Get out of bed! THE SANDMAN SLEPT HERE is back. Paul Kien, Max Romero, and Ryan Daly discuss Sandman Mystery Theatre issues #9-12. Writer Matt Wagner is joined by artist R.G. Taylor for a brutal, punishing tale of the tragic and vile ways this world fails our children. Two fathers: one a poor boxer willing to sacrifice anything for his daughter; the other a rich fight promoter whose personal lust for violence leaves a legacy of hate and perpetual abuse. Can the Sandman and Dian Belmont end this cycle of violence before it swallows everyone, or will they be left only to pick up the pieces of a shattered innocence? Find out in “The Brute”. Plus, Paul, Max, and Ryan respond to last episode’s listener feedback and play another round of “The Dream Sequence”. Wake up and tune in!
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Music: “Farewell Daddy Blues” by Ma Rainey
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Re: Your “cockroach dad eats my flowers” dream, were you confusing Dostoevsky with Kafka? The latter wrote Metamorphosis, and was a Czech, not a Russian. As far as I know the closest Dostoevsky got to cockroaches in his writing was letters complaining about living on cockroach soup while in prison – which is, admittedly, grounds for complaint.
Yeah, I was thinking of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Good catch.
Great episode as usual gents. Man, you guys weren’t kidding about the brutal subject matter. I chose to listen to your show rather than read it. You don’t have to be a parent to be incensed by such things, but it certainly makes it harder to stomach and all too real. I was lucky enough to never have any personal experiences like this, but I know others who have, and the damage, and as Ryan pointed out, the betrayal, never truly goes away.
I see what you mean by the art getting more simplified as the issues progress. Gotta say I still prefer this to Guy Davis, but maybe I’ll feel different when I acutally sit down to read the series. Or he may be like Tim Sale to me. I recognize the talent, but I just don’t care for the style.
Weirdest dream. I have two. One was very pivotal for me. As I have mentioned many times, I was traumatized by Lon Chaney, Jr’s transformation into the Wolf Man in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein when I was four. After that, I was terrified of werewolves for several years. I had nightmares about them often. When I was about 6 or 7, I dreamt I was running near an old castle, and a werewolf was chasing me. He was about to pounce on me, when Batman swung in and kicked him. Batman then proceeded to pound the crap out of this werewolf, while I cheered him on. No kidding, after that dream, I wasn’t scared of werewolves, and The Wolf Man became my favorite Universal monster and monster movie! And I kinda liked Batman more after that too.
Second weird dream I vividly remember was from when I was in high school. Cindy and I were dating, and she lived out on this old country road, WAY out in our county. Half the time when I drove home at night, I’d have trouble staying awake. I was in my bed dreaming about driving home from her house, almost falling asleep in my dream. When I came to, two figures, a man and a woman were standing on each side of the road ahead of me. Their skin was blue gray, like a Romero zombie. As I passed by, they reached into the car, and the woman grabbed me and pulled me out of the car while it was still moving. I immediately woke up…but I can still see her rotting face!
I was so excited to see the new episode drop that I queued it right up! I have been excitedly waiting for your next installment despite not having found time to reread issues 9 through 12… or even remind myself what they were about. Within seconds of listening my heart was filled with dread. This storyline hurts my soul every time I read it.
But I persevered, and can admit I thoroughly enjoying everyone’s analysis of the writing and art. You all seemed very much in sync with one another, but still brought a nice variety of individual insights to the table. Your thoughts expressed on the culture of violence, and the idea that everyone can be a brute, gave me a lot of pause. I’m glad not to have read the story in advance now and maybe this weekend, read it with a new perspective and some deeper appreciation for the craft the creators put into making it. Keep up the great work. I’m a fan of what you all are doing.
As for crazy dreams… I also rarely retain any memory of them after waking. Except for two. One was a pretty exciting sci-fi adventure where I got to ride around on a levitating trashcan lid while alien dragons soared through the sky, shooting lasers from their eyes. In the second, I was walking home from middle school with a friend and figured out I could Fly through sheer force of concentration. But I was twelve at the time and could barely get ten feet off the ground without almost falling, because what 12 year-old can concentrate that intensely for more than a few seconds??? Suffice to say it was a very frustrating dream.
