Aug 13, 2025
I love season 2, but what about Martin Tenbones and Gault? Are they even alive?
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I love season 2, but what about Martin Tenbones and Gault? Are they even alive?
Sandman Reread & Rewatch
Season of Mists Chapter 4 through Epilogue (Issues #25 to #28), Season 2.3 (“More Devils Than Vast Hell Can Hold”)
A Game of You Chapter 1 through 4 (#Issues 32 to #35)
It’s been absolute ages since I posted a recap of our Community reread/rewatch, for both private reasons but also the simple fact that we stopped hosting both because it wasn’t sustainable.
Nevertheless, I still want to post related meta etc on my own blog and roughly stick with the publishing order, so I’m going to post these for future reference and will keep on tagging with #sandman comics reread and #sandman rewatch respectively. You can find all previous posts via these tags, but there’s a lot of related info in my pinned post (which also contains links to these tags).
Without further ado, here comes the recap (sorry it’s so much in one go, but I don’t have the bandwidth to break it down further right now):
Rewatch
S2.3
About Politics and Performance in “More Devils Than Vast Hell Can Hold”
What Season of Mists Can Teach Us About Hope In a World Caught Between Cancel Culture and Toxic Positivity
New still of Barbie (played by Lily Travers) and Martin Tenbones (voiced by Lenny Henry) in The Sandman
The Sandman #32: Slaughter on Fifth Avenue (A Game of You Chapter 1)
We are discussing the first issue of A Game of You in the The Sandman Book Club community this week! Here is my discussion prompt post and plot summary. It is very late. Please come join us!
Plot Summary & Some Thoughts
The drama, intrigue, excitement, and suspense of Season of Mists have concluded, and we are on to a whole new arc! (If you're going by the trade paperbacks that is- if you're going in Issue order you'd have a few standalone issues before A Game of You starts up. But if you're going by the trade paperbacks you're going right from one arc to another.)
We begin (Tom Sturridge voice) in a place called The Land, with a bunch of unseen characters discussing the great danger they are in and how their Princess has abandoned them. We seem to be in a traditional fairy tale: there is great danger in The Land, only the Princess can save them, Martin Tenbones is going to go on a hero's journey to find the missing Princess with the magical Porpentine. If you're reading this for the first time spoiler-free and you have an incredible recall for names, you might recognize a bunch of these named characters and objects from Barbie's dreams back in Book 2, The Doll's House.
Speaking of Barbie.
We switch to the Waking World, to NYC, and here she is.
Her close friend and next door neighbor Wanda has come over to suggest that they go shopping.
Before they can go:
Barbie reveals she no longer dreams
Barbie has to do her makeup. She's a chessboard today.
Wanda makes Barbie coffee, and visits the rest of the building to borrow some cream, giving us a chance to meet the neighbors. There's a young woman named Thessaly who seems very sweet (👀); a couple named Hazel and Foxglove who clearly have a friendly relationship with both Wanda and Barbie; and a man named George who seems creepy (👀). Wanda also gets the cream from Hazel and Foxglove and has to carry it down the stairs in a cute frog mug, to her great embarrassment.
After this, we switch to the Dreaming! In case you were thinking: "I seem to have picked up the wrong comic, I don't know who any of these people are, I thought I was reading The Sandman?" Dream and Matthew both show up as if to say: "don't worry, you are reading The Sandman, the events you've read about so far actually are connected to the Dreaming."
Dream and Matthew discuss how a skerry, a distant island of the Dreaming, is dying.
a dramatic pronouncement, and also he is wearing nothing under those robes is he
This is Dream's only appearance in AGoY ch 1, and he is completely absent from the next 2 issues. After this, we don't see him again until AGoY ch 4.
We return to the Waking and to NYC. Barbie and Wanda are on the subway and they meet a woman asking for spare change- the woman is also scared of dogs and becomes terrified after seeing someone's pet dog on the subway.
Unfortunately for her she then gets off the subway and runs up the stairs to the street- only to bump directly into Martin Tenbones.
Barbie and Wanda go to breakfast and talk about some stuff in more detail, including Barbie's lack of dreaming. Barbie mentions how she used to have incredibly rich, detailed dreams that continued every night- then she mentions a weird night where everything kind of fell apart (we, the reader, know this is the Dream Vortex, but Barbie doesn't)- and after that her relationship with Ken quickly deteriorated and she moved to NYC. (Her landlord in NYC, Scarlett, is an old friend of Hal's.)
The references to Ken, Hal, Barbie's old vivid dreams, and a bad night "two years ago" all help to clue the reader in to the fact that this is indeed the same Barbie from The Doll's House. Barbie also mentions that she can barely remember the details of her old dreams, but she knows The Land was in danger, and that she had a "big-dog thing" that was her best friend. She can't remember his name, but she thinks it was something like Mister Boney. This conversation also confirms that Wanda is a trans woman (and that the name she was given at birth was Alvin).
Up until this point, we've been following two fairly different types of stories. In his story, Martin Tenbones is a fairy tale character from a mystical Land that is in great danger, going on a hero's quest to rescue the missing Princess who will save them and defeat the evil Cuckoo once and for all. And in her story, Barbie is just a regular human woman spending a morning in NYC.
