Sandman Mystery Theatre, Vol. 2: The Face and the Brute

Sandman Mystery Theatre (collected editions) #2

by Matt Wagner, John Watkiss (Illustrator), R.G. Taylor (Illustrator)

SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE: THE FACE AND THE BRUTE finds the Sandman of 1939, Wesley Dodds, and his possible paramour Dian Belmont, involved in a series of grisly murders in New York's Chinatown--murders that threaten to reignite the terrifying former days of the Tong Wars, a time when blood ran in the streets like water. Following this drama of The Brute, Wesley and Dian are confronted with corruption at the other end of the social scale in The Face as they track down the trail of misery left by a man whose gross appetite for violence is rivaled only by his wealth.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Crime, Superheroes, Mystery, Pulp, Fiction

208 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2004

About the author

Matt Wagner is an American comic book writer and artist. In addition to his creator-owned series' Mage and Grendel, he has also worked on comics featuring The Demon and Batman as well as such titles as Sandman Mystery Theatre and Trinity, a DC Comics limited series featuring Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman.

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Double feature! Double the tales! Double the fun?

Not really.

Both stories (The Face and The Brute) take a nosedive in quality from volume one - Sandman Mystery Theatre, Vol. 1: The Tarantula. Never a fan of Guy Davis’ art work in the first volume, John Watkiss and R. G. Taylor are even less skillful in trying to capture Matt Wagner’s vision. But here, Matt Wagner lets himself down, especially in the first tale.

The Face

Dian Belmont, daughter of the New York City district attorney, believes in pushing the envelope on the role of women in society. She’s not content to take a back seat to any man when it comes to crime-solving, partying and relationships. (Read: gat toting, meddling tramp who irks almost everybody) She usually takes the second-banana role in these stories, but for some reason Wagner made this a socialite-crime solver tale and gave the Sandman a back seat in his own book.



The concept of interracial dating and by extension bigotry and racism get the spotlight as Dian’s old boyfriend of Chinese descent gets caught up in a revival of the Tong Wars in Chinatown. The mover and shaker behind the feud is a guy called The Face: he wears disguises.



Where’s the Sandman?



He’s stalking NYC and fooshing and stuff.

Remember: His schtick is the gas (of the truth and knockout varieties), gas mask and some kung fu moves.

The take away message for the kids:



The Brute

Wagner brings back the pulpy noirish vibe from volume one here and continues to explore the gawd awful things people do to one another.

Did he have some sort of checklist of reprehensible things he wanted to build stories around?

Sandman’s in charge as he continues to mysteriously creep people out by being creepy and mysterious…



(That’s Mr. Sandman to you, Bub.)

…stomps the crap out of some thugs…



…does the ninja stalkerish stuff as he rhapsodizes about weird stuff…



(Peek-a-boo!)

…and does some fooshing. With style.



His relationship with Dian grows chummier, but she’s back to playing second fiddle.



Bottom line: If you dig hard-boiled comics with some less-than-stellar art or like Ed Brubaker’s work in this genre, than go for it. The Face is a by-the-numbers story; the Brute is better at evoking the pulpy atmosphere in a cringe-worthy way. I have volumes 3 and 4 at home, so I’m not done with the series quite yet.

The cover art of the individual issues is usually evocative and compelling.

[James DeSantis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first arc in this volume is good, but ends on a bit of a whimper. Basically a gang war gone sideways and gets out of control. Entertaining but not amazing. The second story about a boxer out on his luck, a crime family doing terrible things, a poor little girl caught in the middle, everything goes to hell and makes for one of the best arcs in the series so far. A 4 out of 5 for me.

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this series. The art is sometimes a little primitive, but for the most part this is good stuff. I like the dark horror feel, but at times this series almost goes a little too dark.

We get two storylines here. The first is set in Chinatown and deals with Chinese organized crime. The second deals with a crooked businessman who dabbles in illegal boxing as well as drugs, and has a BIG secret he's been hiding.

Overall a great title.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read as part of Sandman Mystery Theatre: Book One.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the first book I read hiding under the bedsheets this summer, and it was a perfect way to start my blanket-fort reading list. My only complaint is that we didn't get to hear more about the villains. I felt like The Face didn't get the background he deserved. I wanted to hear more about him and his madness.

