley Dodds was the Sandman.
dream state. It prodded him into adopting this secret identity I have to think those early comics are all very informed by
and going out on the streets at night. Of course, the gas mask the pulp traditions that came before them. The comic book
emulates Morpheus’ dream helmet. At that point in the ’80s, motifs had not yet been set in stone, so they were looking
everyone was revamping characters, so I pitched it to Karen, to the pulps for inspiration, so I assume that was inspired by
saying, “Hey, let’s do a revamp of the Golden Age Sandman and the radio version of The Shadow and Margo Lane, who knew
give it a different, more contemporary approach.” The Shadow’s secret identity. But I thought that was a great
opportunity to give us the core of Wesley and
Dian’s relationship—because the mysteries are fun
MATT WAGNER’s EARLY DC WORK and how we tell the stories, but the core that runs
through the comic is their relationship.
In addition to the Sandman Mystery Theatre series, Wagner’s early
contributions to the DC Universe include: POWERS: In terms of your initial three story arcs
• The Demon #1 (Jan. 1987)–4 (Apr. 1987) for Sandman Mystery Theatre, “The Tarantula”
Four-issue miniseries written and penciled by Matt, with is delineated in issues #1–4 (Apr.–July 1993), “The
Art Nichols inks, starring the Jack Kirby–created supernatural hero Face” unfolds in issues #5–8 (Aug.–Nov. 1993) and
Etrigan the Demon.
The Demon, Batman, and Two-Face TM & © DC Comics. Grendel TM & © Matt Wagner.

the tale of “The Brute” is depicted in issues #9–12

• Legends of the Dark Knight #28 (Mar. 1992)–30 (May 1992) (Dec. 1993–Mar. 1994). What did you learn from
Three-issue Two-Face storyline, “Faces,” written and illustrated writing these first 12 issues of the series?
by Matt. WAGNER: When you are working as a writer like
• Batman/Grendel (Aug. 1993) this, what we were basically trying to portray here
Two-issue Prestige Format miniseries combining Matt’s vengeful were the sort of situations that have since become
Grendel with DC’s Dark Knight. Co-published by DC Comics and known as hate crimes. We were trying to search out
Comico the Comic Company. the motivation of what leads someone to do that,
and, of course, nobody is born a monster. How
do they get to that stage where they will brutalize
somebody and develop hatred and act on it?
As might be evident in that time period, Steve
[Steven T. Seagle] and I loved doing research;
we loved trying to strike the vernacular and the
mindsets of the ’30s, which are, of course, different
than today. We tried to stay true to that—even
using stuff that would now probably send the
“woke” crowd into hysterics. That’s the way
people talked back then. You can’t really gloss
over it. You can portray it in a way that shows
how it is unenlightened and needs advancement,
which came eventually. But you can’t just pretend
that it didn’t happen.

56 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 STEVEN T. SEAGLE: We didn’t get a lot of complaints about
the racist language in the book, which, again, we researched
and made sure was appropriate for the time of the stories. But
people definitely complained about cuss words, saying, “No one
cussed in the ’30s. Those words didn’t even exist!” But they’re
easy to trace in the literature of the time. Our letter writers
tested us, and we loved nothing more than providing
proof from the period.
WAGNER: In talking to Neil Gaiman at the time—this
was before Vertigo would allow writers to use the
word “f*ck”—it was mainly due to their printer,
who wouldn’t let them do it for whatever reason.
SEAGLE: I think there was an issue with shipping
“profanity” over international borders while DC
was using Quebecor in Canada to print—fears of
books being seized at customs inspections.
WAGNER: But Neil and I talked about how if you
had something else you wanted to get past
Editorial that you thought might be questionable,
guy davis you threw a “f*ck” into the script, and they
would focus on that word and not the other
Xenopedia. things you were trying to get past them [laughs].

POWERS: On the subject of controversial choices for Sandman

Mystery Theatre, when it comes to the storyline “The Face,”
which was illustrated by John Watkiss, wasn’t there a bit of
controversy surrounding the coloring of some of the characters?
WAGNER: I originally wanted to have the Asian characters
portrayed in a kind of lemon-yellow—like they were portrayed
in comics at the time. But then I wanted the white characters
to be bone white—to not be peach flesh—to show that it was a
symbolic thing, and neither version was correct. Unfortunately,
that didn’t fly, so we had to backtrack and just go with more
naturalistic rendering.
SEAGLE: If I may interject, we loved Guy, and we wound up
doing more and more with him. As a reader of these books at
the time, I actually enjoyed the shifts in styles quite a bit. But,
internally, they were not met with any kind of love whatsoever.
So there was also resistance to the artistic shift to John Watkiss for
“The Face,” which was then amplified by the muddled attempt
to emphasize the print racism of the period in the color palette.
“The Brute” was drawn by Wordsmith alum R. G. Taylor, who was
a logical choice for the period of the book but was another jarring
departure from Guy for too many readers, which was a pity.
WAGNER: I think readers want dependability. It was initially my
idea to switch things up, and I admit I was bringing that over
from Grendel, which is a motif of that book, where we changed
artists every time we switched the storyline. In retrospect, Guy
was such a defining element of the look of Sandman Mystery
Theatre and its world that maybe we should have stuck with him
for the entire run. That said, I did like working with almost all of
our artists. There were a few that were kind of problematic, but,
for the most part, everybody was great and brought a real cool
sensibility and style to the project.
SEAGLE: There aren’t many genuine historical recreations
attempted in mainstream American comics, so it was fun letting
different artists work on a period piece. Most of our artists were
excited by that opportunity.

POWERS: So, Matt, after you finished your initial 12 issues of

Who Knows What Evil? Sandman Mystery Theatre, what made you want to partner
The Shadow—shown in an eerie 2005 illo by Guy Davis— with Steve? Also, could you please provide some background
information on how you first met?
and his relationship with Margo Lane laid the foundation WAGNER: I had met Steve at various points earlier in my career,
for the Wesley Dodds/Dian Belmont Sandman partnership. most specifically, on the infamous Mage tour that I did in 1985,
where a group of buddies and I drove all around the country in
Art scan courtesy of Heritage Auctions ([Link]). a van, and in the space of a month and a half, we did 26 signing
The Shadow © Condé Nast. appearances all the way around the country.

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 57

 SEAGLE: And he pulled up in Boulder, Colorado—where I was a college
student—rolled out of his van and did a signing at Time Warp, which is
still a great comic shop in Boulder, though it’s moved around a bit.
So, I met you as a fan on the street corner! I was like, “Oh, my God!
That’s Matt Wagner!”
WAGNER: And then you interviewed me for
something? I can’t remember what that was.
SEAGLE: That was years later. I was doing a column
for the Comics Buyer’s Guide. I thought, “This is how
I’ll round out my writing—by interviewing people.”
And I did four installments, realized I should not be
interviewing people, and stopped. But thank you
for being one of those four.
WAGNER: I was one of the few, the proud. I’d
been longtime buddies with Tim Sale, so I suddenly
became aware of Steve’s writing via The Amazon,
which he did with Tim at Comico. I had never
worked with a writer, but I have made the path of
my entire career trying sh*t I had never done before.
So, the reason I needed to bring on a cowriter is
the fact that I had some Grendel stuff coming up
on my schedule. I knew I had to give precedence
to my own character and that I wouldn’t be able to
handle the workload all by myself, so I talked to Karen and said, “I’d like
to try bringing on a co-writer,” and she was amenable.
SEAGLE: I had done the first “Grendel Tales” story in Grendel #40 (Feb.
1990) with Ho Che Anderson, but I was surprised you called me because
by that point you knew a lot of way more successful writers, so it was
interesting to me that I came to your mind. And if there were three
people before me who turned you down, just keep that to yourself!
WAGNER: No, there wasn’t. I will fully admit I was looking for somebody
that I wouldn’t clash with, and I knew you were up-and-coming—some-
body that would be a little bit hungry for the gig and would fit that mold.
SEAGLE: That’s funny, because Matt invited me up to Portland and said,
“Come up here and let’s talk about how we would do this gig,” and
my first thought was: “We will clash. This is a bad idea. I’m headstrong.
Matt’s headstrong. This will end in tears, but I do want to go to Portland,
and Matt’s a great cook, so maybe he’ll make me dinner.” So, I got up
to Portland. I went to your house. I was there about five minutes, and
you said, “I’m going to make dinner,” and I’m like “Great! This plan is
working out as intended.” And then you handed me your child—your
infant, Amanda—and you walked out the door to go buy groceries.
WAGNER: Now, I think I just needed a lemon. I wasn’t doing the whole
grocery run. I just needed one thing, but, when you need a lemon, you
need a lemon. You can’t substitute anything.
SEAGLE: I think you were like, “Here’s a mark I can leave my kid with,
and I have got to get some breathing room from this screaming child!”
And then Matt came back, and he made dinner, which was great,
and we just had this conversation about what was happening next in
Sandman Mystery Theatre, and we literally never talked about how we
would work. We knew who would do what, but we didn’t really go over
the nuts and bolts. We just kind of started, and it was extremely easy
conversation-wise. And, idea-wise, I liked what he was doing, and I was
Classical Gas thinking, “How do we do more of that and keep upping the ante?” And
(inset) Sandman’s sleep gun has an important it just… started. So I got home, and I was like, “Wait! I didn’t even agree
to this job, and I’m doing it already!” That seemed like a good indication
part of the character’s iconography since that things would work out. And they did.
character’s ongoing strip launched in
POWERS: What did you want to bring to this collaboration, Steve?
Adventure Comics #40 (July 1939). Cover art by
SEAGLE: What I thought I would be terrible at is the actual mysteries.
Creig Flessel. (top) Sandman’s weapon became That’s not my thing. I had not done all the Chandler reading that Matt
more dangerous in the harder-edged Sandman had done, and Matt was like, “I’ll handle that part. Don’t worry about
it.” So, I was dialogue, and Matt was “big picture” in the beginning.
Mystery Theatre series. From issue #1 (Apr. 1993). What I loved was this alternation between Wesley’s narrative and
(bottom) A 1994 Sandman portrait by Guy Davis. Dian’s narrative Matt had established—it’s a 50/50 partnership book
from the get-go. I don’t know how this current era defines all this, but
Courtesy of Heritage. in that time, there were not many strong women characters at the Big
TM & © DC Comics. Two, and I, for some reason, was interested in complex female leads in

58 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

my stuff and was really into that. Nowadays, that may not be person in a relationship trying to figure out who that other person
allowed, but that was just where my head was, so I loved that I is in terms of thinking, “Why didn’t you tell me this stuff upfront?
could toggle back and forth between how Wes see things and Do you not trust me with it?” Every time we got to dig down into
how Dian sees things. I taught Interpersonal Communication stuff an actual couple would have beef about—but in the context
when I was at Ball State University in Indiana, and that kind of of a superhero kind of fantasy—it seemed like gold to me.
frame of reference—how different people see things depending WAGNER: We were trying to strike a sense of realism—and a
on how they’re coming at it—just made this a really fascinating sense of positivity—to show how a couple’s relationship matures
gig in terms of how Wes sees the world and their relationship and advances over time and isn’t just dramatically reactionary,
versus how Dian sees it all. That was my main draw in that I am which is how a lot of relationships are portrayed in entertainment.
a very structuralist writer. I like when there is a formal—in-the- SEAGLE: What I liked about what Matt had set up—and was a
definition-of-form conceit—to things, and that was there. champion for going forward—was these big swings. It wasn’t
I also like that we could give Guy Davis a plot and say, “Here’s always minutiae. We thought, “Let’s go big. Let’s run toward it
what we need,” and it was very Marvel style, i.e., paragraphs instead of being afraid of it.” A lot of times in serialized fiction,
of action that—in the first year—Matt wrote up entirely. Guy you can’t ever undo what makes it [by definition] the thing it is.
would pencil it, and then I would dialogue it, and it was just all And Sandman Mystery Theatre constantly undid stuff. It still had
there in the art. It didn’t matter what you gave Guy; what you its full weight and mass moving forward, and the big swings for
got back was everything you needed. Instead of having to write character arc never broke that.
dialogue to support incomplete storytelling like: “They walked
to the car and got in,” the acting was perfect, so I could have the POWERS: Matt, can you elaborate more upon how your plotting
text just go straight to subtext and minutia of the pre-war time- methodology worked in coordination with Steve’s dialogue?
frame and the relationship, and that helped elevate the book WAGNER: I also brought that over from Grendel, because
from the genre trappings. And as Matt said, we loved doing once I decided to start writing for other writers on that book, I
the research, so it was really fun to write with that specificity. decided to work plot-and-dialogue fashion because I wanted
WAGNER: Steve mentioned structure. Another bit of structure the artist to have more of a say in things rather than me spelling
based around their relationship is the fact that I decided from everything out. And I can draw, so I felt that if I wanted that
the very beginning that each story arc should be four issues long, kind of control, I should just draw it myself. The only reason
so that, when they were collected, they would be about the to collaborate with another artist was to force myself to see
size of a pulp magazine. But every 12 issues, Wesley and Dian’s through their eyes, to get their visual input in ways that I might
relationship goes through some kind of stage or change, and not have imagined, so it just felt natural to go that way again
Steve and I both would talk about that at the beginning of the in Sandman Mystery Theater.
year and say, “Here’s where we’re getting them to,” and then it SEAGLE: And Matt, you had told me when you brought me on,
was just a matter of slowly pacing that out over 12 issues. “I’m only going to stay on this another year—that’s all I got in
SEAGLE: This is not standard stuff either—for example, the idea me.” And that year was so much fun and worked so well.
that Dian would later in the series take agency over her own WAGNER: Yeah, I found out it was hard to let go.
pregnancy. These were big, interesting things that are common SEAGLE: My job was to not let you go! I was constantly like,
for TV, movies, novels, but certainly not common for comics at “You can do another year. You can stay on this little while
that time. I think Vertigo ushered in a lot more of that kind of longer,” and I kept pulling that string as long as I could.
storytelling, but it was not something you were
getting in mainstream comics at the time.

