Wesley Dodds

Wealthy socialite and brilliant chemist Wesley Dodds donned a gas mask and business suit to become the Sandman, using a homemade sleeping-gas gun and wirepoon to put criminals to sleep. Later lore revealed his compulsive crime-fighting was driven by cryptic prophetic nightmares he couldn't ignore.

Few characters carry the weight of comics history quite like Wesley Dodds, who stepped onto the page in 1939's New York World's Fair Comics — one of the most evocative debut venues imaginable — brought to life by Sheldon Moldoff at the very dawn of the Golden Age. A DC stalwart whose presence has echoed across an astonishing 87 years of publication, Wesley has graced the pages of Adventure Comics, All-Star Squadron, and Justice League of America, sharing adventures alongside titans like Superman, Hawkman, and The Flash. With 17 key issues to his name across 139 catalog appearances, he's the kind of foundational figure that serious collectors keep circling back to — a living thread connecting comics' earliest heroic age to the present day.