Deep Sleeper is billed as something of an unofficial sequel to Hester and Huddleston's previous horror comic from Oni Press, The Coffin. There are no common characters or plotlines, but you know... same creators, same genre, you get the idea. The thing is that this is a radical departure from what we got in The Coffin. I loved that book, but it boasted a fairly linear and straightforward plot. The first chapter of Deep Sleeper is far more unusual and surreal. From the opening sequence, it's clear that Deep Sleeper isn't an easy read. It's a challenging one, but there's something familiar about the protagonist's sense of isolation and powerlessness.
Cole doesn't have trouble sleeping... he meets trouble when he's sleeping. The most bizarre dreams unfold as he slumbers, pitting him in a vicious battle with a vague horror. He also soars through the cosmos, far greater a being than he ever thought he could be. When he's awake, though, Cole is just a frustrated freelance writer, doing his best to support his wife and kids. But after writing a particular story one day, he comes face to face with elements from his fiction, and he becomes aware that he's attracted the attention of some unique individuals.
Huddleston's work here is just as dark and eerie as it was in The Coffin, but there seems to be a more fluid, vague tone to it this time around. There's less definition, but don't get me wrong. That approach serves the tone of the plot and script quite well. He really drives home the flowing and ever-changing nature of dreams in the opening scene, and there's a truly disturbing quality to the visuals, especially when Dream Cole both destroys and merges with the mysterious, pleading creature.
There are plot elements here that remind me of Fabian Nicieza's The Blackburne Covenant... a writer comes face to face with elements from his own prose and with the supernatural. But here, the main character is far more sympathetic. The story within the story -- Cole's tale of superhuman monks that refuse to go to war -- is riveting, and Hester establishes a strong sense of classic legend in it, but it also establishes a recurring plot point and motif, and that's the idea of the soul flying free.
Ultimately, that's the core theme that emerges in this first issue -- a yearning to be free. Cole wants to be a writer, but he struggles under the confines of what society has to offer him in the way of work. He's always longed to get out of his small, confining hometown. And while one gets the sense that he loves his wife and kids, there's also that feeling that they're weighing him down, that he doesn't belong.