POWERS: Dian serves as a dynamic foil to Wesley STEVEN T. SEAGLE’s EARLY DC WORK
as she gradually discovers his other identity as a In addition to the Sandman Mystery Theatre series, Seagle’s early
vigilante crimefighter. As an aspiring writer, she is contributions to the DC Universe include:
also sharing her experiences with the readers via • Justice League Quarterly #14 (Spring 1994)
her journal entries, so you are providing this meta Writer of a 12-page story starring Ireland’s superhero, Jack O’Lan-
approach to her character, who possesses many tern of Global Guardians fame.
layers since she’s a writer who is solving a personal • Hawkman #10 (June 1994)–11 (July 1994)
mystery within the narrative fabric of the greater
Dialogue for William Messner-Loebs’ plots for two consecutive
mystery story arcs unfolding in Sandman Mystery
Theatre. How did you deal with the complexity of issues of the Hawkworld spinoff, Hawkman.
her characterization? • Primal Force #0 (Oct. 1994)–14 (Dec. 1995)
WAGNER: You take that one, Steve! [laughs] Seagle-scripted monthly super-team comic featuring the Red Tornado,
SEAGLE: If you think about it, that’s what we’re all Jack O’Lantern, Meridian, Dr. Mist, Cataclysm, Claw, and Golem.
doing. If you’re in a relationship, you don’t know
that other person. What they tell you is what you
know. What you find out—that maybe they’re not
even aware of—that’s what you discover. There’s
stuff they don’t know about themselves that you can
figure out or not, and there’s stuff neither one of you
knows, and it just shows up. So that quadranting of
selves—which in Communication Studies is known
as the Johari Window, devised by psychologists
Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingram—gives us the
TM & © DC Comics.

known self, secret self, hidden self, and unknown self.

That just seemed like a really good driver, so Dian is
trying to find out the mystery of what Wesley is doing,
but he’s not having an affair; he’s a “superhero,”
which was fascinating because it’s also just about a

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 59

 POWERS: In terms of your first story arc together, “The Vamp,” which ran
through issues #13–16 (Apr.-July 1994) you craft this murder mystery involving
Dian’s sorority sisters. You also present a lesbian overtone, which is very
fascinating. In issue #13 alone, you have Dian’s friend Carol Swanson kissing
her on page 8, and then on page 14, you have Madeleine Giles—who’s later
revealed to be the villain of this arc—kissing Carol. This is some edgy stuff even
for comics in the early ’90s, and, yes, it’s Vertigo, but it’s still a DC comic.
WAGNER: Steve and I obviously are straight white guys, and we had to figure
out a way to get inside the head of the marginalized. That’s what writing
fiction is all about.
Steve mentioned earlier whether it would be cool to write things from a
woman’s point of view nowadays, but I don’t know. I just find it boring if the
only thing we’re allowed to do and write from is our own perspective. I don’t
want everything I write to be me. That’s what fiction’s all about—to explore
situations all around you that aren’t you and people that aren’t you.
SEAGLE: If I recall, that storyline was riffing on the Parisian American expat
crowd of the ’20s and ’30s, in which there was a much more fluid sexuality, and
pan-sexuality—before that term was popularized—which was pretty common
amongst the art circles, and we were talking about the Gertrude Stein/Alice B.
Toklas relationship and thinking about what that might be in New York City.
What does that taboo turn into as a twisted crime story? But part of exploring
like that for Sandman Mystery Theatre was always giving humanity to part of the
cast, and if the villain is within that community—which in that case she was—
she’s saying, “You’re the outlier. These are good people with good intentions
who want to be in love—just like everybody else—and you’re messing it up for
us,” which drives her good intentions to a dark endpoint.
What I liked immediately about my first story arc was that it’s a Wesley-and-
Dian thing. She’s thinking, “Could I kiss a woman? I could. Would I like that?
Yeah, it’s not bad, actually. Does that take me away from Wes? It doesn’t. But
if I broke up with Wes, I could go that way.” For the 1990s and any media at
that time, that was a pretty forward-thinking kind of message. Now we’ve
arrived as a society at a more open acceptance of identity… or have we?
I think we were ahead of that curve.
The other funny thing about that arc is that I turned in my first dialogue
script for issue #13, and I was told that it did not have enough words. I’m fairly
minimalist by writing standards, and I thought, “The art’s doing everything,
so I don’t need to do much more,” and I handed it in with a four-balloons-
per-page kind of vibe, and Karen Berger told me something along the lines of:
“It’s good, but Vertigo books have more words than this.”
WAGNER: There again, she was following the Gaiman template.
SEAGLE: And I don’t think she was wrong, actually. I went through and
added way too much, which was another problem she noted! Then, I landed
in the middle somewhere, but it took me an issue to get my Vertigo wings.
WAGNER: Any time somebody comes back with that kind of critique, you’re
of course going to overreact and go the other way.
SEAGLE: Absolutely.

POWERS: Also in issue #14 (May 1994), on pages 15–19, you show this
crazy fight between Wesley and Burke, and it’s just really brutal and amazing
because usually the foil gradually becomes the friend, but Burke is nearly
the enemy.
WAGNER: We were never going to have that happen.
SEAGLE: No—and Wesley is not good at fighting. He’s a pacifist sort of “old
money” guy, and he doesn’t know jack sh*t about throwing a punch. I was
a scrawny kid in high school, so I related to a hero who couldn’t fight and
would barely get out of that kind of situation intact.
Moonlighting WAGNER: It’s why Wes has the gas gun.
Dian Belmont quickly matured from SEAGLE: I related to Wes because I wouldn’t survive ten minutes if I had to
actually fistfight Burke. I’d have to gas him in the face and run away, which is
Wesley Dodds’ Gal Friday to confidant and pretty much what Wes does unless he’s extremely driven by a dream vision.
lover in the pages Sandman Mystery Theatre. WAGNER: I always love films where fighting is highly choreographed, but I
This exceptional portrait of Dian and Wes really like screen fights that are desperate. Two of my favorite films in the world
are Richard Lester’s Three and Four Musketeers. When you watch the sword
was commissioned of artist Guy Davis in fights, they are just brawls. Half the time, they’re throwing their swords at each
2001 and hails from the collection of Alex other, and they’re grabbing anything that’s in reach and hammering each
other with it. It’s not this Zorro sort of absolute finesse and rapier thrusting.
Winter of Hake’s Auctions. SEAGLE: What we were also trying to show was that in 1930s New York
TM & © DC Comics. City there was the Art Deco vibe—that was the glamour. But the heroism—

60 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 Hardboiled Comics
Sandman Mystery Theatre pulled no punches with its
depiction of violence, including this gruesome title
splash of the aftermath of a hate crime. From issue #5,
illustrated by John Watkiss.
TM & © DC Comics.

every time Matt would bring in our man Wesley, it was not
glamorous. It was the worst-dressed, worst-attempted, most
ill-fated swing at being a hero that you’ve have ever seen, and
I thought that was great.

POWERS: Moving on to “The Scorpion” story arc that ran

through issues #17–20 (Aug.–Nov. 1994), you place an emphasis
on Wall Street by shifting the narrative gears to the financial
world of 1938 New York City. What kind of conversations went
into this story?
WAGNER: In that one, we knew who the Scorpion is right away.
I had pointed out to Steve when he was talking about not know-
ing how to do the mysteries, and I said, “All mysteries aren’t
who-dunnits. Sometimes they’re how-dunnits and why-dunnits.”
SEAGLE: This one is back to Guy on the art, and the setting
shift for this arc was narratively interesting and surprising. We
were in these restrained, closed-room Victorian parlor sorts of
things, and now we are shifting big into a financial system that’s
recovered from a meltdown and is about to be plunged into
war. That’s not something you’d normally look at in a superhero
book at all, and it’s not even the focus of a lot of histories of
New York City per se. I went into The New York Times—which I
would do all the time—and just read front pages for the months
that this story arc is set in and see what they were saying about
finance—not the financial part—but what the general reporting
was saying about finances in the world right then. That was
really interesting to research.

POWERS: This story also presents the villain, the Scorpion—

Terry Stetson—as using this poisonous whip as his weapon,
which makes him almost like a twisted Zorro.
WAGNER: I obviously love Zorro. I later went on to write Zorro for WAGNER: Sex and violence both. When you look at most of
many issues for Dynamite, and I did the Django-Zorro crossover my works, I include that all of the time. And the reason is what
with Quentin Tarantino. Zorro was one of my first favorite loves as makes drama is change, and sex and violence are the agents
far as adventure literature goes. Disney had the show back when I of change. Sex is the beginning of life and the unbridled
was quite young, and then when I was about 12, we had moved expression of relationships. Violence is the end of life and the
from a very rural setting to a suburban East Coast setting, and we brutal cessation of relationships. Certainly, Shakespeare knew
had UHF stations, one of which ran a silent film theater on Sunday this; his dramas are full of sex and violence. So, when anybody
night, so I got to see Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.’s 1920 film The Mark asks me, “Why is there so much sex and violence in your work?,”
of Zorro, which is fantastic and full of a lot of cool anachronisms. I reply, “Because it’s boring without them!” [laughs]
When Zorro shows up for the first time, he’s got his cloak held SEAGLE: The question should actually be, “Why isn’t there more
in this Batman style—or I should say Batman holds his cloak in sex in other comics?”
Zorro’s style—and he opens it to confront the bad guys, and he’s Everybody thinks about sex, talks about sex, and has sex.
huffing on a cigarette the whole time—very rakishly [laughs]. So, Its percentages are like 98%, and for the remaining 2%, 1%
our story was definitely a move toward doing a dark Zorro, and, are not interested, and the other 1% are medical issues. Yet it’s
of course, the poison whip that’s the sting of the Scorpion’s tail. almost nowhere to be seen in most comics, making it repressed
SEAGLE: We were also talking about sadomasochism, specifical- sexuality. And when it is seen, it’s often the grotesque, the
ly a hero—or in this case, a villain—who has a whip. It’s not just porn version. Why is that? Superheroes are naked people with
that you want to do justice; you want to inflict pain and watch costumes painted on their bodies, so you can see everything on
people suffer that pain, and you most likely dig it. These tales their body except their genitals because we have problems with
always have that lurid kind of pulp element to them, and that genitals—especially penises and testicles—in America.
was the one we were playing with in “The Scorpion.” WAGNER: And men have no nipples!
SEAGLE: And yet, with female superheroes, for far too long a
POWERS: That comment leads me to another question I have time, you can see everything—double standards. They not only
been wanting to ask you both: Why is sex important to the have nipples but also those nipples are erect for some reason
storytelling of a superhero-crime epic that’s set in the ’30s? In while they’re fighting supervillains? So here’s a book where the
other words, why does sex show up in many of your Sandman two main characters actually have a normal, kind of tame—and
Mystery Theatre story arcs? I would dare say—almost uninteresting sex life. But they have

