Sleepy passed away from a tragic neck injury/suffocation. While trying to apprehend a criminal Sleepy went for his signature move and that's where things went wrong. The coroner wasn't sure if the neck injury did him in or if was being stuck in that gentleman's rear end for 2 hours, but either way he died doing what he loved - plowing head first into crime.
I’d really like Sony to release Morbius back to the MCU. I mean we know we have Blade and other supernatural stuff coming. And there’s been references to vampires in She-Hulk.
I like to imagine that Sleepy got trapped in a sea captain's pipe and keeps getting accidentally summoned, only to discover that there is no crime and he's still on a ship. Feeling awkward, the captain just gives him odd jobs to do.
Honestly I think that would be a really fun change up for Nightmare as a character. Where he's just cursed, but unlike Ghost Rider it doesn't give him these amazing powers, it just makes him hard to kill in the dark.
I remember seeing these two in the “Book of Regrettable Superheroes” and then doodling a redesign of them and leaving it in the book. I definitely think these two have potential, it’s always good to look for the promise in ideas that might not have been executed too well.
I put public domain superheroes in my share universe. Just to fill the reality with characters other than my creations and not have to make randoms. Nightmare is definitely in it (reinvented, tho).
@@Gatorade69 yeah, I get where you both are coming from and I think what you guys are hitting on is that either extreme doesn't work. These days, you can't claim either happens. There's no creativity, either they are terrified at potentially offending someone somewhere so they go for as blend as possible, or rather than create a new character they adapt an existing one and make whatever changes they want that should have been in their own character. As far as continuity goes, DC has rebooted so many times at this point it's ridiculous, with a dark crisis now occurring. And Marvel does everything in five issue arcs, dropping things at the drop of a hat and hiring seemingly at random. The era of something like a Chris Claremont managing an entire brand for a decade, of a comic company allowing a low seller to continue and gradually build its audience, and of hiring people who have a deep knowledge of their existing lore is a thing of the past. Grant Morrison actually sort of took a jab at that in his recent Green Lantern run. Towards the end of the run, how Jordan encounters golden beings of energy that treat all of the DC Universe as their plaything, discarding things when it doesn't interest them and behaving horribly towards the product. It's hard to not see a parallel there
@@cthulhupthagn5771 Well said. And I I don't hate the golden age, I just think sometimes It's a bit too silly, but that's also part of it's fun and I can see why people enjoy it.
@@cthulhupthagn5771 marvel has had loads of creative output recently. Krakoa massively changed the X Men. Al Ewing completely redefined Hulk. for continuity minded people, MacKay's Moon Knight has loads of deep pulls. new writers are being given chances through the voices anthologies and the infinite comics. it's just not accurate to say there's no creativity or continuity.
@@Gatorade69 The Silver Age was too ridiculous for me at least. At least with Batman. It's not terrible but it's basically Brave and the Bold and Adam West show
If Nightmare had been a supernatural hero without a sidekick and in the original skeleton costume he would have been a home run. Especially if he had been in the mold of The Spectre or Doctor Fate 💀✨
Honestly, I'd go the inverse and have him be a regular guy, have Sleepy be the one with a power, something like the aforementioned Sleepwalker, but maybe let it be kind of evil and Nightmare is the one that keeps it under control. Basically Nightmare is a badass normal that fights crime and uses it to keep his sidekick's more bloody tendencies in check.
2 things struck me as I watched this. First his change from cool costume to generic reminds me when the Golden Age Sandman went from his trench coat and gas mask to his plain purple and yellow costume. Second everytime you mentioned Sleepy, all I could think of was Winky Man from those old Howard the Duck comics. Fun stuff!
There's a character in manga called Skullman (sort like a Punisher type of anti-hero avenger) , but also has a similar costume motif. Since it was the inspiration for the character Kamen Rider, there's another character featured in Street Fighter EX games calles "Skullomania" which is a parody of both Skullman and Kamen rider and it's very similar looking to "Nightmare" , he actually does some wrestling moves.
