I finally finished this series after reading the first compendium back in 2023. Sandman Mystery Theater, by Wagner, Seagle and Davis ran for 70 issues, and this compendium collects the second half, plus some short stories from 2 Vertigo specials. In my opinion, this compendium should also have included the Sandman Midnight Theater one-shot, given that its events are pretty vital to the lives of the main characters, but since it was plotted by Neil Gaiman, I can't say I don't understand why they chose to omit it.
SMT deals mainly with the ordinary lives of its two protagonists, Wesley Dodds and Dian Belmont, as they navigate 1939 New York with political and social tensions rising and war on the horizon. This focus on everyday happenings helps set the series apart from other superhero stories, in fact, I would call it a noir comic rather than a superhero comic, and this also helps the more bombastic moments of crime and action stand out.
The series is also, weirdly and almost imperceptibly, a romance story. The relationship between Dian and Wesley takes a very long time to develop, but its texture becomes that much richer because the authors didn't rush anything (except maybe the ending of the series, because it was abruptly cancelled). We see these two lovers go through the highs and lows of a relationship, with each arc adding another block or etching to the edifice of their love. This aspect was probably my favorite thing fron the comic, because it felt like one of the most real and tangible love stories I've ever seen depicted.
Moving on to the subject of art, Guy Davis is the artist for the bulk of the series (with the exception of a few arcs), and he's work feels very idiosyncratic. There are no clean lines nor defined shapes, every figure is scratchy and bulky, occupying space as they would in the real world. And this is the greatest strength of the art, both people and places are there in the way you expect them to be, and if you're reading through the series at a brisk pace, you might not even notice it, but the level of enviroment design present in these pages is staggering. My only complaint is that a lot of the characters have extrenely similar faces, which sometimes makes it difficult to tell them apart. I would also be remiss not to mention that Paul Rivoche illustrated an 8 page story that I would almost say is enough on its own to justify buying this book, considering how rare and excellent his work is, but luckily the rest of the compendium more than justifies this purchase.
Now, I want to be clear, I really liked this book, but I did think there were a few minor problems. Firstly, the endings of the arcs usually felt incomplete, since the final pages of each story ran a protracted confrontation with the current villain, offering very little closure for the secondary characters introduced in each arc and for some of the themes that were explored. The second issue I had with this book was the lettering, by which I mean that the dialogue balloons and captions were placed awkwardly and in several instances I read the text out of order because of this. This also exacerbated another minor flaw, that being that the narrative captions were somewhat hard to follow, since they talked about some pretty complex ideas but the reader has to jump from the captions to the action in the panels, which felt a bit clumsy.
These are all not huge problems, and in the end I greatly enjoyed my time reading SMT, and I'd go as far as to say it's a great comic. The deft worldbuilding, fantastic and natural character developement and engaging mysteries make this an easy book to recommend (unless you have problems with gore and violence, since some of the crimes can get pretty grisly). It saddens me that the creative team didn't get to complete the final arc of the comic, but I'm happy it exists as it is and the final issue does a good job of concluding things, even if it was obviously not the intended ending.
