| Sandman (Golden Age) | |
| at Dragon*Con 2005 | |
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Dan made the cape, gas gun, and gas
mask himself - details below.
Below: With Black Canary and Huntress - Bottom: with JLA |
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History: The character
is "the Sandman", who is a DC character from the Golden Age
of comics. He appeared about the same time as Batman (1939)
and was one of the original members of the Justice Society
of America. He faded away by the late '40s but was brought
back in the '60s when he made regular appearances in the
Justice League of America (in the cross-over stories with
the Justice Society) and other stories. A series called
Sandman Mystery Theater ran for about four years in the late
'80s but it was a "mature" title and much darker than the
Golden Age character. A new version of the Sandman is the
leader of the new JSA which has a regular book, and the
original Sandman has appeared a number of times in flashback
stories in that title, too.
The Golden Age Sandman has been
making fairly regular appearances in limited series, such as
a recent four part story with the current Starman. Still,
he's a fairly obscure comic book hero but that was one of
the things I liked about him. There would not be a crowd of
Sandman costumes as there are for the really popular
characters like Superman, Batman and Spiderman (in fact,
there was one other Sandman at Dragon*Con this year but he
was portraying the character from SMT, the 1980's series).
Plus, he is a character that a middle aged man who is not in
great shape and wears glasses can play. The gas mask covers
the glasses and he wears a double-breasted suit instead of a
spandex tights. I was pleasantly surprised by how many
people at Dragon*Con did recognize the character.
Apparently, Sandman has a small but enthusiastic fandom.
So, in nearly all ways, the costume was a success.
Construction: The "gas
mask" was made from a paintball mask. Alex Toth has
suggested that the Sandman's mask is based on the mask worn
by a villain, the evil Captain Judas, in Milt Caniff's
"Terry and the Pirates". Although some latter-day
artists draw it like a true vintage-1940 gas mask, it was
never intended to be that. Interestingly, much later Neil
Gaiman in his highly successful series of graphic novel
about another Sandman linked the two characters and
indicated that the design of the original Sandman's mask
partially mirrored the Dream King's battle helmet. From a
practical standpoint, using a paintball mask as the
foundation for the mask meant it would fit over my glasses
and would be reasonably comfortable and have adequate
ventilation to keep the lenses from fogging. The hat is an
Australian bush hat with a silk ribbon replacing the
original leather hat band. I needed the extra brim width of
the bush hat to compensate for the bulkiness of the
paintball mask. The narrow brim of a real fedora would have
looked silly. The gun was made using standard modeling
techniques from a water pistol, a piece of vacuum ducting
and sheet styrene.
(Click here to see photos of the gun and description of how it was made.)
It is modeled on the gas gun from the
Sandman Mystery Theater (SMT) series and is the costume's
nod to that series. Plus, I liked the design of the SMT
gun. It was based on real gun technology of the period and
was a reasonable interpretation of what a gas gun might
actually look like if it were made in the late 1930s. The
final factor was the existence of plans for the gun in one
of the early issues of SMT. As a modeler, it's hard to
resist having plans from which to work. Putting the rest of
the costume together was straightforward, though a good deal
of luck was involved in finding a green double breasted suit
that fit me reasonably well, for $20 at a thrift store.
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