A trippy little story about out-of-body experiences, the worries of fatherhood and how an unlikely savior winds up protecting dreaming souls from a monster, Deep Sleeper was the second collaboration by The Coffin team of Phil Hester and Mike Huddleston. The Fourth Rail doesn't do a "Top 10" writers feature like Wizard does, or a "Writers to Watch Out For" or anything like that. If we did, Phil Hester would probably be on both those lists for me. Though he's not as prolific as some of the big name writers in the industry, everything he's written has been at the very least good and usually great. With that brief estimate of Hester's skills out of the way, let me say that his work with Huddleston is easily his best work, and that Deep Sleeper is the best collaboration they have had thus far. Which is to say, Deep Sleeper was one of the gems of 2004, and the trade paperback collection is one of the gems of 2005 thus far. It's a terrific mix of vivid imagery, strong characterization and a very intriguing plot, well worth seeking out for anyone who enjoys the slow, moody build of M. Night Shyamalan's films in particular and anyone who enjoys a good mystery in general.
Part of what I love about Deep Sleeper is that it's almost impossible to reduce it to a soundbite and get the concept across. Deep Sleeper explores themes of personal responsibility and goals, but at the same time is expanding the theme into what responsibility we have to the cosmos and the larger nature of reality as well. That it does this by means of extraplanar beings, mixing in elements of a magical shadow war and the "things from beyond" of HP Lovecraft, doesn't make it any harder to relate to, and in fact it adds to the creepy factor. Deep Sleeper isn't a pure horror comic either... there's a core story about faith and self-awareness that seems pretty uplifting, even amongst the spooky "things man was not meant to know" vibe that I'm reading as well. Deep Sleeper is a tale of unimaginable magic but with a lingering sense of horror in the background, and a strong throughline of the balance of responsibility to your family and to the larger world and where you can do the most good. All of these elements come together to create a gripping narrative, a story that is grounded in reality but takes the reader very much on flights of fancy at the same time.
At the same time, Hester and Huddleston avoid the pitfall of many comics with this kind of metaphysical trappings. All too often, a story of this type becomes muddled and hard to read as the creators try to convey that sense of out of body confusion. Hester has no such problems with Deep Sleeper; he drops a lot of information on the reader here, but he lets it play out at a reasonable pace as Cole has encounters with people who know more than he does about the dream tripping he's been doing. These are fascinating characters in their own right, from the laid back but composed Tulsa to the hyperactive and open Perry, who hides a secret of her own and becomes quite the player in the whole thing by the end. Hester not only provides information directly from these characters' dialogue, but he gives us more of a view of this unusual realm through their behavior and mannerisms.
Despite the unreal circumstances he quickly finds himself in, I found myself very able to relate to Cole. Sure, I'm not having bizarre dreams or getting involved in what looks like a war between extraplanar beings, but I do have a wife and daughter and I am always struggling about whether I'm doing enough to support them, or if I'm following foolish dreams to their detriment. Cole's real life, with a likable family and work difficulties, makes for a very grounded place from which Hester can take the story into more fantastic territory. When the fantastic elements begin to encroach, as with the terrifying threats on the lives of Cole's children by someone who has possessed his body, it is chilling. As a former father himself, this villain knows where to make Cole hurt, and most every father has probably had the same nightmarish thoughts about what might happen to their kids if they don't do everything they can to protect them (or sometimes, even if they do).
And yet, for all that there's darkness and horror and fear in Deep Sleeper, Hester doesn't fail to make out Cole Gibson as a hero. He's got super-powers, but he doesn't know how to use them, and that's not what makes him a hero anyway. What makes him a hero is the tender moments he shares with his son, or the willingness he shows to do anything he has to in order to get back to his family, or the sacrifices that he makes in order to save others and yet give his family everything they need as well. Cole doesn't bluster or threaten when he's threatened by basically everyone on all sides of this spirit war, instead he focuses in and does what he needs to get done.
Huddleston is very capable on both sides of the story. He excels at the Lovecraftian creatures of the nightmare realm, but he's just as good at the quiet horror of a man being faced by someone else who has stolen his body and taken his family from him, or at the cosmic events that drive much of Cole's experiences. There's such intensity in the confrontation between Calder and Cole that you don't even realize that they're just talking at each other, because you can feel the battle of wills going on between them. The same is true of the love that comes through in the scene between Michael and Cole, or the anger in the confrontation between Cole and Dar. And for all that Huddleston is great with the expressions of these characters and the realistic element, he's even better with the more outrageous elements, like the look of Dar or the Dervish or Ramman's machine. I also quite like the way he depicts Cole and Perry's ghostly forms, fully realized but clearly separated out from the others. Huddleston's work on the dream world reminds me of stylists like Paul Pope and Scott Morse, but with more realistic elements mixed in for the design of Cole or the normal surroundings that make up the backdrop of the dream realm. He changes his style a little bit for the actual real world sequences, using what looks like zip-a-tone and giving that world a more polished, rigid line that makes it feel more real. The art throughout is just gorgeous, and given how much I loved his work on The Coffin, I think it says a lot that I think his work on Deep Sleeper puts it to shame.
Grounded in a real and relatable character but set loose in a realm of imagination and danger, Deep Sleeper is really one of the best horror comics I've come across in a while. It doesn't have the visceral scares of something like Uzumaki, but it's got a creep factor that's hard to beat, and a sense of imagination and weird adventure that competes with the best stuff by Grant Morrison. With Huddleston providing frighteningly imaginative visuals for these dreamscape scares and slightly different but equally great artwork for Cole's waking life, Deep Sleeper is a masterpiece, better even than the previous collaboration between these two. 10/10
