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Sandman: Le justicier des rêves veille
DC Comics continues its series of Jack Kirby titles with a volume collecting this 1940s super-hero series for the first time ever.In 1942, Jack Kirby and Joe Simon began a remarkable run of stories for DC Comics that included The Sandman, featured in the pages of ADVENTURE COMICS. Leaving behind his trademark green suit, fedora and gas mask, The Sandman became a brightly costumed adventurer, on the trail of crime in the big city with the help of his sidekick, Sandy the Golden Boy.With a strong element of the fantastic in the form of haunted dreams and foes claiming to be figures of myth, these stories were the kind of fast-paced, slam-bang adventures that made Kirby and Simon famous.
118 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1984
64 people want to read
About the author
Jack Kirby
2,801 books476 followersJack Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg) was one of the most influential, recognizable, and prolific artists in American comic books, and the co-creator of such enduring characters and popular culture icons as the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Hulk, Captain America, and hundreds of others stretching back to the earliest days of the medium. He was also a comic book writer and editor. His most common nickname is "The King."
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
December 13, 2022
The Sandman by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby collects 20+ Sandman stories from Adventure Comics in the 1940s plus Sandman #1 from the 1970s.
I scored this on Shopgoodwill a while back. I read two or three of the stories in reprints in Adventure Comics digest about 40 years ago so most of it was new material. All the stories are written by Joe Simon and drawn by Jack Kirby. Simon inks the 1940s stories and Mike Royer inks the lone 1970s story.
Ordinarily, I'm not a huge fan of Golden Age super hero comics but these were pretty good, no big shock considering the creative team created Captain America a couple years early and went on to create the romance comic genre. Plus Kirby was the architect of the early Marvel universe. Anyway, Simon and Kirby weren't happy with the deal they had at Timely and jumped to DC.
Charged with revitalizing a poorly received character, Simon and Kirby ramped up Batman and Robin style antics of Sandman and Sandy. The stories are all ten pagers and Sandman and Sandy usually battle ordinary crooks, although crooks with gimmicks are not unheard of. There are no supervillains, though, and no recurring characters beyond Sandman and Sandy.
The stories are pretty simple but entertaining in a bad guys getting punched in the mouth and hauled off to jail sort of way. They remind me of Batman and Robin without the Batcave or any gimmicks beyond their wire-poon guns.
Kirby's art naturally isn't as refined as it would be twenty years later but there are still flashes of brilliance. I wonder how much of the heavy lifting was left to Joe Simon's inks. Sometimes the inks make Kirby's figures kind of grotesque and everyone seems leaner and lankier than they would years later. Again, this is 20 years before Kirby revolutionized comics at Marvel.
My favorite story in this is easily Santa Fronts for the Mob. The mob recruits a brutish wrestler to play a department store Santa so they can follow him on deliveries and rob the rich people's houses. Sandman and Sandy punch a bunch of bad guys and "Santa" helps them. Good stuff.
The reproduction is kind of muddy. I'm blaming it on the paper since the Archives editions came before this and the Plastic Man reproductions from the same time period are clear as a bell.
Four out of five stars. For basic super hero action from the Golden Age, it doesn't get much better than this.
I scored this on Shopgoodwill a while back. I read two or three of the stories in reprints in Adventure Comics digest about 40 years ago so most of it was new material. All the stories are written by Joe Simon and drawn by Jack Kirby. Simon inks the 1940s stories and Mike Royer inks the lone 1970s story.
Ordinarily, I'm not a huge fan of Golden Age super hero comics but these were pretty good, no big shock considering the creative team created Captain America a couple years early and went on to create the romance comic genre. Plus Kirby was the architect of the early Marvel universe. Anyway, Simon and Kirby weren't happy with the deal they had at Timely and jumped to DC.
Charged with revitalizing a poorly received character, Simon and Kirby ramped up Batman and Robin style antics of Sandman and Sandy. The stories are all ten pagers and Sandman and Sandy usually battle ordinary crooks, although crooks with gimmicks are not unheard of. There are no supervillains, though, and no recurring characters beyond Sandman and Sandy.