[angelofmine1974 · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 1/2 stars

Not as good as the first volume but I will continue on with the series. Two stories in this one. One called the Face where the bad buy can alter his appearance and the second one is called the Brute. My favorite of the two was the Brute. Good graphics. The reason why I took a half star off was due to the extreme amount of racism, especially in the first story. I get it that happened a lot in the past but it was a little too much for me to enjoy the story.

[Brent · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finally reading original issues purchased almost 25 years ago! Good stuff.

[Gavin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt somewhat let down by this version after the first volume. I think it was the artwork to some degree...also it wasn't so much mystery at all anymore. There's far more time and effort spent on Dian Belmont, the love interest, and she is about as white, rich, privileged as one can expect. Unfortunately, the best they can do with her is have her be a bit of a whore, dating some shady Asian guy who's tied in with the Tongs (Triads). Her father more or less calls her out on this. The racism is rampant, and I know it's a period piece so that's one way to look at it...
The entire first story (4 of the 8 issues) is all about Chinatown and the racism against the Asians. I didn't care for it at all, it didn't seem like anything that the Sandman would be involved with, it felt forced.
The second story was a little odder, about poverty and child abuse. Here again it seems like Dian and Wesley are just sitting around saying 'gee it sure is crummy that there's all these poor folk who don't feed their kids' and 'boy that's too much hitting of the kiddies'. I don't know what it was that just turned me right off of this one, I think maybe I expected more from 'the Sandman' and this just seemed like a step backwards from the first 4 issues...
I have hope for it to pick up again in Vol. 3!

[Marissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not like Volume 2 of this series nearly as well as Volume 1. Both Dian Belmont and the Sandman himself start to just come off as these ultra privileged bored people with no social intelligence. While I appreciate that these works were an attempt to try to take a realistic, blunt approach to racism, poverty, and child abuse, they got to be so over the top in parts that it almost began to feel like almost a fetishization of these things instead of a confrontation with them. The poverty subplot in The Brute was especially irritating since our heroes are incredibly wealthy and in theory could have intervened before things got as messed up as they did for the hapless father and daughter here. The writing also takes a serious dive in this volume, sliding away from noir into just incredibly hammy territory.

[Nate · Rating 4 out of 5]

More pitch-black goodness from Wagner. Both stories were great and the protagonists were creepy as fuck, which always earns points from me. I still loved hanging out with Wesley and his ever-awesome girlfriend Dian, who as always refuses to fall into ditzy damsel-in-distress cliche. I did like the art a bit less than the first volume but it was still original and pleasing to look at, without ever being overcrowded, confusing or obnoxious.

[Karli Tucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This series is like an old noir movie. I like the feel of it.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this more than I did. The art didn't do the story any favors. I want Guy Davis back!

[Devero · Rating 2 out of 5]

Il volume presenta due cicli di Sandman.
Il primo, The Face, è imperniato sulla guerra fra Tong di Chinatown che un tizio vorrebbe far scoppiare solo per eliminare la possibilità che venga alla luce il fatto di avere un nonno, o bisnonno, orientale. Questo perché il club di cui è membro lo espellerebbe, non avendo sangue puro ariano-caucasico. Siamo nel 1938, a febbraio, ed effettivamente negli USA in quegli anni questo atteggiamento era molto diffuso. Questa storia parla di razzismo, di pregiudizi, di come veniva vista una ragazza bianca che uscisse con un cinese, seppur ricco e fascinoso. Wagner la scrive ma non ha l'efficacia del primo ciclo, Tarantula. Watkiss la disegna, malissimo. Odio dover denigrare il lavoro di un disegnatore, che comunque avrà dedicato giorni a questa storia, ma davvero la parte artistica è brutta. Brutta a vedersi, brutta per le inquadrature, scadenti gli sfondi e la caratterizzazione dei personaggi.
Il secondo, The Brute, è meglio. Intanto Taylor è un disegnatore migliore di Watkiss, anche se non all'altezza di Guy Davis, che comunque non incontra granché il mio gusto. Sarà perché Wagner conosce meglio il tema, ossia la brutalità verso i minori, che venga da genitori od estranei. Osserviamo anche l'evoluzione dei personaggi principali, Wesley e Dian, e il nascere del loro rapporto e dell'attrazione reciproca che pian piano inizia a farsi sentire.