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 61

 sex. And then the things that they’re up against matic. That helped us balance what we wanted
are these skewed visions of that—very lurid kinds the feeling of the book to be from arc to arc.
of “What ifs?”—things that they might become if
left unchecked. And we play with that in some of POWERS: Around this time, Sandman Mystery
The Lady Is the story arcs where Wes and Dian’s sex life causes Theatre Annual #1 (Oct. 1994) was also published,
trauma or problems. Then, they’re seeing them- which offers a series of vignettes illustrated by
a Vamp selves reflected in a way in that they’re thinking, different artists. What did you appreciate about
A startling surprise “Oh, my gosh, I am not that at all,” especially in working on this unique issue?
the earlier stories. Sex and sexuality served a lot of WAGNER: The Annual was spawned by my discov-
for Sandman on the plot and story functions beyond typical titillation. ery and interest in the work of the photographer
final page of SMT The last thing I’ll say is that the core for both Weegee. I had a book of his photos, and one of the
of us was always “Where are Wes and Dian as a last photos in the book was of the costume that
#15 (June 1994), couple, and what are they going through?” If what is seen in that Annual. It was a mugger that was
Part 3 of the serial they were doing was really personal and intense, haunting Central Park during those days, and it just
then we made the villain bigger, which put more was such an odd image since it looked like a super-
“The Vamp.”
of a spotlight on Wes and Dian’s “small” problem villain costume but something somebody would
Autographed original in a weird way. We would use that technique of cobble together in their very poor apartment in
Guy Davis art inverse sliders: if we had something where Wes Manhattan, or Brooklyn, or Queens [laughs]. So,
and Dian’s daily life was explosive, then the villain being an Annual, we decided that it was an oppor-
courtesy of Heritage. needed to recede a little bit—be more mysterious tunity to do a bunch of short stories—in my youth,
TM & © DC Comics.
and off-camera so that it didn’t all seem melodra- Annuals were always a bunch of short stories, not
one long narrative—and weave it all together into
the story of how Wes finds out about and tracks
down this mugger. I will also point out that the
Annual had Alex Ross’ very first story for DC.
SEAGLE: In black-and-white paintings, no less!
I also like very much that it was about socio-
economic inequities, which is still a current topic.
Everybody’s assuming that the mugger’s
costume is to scare people when, in actuality, it’s
just that he’s so poor—that’s really all he could piece
together to make a “secret identity” happen:
wooden shoes, a burlap sack mask, a stick with
nails driven through it as a weapon. For our artistic
collaborators on that book, we had David Lloyd
from V for Vendetta, and Stefano Gaudiano, whom
I had worked with on Kafka; George Pratt, Peter
Snejbjerg, Dean Ormston, Guy Davis, and John
Bolton also each did a chunk—that was an incredi-
ble array of talent in one place and amazing to see.
WAGNER: Yeah, man, that’s a star-studded book.

POWERS: In Chapter 3, titled “The Stakeout,”

Wesley comes across these two gay lovers in Central
Park when he’s trying to apprehend the mugger,
and they run away in fear of him as he just stares
at them. Any thoughts on this poignant scene?
WAGNER: Gay people had to sneak around a lot in
those days. It’s only fairly recently they don’t. Then
again, even in parts of this country, they still do.
SEAGLE: We had a little more time with that issue,
so we did a lot of research. We found that there was
this field in Central Park where homosexual couples
had trysts. The hesitation is simply Wes taking it—
deciding they are not his mark—realizing he has no
issue with the activity, and it’s none of his business.
The couple, though, assumes the worst and runs.
By the way, because of Matt’s initial inspiration,
we put a Weegee-esque character in the Annual—
Feegee—and he shows up again later in the series.
WAGNER: There’s also a scene in the Annual
where the Sandman is chasing the mugger, and
they break through this field, and it’s all full of
people sleeping because, in hot summer months
in New York in those days, people would camp out
in Central Park to escape the heat of their poorly
insulated, no-airflow apartment buildings, sleeping
right on the grass with a blanket.

62 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

POWERS: For your next arc, “Dr. Death,” which takes place WAGNER: We were probably fictionalizing Fredric Wertham
in issues #21–24 (Dec. 1994–Mar. 1995), you introduce a little bit in his takedown of American comic books, where
Raymond Kessler, a sex addict who is quite misogynistic he just saw sex everywhere. Some psychologists just have sex
towards his girlfriend Lucy, and you keep on showing this on the brain.
guy’s sexual addiction across this arc. Why was this aspect SEAGLE: That story was with Vince Locke on art mostly over
important to his characterization? layouts by Guy, which was fun. It seemed like Wes and Dian were

‘Sandman
Mystery Theatre
Annual’ #1
Joining regular series
writers Wagner and
Seagle and regular
series artist Guy
Davis (Chapters 1
and 9) on 1994’s
Sandman Mystery
2 3 4
Theatre Annual
#1 were guest
illustrators (1) David
Lloyd (Chapter 2),
(2) John Bolton
(Chapter 3), (3)
Stefano Gaudiano
(Chapter 4), (4)
George Pratt
(Chapter 5),
(5) Alex Ross
(Chapter 6), (6)
Peter Snejbjerg
5
(Chapter 7), and
(7) Dean Ormston
6
(Chapter 8).
TM & © DC Comics.

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 63

getting bumpy, so somebody who’s out there having a lot of sex SEAGLE: No, and he did them in so many
while they’re getting a little pedantic on their side was part of the different styles. For instance, he did some in
calculus of the relationship. And it is what Matt was saying—it’s a Tex Avery style later on with so much cool
sex and death. He’s Dr. Death. It is the beginning and the end of Zipatone on them.
life—“I am the maker of worlds”—you know, a real God complex, WAGNER: But, as I said, we were just trying
which is a doctor thing from time to time in pulp fiction. to embrace the pulp tradition. When you
say “pulp,” that takes in a huge amount of
POWERS: Talking about Wes and Dian, in issue #23 (Feb. 1995), genres, and certainly terror and horror was a
on page 22, you write this sequence where they very graphically big part of the pulp world.
finally get it on as a couple, and it’s quite intimate.
WAGNER: We know we were always getting to that and the POWERS: With the nameless villain in this
challenges of making it seem actual, not overly dramatized. story—a cannibalistic butcher—he’s quite
With Wes and Dian, we had to be able to portray their initial sex a sympathetic one in that he’s mentally ill.
scene in a way that A) was erotic, B) was loving, and C) seemed As an example, in issue #28, on page 19,
like it would actually happen in a real-life scenario. he’s crying for his mother. But this is still a
SEAGLE: And most tellingly: it’s Dian as the agent—she’s the guy who’s cutting people up and mutilating
one who makes the move. She’s the one who tells Wes what their corpses.
they’re going to do. She moves his creepy little stuffed doll to WAGNER: If you look at the film Psycho,
the side of the bed so that she can get on top of him. Norman Bates has big mother issues.
WAGNER: Speaking of the doll, I should put in here that it is SEAGLE: We were trying to make a real-world,
from the very first Golden Age Sandman story. When Wes goes grounded story. Somebody who does some-
out to be the Sandman for the first time, he tucks the little doll in thing like that too often is too smart, too
the bed, salutes it, and says, “Good night, Mr. Wesley Dodds,” cool for school, too clever. Saying that this is
and then goes through the secret door into his sanctum and somebody who is really damaged—or they
changes into his Sandman costume. When I read that, I thought, wouldn’t do really damaged things—was
“Man, we got to keep that. That’s just too damn good and part of this story. This is the arc where the
weird and uninhibited.” “Mystery Theater Magazine” pulp starts
SEAGLE: Also, at the end of that scene, Dian sneaks out. Some showing up in the comic book, too. So the
people took us to task for this saying: “She just had sex with him writers and an artist of that series within our
so that she could go investigate his apartment.” But that’s not series are somewhere making a pulp out of
true at all. I think that she said to herself, “We are bonded now. Wes’s adventures that the people, especially
No secrets. I’m going to make myself at home.” Then she found those on the police force, are reading,
out something she didn’t anticipate. Or maybe she did—one of wondering if the Butcher is a real guy.
those hidden-self things she suspected and confirmed. This story arc is also where you start going,
WAGNER: And it’s okay to compartmentalize that stuff. “What’s wrong with Burke that this doesn’t
bother him more?” There are things you
POWERS: I also want to discuss page 23, where, in the first two cannot look past, and he’s looking past all
panels, we see Dian cuddling—or spooning—Wesley, which con- these eviscerations like they’re nothing. And
tinues the dominant stance she assumed by initiating sex with him. you start thinking that this is a damaged
SEAGLE: Men often create media where they put their sex in guy—that something more is afoot with him.
the dominant role, but that’s bullsh*t. For many of the people I
know who are in traditional heterosexual couplings, the woman POWERS: Burke also does not like to see
is in charge of everything. weakness in men, especially in his fellow officers,
WAGNER: Those in-charge moments are fluid as well. Some- and he is very powerful in the beginning of
times, my wife’s more dominant, and sometimes I’m more issue #27 (June 1995), where he kicks Wesley’s
dominant. ass in a brutal fashion. This really is a formi-
SEAGLE: I don’t see Wes being dominant, but I’m with you; the dable male who is damaged.
roles don’t have to be locked. That’s an expression of insecurity. WAGNER: Burke is a mobster that didn’t turn
WAGNER: We didn’t show them having sex a lot. But there’s out to be a mobster. He should have been
going to be plenty of times where Dian’s coupled up in Wes’ in the mafia, and he’s not, but he’s got that
arms. It’s not all one way or the other, just the way their same sort of old-world barbarism that he
narration is in the comic. contains by working for the law.
SEAGLE: It’s also interesting that this is a Dian
POWERS: In the next story arc, “Night of the Butcher,” which narrative arc. So again, we were trying to get
runs through issues #25–28 (Apr.–July 1995), you present something extremely brutal in opposition
an incredibly graphic storyline. Specifically, there are of what she’s talking about because we most
dismemberments and bloody torsos on ample display in the often disconnected the kind of through-
beginning of issue #28. narrative from having any direct relation to
WAGNER: We decided to do a Texas Chainsaw Massacre story, the A-story of the mystery just to get that
thinking “Let’s go for absolute Italian giallo sort of stuff. We’ve interplay of soft and hard most of the time.
been doing mysteries, so let’s do something that’s horror.”
SEAGLE: And it opens right on that note, as the very first dream POWERS: With the next arc, “The Hourman,” that is presented
is cutting a baby in half, and Wes crawls out of its carcass. I think in issues #29–32 (Aug.–Nov. 1995), why did you want to
Guy should have received a lot more credit for how visually introduce Hourman to the book? You’re getting closer and closer
inspired and diverse his dream pages were. Some of them were to the JSA continuity of the Golden Age. However, it feels like
just mind-bogglingly hideous. Sandman Mystery Theatre takes place in its own separate world.
WAGNER: And they didn’t look like he ever had any problem WAGNER: At the same time, we wanted to acknowledge that
with it. It was so easy for him. it was in the DC Universe, and Hourman seems to be a neat

64 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 way to introduce somebody with superpowers but who was
a little mundane in the way he got them. He takes a pill, a
steroid, and—boom—gets all hopped up for an hour as
opposed to coming from a different planet or is bathed in
chemicals that give him super-speed. In the original appear-
ances of the Hourman, he advertises in the classifieds and calls
himself the “Man of the Hour.” It just seemed a great way to
maintain the aesthetic and the narrative vibe that we had set
forth and gradually pull in this little bit of the JSA.
SEAGLE: We’re also essentially talking about prescription drug
abuse. Hourman makes his own pill, but obviously it’s not doctor-
controlled, so there’s this idea of the drug making the man as
opposed to the man makes the man. Wes is just himself. He’s got
an outfit, a gas mask, and a gun. But this guy is trying to become
superhuman through chemical enhancement, which remains a
problem to this day as we see entire countries get kicked out of
the Olympics for steroid abuse, doping, etc., not to mention a
global opioid epidemic. Everything old is new again.
WAGNER: This dichotomy you’re talking about is so perfectly
summed up in issue #31 (Oct. 1995), page 21, when they
both get into these Halloween costumes to go to the ball, and
Hourman is dressed in what turns out to be his actual costume
while Wes is dressed in an outfit that evokes the look of the
Kirby Sandman costume. They’re both standing in front of a
mirror, and Hourman’s like, “Damn, I look cool!” and Wes is just
droning like, “I look ridiculous.”
SEAGLE: I love that Wes thinks he looks ridiculous but then has
no problem with his own Sandman getup.
WAGNER: There again, he’s haunted into that. That’s an image
he can’t control that’s from Morpheus.
SEAGLE: But it was also a way to get him in that original
Sandman outfit. We took some flak at the time from people who
thought we were really disrespecting the Golden Age. But the
more we went on, I think people saw that we knew the Golden
Age material, and we were trying to thread it through and keep
the timelines intact while looking at it from a street-level view
instead of from an ivory tower.

