TOP TEN COMICS OF 2003: NUMBER EIGHT
TOP TEN COMICS OF 2003: NUMBER EIGHT
Everyone likes a good spy story, and everyone likes a good undercover cop story, and everyone likes a good twisty-turny-everything-you-know-is-wroooorrrng story. Comics has a history of doing this sort of thing well, so it’s no surprise that SLEEPER’s been such a massive critical hit. ‘Cos it’s ace.
The idea is simple but elegant - undercover agent infiltrates global terror organisation and begins treading an ugly tightrope between keeping his cover in the name of the greater good and appeasing his bloody conscience - a conscience that gets bloodier when the only man who knows he’s doing it for the USA falls into a coma, leaving him inextricably trapped in a world of extreme unpleasantness. So far, so I.D. - but Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips - for it is they - know what the audience love and have made it a global terror organisation of supervillains. This sounds a bit wacky but it’s actually brilliant, the dark espionage being leavened by the bizarre abilities and vice versa, and it’d actually really annoy me if the main character pulled a do-it-all gadget out of his arse like James Bond does, rather than do it with the death-touch he’s had since episode one. (Why does Bond always use everything Q gives him? Clearly, because the wily old boffin can read the very future itself!)
It’s set in the Wildstorm ‘universe’, which differs from other ‘universes’ in that nobody makes big speeches about heroism and tradition but everybody wanders around trading muttered buzzwords about ‘posthuman’ and ‘para-abilities’ - the old “yes, I am lifting up a car, but please concentrate on the serious gripping drama, dear reader” pose. Frankly, I like this much better because as far as I’m concerned you can stuff your Green Lantern Corps up the arse of a certain murderous alcoholic racist with nasty greying temples in a bad cloak, but I do love a good buzzword. Mmmm. Post-human.
I suppose if, say, John Byrne were to try writing this it’d suck the semen of a fetid corpse. But Brubaker is a terrific writer and he works with the veteran Phillips to bring across the moody spy-novel dramatics to perfection. It’s definitely a comic that should be on everybody’s list, which is why it’s such a crying shame that I have to shamelessly plug it in order to make you buy the trade at the earliest opportunity.
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