Adventure Comics #42
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeAdventure Comics #42 is a pivotal early chapter in the saga of Wesley Dodds, the Golden Age Sandman — one of DC's first costumed mystery men, who predated even Batman on newsstands. The issue is narratively significant because it is the first story to establish that Dodds has confidants fully aware of his secret identity, and goes a step further by having two of those civilian allies — Dr. Clyde Dunlap and 'Happy' O'Shea — actually don the Sandman's gas masks and operate as surrogate Sandmen alongside him, a remarkable storytelling device for 1939. It also delivers the first in-story origin detail for Dodds, revealing his background as a U.S. Navy aviator — biographical texture that, tellingly, subsequent issues quietly abandoned. As part of the ongoing Adventure Comics anthology, it continued embedding Sandman within the same pages as Jerry Siegel's Federal Men and other pioneering Golden Age features, reflecting how DC's early editors bundled diverse genre experiment into a single package.
In "The Three Sandmen," a 1939 Adventure Comics issue, Wes teams up with two former comrades to investigate a string of mysterious killings targeting their old unit—each death linked to a shadowy figure named Teeter Sneed, who now threatens more lives. Written, drawn, and inked by Larry Dean, this early mystery blends wartime camaraderie with creeping dread, while Creig Flessel’s striking cover captures the story’s tense, noir-tinged atmosphere.
In "The Three Sandmen," Wes teams up with two of his former service comrades to uncover the truth behind a string of mysterious killings targeting their old friends—each linked to the enigmatic Teeter Sneed, whose shadowy threats now loom over them all. With loyalty tested and danger closing in, the trio must piece together a trail that leads deep into the past they thought they'd left behind.
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The Sandman feature in this issue was written and drawn by Bert Christman, who published his work under the house pseudonym 'Larry Dean.' Christman co-created Wesley Dodds alongside writer Gardner Fox just two issues earlier in Adventure Comics #40 (July 1939), with scripts credited to the same 'Larry Dean' pen name throughout his brief run. By the time this issue appeared, Christman was already serving in the U.S. Navy's Neutrality Patrol, contributing comic work alongside active military duties — a dual life that eerily mirrored his fictional aviator hero. The cover was painted by Creig Flessel, who regularly provided covers for the Adventure Comics Sandman era and whose association with the character was so strong that he was sometimes (incorrectly) credited as co-creator. Editor Vincent Sullivan oversaw the anthology at this stage.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date: September 1939; publication date per GoCollect: September 10, 1939; published by DC Comics (then Detective Comics, Inc.); cover price 10 cents; 68 pages.
- The Sandman story is titled 'The Three Sandmen'; it is the second Sandman cover appearance (Key Collector Comics designation), with cover art by Creig Flessel.
- Interior Sandman story written and drawn by Bert Christman, credited in the issue under the pseudonym 'Larry Dean' — the same pen name used for the character's debut issues.
- First appearances of Dr. Clyde 'Clipper' Dunlap and 'Happy' O'Shea, two of Wesley Dodds's former U.S. Navy comrades who form a temporary trio called 'The Three Sandmen,' each wearing Sandman gas masks.
- This issue provides the first in-story origin detail for Wesley Dodds: the narrative establishes he served as a U.S. Navy aviator approximately six years before the story's 1939 setting — a biographical fact not referenced in any subsequent Golden Age issue.
- The issue also features a Federal Men installment starring Steve Carson, an FBI agent, who reports to his superior called 'The Chief' at Federal Headquarters — a recurring cast of the anthology's long-running G-man strip.
- The Sandman story from this issue was later reprinted in The Golden Age Sandman Archives Vol. 1 (DC Archive Editions, 2004), a hardcover collection covering Adventure Comics #40–59 and the two New York World's Fair Comics issues.
- Writer-artist Bert Christman left comics shortly after this period to join the American Volunteer Group (the 'Flying Tigers') fighting for China against Japan; he was killed in action on January 23, 1942, making his few Sandman issues a small but historically poignant body of work.
Cast · 3 characters
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Reprints
Reprinted in The Golden Age of Comic Books #[nn] (1977), Comics the Golden Age #3 (1984), Golden Age Sandman Archives #1 (2004)
Key issues in Adventure Comics
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