BEAUTIFUL DREAMERBEAUTIFUL DREAMER
Real Name: Unrevealed
Identity/Class: Extradimensional / Alternate Reality (Earth-57780) human advanced technology-user
Occupation: Carnival worker at the Happy Brothers' Carnival
Group Membership: None
Affiliations: Happy Brothers' Carnival
Enemies: None
Known Relatives: None
Aliases: None
Base of Operations: Tent at the Happy Brothers' Carnival, which at least occassionally is near New York City, New York, USA
First Appearance: Electric Company Magazine#54 (April/May, 1979)
Powers/Abilities: None apparent beyond a heightened sense of theatricality, but her Dream Chair can force people to have dreams (not the aspirational kind, the sleeping kind).
If she built it her herself, she must be a talented mechanical engineer / neuroscientist... that works at a traveling carnival.
Height: 5'9" (by appoximation)History: (Electric Company Magazine#54) - Peter Parker and Mary Jane attended the Happy Brothers' Carnival, where Mary Jane showed an interest in visiting a yellow tent covered in moons, stars, and planets (each colored either red, orange, or green) with a sign proclaiming "Beautiful Dreamer - She Will Make Your Dreams Come True." Inside, they found Beautiful Dreamer, wearing a magenta V-neck dress and a solid chrome tiara, sitting in her Dream Chair, which was a blue throne with a tiny antenna on top. Beautiful Dreamer promised to make their "fantasy come true", if they would come and sit in her other two chairs, which appeared to be salon-style hair dryer chairs painted the same blue. After Peter and Mary Jane were seated, she lowered the hair dryers/dream helmets onto their heads and flipped a switch on the wall of the tent and wished them pleasant dreams.
(Electric Company Magazine#54 - BTS) - Peter immediately found himself falling through space before landing on a desolate cratered planet, with many other colorful planets in the sky. He was then attacked by a pumpkin bomb thrown by the Green Goblin, who called Peter "Spider-Man." Peter figured since the Green Goblin now knew who he was, he might as well "wear my spider costume to stop that grinning clown!" Time apparently ground to halt for a bit, with Peter having time to take off his civilian clothes one arm at a time, reveal his spider costume beneath, and put on his spider mask, before the same thrown pumpkin bomb exploded near his feet. This also allowed him enough time to "flip safely away" while doing a mid-air somersault. He then used his "hand-dandy webbing" to web the Goblin's neck and left arm, pulling him from his glider. Then he apparently found some rope to tie the Goblin up against a rock.
He was now attacked by the Lizard and the Sandman, who tried to smash Spidey with a giant sand fist while the Lizard just shook his fist in the air. Spidey decided that he couldn't take them both, but could "have one stop the other." He stood between them while Sandman readied a sandstorm, and the Lizard began to whip his tail. Spidey flipped out of the way, causing Sandman to proclaim "Oh No - we're hitting each other!" while the Lizard hissed "I can't stop my tail from smashing you!" They somehow managed to knock each other out. Spider-Man webbed them up and propped them against the same rock as the Green Goblin.
Suddenly Dr. Octopus appeared, saying the other 3 villains were weaklings, and proceeded to squeeze Spidey with his Octopus arms. Spidey webbed up his eyes, telling him that "what you can't see, you can't hold!" and Dr. Octopus began to release his grip.
(Electric Company Magazine#54) - A voice off-panel said "Peter! Wake up! It's me, Mary Jane! You were dreaming!" A groggy and confused Peter woke up in Beautiful Dreamer's tent, where she waved her wand and told Peter it was just a dream she had "cooked up." As they left the tent, Mary Jane revealed that she dreamed that "a knight in shining armor saved me." She asked Peter about his dream, but he replied "It wasn't a dream, Mary Jane. It was more like a nightmare!"
Comments: Created by Marv Wolfman and Sal Buscema.
You probably just glossed over it while reading above, but we need to talk about the switch that operates the dream chairs. It's a completely normal light switch - inset in the wall of a tent that is clearly 100% made of pink fabric. Why on earth would anyone ever install a light switch in a FABRIC tent? Secondly, the light switch is exactly at head height of a pretty tall female (Beautiful Dreamer). Who would then also install this light switch (into fabric!) 5 and a half feet off the ground? Why couldn't her main throne chair have a switch on it to activate the other chairs or something? This light switch might be the most bonkers thing in this story, and that's saying something.
I know it's a dream, and therefore it has license to make even less sense than a typical Spidey Super Story, but time and space were definitely screwy in this story. The pumpkin bomb, about three feet away from a fully clothed Peter, waited 20 seconds for him to change clothes before traveling those last 3 feet to explode. The Green Goblin was also on his glider a few feet behind the bomb charging towards Peter but didn't reach him at all, ever. And then Sandman and the Lizard can't stop their respective sandstorm or tail-whip from hitting each other, despite standing a good 10 feet apart, though in the next panel they're standing only 4 feet apart for some reason. Not to mention how exactly tail-slapping Sandman on the cheek or sprinkling sand on the Lizard is supposed to knock them out in the first place.
I'm not sure I follow Spidey's logic here: "If you can't see something, you can't continue to hold onto it! (Despite the deathgrip you already have on it.)" I'm not really clear how that psychological trick actually worked to make Dr. Octopus let him go.
Mary Jane in Spidey Super Stories is a lot of things, but "progressive" probably isn't one of them. I'm not sure how women in 1979 would feel about 20-something Mary Jane's wonderful dream of being "rescued by a knight in shining armor".
This profile was completed 09/27/2020, but its publication was delayed as it was intended for the Appendix 20th anniversary 's celebratory event.
Profile by caliban
CLARIFICATIONS:
Beautiful Dreamer has no known connections to:
(Electric Company Magazine#54) – Dream versions of the Green Goblin, Sandman, Lizard, and Dr. Octopus. They seemed to have their normal powers and equipment, but you, know, only existed in the dream Peter had forced on him by a hair dryer/dream helmet. I would say that they appear easier to defeat than the "real" versions of these characters, but maybe you haven't read enough Spidey Super Stories to know that's decidely not the case.
Dream Chair (or Chairs?)
(Electric Company Magazine#54) – Beautiful Dreamer's confusing set of chair/chairs that are perhaps linked together in an unrevealed way. The two that look like hair dryers can induce sleeping and dreaming via unspecified means. When she later says "Dream Chair," she implies it's her single throne chair, and not the two Peter and Mary Jane were in. It's unknown if the throne is the Dream Chair and it controls the others, or they're all one big "Dream Chair" in some sense. The purpose of the throne and her wand (pictured above), if anything beyond putting on a show, remains unclear. And I called it an antenna above, but if you told me the thing on her throne was a tiny collectible dolphin sculpture, I wouldn't disagree.
images:
Electric Company Magazine#54, p25, pan5 (main)
Electric Company Magazine#54, p22, pan6 (Light Switch)
Electric Company Magazine#54, p21, pan1 (Dream Villains)
Electric Company Magazine#54, p22, pan5 (Dream Chair(s))
Appearances:
Electric Company Magazine#54 (April/May, 1979) - Marv Wolfman
(writer), Sal Buscema (artist), Ellen Weiss (editor)
First Posted: 09/04/2021
Last updated: 09/01/2021
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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