Difficile dare un voto a questo albo, ma direi che 2 stelle possono bastare. Sul voto negativo pesa parecchio la parte artistica.

[Linnea Gelland · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's difficult for one artist to follow another and be judged fairly. After Volume 1, I was hooked on the look of it all, and that was bound to make me dissappointed when opening this volume.

The Face: They had a colouring problem in the first issues, that made every Asian character look bright yellow. Something that was a bit ironic, since the story itself focused on racism and stereotypes in 30's New York. The theme worked well though, and the colouring was corrected later on. The story was intriguing, but still felt a bit weak after reading The Tarantula.

The Brute: Same thing goes for the second story in this collection. I found it picked up the pace quite a bit towards the end, but still it didn't live up to Tarantula. That will be a hard one to beat, though. One thing i like is that it takes all the way (SPOILER) to here for Dodds and Dian to actually kiss. For once it's a gradual thing, rather than an instant jump into bed.

The subject matter brought up in all these stories are also very bold, and handled pretty well, I think. Incest, racism and rape aren't easy things to write about, but I don't think they come off as being exploitation stories.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

The other volumes I've read in this series (volume one and volume three) have been really good. I love the mystery/pulp/noir feel of the series. I love the characters. But this one didn't quite click with me. Maybe because every noir detective series does its 'let's don a mystery set in Chinatown' and at 'let's do a story about boxing' story.

Or maybe it's because both of these stories seemed liked they needed another issue or two to fully play out that way it should. And The Brute in particular felt like it was trying to weave a bunch of diverse stories into something coherent and due to it being four issues long, and even in four issues of the amount of text found in 90s comics, doesn't quite pull it off.

Oh yeah.. and there is that one scene that really felt like it belong in a whole other comic. Kinda icky. I mean it felt real... but icky. But its supposed to. It might have been more effective if it connected to the main story a little more. But it doesn't. As good as this series is overall... those two pages are probably why DC doesn't really like reprinting this volume anymore. (Made worse by me seeing it coming an issue ahead of time.)

[Chris Browning · Rating 4 out of 5]

My only concerns with this book is occasionally it wanders into glibness by using real horrors to drive the action - the monstrousness at the heart of Chinatown is all the worse for being barely spoken. It really lingers as you slowly process the relationship between father and daughter. If Wagner can learn to curtail the temptation to toy with fridging female characters and the like, then this would be brilliant. It’s taut and dark and beautifully written, at heart an attempt to take the noir elements of Batman and see if they can exist with little more exotic than a gas mask and gas gun. The art is phenomenal by the way: kinetic and dark and scratchy and pivotal to the story telling. Certainly it’s one of the few books I can think of where art and writing is absolutely simpatico so quickly

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Face (#5-8). The second story attacks bigotry in the 1930s and also offers some good evolution of Dian's character. The mystery itself is ultimately a bit overly convoluted, and feels like it's wrapped up with dialogue instead of revelation, but it's still a good story for those other factors [3+/5].

The Brute (#9-12). This arc's focus on illegal fighting doesn't seem as interesting as first, but it ends up going some very dark places and is the most shocking stories to date as a result. Wow, what a twist on the "villain" and what an ending [4/5].

[Lidia · Rating 3 out of 5]

De momento me está gustando este Sandman con máscara de gas (qué no sé por qué a veces me recuerda a Batman). La ambientación está muy bien hablando de temas de una época de cambio como fueron los años 30: racismo, feminismo, clasismo, la depravación humana... Nos muestra tanto el mundo de los ricos como los bajos fondos desde una perspectiva bastante adulta; el héroe no tiene ningún poder especial, sólo va con un arma que expulsa gas somnífero, y a pesar de ello suele acabar apaleado en cada encuentro. El tema es que los capítulos son bastante irregulares, el hecho de que diferentes dibujantes hagan la serie me despista entre un tomo y otro; y el dibujante de la mayoría de ellos, creo que no encaja con la obra. Hace que me pierda en el dibujo, y los protagonistas parece que tienen 100 años en lugar de 30. Por el resto las historias son entretenidas, y creo que cualquier entusiasta del género lo podrá disfrutar.

