We got a pair of first issues for a pair of new original series this week, both with similar names. One imagines that could make them a little tough to differentiate, since we’re all uninitiated, but let’s take a look at both of them and see which one comes out on top. Not that this is a competition – it’s art, after all. Different strokes and all.
First up is Image Comics’ The Dream Merchant, from writer Nathan Edmondson and artist Konstantin Novosadov. Edmondson, you may know from the kinetic, fast-moving Who Is Jake Ellis? and its sequel, Where Is Jake Ellis?, but this book isn’t quite that.
The Dream Merchant is much more what you would expect when you imagine a book dealing with the concept of dreams. A young man named Winslow has been plagued with a recurring dream of flying through a red-tinged place with no name, looking somewhat like a Martian landscape might. The dream becomes so intense that it consumes his life, inverting his waking world with his dreamlife, and the confusion of it all drops him in a psychiatric institution in Burbank, where he befriends a schizophrenic named Ziggy and a nice cafeteria girl named Anne, who keeps giving him books to try to help him deal with his business. In the corners of his mind, he sees an old man in a cloak in Mesa, Arizona, on some kind of quest. In the midst of a regressive psychotherapy session, Winslow suddenly finds himself chased by three cloaked figures in his dream, and then soon appear in the waking world as well, forcing him to break out with Anne – and to watch as they seemingly kill Ziggy. On the run, the old man finds them both, claims he’s The Merchant of Dreams, he helps them escape from the threats he calls The Regulators, and he promises to teach Winslow how to hide in his dreams.
It feels weird and metaphysical, like we’re beginning some kind of magical journey, and it’s not bad. There is certainly some interesting potential in exploring dreamscapes and their relationships with reality. Sleep is such an odd thing. It reminds me of a whole George Carlin piece from Brain Droppings about how weird it is. Anne seems a little off as the excitable ex-juvie who is thrilled to be on an adventure with the crazy guy from the psych ward, but Winslow seems very earnest and unjaded and a little spacey, as you might expect, and that might make for a refreshing protagonist. Novosadov’s art is fairly cartoony, and if that style is going to work anywhere, it’s in a story where reality isn’t a crucial component.
The Dream Merchant #1 is an all right book. But then Dream Thief #1 comes along and completely hijacks your vibe, harshing your mellow in a very slick way.
Writer Jai Nitz and artist Greg Smallwood quickly establish a very cool M.O. as far as laying out the story, with no black-bordered panels, but rather squares blocked with white, and the result is a very retro, stylized sensibility. They present to us John Lincoln, a man who wakes up with the memory of nonchalantly cheating on his girlfriend Claire and then casually hashing out a cover story with his best friend Reggie Harrison, all in a dual narration with an odd letter from imprisoned father to son warning of the strangeness about to envelop his life. Not that Lincoln seems to register it. On the way to go deal with Claire, he picks up some funky weed, finds Claire acting weirdly guilty – apparently some lingering trauma from a nasty break-in months ago, trauma which Lincoln is a selfish dick about. This is confirmed when his own sister Jen calls him out for being a self-absorbed asshole, too.
That night, John and Reggie are hitting on girls at a museum exhibit of Australian Aboriginal Art, busting out the ganja in front of this ceremonial mask display, and moments later, he wakes up in a bathroom, wearing that mask, and realizing that “I killed my girlfriend last night. I killed her because she deserved it.” Again, with this eerie nonchalance. He gets a flood of the victim’s memories intermixed with flashbacks from choking Claire out, because she’d killed the man believing he was the home invader that traumatized her. She was wrong. And John doesn’t feel bad about killing her, and is completely casual about disposing of her body.
It’s the most relaxed ‘discovery of super powers’ story I think I’ve ever seen. John grouses a bit about it, but most of his response is an ‘autopilot,’ as he terms it. When he stops to try to figure it out, he blames the weed and goes to clock his dealer in the jaw. He stops himself before he kills again, though, because he wants to believe he isn’t a killer. But he goes home, passes out – and wakes up wearing the mask once again – the mask he got rid of with Claire’s body. And yes, he’s killed again.
Smallwood’s artwork is fantastic and cool, with imaginative layouts and a clean, snazzy look to it all that clicks immediately. Nitz’s story is definitely strange, but he somehow makes his jackhole protagonist not a tremendous detriment to the issue – we may not like Lincoln all that much, but whatever’s happening to him is certainly weird enough to grab our interest, and why in the world is he so calm and disaffected about it? Nitz subverts expectations very well, moves the story along quickly, and gives us enough mystery to hook us in for whatever ride he’s planning to take us on.
After it’s all said and done, Dream Thief comes out on top as the more dynamic read on a visceral crime-story level, but depending on your mood and state of mind, you may find The Dream Merchant and its bigger questions to be more your thing. To each their own, man.
The Dream Merchant #1
Dream Thief #1