POWERS: With the next story arc, “The Python,” which is told
in issues #33–36 (Dec. 1995–Mar. 1996), you have Burke take
center stage, which provides an interesting narrative shift.
WAGNER: Well, it was his time.
SEAGLE: And it’s an arc that has everybody out of their element.
Dian goes to a health club, and she feels out of place. Wesley,
having had this adventure with this other costumed person, is
feeling displaced, and Burke suddenly becomes our kind of front
man for the book, so he’s in a different position, and it is a lot
about that shifting of things—a creeping unease that everything
could be turned over—the impending war in Europe.

POWERS: On the topic of the health club, in issue #35 (Feb. 1996),
on pages 13–14, Dian is showering, and her body is illustrated
by Warren Pleece in such a natural way.
WAGNER: We absolutely applauded that portrayal. It’s the
thing about breasts and comic books—they don’t seem to
have gravity. And Warren drew Dian, as you said, looking very
naturalistic, like a woman with her clothes off.
SEAGLE: Yeah, Warren Pleece—whom I was a fan of via his
Velocity series with his brother Gary—still need a number 1, by the
way!—drew this arc, but he followed the Guy models. Societally,
there have always been these kinds of “You can look better” cam-
The ‘Twisted Zorro’ paigns. It’s just that “better” keeps getting redefined as different
things in time, and so Dian kind of owning her body was important
Courtesy of Alex Winter of Hake’s Auctions, original Guy for where she’s going to go next as a character. And this was a
Davis promotional artwork for the story arc “The Scorpion,” way to tap into that and her insecurities around her friends.
which appeared in Sandman Mystery Theatre #17–20. POWERS: Dian also decides to go off to England at the end of
TM & © DC Comics. this story. What are your thoughts on this surprising conclusion?

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 65

 Can the Sandman Cut It?
From the Heritage archives, original Guy
Davis promo art for the “Night of the
Butcher” story arc appearing in Sandman
Mystery Theatre #25–28.
TM & © DC Comics.

WAGNER: Neil and I were doing Sandman Midnight

Theatre (Sept. 1995) at that point, so that was just
deliberate staging to get her over to England so
that Wes would follow her across.

POWERS: What were your thoughts on working

with Neil on that one-shot?
WAGNER: He was very amenable to it. DC flew me
on two different occasions to somewhere where
he was touring and doing lectures. One weekend,
I remember was in Santa Barbara, where we were
in our mutual hotel rooms just hacking out the
story. Neil already had the structure of the Burgess
mansion and how Morpheus was cooped up there,
and we knew as a result that there wasn’t going to
be a whole lot of interaction between Morpheus
and Wes. Of course, Wes doesn’t remember it
afterwards, but Morpheus’s presence is very much
felt throughout that entire book.

POWERS: With the next story arc in issues #37–40

(Apr.–July 1996), titled “The Mist,” you get back to
the regular continuity and include the Mist, who is
a really dangerous villain. What were the origins
of this story?
WAGNER: James Robinson was doing Starman.
[Editor’s note: See BACK ISSUE #133 for our
Starman coverage.] Both Steve and I had
known him for many years. He did the first
continuing story arc of Grendel Tales. James
and I hooked up and said, “Let’s sort of do
a crossover.” I told him, “I’ll take care of the
Mist’s origins in Sandman Mystery Theatre, and
you can have Wes and Dian in their elder years
to guest star in Starman.”
One of the things I particularly loved about the
portrayal of Wes and Dian in Starman is the fact
that Dian has become famous by that point in
their lives. She’s a world-famous author who’s won
a Pulitzer, and Wesley is just this kind of strange
guy she lives with [laughs].
SEAGLE: [laughs] Seems fitting. The arc is intriguing
because it is one of the first World War II micro-
cosm storylines that we get into. There are Nazis,
and there are government inventions of weapons
that can do terrible things to people. It really
started to boil the war tension up in the book.
WAGNER: And included the first kind of para-
normal science-fiction elements in the comic,
too, with the Mist’s body dissolving and finally
becoming insubstantial.
SEAGLE: But in Starman, the Mist is one thing. In
the context of World War II about to break out in
Sandman Mystery Theatre, “mists” are a different
thing. Gas turning a body to garbage is a different
thing, and I thought it really resonated what was
happening/about to happen in Europe very well.
WAGNER: I did too.

66 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 POWERS: You were talking about history in terms of context, WAGNER: This was also another opportunity to bring in a
and, in this story, you have a Jewish subplot that touches upon Golden Age character with the Crimson Avenger, who is another
the growing tension between the Germans and the Jews. sideline hero character brought in just to show what Wes is
WAGNER: All that stuff was happening for real. We were doing, but he’s doing it with a completely different tilt, intent,
trying to show that progressive thought didn’t just pop up on and outcome.
its own in the ’60s—it had been around for a long time, which SEAGLE: These issues had some of the creepy dreams where
also applies to the fascist movement that we were talking about. Guy drew the animals in the style of the Fleisher Studios or
Fascism always arises as a reaction to progressivism because Warner Bros. We didn’t send him a ton of reference material.
progressivism challenges society and wants change, and people He just imagined what it looked like to walk around the Fair or
get reactionary and resistant to that. Plenty of people in the what an underground torture chamber in the fair would look
United States had an unreasonable hatred for the Jews as well like, and he drew it out of his head, and it was exactly like what
at this time. It just wasn’t allowed to flourish and be set loose in you would have thought somebody who researched it for years
the same way it was in Germany. would have come up with. He’s a genius that way.
SEAGLE: We didn’t have our series ending in mind by any stretch
of the imagination, but we constantly talked about World War II POWERS: What do you think about how you wrote the villain
being a change point and wanted to have that start percolating. for this story arc? I mean, he’s sadomasochistic, repressed,
As Matt was saying, a lot of people in the US turned a blind eye and gay.
to what was going on in Europe and downplayed its severity. For WAGNER: Our thought there was we’d already had a variety of
Wes and Dian, we wanted to show that they were aware that gay characters and given them a very positive portrayal. But the
there was more going on in certain sectors of society. Again, point is that every human’s capable of becoming a monster, and
that came from reading old New York Times pieces and seeing you aren’t saved from that if you are gay.
how things were going down. SEAGLE: The character Robert from “The Face” returns. He’s
gay, and he’s got a boyfriend. It’s also to give Wesley this kind
POWERS: You also make this really powerful decision to reveal in of ticking clock of “I know this threat is out there, and now I
issue #40, page 16, that Wesley’s half Jewish on his mother’s side. know exactly who’s going to get murdered.” A lot of these
SEAGLE: I think we knew he was half Jewish from the get-go. anonymous crimes don’t have a connection to Wesley other
WAGNER: I don’t remember whether we did or not, but I’m than the fact that he’s troubled by his dreams and is compelled
going to say I was probably inspired with that plot decision from to capture the culprit, but this one becomes extremely,
the film Cabaret, which has one of the characters being Jewish intimately personal for him.
and hiding it. WAGNER: And a little closer to home.

POWERS: With your next story arc, “The Phantom of the Fair,”
which ran in issues #41–44 (Aug.–Nov. 1996), you bring us to
the 1939 New York World’s Fair. What level of research went into
that storyline?
WAGNER: We knew we had been aiming for the fair for a long
time, because, of course, it’s such a huge, significant part of
New York history at that time, and boy, that was a blast. All
those wacky exhibits that they go to see—that’s stuff Steve dug
up in particular that were real.
SEAGLE: I have a weird hobby niche of World’s Fairs in general,
and I had a room in my house that we called the “World’s Fair
Bedroom,” in which I had furniture that I bought from the 1939
New York World’s Fair House of Tomorrow, which was in that
bedroom until we recently adopted a nine-year-old! But I
literally was very into the 1939 Fair. It was the main inspiration
for and prototype of Disneyland. That particular World’s Fair
had this very good goal, which was to show attendees what the
world could be instead of what it is.
So, leave it to Matt to suggest dumping a cruddy underbelly
into this pristine vision of the future. But then the fair, as you
research it, was rife with corruption and had all kinds of financial
problems. It was actually almost bankrupt at the end of 1939 and
then rebranded itself in 1940 as a shell of what it was, just to try
to make back lost expenses. Also, we were both aware of DC’s
real-life entry into the corporate carnival of the fair—they released
New York World’s Fair Comics Volume #1 in 1939, which featured
both Superman and… of course, Wesley Dodds, the Sandman!

Seems Like Old Times

(top) Sandman and Hourman slip into their old threads
in Sandman Mystery Theatre #31 (Oct. 1995). (bottom)
Blackhawk meets Sandwoman—no, make that Sandy—as
a masked Dian chauffeurs the Polish operative in issue #47.
TM & © DC Comics.

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 67

POWERS: In issue #42 (Sept. 1996), on page 20, Wesley POWERS: In issue #44, on page 10, in the last panel, you also
discovers Robert is gay, but then his friend is tortured and make a visual connection to the Corinthian from Neil Gaiman’s
murdered by the villain in issue #44. Later in that issue, via Sandman in a dream sequence by saying his name and evoking
internal narration on page 17, Wesley reflects upon the time the image of his face.
he and Robert had submitted themselves to a humiliating SEAGLE: This is just because of “The Phantom” having the
homoerotic college fraternity initiation ritual. I mean, you really zippered bondage suit, mask and stuff that, visually, felt like
go to the edge with his character in this part. You already did the Corinthian. There are always these silly little fiefdoms
this with Dian by showing she’s bi-curious, but now you’ve in mainstream/corporate-owned comics. We were quite
turned that psychoanalytical mirror upon Wesley. concretely part of Neil’s Sandman world, but we also weren’t
WAGNER: Boys experiment with all sorts of sh*t when allowed to make it the same character, yet we could allude
they’re young, and they don’t consider it a branding on their to “that time when Morpheus was in prison and Wes was
sexuality at all. living the same nightmares”—Huh…? Relax. It’s just comics.
SEAGLE: Well, we do now. Back in those days, if you had But whatever. And Vertigo was getting more and more edicts
swimming class in high school, you swam naked, like all from on high to stop commingling with the DC Universe,
the guys just swam naked at the pool or the YMCA. Or and Neil was getting more and more famous and didn’t want
if you went to boarding school, mutual masturbation and anybody playing with his toys—not in a prima donna way, I
exploration among boys was not uncommon. But it didn’t don’t think—it’s just—that’s his sandbox.
define you forever as homosexual or bisexual as a branding WAGNER: We kept bringing in the other DC characters for
label like it would now—whether as a positive or a negative. a while.
It was Kinsey before there was Kinsey. For Wes, and many SEAGLE: Never ones to take and edict lying down, we did, but
men of the time, it was like, “This is just something we did, I mean the imprint by and large was getting flak not to do it.
and now we do something else,” so it wasn’t so defined
and labeled. POWERS: Talking about Guy Davis, his one—or several—pages
WAGNER: In regard to the killer in “The Phantom,” doesn’t of dream sequences found in various issues of Sandman Mystery
it just seem inevitable that, with the most virulently anti- Theatre depict Wes’ complex dreams and the fact that he is
gay people, you can look at them, and it’s just so obvious connected to Morpheus.
they are internalizing their hatred and expressing it because SEAGLE: Again, it’s what Neil said in the first issue of Sandman,
they can’t find the freedom to express that love and sexuality so the connective tissue is that Sandman’s dreams haunt
on their own terms? Wesley Dodds.

‘The World of Tomorrow’

(top left) Grinnell Litho produced this
stunning 1939 New York World’s Fair
poster illustrated by Vienna-born painter
Joseph Binder. Courtesy of Heritage.
(top right) DC Comics’ New York World’s
Fair Comics #1 (Apr. 1939), featuring the
first appearance of the Golden Age
Sandman (as well as a blond Superman
on the cover)! (bottom) Wes and Dian
take in the sights of the ’39 World’s Fair in
this detail-drenched shot from Sandman
Mystery Theatre #41 (Aug. 1996).
Sandman, Superman, and related characters TM & © DC Comics.