The stories are pretty simple but entertaining in a bad guys getting punched in the mouth and hauled off to jail sort of way. They remind me of Batman and Robin without the Batcave or any gimmicks beyond their wire-poon guns.
Kirby's art naturally isn't as refined as it would be twenty years later but there are still flashes of brilliance. I wonder how much of the heavy lifting was left to Joe Simon's inks. Sometimes the inks make Kirby's figures kind of grotesque and everyone seems leaner and lankier than they would years later. Again, this is 20 years before Kirby revolutionized comics at Marvel.
My favorite story in this is easily Santa Fronts for the Mob. The mob recruits a brutish wrestler to play a department store Santa so they can follow him on deliveries and rob the rich people's houses. Sandman and Sandy punch a bunch of bad guys and "Santa" helps them. Good stuff.
The reproduction is kind of muddy. I'm blaming it on the paper since the Archives editions came before this and the Plastic Man reproductions from the same time period are clear as a bell.
Four out of five stars. For basic super hero action from the Golden Age, it doesn't get much better than this.
April 19, 2024
While I much preferred the caped pulp inspired version of this character these are still fun reads. Great Kirby action. Recommended
August 6, 2021
Apesar de eu ter dado somente três estrelas para Sandman e Outras Histórias: Lendas do Universo DC, por Jack Kirby, achei essa coletânea mais interessante que a anterior focando nos trabalhos do "Rei", que foi OMAC. Nesta pelo menos não ficamos entrelaçados com só um personagem, mas vemos o trabalho do Rei dos Quadrinhos em desenvolver outros personagens, alguns que eu nunca havia ouvido falar como os Dingbats. Esta é a história mais louca e cheia de estereótipos possível. Por outro lado, achei Atlas, Caçador, Kobra e Richard Dragon com premissas muito interessantes. Kobra eu até gostaria de ler mais sobre e de como o enredo se desenvolveu. Sandman, o herói da Era de Ouro recriado por Joe Simon e Jack Kirby, os dois criadores do Capitão América é interessante, mas bastante confuso, como a maioria das história do Rei para a DC Comics. Por fim, temos um encontro entre o Superman e os Desafiadores do Desconhecido que é bem okzinho. Agora é aguardar para saber se a Panini também vai trazer Kamandi para cá.
February 18, 2010
This book contains a large number of the 1940s Sandman stories by Simon and Kirby, along with one of the odd remake of 1974.
For those who have never read the original series, The Sandman was originally more of a pulp hero character, like The Shadow or others of that ilk, with a distinctive gas mask and using sleep gas as a weapon. Shortly before Simon and Kirby took over the title, he was changed to a Batman clone, wearing bright yellow and purple, and with a boy sidekick. Simon and Kirby reworked the costume and repeatedly used various dream themes in the stories, making them very strange but a major improvement. Sadly, the 1974 remake was quirky, but not as good, and it failed after a few issues.
Of the 30+ stories reprinted in this volume, a few are real gems, including a story that hinges on a boy's desire to finally wear long pants. Another was about politics, corruption and the building of a recreation center. The Sandman typically fought regular criminals, rather than "villains" in the traditional comic book sense.
Artistically, early Kirby is rough and unrefined compared to his later work, but it's still Kirby. Joe Simon told fast-paced action stories very well, and this volume contains some fun stories. On the other hand, these were World War II vintage, and some of the stories aged better than others. Most survived better than the painful 1974 example, which was just badly written and plotted.
For those who have never read the original series, The Sandman was originally more of a pulp hero character, like The Shadow or others of that ilk, with a distinctive gas mask and using sleep gas as a weapon. Shortly before Simon and Kirby took over the title, he was changed to a Batman clone, wearing bright yellow and purple, and with a boy sidekick. Simon and Kirby reworked the costume and repeatedly used various dream themes in the stories, making them very strange but a major improvement. Sadly, the 1974 remake was quirky, but not as good, and it failed after a few issues.
Of the 30+ stories reprinted in this volume, a few are real gems, including a story that hinges on a boy's desire to finally wear long pants. Another was about politics, corruption and the building of a recreation center. The Sandman typically fought regular criminals, rather than "villains" in the traditional comic book sense.
