Adventure Comics #44 (November 1939) "The Sandman Meets The Face"
Author: Gardner Fox
Artist: Creig Flessel
Cover: Creig Flessel

"The Sandman is an unknown and mysterious figure, warring with criminals - and almost at times, it seems, with the police, themselves has made himself a man to be feared by all the underworld!"

Synopsis: A burglar intrudes upon Wesley Dodds one evening as the playboy relaxes at home. Small world that it is, Dodds recognizes the man.

"Surely - you're Billy Winslow! Don't you remember - Wes Dodds back in Hilltown? We used to swim and play together!"

After this rather awkward reintroduction, the story cuts ahead several hours skipping past Winslow's summation of his life up to this point. Thankfully however, we have Wesley Dodds to recap it.

"So you went bad - and Sue, your sister, killed herself when this man you mention - The Face - got hold of her, 'eh? She didn't squeal on you when you went up the river for five years - and now?"

Now, Winslow seeks revenge against The Face. The policeman entering Dodds' abode however, seeks the man sighted entering the millionaire's home. If Winslow had any reservations against trusting his old pal, they're likely put to rest when Dodds covers for his friend.

"I've told you before your pranks will get you into trouble Billy. It's all right, officer."




Unfortunately, things are far from all right. A panicked Billy Winslow attempts to draw his weapon when he recognizes the policeman as none other than The Face himself - a man he has cautioned Dodds has "got lots of disguises". Unfortunately, the sneak thief's gun snags itself upon his pants pocket, The Face guns him down, and Dodds is shot as he lunges at the killer.




"I'm The Face you fools! To think such as you could trap him!"

Following a week's convalescence inside a hospital room, Wesley Dodds visits the official uniform maker for the police in his guise of The Sandman. Although his presence is detected - and summarily dealt with when our hero discharges the contents of his gas gun upon the unfortunate employee who crosses his path - The Sandman gets the information he's come for via a ledger informing him that one Gus Olssen recently rented a police man's outfit.

Paying a visit to Olssen's ramshackle abode, The Sandman finds that the man is indeed one The Face's hired hands from a note reminding him of an appointment with the criminal mastermind at "the warehouse at 1:30".



Conveniently, Olssen arrives with an associate at just this time to retrieve the message meaning that so long as he stays out of sight, The Sandman simply has to trail them once they leave to discover the location of this warehouse. That's exactly what happens and precisely what he does.

Dispensing with the lookout man when he arrives, the mystery man watches from a skylight window as The Face outlines his plan for his henchman.

"Frowser, when Billy Winslow was killed, he almost discovered my identity. You know me only as "The Face" I intend to stay that way. Yet this Winslow had some interests in an Oklahoma oil well I framed him to get him out of the way. The oil well is hot! Winslow and his sister were worth millions. I haven't been successful in finding any heirs so you go out to Oklahoma and pretend to be a cousin. Get the set up?"

Handing over an envelope to the underling containing his further instructions and documents required to make the insidious scheme succeed supplies too good a cue for The Sandman to resist. Crashing through the skylight, our hero douses Frowser with some gas as The Face takes off running. Figuring that The Face expects him to read the instructions now left in his possession, The Sandman gambles that rather than take the train to Oklahoma to carry out the deception himself, he'll head to the airport. Knowing the route he'll have to take to accomplish this plan, The Sandman is on sight when The Face rides the tracks via a handcar.

Earlier in this tale our defender of the weak and helpless remarked to himself, "If Wesley Dodds takes an interest in The Face it will be too bad for him!"

Those words are backed up tenfold when The Face, pumping furiously away at his handcar atop the railroad trestle carrying over the river, is met head-on by The Sandman as he rams him with his car. The Face falls "toward a cold death" and The Sandman gets in the last word.

"And so ends the threat of The Face! Oh well, it was fun while it lasted!"




Thoughts: I want to touch upon a moment from this tale which I skipped over in my summary - that of Wesley Dodds' actions and train of thought following his discharge from the hospital. He presents his theory that The Face wore a genuine police uniform when he killed Billy Winslow (and shot Dodds himself) to the Police Commissioner directly. Discounting the implied suggestion that one of his own men could have been involved in the shooting (a position which Dodds emphatically agrees with though his declaration of "I tell you it was a policeman who shot me!" of just a moment prior doesn't sound like as ringing an endorsement as his follow-up comments) The Commissioner provides Dodds with the name of his force's uniform supplier. From there, The Sandman takes charge. The fact that this could conceivably implicate Dodds himself isn't a detail Fox leaves unaddressed. After securing Olssen's name from the uniform maker's establishment, The Sandman's playboy alter ego ensures that he's seen at a popular nightclub three sheets to the wind.

"Wes Dodds - drunk! Must have been hitting it up for hours!"

Such is the observation of muck-raking gossip columnist, Rennie McCavoy who prints this little tidbit in his column the following day. Exactly Dodds intentions since it provides a convenient alibi should The Police Commissioner contemplate The Sandman following up Dodds' lead.