68 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

WAGNER: Through no explicable reason of Wes- SEAGLE: Gavin Wilson photographed the covers,
ley’s—it’s just he becomes a conduit for Morpheus. and Richard Bruning did all the designs on them,
SEAGLE: We tried to always make the dreams but with the cover for issue #47 (Feb. 1997) where
consistent in each arc, but they were wildly Dian’s in the mask and in the car, I was like, “Wow,
different from each other outside of each who is this person, and where is that car? That car
arc. The dream logic and language of them is really gorgeous.”
changed. There was usually a binding poetic WAGNER: Gavin was very clever about coming up
device or a narrative prosaic device for how with the gear for all that. That’s Hardly
they function in each four-issue arc. SEAGLE: They were actual photographs, actual Fair
models.
POWERS: One other point I want to make is that
The Phantom of
you include Jim Corrigan in this story arc, yet he POWERS: I also have a note here on issue #48 the Fair tortures a
never becomes the Spectre. and its commentary on pulp violence and thugs
victim on the
WAGNER: I saved that for Madame Xanadu operating in the publishing world.
eventually. We were just bringing in the character, SEAGLE: I think this is the one where we’ve got disturbing cliffhanger
adding texture to show that he was existing in the publishing house under Mafia control, why to Sandman
that world. pulps existed, and why comics took their place, so
SEAGLE: The JSA framework was around, but we were just laying in that groundwork because Mystery Theatre
if it didn’t serve a story we were telling, we we knew we were going there for the big 50th #42. By Wagner/
didn’t use it. issue soiree and building out the meta-world
WAGNER: We didn’t feel the need to show where Sandman was a really tough and interesting Seagle/Davis.
Corrigan as the Spectre or even to indicate continued on page 72 TM & © DC Comics.
whether he was the Spectre or not yet.

POWERS: You continue with this theme of including

more elements from the DC Golden Age in the next
arc, “The Blackhawk,” that runs in issues #45–48
(Dec. 1996–Mar. 1997). I am particularly impressed
when Blackhawk—Janos Prohaska—fights back
against Burke during the interrogation scene in the
beginning of issue #46 (Jan. 1997). I found that
very empowering. Any thoughts on the way you
depict Janos as a tough heroic figure?
SEAGLE: He’s not what Wesley ought to be, but
he’s what Wesley thinks sometimes he ought to be
in terms of being a hero and more masculine. Matt
Smith draws this arc, and it involves a little bit of
“How does Wesley think Dian sees this guy versus
him?” The story then opens the door for where the
series eventually goes at the end, which is wings
up and headed for Europe.
POWERS: At the beginning of the arc, on page 13
in issue #45, Burke, who’s crying over the murder
of a prostitute, Gina, has a breakthrough moment
with Wesley, the Sandman, by letting him join him
in an investigation of her murder. Why was this
the right time to present the scene to the readers?
WAGNER: Even Burke’s human. That was just our
approach with everything. Everybody has a soft
side, even a hard-as-nails tough guy like Burke.
SEAGLE: The portrayal of Burke has gotten harder
and harder. He’s granite by the time he gets here,
and the only human he actually has in his life he
pays for, and that’s taken away from him. His life
is always one of loss, but this is what breaks him.
In Burke’s mind, he’s thinking, “A prostitute is
human garbage—no one will take that from me.”
And he loses her too, and he’s also wrong about
that. He cares more for her than he’s willing to
tell himself. At that point, he can’t do anything
alone—even the thing he does best. He’s got to
have somebody, a system, and, unfortunately for
him, the only somebody he could think of that can
do it is Sandman.

POWERS: We also got Dian in this arc as Sandy

with her little driver mask.
WAGNER: She’s Kato!

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 69

70 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue
Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 71
 continued from page 69 through #49, with an element or a caption from
fictional hero in the pulps that Wesley could never each recombined to make a single narrative out
be in real life. of all of the dreams to date, to show that there’s
something more in Wes’s mind than he knows. I
Pulp Fiction POWERS: Moving into “Return of the Scarlet was very stoked to pull that off, but then no one
The splash page Ghost,” in issues #49–52 (Apr.–July 1997), why noticed—not editorial, not readers, no one! But it’s
was this story important to you? there! We likewise have the comic book pages in
from Sandman that issue drawn by the legendary Daniel Torres in
SEAGLE: It was the unification of that meta, so
Mystery Theatre historically, this is when pulps died, and comics a 1930s/’40s style.
came to be. This is really the birth of Wesley Dodds WAGNER: It was our way again to explain away
#49 (Apr. 1997)
recontextualized to the here-and-now with some the yellow-and-purple costume.
emulated the layout gore added. Because Matt’s always willing to SEAGLE: It’s literally a comic within a comic that
of 1930s pulp experiment with narrative forms, he had this great explains how Sandman from the pulps turned
idea to put pulp pages in the comic to tell the story. into Sandman from the comics and why we’re not
magazines, WAGNER: And it was our way of getting around going to do that costume. There’s no way to make
reflecting the issue’s that yellow and purple Sandman costume, in that that costume look legit other than the party scene
the costume existed, but it existed in a comic book that we already did in “The Hourman” arc. So,
storyline where version of our reality. we’re going to establish that Sandman got turned
Wes and Dian SEAGLE: Again, there is the ratcheting up of the into a spandex hero because of the exploits of
war as this arc opens with Poland falling to the Wes that even he had no control over. But it was
poke around the Nazis, and we know Jonas—the Blackhawk—has fun to try to go back and write in that old-house
seedy world of gone there from the previous arc, so the drumbeat style, definitely with word bubbles instead of word
gets louder in that regard. Also, the dream balloons for those pages.
pulp publishers. sequence in issue #50 (May 1997) is actually a WAGNER: I remember when we were doing the
TM & © DC Comics. piece of every dream sequence from issue #1 up Annual, and Alex Ross says to me, “You know this
isn’t fair because you’re doing this cool pulp stuff,
and in just like a year or two, Wes is going to be in
that yellow-and-purple costume,” and I’m thinking
to myself, “No, he’s not, buddy.”
SEAGLE: Oh, I hope not!

POWERS: With the next arc, “The Crone,” that

runs through issues #53–56 (Aug.–Nov. 1997), you
present the setting of a radio show and its many
eccentric performers. What went into this story arc?
SEAGLE: We were still just talking about The Shadow
and stuff like that, which we hadn’t gone into, and
radio drama is such a key part of America and our
fixation with media. It’s like doing a story about
the current world and not having the internet in it.
How could we miss that?
WAGNER: And the story has a traditional
intellectual, who would look at all these new forms
of entertainment narrative with a snooty, disap-
proving opinion.
SEAGLE: It’s also getting us into Dian’s dad and his
coming unwellness and certainly the conversation
about children that is brewing between Wes and
Dian and whether this is a world where that need
for future generations even matters. The Crone is
the world’s worst mommy/nanny, and the dreams
become eerily Dian-specific and kind of harrowing
because they’re from Wesley’s point of view more
than Morpheus’, which is telling.
WAGNER: In my mind, the worst thing about the
Crone is that she hates the movie The Wizard of Oz,
which she sees as vastly inferior to the book! [laughs]

POWERS: What went into the way you wrote

Francis Beauvedere in this story arc? He’s kind of a
hapless villain. Wesley sees him in drag and says he
doesn’t make a good woman.
SEAGLE: Back then, there were obviously trans-
vestites—as they called them at the time—and
cross-dressers—which we will call them later.
Now we would say trans people. And there were
people for whom it was a way of life, and there were
people for whom it was diagnosed as a psychosis

72 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

and everything in between those poles. Francis was a damaged
person. He got really hung up on his mom and was acting out
to hang on to her. Francis wasn’t a transgendered person. This is
somebody who really got stuck on his mother issues and didn’t
process that trauma, so I think the critique was more about his
psychology than his appearance.

POWERS: Do you have anything else to say about this arc?

SEAGLE: This is where Matt’s trying to leave me, and I’m like,
“Don’t go!”
WAGNER: It was because of the second Mage. Once I started
that, there’s no room for anything else. Mage is all-consumptive
when I’m working on it.
SEAGLE: I’d gotten him to hang on, so we would still meet up,
figure out the year together, and break those into parts. Then,
I would write up the paragraph for Guy but get Matt’s input
before it went out.
WAGNER: At one point, wasn’t I writing up just a page or two
about the whole arc but not doing the full plot for the issue?
SEAGLE: Yes. We would talk about the year, you would do
overviews every four months, and I would lean on you as much
as you’d let me. But you were like, “I’ve got stuff to do!”

POWERS: Doesn’t Dr. Mid-Nite show up in that arc?

WAGNER: Dr. McNider is in there somewhere.
SEAGLE: Once those characters show up, they’re fair game, but
they’re also kind of a distraction because the JSA fan base in our
audience really wanted the book to shift to JSA, and that’s not
what the book was for me.
WAGNER: Yeah, they wanted more of like “The Hourman” arc.
SEAGLE: But if Wes got injured and needed a doctor, McNider
was certainly an option to use, but again, he wasn’t going to be Lord Knows
in costume.
“The Lord of Dreams,” are you, Wes? Would Morpheus
POWERS: Your final story together is “The Cannon,” which agree? Detail from 8 of Sandman Mystery Theatre #58
ran in issues #57–60 (Dec. 1997–Mar. 1998). What are your
(Jan. 1998). Script by Steven T. Seagle (with a story
memories of working on that arc?
SEAGLE: Numismatics was something we hadn’t touched on, assist from Matt Wagner), pencils by Michael Lark, and
but, again, we always had this running thing about money as inks by Richard Case.
social status in the book. And this arc was also a big religious
thing; the villain was the Cannon, so there was no hiding that TM & © DC Comics.

kind of idea of the cross pollination of coins and churches. But,

at this point, with Matt doing his own stuff, he left me to my they talked about, does she feel like Wes should have fought
own devices, so Sandman Mystery Theatre was evolving into a harder? Should she have made a different choice? Was that the
more of a Wes-and-Dian romance comic. only chance she was going to have? When we see them later
WAGNER: Oh, you know what—Gaiman had something to do in Starman, it’s implied they didn’t have any kids. That was the
with this. I think he coined the name of the character the Cannon. decision they made as a couple, so it had a massive consequence.
SEAGLE: Probably so—in the coins on the eyes, the final rights, I imagine it informs her writing. It’s probably why she won a
and all that stuff. The arc is also a little more Agatha Christie–ish, Pulitzer Prize for her writing because of that particular pain.
and Michael Lark’s art is beautiful—that’s for sure.
POWERS: On page 16 of issue #58 (Jan. 1998), Wesley’s trying
POWERS: With this story in terms of Dian and Wes’ complicated to initiate sex with Dian, but she cannot reciprocate his advances
relationship, there is a scene in issue #57, on page one, in the since she is still processing her recent abortion. That’s a painful
final panel, where Dian says to Wes, “It’s not the pain of losing scene in many ways.
the child, Wesley. It’s the pain of knowing I chose to give it up.” SEAGLE: And not because of medical issues—not because she’s
This is some intense stuff that’s going on between them, especially in physical pain—but because she’s in psychic pain about it.
considering the fact that Wes simply let Dian go through with the And what does the act of sexual intercourse mean to them as a
abortion without any argument occurring between them. couple now? Are they going to get to the same point, the same
SEAGLE: “The Crone” was that pain happening, and “The impossible choice again? Is this just a repeating cycle going
Cannon” is the reflection. So, a lot of child loss, whether it’s by forward? It’s heavy sh*t.
choice or by circumstance, it is those two things—the weight WAGNER: I want to point out that this is a bit of our period
of the decision and the depression or acceptance of the choice. approach to things because there are still women that experience
Knowing that the narrative arc was going to shift to Dian, I really this sort of psychic trauma when they have an abortion. But if
wanted to just plunge her into that. She has to work her way you’re on the pro-choice side of things—I’ve known plenty of
through it, and all four of those issues have a romance comic women that have had abortions and suffer no trauma whatsoever
vibe more than the mysteries because I was gutted over what in that they just considered it a medical procedure. Whereas,
she could be going through. And her process of grief/accep- back in 1938 or ’39 or ’40, whenever that was that we had this
tance drives a wedge between her and Wesley. No matter what happening, it was still such a black-market sort of scenario. Even

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 73

 the most progressive minds, like Wes and Dian, would be operating under the
auspices of the societal condemnation of it.
SEAGLE: I think we did go to some extremes to make sure that it was about
what Dian wanted, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t have regrets by any
stretch of the imagination.
WAGNER: Wesley’s still the Sandman. Even more than other costume
adventurers, he’s haunted and doing this almost against his will. That doesn’t
make good daddy material.