These two stories now collide in a horrific way, as Martin Tenbones appears on the streets of New York City, narrating his quest to himself as if he is a brave storybook character off to rescue the Princess- and promptly gets gunned down by the NYPD, giving us the titular Slaughter on Fifth Avenue.
However, this violent combining of two different worlds (Dreaming vs Waking; fantasy vs reality; storybook heroes vs cops who shoot first and ask questions later never) jogs Barbie's memory, to the point that she remembers Martin Tenbones and accepts the Porpentine from him. (And Martin Tenbones's dramatic, emotional, heroic death is also interrupted by the cops telling Barbie, "Out of the way, bimbo" - they are clearly in a completely different story.)
Barbie and Wanda discuss gender, identity, and the stories our parents/families/histories try to write for us. Barbie remembers Martin Tenbones.
Martin Tenbones's tragic death. Martin Tenbones gives Barbie the Porpentine and tells her she has to destroy The Cuckoo. Barbie's tears wash off her chessboard makeup.
Back in The Land, the other characters (we see them for the first time) discuss how they have felt Martin Tenbones die and how they are all doomed.
Back in the Waking, Barbie is beside herself, and Wanda helps her home and tells her to get some rest and to bang on the wall if she needs anything (Barbie says she wants to be alone).
But the walls between Dream and Reality have already started to crumble and can't be put back up: Barbie has the Porpentine, and also sees a bunch of mysterious black birds. One of which... flies over to Creepy George, who promptly consumes it and reveals himself to be one of the Children of the Cuckoo. To be continued!
Discussion Prompts
Whew! I just absolutely love A Game of You, while also completely understanding people's criticisms about some aspects of it. And it certainly starts with a bang.
Dream: How do you feel about Dream's absence? Does it make the story less accessible to you, or harder to get into? Do you wish he was in it more? Do you find the transition from Season of Mists to A Game of You jarring? Or do you find the huge variety in story type to be one of The Sandman's strengths?
Barbie: How long did it take you to recognize Barbie from The Doll's House?
Barbie and Wanda: What do you think about their friendship? What does this issue reveal about their closeness; their different approaches to various aspects of life; their support for one another? (SPOILER ALERT: Every time I re-read AGoY I am absolutely shocked that this is the only issue that they spend together when both are alive and awake. Their friendship seems so genuine and lived-in to me, I always feel like we have more time with them together than we actually do!)
Art: Do you have a favorite panel? Do you have a least-favorite panel?
Clothing, hair, makeup: What do you think the various characters are trying to portray with their styling choices? What do you think Barbie is intending to portray with her chessboard face?
Representation: This issue includes several examples of representations of diverse identities, especially along lines of sexuality and gender identity. How well did these various representations work, or not work, for you? This issue was first published in 1991. How much does that change, or not change, things? (I personally have seen several people say that Wanda is the first example of a trans woman they ever encountered (in fiction, or in real life) when they were reading the comics for the first time in the 90's. And I think this is one of the reasons why Wanda is so iconic, and so beloved, even if certain aspects of her story are maybe not great or have maybe aged poorly.)
Themes: What do you think this issue is trying to say about borders, or boundaries: between public and private, between real and fictional, between the Dreaming and the Waking, between stories we tell other people and stories other people tell about us and stories we tell ourselves? How well do you think it succeeds, or doesn't succeed? (As I said in the other post: I personally LOVE AGOY- but when I look at the entire storyline as a whole, I'm not sure I'm entirely clear on what it's trying to say? Or maybe I come away with different messages each time, and I'm not entirely clear on how many of them are intentional or unintentional?)
Anything else you would like to bring up.
I am very excited to hear everyone's thoughts!
‘Sky Reflections’, Osaka by Martin Tenbones
Fan art of Barbie and Martin Tenbones, from Netflix's The Sandman S1. For @tryan-a-bex
The Empress. Art by Shannon Hochman, from the Sandman Tarot Deck.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Sandman (TV 2022), The Sandman (Comics) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Rose Walker/Barbie (The Sandman), Chantal/Zelda (The Sandman), Jed Walker & Rose Walker, Lucien | Lucienne & Rose Walker, Barbie (The Sandman) & Martin Tenbones, Fiddler's Green | Gilbert & Rose Walker Characters: Rose Walker, Barbie (The Sandman), Chantal (The Sandman), Zelda (The Sandman), Lucien | Lucienne (The Sandman), Fiddler's Green | Gilbert, Jed Walker, Martin Tenbones, Nuala (The Sandman), Matthew the Raven Additional Tags: First Kiss, Writer's Block, Dreams, Self-Discovery, Post-Divorce, Inspiration, Gardens & Gardening, Library of the Dreaming (The Sandman), The Dreaming Realm (The Sandman), Name Changes Summary:
“Rose! Look who came back!” At Chantal’s cheerful greeting the teal-haired woman in a leather jacket and cuffed jeans at the kitchen island turned around to face Rose. “Rose!” she called, reaching out with a huge smile. “Barbie? Is that you?” Rose stepped forward into a big hug, marvelling at the changes in her friend’s appearance. “It is me! Do you like my haircut?” She ran her hand through her short, asymmetrical undercut as Rose catalogued the pink, purple and blue pin on her jacket and the simple teal blouse which was unbuttoned to reveal a white camisole underneath. “You look amazing! How are you doing? Why are you here? I mean, we’re so happy to see you! But why are you here?”