Also, check the links at the top of this page for Episode 3, several still take us to episode zero content.
Thank you for bringing this to the management’s attention. We believe we have resolved the issue now.
Guys, I’m loving these dreams you’re sharing. Thanks for listening!
oof ya’ll read that for fun?
Gentlemen. This was a very challenging story to discuss, and you did it admirably. Well done.
One perspective I keep thinking of is parenting, and the perception of “good” vs “bad” parents. In this story and actually throughout this series, the class divide is a recurring theme. There’s Reisling who has all this wealth, and also abuses and neglects his kids, but in relative private for appearance’s sake. And Ramsey who’s down on his luck and giving all he can to raise his daughter right and desperate to make her healthy. So the family that has all the power and privilege they could want is admired, but his family is more dysfunctional than a boxer who’s looked down on by the upper class and barely scraping by, and I find Ramsey a damn admirable father. And in spite of their compassion and good intentions, Wes and Dian have no “skin in the game”, as they aren’t parents themselves. I’m not judging Wes and Dian, but I think that counterpoint is intentional on Wagner’s part and shouldn’t be forgotten. Maybe it will lead to more plot points later. I will admit, I hope little Emily is not gone from this series, since I want to see her heal from this horror, but I expect she is.
I’m glad I read this story in one sitting. Back in the monthly days, it would have been brutal reading the end of part 3 and having to wait for a resolution. Thanks for the great episode, guys!
Oh right, weird dreams! Have I mentioned that I’m a basket case when directing a show at the theater? And also the rest of the year? Don’t know why I mentioned that.
I’m terrible at remembering details of my dreams, and so I don’t have any to great degree. But for snippets, there was an awful nightmare as a kid where basically the sun was destroying the earth and I was in a ship with my family, so that was not fun. I’ve also had dreams where I meet characters from TV or comics, like in high school where I met the New Mutants because we were all the same age, but they looked like real people, not drawings. I have the strongest memory that Rahne “Wolfsbane” was adorable. And there was me dreaming that I was watching new episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation after its final episode had come out.
But hey, remember what I said about directing theater? Well, in years past, I would have that anxiety dream of showing up as an actor and not knowing any lines or songs and can’t find my costume. Well, last year I had that dream again, but now as a director, so I show up and none of the cast know their lines, the sound and lighting don’t know their cues, and 20 kids running around messing with the costumes. To which I say, thank you my subconscious for making that dream “better”!
I haven’t read these comics in forever so hearing you review them has been great. Sometimes I read the books before I listen, sometimes after.
This one I did after but as you were discussing, panels entered my mind that must have been ingrained from when I last read it many years ago – Wesley saying ‘his jaw’ after the boxers put on the cestas, and the girl saying she didn’t like the new medicine all came back to me. Signs of a shocking story if I could conjure that stuff up in my mind.
I can remember that Dian wanting to be intimate so closely to the time she was nearly raped seemed a little weird to me as well.
I definitely liked this art more than Watkiss’ art but for sure Guy Davis is the look for this book.
I have very vivid dreams so there are too many. But I think ER providers, both docs and nurses, have ‘work-mares’ where they are in scary medical issues. One I had that stuck with me was that I walked by a room where a patient looked very ill and checked to see who was seeing the patient on the tracking board – only to see that there was no patient listed in that room. Meaning someone put a sick person in an exam room that no clinician knew about and therefore didn’t see and care for. When I went back in to check on the patient, I discovered they had passed. And I kept saying ‘who put this patient in the room? When did they do it???’ I woke up panicked with my heart rate through the roof.
Great show!
Great show, as always, fellas! Man this book is grim. I have to say the art is not my favorite. I feel this book definitely needs a “gritty/ugly” style of art considering the time period and essence of the stories. But while the overall storytelling is fine, the figures and movements often look wooden and unnatural. AS far as weird dreams, when I was bartending at a busy bar in DC, I would often get home at 3am and crash out. Almost every night, I’d have what some refer to as “frustration dreams.” I’d dream I was bartending and kept trying to make some drink (it would always be something different), but something kept getting in the way or the space would grow around me, or something else would distract me, or I couldn’t find an ingredient, or everything would spin upside down. I could never actually make the drink. I used to have this dream almost nightly for years.