POWERS: Talking about Wesley, when he’s in his Sandman garb on page 8 of
issue #58, he ominously says to Reverend Hawsley, “The Lord of Dreams is not
accustomed to casting a tangible shadow. What is your business here, man of
God?” Simply put, why is he talking like Morpheus?
WAGNER: Wes is doing that very unconsciously since he thinks it will help
intimidate people, but he’s not even aware that he’s adopting Morpheus’
own nomenclature.
SEAGLE: I forget where it is specifically, but somewhere in the series Dian
makes fun of the way Wesley talks as Sandman. But, for him, it’s camouflage.
It’s part of a costume, so others can’t track the way he talks back to him. But
it’s also very pulpy.
WAGNER: Again, he’s trying to intimidate. When you speak in that creepy
third-person sort of sh*t, that’s off putting.
SEAGLE: I think, again, back to the very DNA of what Matt and Guy set up at
the beginning, which is that the mask for him is the Morpheus mask. It is him
behind a veil, and those dreams are compelling him to do what he’s doing at
night, and I don’t think he’s completely in control of it at all times.
WAGNER: Hardly ever, I would think! He has a methodology to how he brings
it to fruition, but, as you said, the compulsion is there that is beyond his grasp.
SEAGLE: But he’s got to do it—an addiction metaphor.
WAGNER: That’s why by the time he shows up in Starman, when James was
writing that arc, he’s no longer putting on that mask and going out all the
time. Morpheus is free; this is over. There’s a scene where he shows up in the
mask, and you can tell he hasn’t had that thing on in a long time. So yeah, as
Steve said, it’s a mystical compulsion that overtakes him.

POWERS: Regarding this darker character development of Wesley losing his

mind, Steve, with your final Sandman Mystery Theatre two-part arc “The
Hero,” in issues #69–70 (Jan.–Feb. 1999), you show him becoming temporarily
deranged after falling into a trash truck. What lead you to going the distance
with this plot point?
SEAGLE: Again, we knew the book was ending, and I kept calmly going to
[DC editor] Joan Hilty and Karen Berger, “I know we’re going to get cancelled,
and I want to make sure we go out right. Is it now?” And they’d reply, “No,
you’re fine.” “How about now?” “No, you’re fine.” And as this last year got
set up, I did the first four-part arc in issues #61–64 (Apr.–Aug. 1998), which is
“The City,” which is this Rashomon kind of story told from the point of view
of Wes and Dian and then Burke and the butler, Humphries. Just seeing how
one crime looks from four different perspectives—that was a lot of fun to
construct and pull off. Also, it was nice to learn a bit more about Humphries
and his daughter, who had been a recurring character in the margins. Then,
“The Goblin,” in issues #65–68 (Sept.–Dec. 1998), which is kind of like, “What
is the aftermath of babies terrifying me?” for the couple. I kept checking
in—“Cancelled or not?” “Well… you might want to think about wrapping it
up in the next four.”
So I had an idea of what a final four-partner would be, I plotted it out, and
after we’re already working, I get a call that we had to end it after two issues,
and I responded, “Sandman Mystery Theatre is always four. It’s been four since
the beginning. Please get the other two issues. I don’t care what it takes. Cancel
some other book I’m on and take two issues from that—whatever you need. If
you want me to do it for free, I’ll do it for free, but it has to be four issues.” There
was—I’m told—some kind of behind-the-scenes power struggle tit-for-tat, and
Man of Mystery Karen could not get the book the exit it deserved. Two issues was it.
So with just two issues left, I was like, “F*ck this. It’s a four-issue story, but the
Really, we can’t get enough of Guy Davis’ War is the war—it interrupted lives; it interrupted history; it can interrupt this
artwork! Here’s a 2004 Sandman commission series. We’re going to do two issues of those four issues of the mystery, but then
Wes and Dian’s life will propel out of there—interrupted by the War.” The idea
by Guy from the archives of Heritage. that they would just leave the mystery mid-mystery—leave their own series mid-
TM & © DC Comics. stream—seemed like the right thing and the best use of a crappy publishing

74 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

decision. For that to happen, though, Wes had to be
kind of rock bottom and in need of something else.
Dian had to be at wit’s end and too conflicted over
WAKEUP CALL
what the city means to her so that when they look at In case you’ve been napping, in Oc-
each other and go, “Are we already married? I think tober 2023 DC Comics launched the
we are. Screw this joint. Let’s go,” they just leave six-issue miniseries Wesley Dodds: The
the mystery in the hands of Burke, who has proven Sandman! The creative team
he can bust people who do bad things, and the is writer Robert Venditti and artist
Crimson Avenger, who wants to put on fancy
Riley Rossmo.
superhero clothes and do crime-solving anyway. So,
Wes and Dian just exit their own book mid-story.

POWERS: What about Burke?

SEAGLE: Burke hit his personal rock bottom with
the death of his girlfriend. He relied on Wes, and
so that says to Wes, “Whatever granite-bullsh*t
man you are, there’s reason in there. There’s a you
that knows when to ask for help.” Wes feels like

TM & © DC Comics.
they have a certain respect between them. They
fought a bunch of times; they’ve let each other go
a bunch of times. And Wes is leaving. He knows
that his place is with Dian, and they are leaving the
United States to try to go help his brother in
Poland, with Janos most likely, and he’s got to leave
it in somebody’s hands. So that’s who there is—
Burke and the Crimson Avenger—and neither one is a perfect fit, forms those took in that particular moment of society, and
but, frankly, neither is Wesley. that was another person to be that foil for Dian.

POWERS: Doesn’t Burke now also have a new girlfriend—Doris? POWERS: As we wrap up—and this is a question I’m sure many
SEAGLE: Yeah, he’s tried again. He definitely reconnects. That’s BACK ISSUE readers would like to hear answered—would you
part of what the arc of “The City” establishes. both revisit the Golden Age Sandman if you could do it again?
WAGNER: I always pictured Burke ultimately ending up an WAGNER: I don’t know what we would do with it. We already
alcoholic in Boca Raton. saw where Wes and Dian go ultimately in their old age in
SEAGLE: Probably, yeah. He was a dirty cop the longer he stayed Starman. Maybe an adventure where they first come back from
in, no question. Now he’s a private detective taking money for Europe because they do obviously return from Europe at some
sh*t he shouldn’t be doing, and then he died in Boca Raton. point post-WWII?
SEAGLE: We covered a ton of ground. It felt very complete.
POWERS: Regarding the characters Lawrence Belmont and Bring Sandman Mystery Theatre back as a TV show and let Matt
Humphries, do you have any thoughts on them since they’re and I sit in that writers room instead and help people make a
nicely developed over the years in Sandman Mystery Theatre? new thing out of it. But I do wonder what Wes and Dian did in
SEAGLE: Dian’s dad gives her that kind of person with whom Europe. I wonder what happened when they came back and
she’s going to prove her maturity as we go. And then he what remained of the New York they left. That’s why stories are
becomes infirm, and she proves that she is the adult who now fun because they tell us parts, and then we imagine the other
has to take care of the kid version of her parent. And then parts. When I was in fifth grade, my teacher, Mrs. Maxwell, read
eventually he passes away. You know, that’s the arc of life. That’s this book to us called The Blue Man by Kin Platt. Creepy. But I
what we do—from kid to young adult, to adult, to parent having moved before she finished reading the final chapters. I didn’t
our own kids. As for Humphries, Wesley strangely comes from know what happened, and that’s why I became a writer because
money yet doesn’t seem to lavish himself in it, so it feels like I was like “What happened next in that book”? My wife found
a trapping from his father’s legacy since he has passed. Yet the book decades later and bought it for me. But I’ve never read
Humphries is that fatherly voice on occasion. the last chapter because I don’t want to know.
WAGNER: But Humphries came with the house. You’re right! WAGNER: [laughs] Yeah, that’s great!
[laughs]
POWERS: Is there anything you would like to add about working
POWERS: How does he differ from Batman’s Alfred? together?
SEAGLE: Alfred seems, especially as time goes on, way too WAGNER: It’s just as Steve said—I think it surprised both of us
invested in everything. Humphries does his job. He helps with how easy it turned out to be. From a
the person he’s paid to help out, and maybe he’ll make a writing standpoint, we were each other’s
comment that says, “You’re kind of screwed, buddy,” but he first love! [laughs]
goes home to his room at the end of the night and shuts it SEAGLE: [laughs] Who would have
off. I think that’s the big difference. But it was nice to give him thought, Matt? I literally assumed it was
that issue of “The City,” #63 (July 1998), so you saw he had a doomed venture from the moment you
an internal life as well. He’s got this daughter, Etta, that he suggested it! Live and learn!
cares about, who comes up through several of the stories. He
wants Dian to take her under her wing, but sometimes your TOM POWERS teaches English at Montgomery
kid is not the kid you want; whereas, for Dian’s dad, she is the County Community College, which is located in Blue
Bell, Pennsylvania. He is also the author of Gender
kid that he dreamed he would have, so just paralleling those
and the Quest in British Science Fiction Television:
two characters against each other was interesting. There was An Analysis of Doctor Who, Blake’s 7, Red Dwarf
a lot about female friendships in this book and the different and Torchwood (McFarland, 2016).

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 75

 Sleep Tight!
Matt Wagner shows his skill at drawing the Golden Age Sandman matches his ability to write the character.
According to Matt, who kindly shared this previously unpublished illustration with BACK ISSUE, “It was a
piece I did as a thank-you to [comedy actor] Patton Oswalt for writing the intros for both volumes of the
huge, new SMT Omnibus editions.” Wow! We’re honored to share this gem.
Sandman TM & © DC Comics.