This is my favorite part about your channel you get the most obscure funny stuff I would've never known about nightmare and sleepy without you thanks Chris
I was already familiar with these as they're featured in the rather good reference book The League of Regrettable Superheroes, alongside other classic characters like Doctor Hormone (A scientist with a wide range of body altering hormone pills), the Puppeteer (Who was a superman knockoff who inexplicably named his superhero identity after his day job), and Madam Fatal (A man who dressed up as an old lady to fight crime)
The Golden Age comics are to modern comics what the 50s monster movies were to modern horror films. Goofy pulp with some useful tropes, and scattered genuine reflections of narrative innovation. Also: Bob White was the Low Ki of wrestling in the Golden Age? Awesome👌
@@eddiejoewalt7746 modern as in the "modern age" of comics. American comics history is divided up into different eras called "ages" with the 40's being called the "golden age" and the past 20 years or so the "modern age."
I'm thinking of Skullomania as a character who would wear something similar to Mr Nightmare, only in a potential manga where we'd get to see all his zanny fighting moves.
Slowly making my way up to the more modern episodes. Still working on the episodes from 3 years ago. But I saw this and just had to watch it now and make a few comments/suggestions. That glow in the dark costume was a really good idea. I agree that it's too bad that they lost it. Had just finished the Tigerman episode you did of Atlas/Seaboard and you mentioned how weird it was that the guy would inject tiger serum into himself to see what would happen. You need to look over the origin of the Whizzer from Timely Comics to compare stories. He is a young man bitten by a cobra and a mongoose rushes out and fights and kills the cobra but is bit and is quickly dying. Young man's dad, a scientist, need some anti-cobra venom to save his son and decides the blood of the dying mongoose will do, somehow thinking that mongooses have immunity to cobra venom. So he injects the blood into his son who gets superspeed as a result. Also take a look from Clue Comics, Zippo, who uses an invention of gears and pistons to give himself superspeed. Actually, doing a comparison of the various superspeedsters of the Golden Age and how they get their powers might be a fun episode in and of itself.
Always really appreciate being exposed to stuff I would’ve never discovered otherwise - this is a great diamond in the rough you’ve found. Thanks Chris!
"Nightmare and Sleepy?" Sounds like the title of an obscure [adult swim] show 🤣🤣 Also, at 4:48 - he uses his young friend to be his manager so unscrupulous promoters don't take advantage of them? What logic is that? If they're unscrupulous and are likely to try to rip someone off, wouldn't they see a kid as easy prey? They wouldn't say, "Oh man, I was gonna rip these guys off, but I can't do that to a kid..." 🤣🤣 makes no sense
Great review and you're right, Chris. Nightmare and Sleepy was a good idea that just wasn't executed properly. Maybe if they had better and more consistent writers it would have lasted longer than it did. BTW, there was a pro wrestler that wore a shirt and tie when he wrestled: the evil accountant Irwin R. Shyster! Get it? I.R.S.? (His finishing move? The Write-Off!)
I agree. This idea is way too good for this book, lol. Also, maybe Sleepy's name might be better if it was insomnia? Either that or change the name of Bob White's hero to Nightterror with Nightmare being Sleepy's name.
In the Alan Moore origin, you were supposed to pick up that he was referencing other muck monsters that appeared in the comics before Swampy, like the Heap (Hillman, 1942). Wikipedia gives his origin: The original Heap was formerly Baron Eric von Emmelman (his last name also sometimes spelled Emmelmann), a World War I German flying ace who was shot down in 1918 over a Polish swamp. Clinging to the smallest shred of life through sheer force of will (and, as it was later revealed, with the mystic help of the goddess Ceres, later to be referred to more generically in the series as Mother Nature), through the decades his body decayed and intermingled with the vegetation around him, becoming one with the marshland itself until at last a shaggy, shambling half-world creature neither animal nor man arose from the muck during the early years of World War II, a creature which would become known far and wide as The Heap. Resembling a huge humanoid haystack whose most visible facial feature was a dangling root-like snout, the mute monstrosity first battled the lupine-cowled Blackhawk-style Allied ace SkyWolf before turning against its fellow Germans who were now fanatical followers of the evil Nazi cause. Then it took to wandering the globe, helping in its semi-mindless and often misunderstood way those in need and battling those monsters more malevolent than itself. Heap was probably based on Theodore Sturgeon's swamp creature "It," a short story published in 1940 (and later adapted by Marvel Comics). Solomon Grundy has a similar origin, but without the element of fire involved.
The unseen dialogue Nightmare "You'll be know as....SLEEPY!" Sleepy "Aw gee whiz I think maybe 'Reaper' would be far more intimidating to crimin...." Nightmare "Very good! Sleepy it is!"
