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SLEEPER: SEASON TWO #1
(Best of the Week!)
"Faith, Hope and Charity"
Highly Recommended (10/10)
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DC Comics/Wildstorm Productions imprint
Writer: Ed Brubaker
Artist: Sean Phillips
Colors: Carrie Strachan & James Sinclair
Letters: Jared Fletcher
Editor: Scott Dunbier
Price: $2.95 US/$4.50 CAN |
Undercover agent Holden Carver has been having a series of real bad days, and when Sleeper Season Two opens, it's only gotten worse. He seems to have given up on his undercover assignment and gone native, but his best friend got whacked by the feds and his girlfriend has to cheat on him or become sick and possibly die. The only thing that could make things any worse is to find out that he might have an out after all, forcing what had been a crappy but at least certain life into one once again filled with uncertainty. This is the second go-round for Sleeper, but it starts off just as strong as the previous series ended, and Sean Phillips has, impossible as it seems, taken his art up another notch by giving it a more finished look while retaining the same gritty realism that he brought to the book the first time around. If you missed out on it the first time around, here's your chance to get onboard, and if, like me, you've been waiting patiently for it to come back, your patience has been rewarded with a kickass first issue.
The funny thing is, for all that Sleeper had to suffer in sales because it was new and different, it really is like a lot of the popular books on the market right now. It's not hard to make comparisons to the supervillain conspiracies and dark tone of Wanted, to the intelligent examination of the spandex set in Bendis's Daredevil, to the slick fast-paced pop thrills of the Ultimate books. The difference is, where some of those books have flaws ranging from minor to major, Sleeper has yet to really make a misstep. It's dark and yet fun, full of intriguing characterization and dialogue but not light on the action and morally complex instead of just wallowing in evil for its own sake. Brubaker's whole point with Sleeper seems to be to examine the notion of good guys and bad guys, and to show that maybe it's impossible to fully be either one, and that neither life is easy.
Case in point, a lot of smart books like this are light on the action, but Sleeper Season Two opens with a wicked cool chase between a couple of supervillains in a car and a flying superhero. Phillips does a spectacular job with this Bruckheimer-esque opening sequence, with the car going up on two wheels in the midst of rush hour traffic, one of the villains trying to line up a rocket launcher to shoot at the hero chasing them down and then the super powers coming into conflict. This is a book about a spy and criminal, but Brubaker doesn't forget the superpowers, and this confrontation between I.O. agents and agents of Tao is as exciting as any given X-Men fight, maybe moreso because it's a lot more deadly and brutal.
However, while the action sequence is terrific, the meat of the issue for me was the relationship between Holden and Miss Misery, which reached an interesting point in the tail end of the last issue as we learned that she had known for quite some time that he was a double agent and that she was still in love with him. There was a sort of f'ed-up situation going on, but there was also some happiness, even though there were hints that with Misery's unusual powers, that couldn't last. This issue, Brubaker explores that further, and he's taken the Misery-Holden relationship into even more twisted territory. You can't help but feel a little bad for both characters, neither of whom can fully express their emotions thanks to superpowers and their situations. And while that's plenty of story material to explore, the notion of Holden being unable to feel thanks to his powers and his job, Brubaker has another twist as well, a change in Holden's job once again that will put his loyalties to another test and leave the readers wondering just which side he's really on.
So how's the accessibility level? I mean, this is "Season Two," meaning that you might have missed out on something if you didn't get "Season One," right? Well, Brubaker keeps it pretty clear who Holden is and what he's up to, even if a little one-page "Previously on Sleeper" would have been a more natural intro, and I think it's fair to say that anyone could jump right into this issue and get right into the book with no prior knowledge. But honestly, you're so much better off buying both trades, because they are every bit as good as this first issue.
Email Randy Lander comments about this review. |