76 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

 for the past month? I wonder if Spidey will try to stab him
with the antidote needle soon, and how the heck it takes six
months to do all this nowadays whereas Lee and Ditko pulled
it off masterfully in ten or so pages in JUST ONE ISSUE.”)
YouTube’s GodzillaMendoza a couple of years ago did a brilliant
job addressing a lot of my feelings regarding Dr. Connors and
his scaly alter ego. Great character, but I just wish modern
Send your comments to: writers and artists went somewhere vastly different with him.
Email: euryman@[Link] (subject: BACK ISSUE)
Postal mail: Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief • BACK ISSUE
Kingpin is definitely more of a Daredevil Big Bad today,
112 Fairmount Way * New Bern, NC 28562 but I also like his earliest status as the culmination of Spidey’s
anti-crime campaign riling up the New York underworld,
Find BACK ISSUE on the natural end product of Big Man, Hammerhead, Silver-
mane, etc., all attempting to solidify their status against the
Wall-Crawler through both traditional gangland tactics and
funding the creation of supervillains like Rhino. Wilson Fisk
represents the evolutionary apex of both lines, intimidating
enough to claw to the top of the Maggia pecking order and
strong enough to throw his own weight around (remember:
SPIDER-ROGUES ARE IN VOGUE densely packed muscle, not dense fat) when the need
Semi-regular reader since BI #126; really enjoyed most of to fight is felt. If Spidey’s first decade were a video
the past year’s worth of top-notch comics journalism. I feel game, Kingpin would be the natural candidate for, as
inspired by a certain letter in #143 to gush about upcoming Japan’s GameCenter CX, would put it, “true final last
subject matter like Danny DeVito pines for a Jersey boss.” (By the way, can you tell I greatly loved the
Mike’s sub. BACK ISSUE #145 will be covering my Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon’s use of the gangland char-
favorite Rogues’ Gallery, and I am wildly anticipating acters to drive much of the plot development?)
each and every article on their eclectic membership. I’ve given a lot of my love for the mob villains to Kingpin,
Doc Ock had loads of iconic Bronze Age moments, which but I will say Silvermane’s arc from influential leader to bawl-
I’d find tough to distill down to the length of an article, let ing baby was truly weird and shocking, both in the comics
alone a 20-page lead. Three stick out to and on Spidey’s ’90s animated series.
me as especially significant to my under- Hammerhead was another favorite
standing of him as a character (apart from (thanks, Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro for
later revelations of his backstory and his PS1!) just because of the weird head shape
“Superior Spidey” tenure, but that’s be- and how he could ram people with his steel
yond BI’s stomping grounds). The killing noggin Rhino-style. For a kid that hadn’t
of Capt. George Stacy, even if it was by quite discovered the joys of Dick Tracy’s
complete accident, was one of ten-year- enemies, particularly Flattop and his sur-
old me’s first experiences with a “real” prisingly huge extended family, that was
death of a character I’d liked following, just crazy stupid fun. (I did love the Daffy
which got me all hot and bothered about Duck classic The Great Piggy Bank Robbery,
how that would affect Peter’s life and so at least I had a good basis for when I got
Gwen’s welfare; it also embittered me toward into the “real deal” decades later.)
Octavius for what felt to me like it would Jackal is so creepy, both in his motivation
be for life. Ock “marrying” Aunt May just and his methods; he didn’t need the ‘90s
to try and inherit her (alleged) wealth was Clone Saga to more than earn his all-time
both a wonderfully silly soap-opera beat bad guy bona fides. I often mistake Carrion
and a sign that Otto will manipulate any- for BI #140’s Sauron and vice versa; I guess
one he sees fit, even those he apparently there’s only so many ways one can con-
has genuine feelings for, just to serve ceive of a dino/man guy with wings who
his own ends. Talk about petty! And the kidnaps people with his talons, so small
storyline of him going after Aunt May’s wonder I get mixed up on them. At least
inheritance of a Three Mile–esque nuclear I don’t confuse them for Vulture; the latter,
TM & © Marvel.
facility, only to end up clashing with the an old man with a very green and feath-
“ghost” of Hammerhead, is just the sheer height of Bronze ery look, is memorable enough to stick out in my memory.
bombast, a blast to revisit when it was reprinted in Marvel (Unless, of course, he’s mind-swapped into a younger body, in
Comics Digest #1 in 2017, one of very few times in my life that which case, all bets are off.)
I had the classic experience of reading comics on my front Tarantula, the Spanish assassin with the steel-tipped heels,
porch with a soda. was a cool villain to introduce in the first issue of Spectacular
The Lizard is one character I’ve had mixed feelings Spider-Man vol. 1, as a slightly different take on who might
about. His tragic backstory is the first one I tend to think of embody the term “Spider-Man.” Beyond that, I can’t recall
when I’m reflecting on how villains get their start; his power him much, and I’m not sure if he’s even being used at all
set, particularly his early ability to summon other reptiles to today. There’s one villain in sore need of a PR boost!
serve as an army of sorts, is fun and terrifying, and his on-off Puma, another villain who I feel could’ve had a big-
friendship with Spidey was one of the first I really latched onto ger carbon footprint on the reading public if only he’d
when it recurred in my reading. At the same time, it seems like been more active for far longer than just the mid-’80s. He’s
his whole existence has been steadily diminishing returns with a character archetype I just gravitated towards: a Native
the same plot beats hit too often to leave much of an impact American running a big business like a born-’80s yup-
anymore. (“Oh, you don’t say, he betrayed his family again, is pie by day, chasing Spidey in a costume straight out of a
devolving into a monster, and has been lurking in the sewers cheesy Mystery Science Theater 3000 film by night. Both sides

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 77

 of his persona have continued to affect American culture in Even the way he was depicted escalated the savagery aspect
recent years, so I’m surprised he hasn’t made some kind of with fangs and talons. Instead of a rousing fight, it was now
comeback. brutal bloodletting.
“Spider-Foes Only a Mother Could Love?” How If Stan and Steve meant him as a one-time opponent,
many of them even have mothers, I wonder? Look- maybe things would have worked out for the best that way?
ing at the online preview, it looks like you’ve got many Complete and satisfying in itself. Better than some of the story-
of the animal-themed ones like Kangaroo and Gibbon lines I luckily missed, especially the one noted where he was
covered, and I can imagine you’ve saved room for the “killing and eating his own son.” Not my idea of entertainment.
likes of Rocket Racer and Big Wheel, two infamous gim- Did enjoy when Roy Thomas was questioned about who
mick-based baddies who both had at least one ’90s gave the Lizard fangs. He thought it likely was Gil Kane.
cartoon episode each devoted to them (and both eps Unfortunately, beyond visual decoration, it started him down
are somehow considered the worst of their respective sea- the road to being a more ferocious creature and not just a
son, go figure; I at least got the pleasure of discovering maladjusted scientist in a startling form.
them in the first place, and who doesn’t love a big ol’ Of course, when these villains were first created, no one
motorized menace to artificially add motion?). The all- knew they’d still be in use 60 years later and under different
time poster child of weird one-offs, the Spot, has been writers and editors all looking to do something different.
on something of a comeback trail in the past decade, – Joe Frank
and recently served as the ostensible lead baddie in
the Across the Spider-Verse film this year, so I’m assum- We fielded your question about the character-crammed cover
ing he’s off the table this time around. At least he made to its artist, Dusty Abell, who replied:
the BI #145 cover, right above Mr. Negative of Spider-
Man PS4 fame!
So many rogues, it’s hard for me to anticipate which of
their features will end up my favorite. Oh, heck, I’ll just say
I’m looking forward to them all and see what you and your
farm team of fabulous fact-finders can do for each. See you
in... uh... seven-ish, as of when I’m writing this!
– Ben Kellogg

Great insights you’ve shared in your letter, Ben… which you

wrote before even reading BACK ISSUE #145!

WHERE’S WEBHEAD?
Astounding cover! Good thing I had a magnifying glass and a
spare 20 minutes. So fun to get beyond the characters I didn’t
know, or for which I’ve no nostalgia, and meticulously attempt
to find the early Steve Ditko opponents I wholeheartedly enjoy.
Laughed at spotting some more obscure ones like the
Living Brain, the Looter, and, on my third search, the Crime
Master.
Did I somehow miss the Burglar, the Cat, Dr. Stromm’s
robots, and Joe Smith? Or were they hiding behind the
logo or UPC box? Still, if Dusty Abell included them, that
would have officially made this cover more crowded than
an aisle at Comic-Con International.
Perhaps, in a future issue, once his drawing hand heals
from doing this rendition of the Sinister Sixty, you can ask him
questions about the cover? How long it took? Who had to be
included? Did he realize, afterwards, that he forgot anyone?
Any characters more fun for him than others?
Laughs inside, too. Probably the funniest was artist
Ross Andru basing a house on an existing one, which he’d
photographed, and the residents being badgered by fans TM & © Marvel.
who recognized it.
Ordinarily, with BACK ISSUE, I might read an article and feel
I missed out on something in overlooking a series 50 years
back. Here, in some cases, it was just the opposite. I was only The “Sinister Sixty,” that’s a great one, Joe! There’s actually 91
too happy to have missed clones, symbiotes, and the like. villains altogether, but Sinister Sixty sounds so much better! It
While I loved Amazing Spider-Man #12, with Doctor took about six months for me to complete both pieces, in my
Octopus unmasking Peter and rejecting the obvious, due to spare time in between my fulltime gig at Warner Bros. Anima-
a brilliant plot twist, glad I was long gone by the time he was tion, the Rogues first, followed by the Heroes second. I had the
wooing Aunt May, caught near a nuclear explosion, or fighting tremendous good fortune to collaborate with two of the best
gangster ghosts. artists in the animation business, Jonard Soriano (background
Ditto the Lizard. His first story (#6), along with the design) and Thomas Yamaoka (BG Paint/Color)... I handed off a
prerequisite action, was emotionally balanced and sympathetic. super rough idea of what I was looking for and in a matter of days
A villain, no question, but with a catch such that Spider-Man Jonard came back with the awesome Daily Bugle background
didn’t want to actually hurt him. So, a terrific complication. all the Rouges and Villains appeared in and on top of… then
Later appearances diluted or lost that all-important aspect. Thomas took that and wove his digital painting magic on it and

78 • BACK ISSUE • Dreams and Nightmares Issue

in less than a week I had a completed, painted background just
waiting for a wild assortment of characters and creatures to
be placed on it! Getting the assist with the background really
allowed me to give the characters all my focus and attention,
and I planned it in advance to economically reuse the same
background for both pieces… smarter, not harder! I actually only
drew Spidey once as well, but flopped him horizontally from one
piece to the other to add just a little variety. I also dropped his
“Spidey Sense” tingling from the Heroes piece!
Marvel initially sent a list of all the approved Spider-Verse
characters I was supposed to choose from, heroes, villains,
and supporting characters. I actually proposed about a dozen
or more characters that surprisingly weren’t on their “pre-ap-
proved Spidey list of characters,” and they went them! I just
knew I wanted to try including everyone I could from the eras
I read Spidey during, and that I wanted to draw! You’ll notice
there’s a slim amount of characters from the 1990s–2010s—the
Silver and Bronze eras were my jam! (That’s not saying there
aren’t some great characters from that time period, though—the
Superior Octopus is one of the best villains of the last decade!) I
honestly didn’t get any notes [requested revisions] from Marvel
on the Villains piece once it was done, which amazed me! I was
so happy I was able to get Draco from the Power Records adven-
ture in there! The only ones I recall them nixing at the submission
approval list stage for the Rogues, that I recall, were Cardiac and
the Punisher!
There were a couple changes asked for on the Heroes piece at
the rough approval stage. I originally had Mary Jane holding the
orange-boxed Mego Spider-Man action figure from 1974 (they
requested a change to the Toy Biz figure from the mid ’90s).
I originally had John Romita, Sr.’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day
Parade Spider-Man balloon float up in the sky above the Spidey
Mobile (I was asked to remove that), and Silver Sable was origi-
nally holding a sniper rifle (totally understood being asked to lose featured characters from local comic shows up here in
that). I was frankly amazed I got the Ben Cooper Spider-Man Canada. It heightens my love of this magazine!
Halloween costume in, though! As for the Spidey issue, it was Amazing—whoops, sorry,
The one character I regret not including was the Burglar! He it was Spectacular! My sweet spot growing up was the
shoulda been in there! mid- to late ’70s Spider-Man group of comics, so this issue
My personal favorites artistically include Puma, the Lizard, really nailed it, bringing back some great memories with
and Morbius… I figured if I only ever get to draw these friends and the local spinner rack at 7-Eleven.
characters one time, I wanted to try and do the most iconic- Issues #146–148 look so fearless and wonderful that I will
looking representations I could manage for them all. I was really be sure to not miss my Zeta-beam on the day of release!
happy people responded so favorably to both pieces. – Jason Jaroslawsky
Glad ya dug it Joe, thanks! You can always check it out in
greater detail over at [Link] too. Nice subtle plugs for #146–148’s contents in your closing
– Dusty Abell comment, Jason. Thanks for being in BI’s corner!

FAST AND FURIOUS BI RELEASES Next issue: Get ready, True Believer,
The last few editions of your fine publica- for our star-studded Marvelmania
tion have been excellent, they have been Issue! SAL BUSCEMA’s Avengers,
released fast and furious lately but that’s FABIAN NICIEZA’s Captain America,
fine by me… as long as they continue to and KURT BUSIEK and ALEX ROSS’
come out! Marvels turns 30! Plus Marvelmania
The Neal Adams issue [#143] was a International, Marvel Age, Marvel
classic. I gleaned some new information Classics, PAUL KUPPERBERG’s Marvel
from the fine piece on Power Records by Novels, MICHAEL USLAN’s missed
Rob Kelly. Marvel opportunities, and Marvel
In the Savage Lands edition [#145], Value Stamps. Featuring CHRIS CLARE-
my favorite articles were the ones done MONT, JACK KIRBY, KEVIN MAGUIRE,
on the dreadful Annihilus by Jason Shayer ROY THOMAS, and many more Men
and the very comprehensive article by and Women of Mighty Marvel! Marvel-
Jarrod Buttery on one of our favorite mania Avengers cover illustration by Sal
jungle boys, Ka-Zar. Buscema. Don’t ask—just BI it! See you
I always like to look ahead at what in thirty!
is coming up in future releases of BACK
ISSUE and possibly pick up a sampling of Your friendly
neighborhood Euryman,
The Avengers TM & © Marvel. Michael Eury, editor-in-chief
BACK ISSUE TM & © TwoMorrows. All Rights Reserved.

Dreams and Nightmares Issue • BACK ISSUE • 79

 THE RETRO COMICS EXPERIENCE!

