A few years back, this creative team gave us the horror story The Coffin, about a scientist who trapped his soul in a machine of his own creation after death. Deep Sleeper is their next collaboration, and it starts off every bit as strong as The Coffin did. The story introduces us to a writer whose dreams haunt him, and whose waking life is good but on the verge of slipping away, and then provide him with a greater destiny and a step into a larger story. 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.
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. However, so far at least, 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, a sense that Cole Gibson shouldn't be messing around with these forces, and Hester manages some really creepy, spooky moments here, not to mention one hell of a cliffhanger.
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. I buy into Cole's world, and that makes the revelations about the mystical elements of the story more powerful and fantastic, not less, because there's a reality to contrast them against.
What I love about Deep Sleeper is that it's almost impossible to reduce it to a soundbite and get the concept across. There are a lot of things going on in these first two issues. A struggling writer with a wife and daughter hoping for his big break. A self help guru who appears to be a lot more than he appears. A pair of strangers who have powers and destinies of their own. Even a monastery full of powerful monks and their encounter with a general from a large nation. 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, as he sheds more light on Cole's unusual ability to "travel" when he dreams and introduces some very high concept weirdness, but he never loses the reader while still managing to creep the reader out. Hester 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. 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.
Huddleston is very capable on both sides of the story. With a few well-placed objects, he defines the city streets, or the Gibson home, and he has done excellent character designs for Cole and the real-life versions of his foes and friends. It is in the more fantastic aspects of the story that Huddleston really shines, though. His depiction of the monastery in Gibson's story, or the monks performing feats at the monastery, is fantastic, and the full-page splash of the "real" forms of the two strangers that Gibson meets is a beautiful piece of work. Some of the really scary stuff, though, comes in the actual dream visions. Huddleston does some phenomenally creepy designs for the monsters of the dream, such as the tentacled, organic monstrosity that is the Harvester or the disturbing visual of the mad genocidal king. 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.
