Sandman Mystery Theatre: Tarantula - Part 1

[espanolbot]

7 of 26 pages

It's 1938, and the place is New York City. Daughter of the District Attorney, Dian Belmont, is just about her out for a night on the town with her friends. Unfortunately her dad doesn't like the idea of her going to a jazz club, particularly one in Harlem.




DA Belmont is surprised, as you would be, to find a man in a trenchcoat and gasmask going through his private papers. But before he could call the cops, the man hoses him in the face with a mysterious green gas that makes him pass out in a chair...

Dian has a good night out with her friend, but just as she's dropping the woman she's getting a lift off near her boyfriend's house, she's abducted off the street by a second mysterious person.

Later Dian goes to a charity ball as her dad's plus one. DA Belmont apparently doesn't remember being gassed, as mild memory loss is a side-effect of the gas, which is basically like a bad hangover once you've recovered from it. It's here we begin the narration of Wesley Dodds, recently returned to NYC after some years abroad in the Far East...




It turns out that the police have received a note from a man calling himself the Tarantula, who claims to have kidnapped a woman, and news of this causes the DA to leave early so he can see what's going on.

While he's informing Dian that her friend has been kidnapped, Dodds gives the judge a lift home to fills him in on what's going on too, at least as much as he cans. Schaffer laments that they expected something like this would happen, as recently a lot of criminals have been showing up unconscious for seemingly no reason, and that the two must be connected somehow...

Dodds comes around to the Belmonts, having taken up their offer of cocktails even though he doesn't drink. Dian's dad is somewhat smug about this, as he didn't want Dian to go out because of the kidnapper and he knows she can't leave if they have company. Wesley asks up about one of his father's former business associates, a man called Albert Goldman, whose name showed up as he was putting his dad's business in order. The DA says that Goldman is a former bootlegger who somehow managed to shift his earnings into legitimate businesses before Prohibition ended properly, but still has ties to the Mafia. This surprises Wesley, but not as much as the phone call Belmont gets saying that the Tarantula has kidnapped a second victim...

Later that day, the body of a blonde woman is found hanging from a fire escape, and Dian shows up at the police station to identify the body in case it's her friend. Unfortunately one of the policeman crowding the lobby jostles her, spilling coffee on her in the process. Annoyed, Dian goes into the women's loos, which is located next to the room where her dad and the detectives are having a meeting about the murdered woman...



To be continued...

Comments

[mrstatham]

I always get embarrassed that, when people talk about the Sandman, I'd much rather talk about Mystery Theater than Gaiman's epic. To me, this was just the perfect crime/mystery series and a really good example of what Vertigo could do with established DC characters. Wagner hit the ball out of the park here, and I actively prefer Davis' artwork in this series to his BPRD stuff. And as great as the Tarantula arc is, it only gets better as the series progresses; My favourite arc's The Vamp.

[his_spiffynesss]

Yes, This Sandman series was very much taking the original idea of the character and really running with it.

[espanolbot]

I liked the storyline where the Mist showed up. :) That and the Butcher are my two favourite stories I think.

Annoyingly they stopped collecting the trades two storylines or so before the end of the series though. XP

[mrstatham]

They did? I thought DC/Vertigo had just gotten into the habit of doing, like, one a year.

[espanolbot]

They stopped collecting them at the point Dian reveals she's pregnant to Wesley, but none of the following issues. XP

[randyripoff]

Sandman Mystery Theatre was excellent stuff. I always thought it would make a great TV series, especially on HBO or Showtime.

[espanolbot]

The Wire crossed with Boardwalk Empire. ^^

[doomisay]

Dare we say...

Here's a little ditty, 'bout Wes & Dian?

[espanolbot]

Dian is awesome, she gets a law degree, sets up charities to help children in poverty, wins a Nobel Prize for Literature AND becomes an equal partner in Wes' crime fighting activities. :) Plus she and Wes, when they officially become a couple stay together for the next sixty years, until she dies of cancer.

Dian Belmont is awesome, and more people should know this. :(

Heck, even in the original comics she was in the positon she'd later get in SMT, but she was moved out of the way for her nephew Sandy Hawkins to be Wes' more traditional Robin-ish sisdekick instead.

[doomisay]

Wes died not long after Dian, which brought about the return of the JSA.

[espanolbot]

Yeah, I know, he jumped off a mountain to keep the new Dr Fate's ID safe.

[silverhammerman]

I love what I've read of this series, I never finished it though, I was reading it pretty much all in one go a couple years ago and ran out of steam at around issue 40, through no fault of the series.
I think I must be alone in that I initially didn't really like Dian in this series. She's a good character and her story was interesting, but I found her kind of boring as a protagonist in the early issues before she and Wesley really got together. I found it annoying that the segments with Wesley doing cool pulp hero Sandman stuff were interspersed between long sections of Dian just doing regular stuff and going to parties. She grew on me eventually, but I still find the initial stuff with her to be kind of boring. I suppose it's probably of me having gone into the series with expectations that turned out to not be what the series was about.

[espanolbot]

I thought that it was interesting to see her evolve over time, changing from a rather aimless young woman to someone who was very much Wesley's equal, if not more so.

[team_mummy]

That lady looks like Kristen Schaal!