As I mentioned in my first review, I always enjoy seeing these little side streets the good guy has to hopscotch down on their way between the more pressing stages of their main plan. I suppose that a lifetime of reading comics has inured me to the dangers bullets which don't directly enter the heart or brain pose since it isn't the gunshot to the chest sustained by Dodds which resonates with me so much as this self-inflicted blow to his reputation. Such attention to the byproducts of the hero's master plan isn't uncommon in very early Golden Age stories such as these - a time predating the period when "everyone is taking their cues from earlier superhero comics" as Cody so astutely noted - and is always appreciated on my part at least. Public intoxication feels like one of those subjects which isn't quite taboo enough to merit an objection from any editor looking for something which might illicit raised eyebrows from any concerned parent, but at the same time, seems just crude enough that in a short little while it'll be a depiction of our hero most writers will know not to take a chance on.

Speaking of which...

That bullet to the chest might not linger in my memory, but I suspect from how The Sandman deals with The Face that he's not letting go of that grudge anytime soon. I've seen Superman hurl torturers through the air like a javelin, Batman shoulder toss bad guys off of rooftops in self-defense, but ramming a villain head-on with your car while shouting, "No mercy to The Face!" at full throttle as he's using an old-timey handcart to make his getaway? Wow! Dodds must have really been stewing in that week's stay in the hospital to resort to this.

And yes, The Face does remain dead after this story as there will be no more appearances hereafter. It's a shame too, since he's a formidable foe what with his skill at mimicry enabling him to go wherever he pleases. Gaining entry into The Sandman's own home as a policeman, gunning down both Dodds and the man he attempts to protect, and then sticking around long enough to scold the pair for daring to try and defy him has all the earmarks of a great beginning for a classic foe (The Joker would later pull a similar stunt in his debut appearance in 1940) - shame that this is it for him.

And it might be the end of Feathers the butler too depending on whether or not his employer decided to sack him for leading a crazed killer into his house. Or Feathers - as Cei-U! noted - might just be good old Humphries making his second appearance in the series. I suppose it's a reflection of Gardner Fox's workload that he forgot that he gave Wesley Dodds' butler a very serviceable and dignified surname in his previous contribution to the run since I can't visualize the writer smacking himself in the forehead and exclaiming, "'Humphries??' What sort of butler name is 'Humphries'?? What was I thinking?? I should have called him 'Feathers'! Now THAT'S a name for a butler!" Or perhaps "Feathers" is just the nickname Dodds applies to Humphries whenever he does something he considers disagreeable such as help a policeman arrest of one of his friends. Could be that it's short for Featherbrain.

So after too very un-Sandmanish chapters in the saga, Fox picks up where he left off with an entry which realizes the full potential of the character. Getting flung from the whirlwind pace of his world the moment he lets his guard down (the bullet to the chest) to leaping back on the merry-go-round and refusing to take any prisoners once he does. Shot in the chest, leaping through skylights, drunkenly carousing late into the evening, and a climax in which he drives his car at full throttle into oncoming traffic and goes over the side with his victim - the lack of a follow-up to this one might very well have been due to doctor's orders that if he wanted to live to see 30, Fox had to ease up on the excitement.

Sandman Mystery Theatre will introduce their own take on The Face some 50 years later and I would argue that the perverse - with every possible definition of that word being considered fair game - and diseased rendering which artist, John Watkiss' supplies him with is well within arm's reach of how Creig Flessel (making his debut as interior penciller for The Sandman with this installment) depicts him here. It's as if Matt Wagner instructed Watkiss to read the original chronicle as quickly as he could before trying to recreate The Face's visage from memory. The results may be a little more pronounced in 1993 but the essentials were all there from the start. The mouth without lips, dead empty slits for eyes, the hollow cheekbones like that of a reptile - I really don't know if this is supposed to be The Face's true appearance (which wouldn't make sense if he's looking to keep his identity a secret) or a disguise (which also wouldn't make sense since I can't imagine any police officer looking like that).



But what else can I say about Flessel's work here? Well, despite seeing The Sandman adorned in his classic green suit - which also premieres here - which might suggest a back to basic look after a couple of installments showcasing Frog-Man Sandman and Sky-Man Sandman, he's beginning to look more like a superhero than mystery man to my eyes here. He doesn't loom over that skylight so much as hunch over it; he doesn't really prowl through the streets like a shadow as he does streak through the alleys like a bolt; and that drop into The Face's hideout seems just a little more clumsy than I'd like. The little 'IDEA!' lightbulb which literally appears above his head when he hits upon the strategy of ramming The Face with his car doesn't feel all that pulpish to me either, but those moments aside, Flessel makes a fine successor to Christman (whose finer lines I happen to still prefer). And in the interest of giving credit where credit's due, he's still turning in covers which grip the reader by the eyeballs with every chance he's given. As Flessel noted about them in The Sandman Archives Vol.1, "[DC] needed somebody to do them. They'd say, 'We need a cover for The Sandman. Do something.' The covers were my ideas, my work, and generally there were no complaints."

Certainly none from me.