Brubaker and Phillips' Sleeper
“But at least in my dreams somtimes I make it out alive.”
—Holder Carver, Sleepers #1.
It was an ambivalent read. Reluctantly I turned the pages because I knew this was the end. At the same time, I wanted to speed through it as fast as I could and just glee att everything that happened. Eventually I came to the end and Sleeper is no more.
It began with a silent bang, because nobody payed any attention to a creator-owned comic from Wildstorm. Hell, I was a latecomer too. Mostly because I was slowly building up authors to read—my corporate drone days lingering long after me with a zero-interest for comics that lasted almost a decade. So I went trough Queen & Country to Greg Rucka to Gotham Central to Brubaker. Sean Phillips helped a great deal too. I got the first trade, read it through and then went scavenging for the next. Didn’t find it in collected from, but instead a lot of singles. I bought every issue up until the then recent season two #4 and really, while the first part was good, season two really sprakled and shone like a strong flashlight held really close to the eye. (After all, this is Sleeper and no other lightsource is to be found.)
It had to end like that. There was really no other way, even though I didn’t see it coming. And now that it is over, I think it must be the finest comic series this decade. Ok, it isn’t quite over yet but whats going to crawl över the vast amount of crap and climb the small hill of gold to get to the top and puch it down? The really Really New Excalibur in 2008?
