Just Imagine: Stan Lee and Walter Simonson's Sandman

Just Imagine Stan Lee with Walter Simonson Creating Sandman
Writer: Stan Lee
Pencils: Walter Simonson
Inks: Bob Wiacek
Letterer: Bill Oakley
Colorist: Lee Loughridge
Cover: Simonson

“On the Street”
Story: Michael Uslan
Pencils and Inks: Richard Corben
Letterer: Phil Felix
Colorist: Loughridge
Publisher: DC
Released: June 26, 2002

Lee and Simonson's Sandman story starts with perhaps the most striking opening salvo of the entire series. And that includes Crisis. I looked ahead.

As astronaut Larry Wilton drifts through space, his life conveniently flashes before his eyes, allowing readers to see a childhood in which he mostly stayed inside because he was sickly. His refuge was the fantasy stories his mother read to him, which led to vivid dreams in which he was chased across a magical landscape by a hulking demon and aided by a spritely, winged figure named Melana.

Larry outgrows his health concerns* and eventually becomes an Air Force pilot and astronaut. He witnesses one of the first cases of the “Sleeping Death,” an affliction that kills or leaves victims in some sort of coma, though they occasionally wake up for violent outbursts. When a mysterious green cloud is detected in space, Larry is assigned to lead a team of astronauts to investigate it and a possible connection to the sickness. Apparently the powers that be have not read previous issues or they would have known green is good and the purple associated with the sleeping sickness (in dialogue, rarely in the art) is bad.

On the eve of the launch, Larry's second-in-command, Bryan, invites him to church: the Church of Eternal Empowerment. The wrong Rev. Dominic Darrk isn't there to welcome him, but Morgana is, in an outfit that prompts Larry to ask if she's preparing for a Victoria's Secret shoot and thus spares me the need to make a joke about it. A man in the sanctuary collapses, a victim of the Sleeping Death, as Morgana attempts to seduce/recruit Larry, which doesn't impress him in the least.

On the mission, Larry exits the shuttle to perform a repair and his tether is cut. As he drifts, he hears over his radio the crew fighting with Bryan shortly before the shuttle explodes.

Thinking he's dead, he awakens in the realm of his childhood dreams, pursued by a creature that identifies itself as the Thief of Souls and fleeing alongside a beautiful woman he recognizes as Melana, despite the fact that she's as tall as him and has no wings. She's also naked except for some, I don't know, branches that make Morgana** look positively Puritan.

Melana helps Larry escape the Thief of Souls and informs him he's destined to defeat the forces who deliver evil dreams that influence the likes of Hitler and Jack the Ripper. He's the Sandman, and Melana tries to explain his powers, including a mystic gem on his arm and intangibility, while he drools over her.*** But the evil Dream Lord, who looks an awful lot like the Thief of Souls, returns to attack and Melana sends Larry back to the waking world with a rhyming oath.

He awakens to find himself being rescued by another shuttle crew. Upon returning to Earth, he tries to investigate the church, but Darrk kicks him out after getting zapped by his mystic gem. Larry spots a man falling victim to the Sleeping Death in a park but now sees an otherwise invisible demon attacking him and fends the creature off with a blast from the gem.

Falling asleep that night, he returns to the dream world, exploring for a bit before another peril forces him to return to his body – which is about to be thrown out a window by two thugs. In an action-packed-but-confusing sequence, Larry wakes up in the nick of time and turns himself intangible before flying back to his apartment to face the assassins. One of them melts and the other flees to the church, where Larry finds him skewered by a sword.

Before he can investigate further, Melana summons Larry back to the Dream World, so he crawls into a storage alcove to catch some Zs. He arrives to face the Thief of Souls/Dream Lord and soon finds himself in the nightmare of his youth as the villain grows into the giant demon that always chased him. Before he's destroyed, he activates the gem and, to his surprise, turns into a massive sandstorm that reduces the demon to an empty skull.

Sandman finds Melana in the aftermath, and she guides him to awaken the sea of souls the Dream Lord has imprisoned through the Sleeping Death – I guess? – because Crisis is at hand. He sandstorms up again, intones his oath and everybody wakes up, including Melana in the real world with him. They find Darrk collapsed outside the alcove, where he was preparing to stab Larry's sleeping body. But he's wearing a mask that kind of looks like the Thief of Souls, so apparently when the demon died, it put a whammy on Darrk.

They exit the church and Larry's head transforms into that of a giant cartoon wolf who whistles and slobbers over Melana. Not really, but maybe it would have if the church building hadn't exploded, with a giant creature, presumably the Dream Lord, emerging to signal the arrival of Crisis.

The On the Street story, with the moody art of Corben, is a four-page affair featuring an elderly guy fleeing from dream demons and apparently saved by the Sandman. He awakens on a park bench and begins running through the streets, warning folks about Crisis.

This issue moves at a brisk pace, with generally better dialogue than previous installments, which covers up some of the confusion. What are the Sandman's powers? Does the Sleeping Death kill or make people catatonic? Are the Thief of Souls and Dream Lord different beings? How come folks say the Sleeping Death turns people purple, but the coloring on the page doesn't reflect it?

If details in comics don't make sense, the fun and excitement of the story can make up for it. This one does some, but not completely. Larry's an interesting protagonist, and Simonson's art straddles the fantastical and realistic elements well. The fact that Larry is asleep and vulnerable while in the dream world presents an interesting dynamic.

Like many of the other stories, there's a lot of potential here, but as with Catwoman, it feels like some details needed tightened up to make it more effective.

Next up: A Crisis on this particular Earth.

* - Whereas mine just increase with age.

** - Heck, even Witchblade.

*** - At least he's not a college professor where she's a student. If anything, she seems older than him.