Today's hero of choice is The Sandman! I'm talking about the Simon/Kirby version from the 1940s. Yellow tights with purple accouterments. It was the first comic book character called Sandman that I encountered and, despite years of seeing other characters using the name, I still always think back to this one when I hear the name.The Sandman's costume here is probably the simplest of all the Sandman costumes in terms of design. Yellow tights. Purple gloves, boots, cowl and shorts. Brown belt with a sidearm attached. No chest logo, no cape, extra headgear. It's about as bear-bones as you can get visually.
So what attracted me to the character?
Well, he did have a few things working for him. First, the cowl bit came down well over his shoulders. That was kind of cool and original, especially in lieu of a chest emblem. Second, he was a hero that made no effort to hide the fact that he carried a gun. Although, I would later encounter all sorts of gun-toting heroes, he was the first (and for a long time, only) one I saw who did so. Third, it's a pretty decent color combination (one which I would later learn to be my high school colors). Indeed, Sandman's costume was much better than his sidekick's precisely because the red/yellow combination was decidedly inferior.
Add in the fact that it was expertly drawn by Mr. Jack Kirby, and I was sold with a single, poorly reprinted story in the back of one of DC's giant-size issues from the 1970s. I've since picked up many of his adventures in microfiche format (which was before DC's nice Archive editions).
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