[Lavell]

Artwork: Ok Story: Excellent . This is a story that transcends artwork. The artwork is adequate for the story which is excellent. Love this series

[Liliana · Rating 3 out of 5]

RTC

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

This establishes more tone/feel for the rest of the series and is an engrossing slow burn mystery suspense thriller. Good fun

[Youssef · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

[Kris Shaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another satisfying installment in this series. I really enjoy the tone and pacing of this book.

[Toad Soup · Rating 3 out of 5]

Art??? Better… first storyline???? Kinda racist??? Second storyline???? Better but damn…

[Aleksandar Nikolov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Добрите ми впечатления от поредицата продължават. Все така е добре издържана , с всичките му там съспенси , екшъни , драми с лек привкус на екзотика и романс които са задължителни за криминалния жанр. Всичко е уравновесено и поднесено по прекрасен начин.

За действието- отново е 30-те години на Америка, малко след действието от предишната част. Диан се забърква с един чичак от китайския мафия , точно по време на конфликт м/у азиатските банди. Ако си мислите че на негрите им било тежко за това време , то на азиатците със сигурност не им е било по леко. Поредната доза лицемерие от държава създадена от имигранти към своите имигранти.За имигранта нещата са били такива , или ставаш престъпник или си на улицата. Но това е друга тема, да се върнем на предишната. Китайския чичак въвлича Диан в каша , която се предполага че Уесли Додс ще я измиква. Всъщност май и така става.... може би най накрая ще вземат да се вземат тея малдежи.

Втория разказ е с по спортен привкус. За едно боксьорчен и неговия кофти начин на живот , който е гледал "Cindarella Man" , знае за какво става въпрос. За уговорените мачове , за семейството и децата , за кървавия бокс на черния пазар и тн... Абее кофти работа. :(

[Ravenhats · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories of The Face and The Brute address two very interesting and controversial subjects of the 1930's. The first the Face story investigates race relations as Dian meets a old handsome Chinese friend in Chinatown involved with the Chinese Tong's. In it a Lon Cheney like killer is trying create conflict among the Chinese communities and gangs through manipulative murders. The art for this tory has some heavy line work and at times is stiff, but is generally colourful and interesting to look at.

The second story is a story about abusive parenting and class inequality as a desperate boxer Ramsey seeks to escape from wealthy illegal fight promoter with his daughter who has tuberculosis. He is pushed to his limit, while the promoter tries to make deals with Dobb's and a local heroin pusher. This story is really a tragic one with a shocking conclusion and reads less like a superhero comic, and more like a dark noire story much to its credit. I slightly prefer the art style of this story which has a lot line work and noire shadows, but isn't so brightly coloured, pulpy or heavily drawn.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originaly bought as single-issues, I have the complete collection.

Somehow, Matt Wagner and Guy Davis were the perfect team to bring the original Sandman back.
Where most writers would have updated the character to bring him into the 21st century, Matt Wagner goes way back to his original roots set in the 1940s and gives us a bare bones version of the character.
This isn't a super-hero, he doesn't jump from rooftops, he's faillable, he's a well-rounded, caring human being, heck he's not even muscle-bound, he could probably even lose a bit of weight. You actually get the impression that he has to make an effort to do the things he does. Add to that the more than believable love interest of Dian and you have the setting for some great stories.

These stories should be re-collected into Absolute or Deluxe editions... even if I might be the only one buying them :-)

[Josh Hornbeck · Rating 3 out of 5]

FIRST THOUGHTS:
Nice little grimy noir. Very dark, but completely riveting. I like the stylized illustration, but at time it makes it hard to follow the narrative or distinguish between characters. I appreciate Dian’s agency and narrative arc - especially in a medium (and written at a time), that often keeps female characters on the back burner.

[Gonzalo Oyanedel · Rating 4 out of 5]

La áspera relación con la cultura del Barrio Chino es el telón de crueles asesinatos, con Dian Belmont en el centro de conflictos personales y un creciente interés por el engañosamente tranquilo Wesley.

[Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Face was an interesting story arc, with a little more look of the bigotry that was more prominent at the time. Artwork was beautiful, characters look sharper. The Brute was not as great. I was not satisfied with the arc, especially with how it ended.