TM

Edited by MICHAEL EURY, BACK ER

EISN RD
ISSUE magazine celebrates comic AWA NER
!!
WIN
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CLASSIC HEROES IN THE BRONZE AGE! NOT-READY-FOR-PRIMETIME MARVEL DINOSAUR COMICS! Interviews with
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MARV WOLFMAN, a Wonder Woman BATES, DAVE GIBBONS, DAN JURGENS, DOUG MOENCH, RON RANDALL, DON SIMONSON, ALEX TOTH, and BERNIE
interview with MINDY NEWELL, and more! CURT SWAN, PETER J. TOMASI, MARV SIMPSON, MARK VERHEIDEN, CHRIS
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WRIGHTSON. Plus: revisit FRANK
With a stunning Wonder Woman cover WOLFMAN, and more! Cover by CARMINE WARNER & more superstar creators. Cover MILLER’s first Batman story!
by Pérez! INFANTINO & MURPHY ANDERSON! by NORM BREYFOGLE!
(100-pg. FULL-COLOR magazine) $12.95
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AMERICAN COMIC BOOK ALTER EGO #189 ALTER EGO #190 ALTER EGO #191 BACK ISSUE #152
CHRONICLES: 1945-49 JOHN ROMITA tribute issue! Podcast MITCH MAGLIO examines vintage jungle #191 is an FCA (FAWCETT COLLECTORS MARVELMANIA ISSUE! SAL BUSCEMA’s
Covers the aftermath of WWII, when recollections recorded shortly after the comics heroes (Kaänga, Ka-Zar, Sheena, OF AMERICA) issue! Documenting the Avengers, FABIAN NICIEZA’s Captain
comics shifted from super-heroes to Jazzy One’s passing by JOHN ROMITA Rulah, Jo-Jo/Congo King, Thun’da, Tarzan) influence of MAC RABOY’s Captain Marvel America, and KURT BUSIEK and
crime, romance, and western comics, JR., JIM STARLIN, STEVE ENGLEHART, with art by LOU FINE, WILL EISNER, Jr. on the life, career, and look of ELVIS ALEX ROSS’s Marvels turns 30! Plus:
BILL GAINES plotted a new course for EC BRIAN PULIDO, ROY THOMAS, JAIMIE FRANK FRAZETTA, MATT BAKER, BOB PRESLEY during his stellar career, from the Marvelmania International, Marvel Age,
Comics, and SIEGEL & SHUSTER sued for JAMESON, JOHN CIMINO, STEVE POWELL, ALEX SCHOMBURG, and 1950s through the 1970s! Plus: Captain Marvel Classics, PAUL KUPPERBERG’s
rights to Superman! By RICHARD ARNDT, HOUSTON, & NILE SCALA; DAVID others! Plus: the comicbook career of real- Marvel co-creator BILL PARKER’s complete Marvel Novels, and Marvel Value Stamps.
KURT MITCHELL, and KEITH DALLAS. ARMSTRONG’s mini-interview with Romita; life jungle explorers MARTIN AND OSA testimony from the DC vs. Fawcett lawsuit, Featuring JACK KIRBY, KEVIN MAGUIRE,
John Romita’s ten greatest hits; plus FCA, JOHNSON, FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s ROY THOMAS, and more! SAL BUSCEMA
(288-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $49.95 Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, & more! Crypt, and more! Comic Crypt, and other surprises! cover.
(Digital Edition) $15.99
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BACK ISSUE #153 BACK ISSUE #154 BACK ISSUE #155 BACK ISSUE #156 KIRBY COLLECTOR #91
BIG BABY ISSUE! X-Babies, the last days BRONZE AGE NOT-READY-FOR- THIS ISSUE IS HAUNTED! House of BRONZE AGE GRAPHIC NOVELS! 1980s 30th Anniversary issue, with KIRBY’S
of Sugar and Spike, FF’s Franklin Richards, PRIMETIME DC HEROES! Black Canary, Mystery, House of Secrets, Unexpected, GNs from Marvel, DC, and First Comics, GREATEST VICTORIES! Jack gets the girl
Superbaby vs. Luthor, Dennis the Menace Elongated Man, Lilith, Metamorpho, Nubia, Marvel’s failed horror anthologies, Haunted Conan GNs, and DC’s Sci-Fi GN series! (wife ROZ), early hits Captain America and
Bonus Magazine, Baby Snoots, Marvel and Odd Man, Ultraa of Earth-Prime, Vartox, Tank, Eerie Publications, House II adapta- With BRENT ANDERSON, JOHN BYRNE, Boy Commandos, surviving WWII, romance
Harvey kid humor comics, & more! With and Jimmy Olsen as Mr. Action! Plus: tion, Elvira’s House of Mystery, and more HOWARD CHAYKIN, CHRIS CLAREMONT, comics, Captain Victory and the direct mar-
ARTHUR ADAMS, CARY BATES, JOHN Jason’s Quest! Featuring MIKE W. BARR, wth NEAL ADAMS, MIKE W. BARR, DICK JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, JACK KIRBY, ket, his original art battle with Marvel, and
BYRNE, CHRIS CLAREMONT, SCOTT CARY BATES, STEVE DITKO, BOB HANEY, GIORDANO, SAM GLANZMAN, ROBERT DON MCGREGOR, BOB McLEOD, finally winning credit! Plus MARK EVANIER,
LOBDELL, SHELDON MAYER, CURT DENNY O’NEIL, MIKE SEKOWSKY, MARK KANIGHER, JOE ORLANDO, STERANKO, BILL SIENKIEWICZ, JIM STARLIN, ROY a colossal gallery of Kirby’s winningest pen-
SWAN, ROY THOMAS, and other grown- WAID, and more ready-for-primetime tal- BERNIE WRIGHTSON, and others. Unused THOMAS, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, and cil art, a never-reprinted SIMON & KIRBY
up creators. Cover by ARTHUR ADAMS. ent. Retro cover by NICK CARDY. cover by GARCÍA-LÓPEZ & WRIGHTSON. more. WRIGHTSON cover. story, and more!
(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95
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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #35 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #36 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #37 RETROFAN #34 RETROFAN #35
An in-depth look at the life and career of TOM PALMER retrospective, career-span- STEVE ENGLEHART is spotlighted in Take a ride with CHiPs’ ERIK ESTRADA and Saturday morning super-hero Space Ghost,
writer/editor DENNY O’NEIL, and part ning interview, and tributes compiled by a career-spanning interview, former LARRY WILCOX! Plus: an interview with plus The Beatles, The Jackson 5ive, and
one of a career-spanning interview with GREG BIGA. LEE MARRS chats about assist- DC Comics’ romance editor BARBARA movie Hercules STEVE REEVES, Weird- other real rockers in animation! Also: The
ARNOLD DRAKE, co-creator of The Doom ing on Little Orphan Annie, work for DC’s FRIEDLANDER redeems the late DC editor Ohs cartoonist BILL CAMPBELL, Plastic Addams Family’s JOHN ASTIN, Mighty
Patrol and Deadman! Plus the story behind Plop! and underground Pudge, Girl Blimp! JACK MILLER, DAN DIDIO discusses going Man on Saturday mornings, TINY TIM, Isis co-stars JOANNA PANG and BRIAN
Studio Zero, the ’70s collective of JIM The start of a multi-part look at the life and from DC exec to co-publisher, we conclude Remo Williams, the search for a Disney CUTLER, TV’s The Name of the Game, on
STARLIN, FRANK BRUNNER, ALAN WEISS, career of DAN DIDIO, part two of our our 100th birthday celebration for ARNOLD artist, and more! Featuring columns by the set of Evil Dead II, classic coffee ads,
and others! Warren horror mag writer/ ARNOLD DRAKE interview, public service DRAKE, take a look at the 1970s under- ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT and more! With ANDY MANGELS, WILL
historian JACK BUTTERWORTH, alternative comics produced by students at the CENTER ground comix oddity THE FUNNY PAGES, SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT
cartoonist TIM HENSLEY, & more! FOR CARTOON STUDIES, & more! and more, including HEMBECK! VOGER. Edited by MICHAEL EURY. SHAW, MARK VOGER & MICHAEL EURY.
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 New from TwoMorrows!

ALTER EGO #186 ALTER EGO #187 ALTER EGO #188 KIRBY COLLECTOR #89 KIRBY COLLECTOR #90
Spotlights ANGELO TORRES, the youngest Focuses on great early science-fiction DOUBLE-SIZE ANNIVERSARY ISSUE! The KIRBY CONSPIRACIES! Darkseid’s Foourth WHAT IF KIRBY... hadn’t been stopped
and last of the fabled EC Comics artists— author EDMUND HAMILTON, who went Marvel side includes mini-interviews with World palace intrigue, the too-many by his rejected Spider-Man presentation?
who went on to a fabulous career as a on to an illustrious career at DC Comics, JOHN BUSCEMA, MARIE SEVERIN, JIM attempted overthrows of Odin, why Stan DC’s abandonment of the Fourth World?
horror, science-fiction, and humor artist writing Superman, Batman, and especially MOONEY, and GEORGE TUSKA—plus Lee hated Diablo, Kang contradictions, The ill-fated Speak-Out Series? FREDRIC
for Timely/Marvel, Warren Publishing, and The Legion of Super-Heroes! Learn all “STAN LEE’S Dinner with ALAIN RESNAIS” Simon & Kirby swipes, a never-reprinted WERTHAM’s anti-comics crusade? The
MAD magazine! It’s a lushly illustrated about his encounters with RAY BRADBURY, annotated by SEAN HOWE! On the DC S&K story, MARK EVANIER’s WonderCon CIA’s involvement with the Lord of Light?
retrospective of his still-ongoing career— MORT WEISINGER, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, side: talks with CARMINE INFANTINO, 2023 Kirby Tribute Panel (with MARV Plus a rare Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER
plus FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), et al—a panoply of titans! Plus FCA, JOHN BROOME, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, JOE WOLFMAN, PAUL S. LEVINE, and JOHN and our other columnists, a classic Simon
MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s KUBERT, & MURPHY ANDERSON—plus a MORROW), an extensive Kirby pencil art & Kirby story, pencil art gallery, & more!
Comic Crypt, and more Comic Crypt, and more! GARDNER FOX photo-feature, and more! gallery, and more! Cover inks by DAMIAN PICKADOR ZAJKO!
(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (160-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $21.95 (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95
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RETROFAN #32 RETROFAN #33 BRICKJOURNAL #85 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #33 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #34
Featuring a profile of The Partridge Family’s Meet the Bionic Duo, LEE MAJORS and LEGO MINIFIGURES! Customized minifigs STEVE GERBER biographical essay and DAN JURGENS talks about Superman, Sun
heartthrob DAVID CASSIDY, THUNDARR LINDSAY WAGNER! Plus: Hot Wheels: by fans, designing the Disney minifigures collaborator insights, MARY SKRENES on Devils, creating Booster Gold, developing
THE BARBARIAN, LEGO blocks, Who The Early Years, Fantastic Four car- from LEGO House, spotlight on minifig co-creating Omega the Unknown, helping the “Doomsday scenario” with the demise
Created Mighty Mouse?, BUCKAROO toons, Modesty Blaise, Hostess snacks, fan artist ROBERT8, and more! Plus, all develop Howard the Duck, VAL MAYERIK of the Man of Steel, and more! Traverse
BANZAI turns forty, Planet Patrol, Big Little TV Westerns, Movie Icons vs. the Axis our regular features: Nerding Out with cover and interview, ROY THOMAS reveals DON GLUT’s “Glutverse” continuity across
Books, Disco Fever, and more! Featuring Powers, the San Diego Chicken, and more! BRICKNERD, step-by-step “You Can Build STAN LEE’s unseen EXCELSIOR! COMICS Gold Key, Marvel, and DC! Plus RICK
columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, line, LINDA SUNSHINE (editor of early ALTERGOTT, we conclude our profiles of
MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, BANTHA BRICKS: Fans of LEGO Star Wars, hardcover super-hero collections), more MIKE DEODATO, JR. and FRANK BORTH,
SHAW, and MARK VOGER. Edited by SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER. Edited and Minifigure Customization with JARED with MIKE DEODATO, and the concluding LINDA SUNSHINE (editor of DC/Marvel
MICHAEL EURY. by MICHAEL EURY. K. BURKS! segment on FRANK BORTH! hardcover super-hero collections), & more!
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