Let there be no question in your mind: If you buy only one book this week, Sleeper: Out in the Cold should be it. And I say that despite this being a pretty good week. Sleeper is like a perfect recipe, combining a classic creative team, a great premise, fantastic characters and excellent structure to make one of the most compelling monthly reads on the stands and probably the best of the "Eye of the Storm" titles. It's also a title that is getting more critical buzz than sales, and it deserves better. This trade collects the first six issues of the series, setting up Holden Carver's powers and identity as an undercover super-villain without a lifeline back into his old career and then spiralling downward into conspiracy, murder, sex and the daily compromises that he must make to stay alive. Brubaker's strong appreciation of noir storytelling serves him well, creating an interesting self-loathing, flawed hero and plenty of fascinating shady supporting characters, and Phillips's artwork is a perfect match for the tone of the book.
What I like about the style of Sleeper is that it is very open-ended, but also has a clear possible ending point in sight at the same time. There's so much potential in seeing Holden as he learns about Tao's organization and performs missions, but all it would take is Lynch waking up or a fairly elaborate and clever plan and Brubaker would be able to put his undercover career to rest. And Brubaker isn't content to sit on the status quo. Aside from the first issue, which sets up the status quo, every issue in this collection features some kind of shift. A murder and cover-up that puts Holden in a precarious position with his new boss. An ill-advised love affair built on danger and being wrong. A chance to get out that forces Holden into a pretty despicable action. An encounter with a past love that forces Holden to hurt himself and others in order to survive. Brubaker puts his lead through the wringer on a regular basis.
Brubaker's storytelling fairly drips with noir style. Holden's first-person narration, as if he's dictating the story in casual language to some unseen journal, gets us right inside his head and lets us see not only how he views himself and the people around him but how cold he's had to become in order to keep going. While the story has elements of espionage and crime, it's also deep in the conspiracy genre, whether it's small conspiracies like Holden trying to find a way out of his deep cover or the larger one that manifests about midway through the trade when Tao's real goals and sphere of operation are revealed.
Gray morality doesn't even begin to describe it, as Holden is not only something of a grumpy bastard, he's forced to kill in the name of protecting his cover. More than once, actually. It's easy to see where someone as deep cover as Holden might lose his own identity as a former secret agent and just go native, especially since his only contact to the outside world is basically gone. However, Brubaker does an excellent job of keeping Holden sympathetic, always holding back from becoming truly despicable and always driven by the same desire to serve the good of his country that got him into this mess in the first place. He's aware that playing around with the boundaries of what is right has cost him a little of his humanity. He's aware that his friends (and lover) are bad people, but at the same time they really are his friends and his lover.
While the premise of Sleeper alone is enough to get my attention, it's the strong characterization and imaginative plotting that keeps it. Carver's friendship with Genocide is a solid and important bit, showing that while these guys may be criminals, they're not necessarily inhuman. Ditto for Miss Misery, who comes across as seductive, intelligent and a perfect match for Holden, even as she comes across as incredibly dangerous and amoral. This is a woman who will beat a chambermaid near to death because she has to in order to survive, and yet Brubaker makes her sympathetic. She also has one of the most disturbing and inventive origin stories seen in comics (Genocide's comes close, but we won't see that until volume two). Speaking of origins, it seems worth noting that Brubaker has come up with a clever twist on the flashback origin sequences in comics, having origins played out as a sort of common dare between super-villains, a knowingly hokey tradition that turns up in drinking sessions or between jobs. It's a fun way of introducing backstory without breaking the mood.
Playing up the noir tone is Sean Phillips, whose gritty and realistic style is perfectly suited to the tone of the story. Phillips's artwork is perfect for the book, working on realistic clothing and characters rather than spandex numbers, and handling the balance between more talky scenes and action. With Phillips at the helm, Brubaker can go from casual conversation to casual violence (important when you're using characters like Miss Misery or Genocide), and he doesn't have to worry that choreographed action sequences during the missions will fall flat. Holden has a whole two-gun John Woo thing going, and Phillips never misses a trick when it comes to the violence erupting. He's just as good at the more subtle moments, such as the shifting beauty and grace of Miss Misery as she indulges her dark side, or the shadowy appearance of the meeting rooms that highlights the shadowy nature of the manipulation that Tao performs. It's why Genocide kicking Max in the head is laugh-out-loud funny, while a number of nameless corpses outside of Carver's limo carries with it a feeling of sick horror.
Sleeper is easily one of my favorite new books of this year, and it might in fact be my favorite new book. Certainly Brubaker's inventive plotting and deep characterization, along with a willingness to shake things up on a regular basis, makes it an unpredictable and surprisingly accessible read. Pick up the Sleeper trade if you're a "wait for the trade" person. Or pick up the latest issue if you just want to get a sample of what's going on with the book. But one way or another, give this book a look.