Oh hey I own this very brief run via Gwandanaland comics. They collect and reprint golden age comics, mostly forgotten stuff except for the Dan Garrett Blue Beetle, early Captain Marvel (Shazam), and the Charlton heroes.
someone needs to revive nightmare, sans sleepy for a serious take, with sleepy for a comedic take. That costume design is iconic and I love the idea of him being a wrestler who moonlights as a vigilante while travelling the country for various matches. Extra points if he's reimagined as a Mexican luchador.
That intro was hilarious as always Chris 😂 they are seriously one of my favorite parts of your videos, as well as the informative comic knowledge of course!
I just want to say I appreciate that this channel covers golden age comic hero shenanigans even if it’s not as popular as newer stuff it’s fun to get an idea of how older stories worked or didn’t in some cases
Man, Nightmare looked so cool and it had a ton of potential! having a wrestling superhero could've been so cool! The writers did him dirty by changing his costume and just letting him slowly die out into obscurity, if i could i would buy him and get him back into shelves with some Batman-esque stories but with more suplexes
Now I'm wondering if Skulldigger and Skeleton Boy is a nod to this comic. I know the mini-series is a homage to DKR and Frank Miller, but the skelton costume is sort of similar and the Black Hammer universe is all about mining old obscure golden/silver age comics and turning them on their heads.
This character is public domain, anyone can revive him if they like. Idea: Nightmare is a wrestling persona of Bob White, until he decides to start fighting crime - first as a wrestling gimmick, but then it gets serious. Cigar could be a special signal that Nosey uses to show Nightmare that he needs to talk to him - at first by literally taking a smoke break, later changed to a cigar being some kind of high-tech signal device.
My idea for this character (which is also Public Domain) is: You know how Batman lost his parents very young and then devoted his to learning to scare and beat up criminals for when he grew up? Well what if he just hired a guy for the scaring part, and /he/ was the one who did the fighting? That way you can maintain the gimmick that the kid is the manager while also publicly being "the sidekick". And of course Bob is helping partly because it's a job but also partly to keep the kid from going down a really dark path. I also think having a chess supervillain is pretty rad.
The mirror on the face guy broke me. Because not only is this another case of "Why would we have anything interesting actually going on ?", but how are these people so dumbt that they look into a mirror AND THINK SOMEONE STOLE THEIR FACE.
Dan Barry’s brother Seymour (Sy) had a very long tenure drawing The Phantom newspaper strip. And the boring name of Bob White also belonged to an Archie Comics artist who had a lengthy run on the Life With Archie comic in the 60s.
honestly, the Nosey Mcginnis stuff kinda has potential too. Like, I can imagine a lot of situations where Nosey is about to face some gangsters and his last request is to smoke a cigar. OR have him have to navigate a "No smoking" area. Maybe it's raining, and it accidentally puts the cigar out. Perhaps he needs nightmare twice, so he cuts the cigar in half, but that limits the amount of time nightmare can be out. Maybe the different flavor profiles give nightmare different powers. In fact, if you got a really talented artist behind this, you could get some cool smoke effects in the art. Obviously, you would have to re-work the origins and re-name the characters, but it does have potential.
I am 100% behind the idea of bringing Nightmare and Sleepy back in the modern day SIMPLY because I am enraptured by the idea of what a modern artist could do with Nightmare's costume.
They need to revive Nightmare and Sleepy for the modern Comic Industry. Make it darker! Oh! like what Alan Moore did to MarvelMan. That would be awesome ♡!
Darker, maybe. I kind of like the juxtoposition of the gothic costumes, with them being very jovial and lighthearted. Playing baseball with the gear they pick up off of the KOed baseball thugs is great, for example.
You mentioned in passing that you would like the idea of a wrestler turned crime fighter in a luchador mask. Check out the Mexican El Santo and Blue Demon movies of the 60s and 70s. They featured real life masked wrestlers fighting criminals and supernatural beings. The two heroes appeared in separate movies as well as several in which they teamed up to fight Aztec mummies, Dracula, Dr. Frankenstein, zombies and more.
If you love the idea of an actual famous Professional Wrestler fighting crime and defeating evil monsters, definitely check out the extensive library of El Santo movies from the 60's and 70's.
Hey! Nightmare and sleepy showed up in krent able and shake kanes semi-recent anthology from image Kane and Able! They were in a short called “creep zone” I had no idea they were actual golden age characters!
