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Charlton, Chris & Various Artists – Sleepless #1

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Sleepless #1

I’ll get to the quality of this book in a minute, but when you review comics for as long as I have you start to develop some serious pessimism when there’s a long lag between issues of a series. In this case this comic came out in 2012, a #2 was mentioned (but, in fairness, no date was promised) and now it’s April 2016 with no second issue. However! This same writer has six issues of another series (Binary Gray) done and available, and two issues of another series (Black of Heart) available, so it’s not like he’s slacking. Maybe he’s just having trouble coming up with more stories for this theme. Which, in case you’re wondering and haven’t wandered off by now, is basically horror stories in the vein of Twilight Zone or Skeleton Crew (according to Chris in his afterward). Four stories in this, and first up is a fairly standard zombie story about a man who has given up hope and has his back against the wall. I kind of saw the ending coming, but I’ve read far too many zombie stories over the years, so good luck surprising me on that stuff. Next up is the story of a man who has waited out the apocalypse all by himself, listening for radio signals and coming to the end of his food reserves. The third story has a pretty drastic tonal shift, as it’s all about a redneck who gets himself abducted by aliens and his fight to escape, with a pretty great last couple of pages that turns it in an unexpected direction. Finally there’s the tale of a young boy who is tormented by bullies at school and his overprotective mother. Again, I did not see that ending coming, which is always appreciated. A different artist draws each story, and they all bring a unique touch to it, with my favorite being David Hollenbach because of his gorgeous, haunting artwork about the man who is living alone through the apocalypse. So yeah, I may not have loved the whole book, but there’s more than enough good stuff here to make it worth recommending. $6

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