Wesley Dodds: The Sandman is a six-issue miniseries by Robert Venditti and Riley Rossmo, published by DC Comics as part of their Dawn of DC initiative.
In the 1940s, Wesley Dodds tries to use the considerable fortune left to him by his father to fight crime in the guise of the Sandman, using a specially designed sleeping gas to put criminals to sleep. However, before he developed that gas, he accidentally invented a number of more harmful gases, and after a fire damages his home, he discovers that a new villain, the Fog, has stolen his compounds and is using them for evil.
Wesley Dodds: The Sandman contains examples of:
- Awesome, but Impractical: In the first issue, Dodds tries to sell his sleeping gas to the United States Army, figuring that they'd pay good money for a weapon that would cause fewer casualties on all sides. The Colonel flatly turns him down, pointing out that the logistics of detaining and transporting an entire battlefield's worth of enemy soldiers would be beyond what the army is willing to expend, and that it's so much easier to just kill the enemy.
- Evil Cripple: The theft of the journals was orchestrated by Colonel Breckenridge, who lost an arm under unrevealed circumstances.
- Generational Trauma: Wesley Dodds' famous nightmares and obsession with the combat applications of various gases began when his father came home from World War I. Edward Dodds had fought in the war and developed severe PTSD after seeing his fellow soldiers die from exposure from mustard gas, and his stories about witnessing these horrors gave young Wesley nightmares, which he tried to conquer by learning everything he could about gases so that he'd know exactly what they do to the human body.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Wesley's father Edward came back from World War I with a bad case of what we now call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, a consequence of seeing his fellow soldiers die gruesome deaths from exposure to mustard gas. Edward vented his fears onto young Wesley, who tried to conquer his own fear of gases by studying them to find a gas that could incapacitate people without harming or killing them.
- Smokescreen Crime: The fire at Wesley's estate was a cover for the theft of his journals.
- Unnecessarily Cruel Rejection: After Dodds ingests a faceful of his own sleeping gas, he has nightmares in which he's forced to confront everyone he's ever hurt. Among his past victims was a young woman he met at university who asked him out on a date. Instead, he mocked her in front of his peers in order seem more impressive.