Artistically, early Kirby is rough and unrefined compared to his later work, but it's still Kirby. Joe Simon told fast-paced action stories very well, and this volume contains some fun stories. On the other hand, these were World War II vintage, and some of the stories aged better than others. Most survived better than the painful 1974 example, which was just badly written and plotted.
January 19, 2013
Brilliant, of course. Especially interesting is how Simon gradually took the basic theme of sleep and started, as the series went on, weaving it into Sandman's identity, while still leaving the exact supernatural relationship undefined and vague (maybe because he never sorted it out himself). This makes me want to revisit Kirby's Bronze Age reboot and Gaiman's Vertigo version to see how they pursued it. One complaint: there are some covers reproduced near the end of this volume, but without the stories. Were these ones where Kirby did just the covers, but Simon & Kirby didn't do the stories, or are these teasers for a forthcoming volume. I wish that had been clarified.
June 1, 2015
You can't go wrong with Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in any instance, so this book is another treat. This volume reprints all of their work on the original Sandman series in Adventure Comics during the Golden Age, as well as the first issue of The Sandman from the mid-seventies.
I could add to all the paeans about their work, but why waste your time? Just go out and find this one and read it!
I could add to all the paeans about their work, but why waste your time? Just go out and find this one and read it!
March 25, 2015
fascinating look at early Kirby art, especially comparing the 40s work to the one 70s story
December 5, 2018
This book has an interesting place in the decades-long struggle for comics between DC and Marvel. This struggle often involved talent raids to enlist top creators, i.e. writers and artists. Marvel has different company names through these decades, and as Timely, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created for them Marvel's probably most iconic character, Captain America. For DC to hire this writer/artist team was an incomparable coup for DC. The work on the Sandman, who appeared in Adventure comics, was exciting as promised with Kirby's slam-bang graphics and Simon's breathless, non-stop story lines. Interesting how this Golden Age of comics style, considered illiterate by critics, has become an important element that drives the waves of current super-hero movies. However, here the generally 10-page stories do eventually start to slow down and become a little sloppy, what seems a a natural attrition considering they went on for four years with creators working with severe deadlines and many more pages to create than these. The volume also includes an update with a rollicking 1974 revival of the Sandman. Mark Evanier adds an Afterword with a Golden Age comics creator anecdote, good additional material for comic book historians.
July 6, 2024
Shame on you, DC! You have top shelf Golden Age material by two of the all-time greats, and THIS is the respect and the treatment that you feel that this material deserves? Shoddy restoration, shoddy paper, and shoddy binding, this package is a disgrace to the legacy of Simon and Kirby. Before there was Stan and Jack there was Joe and Jack. The pair did a wonderful job creating Captain America, and this was their 'next big thing'. DC insisted on scanning old yellowed pages, which Dark Horse and Fantagraphics also do for these vintage collections, but they clean up and color correct the pages. DC only color corrected the word balloons and captions, leaving the rest a yellowed, discolored mess. Every single color looks off because they took no time whatsoever and put no effort into restoration or using modern color values to replicate the original color palette. The paper is the same crappy pulp paper that DC uses in most of their hardcovers these days, being scarcely thicker than toilet paper. Couple that with glued binding, and you have the most sucktastic presentation imaginable. The real shame of it is that these are such good stories.
November 18, 2018
You can see the roots of the greatness that Kirby would go on to later, but this is a rough version, more like a downmarket Batman than anything. Short stories about gangsters over and over again. The dream aspect isn't as played up as I expected, more just a matter of bad guys dream of him getting them rather than him having actual powers to go into their dreams. Seems like it could have been more.
The reboot comic at the end showed promise, but was so fast moving and lacking in explanation that it was hard to know what the heck was going on. Still had that Kirby charm though.
This collection would be for die hards only I think.
The reboot comic at the end showed promise, but was so fast moving and lacking in explanation that it was hard to know what the heck was going on. Still had that Kirby charm though.
This collection would be for die hards only I think.
April 3, 2018
Lots of promise here, Kirby's art is already very good (but without those stylistic 70s excesses I love so much), but the stories are very, very week. Gangster after gangster, dream/sleep theme after dream/sleep theme. Sandy gets clonked, Sandman is distracted and defeated, deathtrap, escape, win.
