Neil Gaiman's work on The Sandman in the early 1990s is well-known. His meandering mythologically inspired epic is highly acclaimed, and has won many awards. Drawing upon a multitude of sources historical and religious, The Sandman wove these elements together into a unique text which had broad market appeal.
Matt Wagner's Sandman Mystery Theatre was published in the 1990s. The subject was very far from The Sandman: Sandman Mystery theatre is film noir not on film. It is a detective story set in the 1930s, focussing on a man who wears a gas mask and solves crimes. Its is gritty, with great dialgue and characteristion, ranging from the suffragette Dian Belmont to the racist cop to the owlish and sensitive hero Wesley Dodds. The subject matter is vicious and sordid: the first arc deals with a man who kidnaps women and tortures them to death: the villain sickens himself when he puts out a victim's eyeball with a burning iron.
The Sandman is a collected work nowadays, consisting of 10 volumes which have been reprinted at least 3 times by my reckoning. Sandman Mystery Theatre, on the other hand, didn't have anywhere near the same level of commercial success. There has been one trade paper back published of the first arc, dealing with the psychotic Tarantula.And that was it, despite the excellent content nd the fact that the series had a decent run.
Someone must have got the idea of having a crossover."Hey, he's the Sandman, and he's the Sandman too...they should meet!"
Normally I'd be very skeptical of such a thing. What next, Transmetropolitan and Lucifer? Spider Jerusalem gives the Morningstar the finger and tries to shoot him with his bowel disruptor, and is instead consumed in flames and his soul annulled. Game over.
Instead we have a very fine story dealing with the Sandman's adventure in London. Both Wagner and Gaiman contribute to the script and the two mesh well together. We have Dodd's detective work and passion for Dian Belmont, detailed by Wagner. We also have the quirky cast of characters and all of their eccentric English foibles, at a cocktail party and magic show for the morally uninhibited fleshed out in an amusing fashion by Gaiman.
The art is excellent too. The artist's name escapes me right now, but the art is gloomy (it works well given the day and age - London was shrouded in fog back then as a result of perpetual coal fires) and is painted.
And Dream of the Endless? He makes a limited cameo role, and acts as a caged deus ex machina, disturbing Wesley's dreams. He is also somehow responsible for the ending, which I won't spoil, but its not clear exactly how.
(There is a follow-up to their meeting in the last volume of the Sandman tpbs, called the Wake: Wesley Dodds, now aged in his 80s, speaks briefly at Dream's funeral.)
I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes their detective stories stirred up by off-beat humour. I can't flaw it at all, as you'd expect for a collaboration by two of comics' best writers. 9 out of 10.