The 70s story was also thin, but totally freakishly bizarre. I wouldn't recommend it, per se, but it's definitely an experience. Totally incoherent, but an experience!
And DC didn't even do a very good job on the reproduction.
The 70s story was also thin, but totally freakishly bizarre. I wouldn't recommend it, per se, but it's definitely an experience. Totally incoherent, but an experience!
And DC didn't even do a very good job on the reproduction.
February 23, 2020
A collection of the 1940s run by the famous pair on the Sandman character, Wesley Dodds. This was long after the character had shifted from his green suit, fedora, and trademark gas mask to a more superhero-y garb and was given a kid sidekick. Plus as a bonus feature it contains a reboot of the reboot Sandman feature by the pair done in the 1970s, which played a significant part in Gaiman's work on his character Dream. An excellent look at old time comics.
January 21, 2023
Always interesting to see everything that Jack Kirby was involved in at one time or another. Back in the day, I owned a copy of the remake that is featured at the end of this collection. That leads to further speculation about what that old collection of comic books from the late 60’s and 70’s would be worth now if I had kept track of them. In any case, a worthwhile book if you are interested in Golden Age stories.
August 28, 2022
What massive creativity and LSD does to a mf
November 23, 2010
Mainly of historical interest.
In making my way through Jack Kirby's enormous body of work, I came upon this, one of his earliest strips, which he worked on from 1942 until 1946 with his then-partner Joe Simon. Golden Age comics were still an infant artwork, and they were slapped together fast by tyro artists and editors to fill the huge wartime demand for cheap entertainment. These comics sold millions, but they were remarkably primitive works, as creators publicly figured out the conventions of the art form.
Simon and Kirby, fresh from creating Captain America, came to DC where they were given the Sandman strip, which was slated for cancellation. The Sandman had started out as a pulp mystery feature, but, in an effort to boost sales, jumped onto the superhero bandwagon that Superman and Batman had kicked off just two years earlier. Sandman was given a bright costume, a kid sidekick, and little reason to be published other than to cash in on a craze--unpromising stuff. Despite all this, Simon and Kirby took on Sandman with gusto. They didn't yet know the tricks; to modern eyes, their pages are stilted, crowded, and very hokey, but they still explode with a raw energy right out of the gate. Sandman seems to almost tumble between panels in a fury. But the book becomes a bit of a slog as you continue through it. With the positive reaction to their Sandman stories, Simon and Kirby were given more work. The increased workload shows; the tales here settle down into a competent but dull house style, finally deteriorating into downright lackluster as the team feverishly compiled material before they were shipped off to war. Though Jack Kirby would go onto far greater things, his massive talents still shine through here and there.
In making my way through Jack Kirby's enormous body of work, I came upon this, one of his earliest strips, which he worked on from 1942 until 1946 with his then-partner Joe Simon. Golden Age comics were still an infant artwork, and they were slapped together fast by tyro artists and editors to fill the huge wartime demand for cheap entertainment. These comics sold millions, but they were remarkably primitive works, as creators publicly figured out the conventions of the art form.
Simon and Kirby, fresh from creating Captain America, came to DC where they were given the Sandman strip, which was slated for cancellation. The Sandman had started out as a pulp mystery feature, but, in an effort to boost sales, jumped onto the superhero bandwagon that Superman and Batman had kicked off just two years earlier. Sandman was given a bright costume, a kid sidekick, and little reason to be published other than to cash in on a craze--unpromising stuff. Despite all this, Simon and Kirby took on Sandman with gusto. They didn't yet know the tricks; to modern eyes, their pages are stilted, crowded, and very hokey, but they still explode with a raw energy right out of the gate. Sandman seems to almost tumble between panels in a fury. But the book becomes a bit of a slog as you continue through it. With the positive reaction to their Sandman stories, Simon and Kirby were given more work. The increased workload shows; the tales here settle down into a competent but dull house style, finally deteriorating into downright lackluster as the team feverishly compiled material before they were shipped off to war. Though Jack Kirby would go onto far greater things, his massive talents still shine through here and there.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews