Customer Reviews

Sleeper: Season 1

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sometimes I am reluctant to seek out earlier work from a writer whose current stories I enjoy, for fear that I'll end up reading material completed during his or her formative years, and that it won't match up. That's silly, of course, and various works have proven me wrong over the years (one of the latest being Cormac McCarthy, whom I discovered via The Road and whose earlier All the Pretty Horses is a masterpiece), yet I persist.

So I was cautious about Sleeper: Season One from the Eisner Award-winning writer and artist duo of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. While I love the work the two are doing with Criminal and Incognito over at Marvel, I was reluctant to try their Wildstorm series for the reason listed above and because the title is set in the Wildstorm super-hero universe, a locale I hadn't explored and had no interest learning anything about.

I shouldn't have worried. Yes, there are a few heroes flying around in Sleeper, but no advance knowledge is required to appreciate the story. It isn't really a super-hero tale at all, but rather a big, dark, hard-boiled spy/espionage saga. The protagonist, Holden Carver, is a double agent assigned to go deep undercover in a "post-human" criminal organization, so far undercover that not only is he is framed for crimes he hasn't committed, but his father (now deceased) is also implicated. This guy is so far out in the cold that it makes Siberia look like the Bahamas. Then, the one person who knows the truth of his undercover status -- his boss, Jack Lynch -- ends up in a coma, and Carver is screwed.

The series is one cat-and-mouse game after another, as Carver tries to keep up his facade as an operative in a villainous organization while trying to re-enter his former life as one of the good guys. Along the way, he becomes romantically entangled with one Miss Misery, a woman who maintains super strength (not to mention her health) only when involved in morally repugnant activities. Carver's super-power, granted by an alien artifact left on Earth (and one not wholly explained in the first twelve issues comprising Season One), is to collect and store pain and then release it on others. So he can stick his finger into an electric socket, soak up the juice, and fry an enemy at a later date. He becomes, in effect, a man without physical feeling, which adds to his isolation as a sleeper agent.

Man, is this series good! Given the premise, Brubaker could spin story after story in such a rich universe, but his goal seems not to maintain the status quo, but to constantly advance the plot and raise the stakes. Phillips' art is just as good here as it is in his later Criminal work, providing a gritty texture perfectly in keeping with the noir-ish world Carver inhabits.

Sleeper: Season Two (and final, apparently) will be re-released in late September. I have no reservations about picking it up, and no qualms about seeking out an earlier Wildstorm tale, Point Blank, also by Brubaker, that serves as a prequel of sorts for Sleeper. Highly recommended.

"Sleeper: Season One"
Written by Ed Brubaker
Illustrated by Sean Phillips
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This is definitely one of Ed Brubaker's best, most captivating works, the story of Holden carver, a hardbitten superhero secret agent who's gone deep undercover inside one of the most ruthless criminal syndicates ever. I tend to read graphic novels and recycle them -- pass them along to friends or sell them to local bookstores -- but this one I kept. I've re-read it twice so far and I'm sure I'll read it again, when the time is right. Nice to see it all gathered into one big omnibus book. (And does the "Season One" subtitle mean there's more to come? I sure hope so! I'm a big Holden Carver fan.) This is highly, highly recommended. (Joe Sixpack, ReadThatAgain book reviews)

This is a great series. I'm hooked. I started reading Incognito, which is Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips too. I liked it so much, I decided to pick this up. I never expected it to be this good, but it's great. The plot and characters are great. The dialogue is top notch and the artwork is fantastic. It's a great tale of paranoia and intrigue. Do yourself a favor and buy this now.

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips absolutely nail it. Sleeper is a page turner about Holden Carver - a double agent with self-healing powers ala Wolverine and a death touch - trapped between both worlds. Nihilistic, dark and riveting. My only question is - how's he able to make love with his gloves off? Looks like the authors forgot about this in some panels...read it to know what I mean.

Holy hell, was that good. This is gritty, comedic, gruesome work. Holden Carver is a double agent asked to do the most terrible acts while still believing he's doing good for god and country.His former beloved believes him a criminal. His handler is in a coma. His "boss" thinks there's a spy in their ranks. And did I mention, these are all people with powers of some sort? So, every moment for Holden is bursting with tension and rightful paranoia.

And every moment for us, the readers, is wonderful.

Just go get it. You won't be disappointed. Brubaker rules.

There was a time after DC's acquisition of Wildstorm in 1999 that people were skeptical of the whole move. But when Wildstorm shifted their titles under the banner of the more mature "Eye of the Storm" titles in 2002, a new world of storytelling emerged. We already had such gems as Planetary and Joe Casey's work on Wildcats (Vol. 2). But with Eye of the Storm we got titles like Wildcats 3.0, also done by Casey. There was also a little mini-series called Point Blank written by Ed Brubaker. It took some of Wildstorm's more popular characters such as Grifter, Lynch, and Backlash and put them in a more noir style story than the traditional superhero fare. Brubaker not only wove a cool original story with these characters, he took a villain from Alan Moore's Wildcats run and kicked up his wickedness to the next level. Of course, I'm talking about the villain called Tao.

But Point Blank wasn't the end. It was only the beginning. During Point Blank we were introduced to Holden Carver, codenamed The Conductor. After coming in contact with an alien artifact from The Bleed, Carver gained the ability to absorb pain and damage to his body, store it, and later transfer it to others. This made him a valuable asset to both sides in a secret war between the remains of the covert agency Internal Operations and Tao's Crime Syndicate. After the events of Point Blank, Holden is left playing double agent in an attempt to bring down Tao and his syndicate. Brubaker gives us a cold and calculating look at the underbelly of the Wildstorm Universe. The beauty about Sleeper is that it can be read as a stand alone, but for those who know the Wildstorm U, there are plenty of Easter Eggs for long time fans. Plus, Wildstorm's current storyline "World's End" does have a ton of elements from Sleeper that are constantly being referred to which is probably why they decided to re-release it. (Plus I'm sure the fact that Tom Cruise has opted to make a movie based on it helped that decision as well).

This trade contains all of Sleeper: Season One (called seasons instead of volumes) which includes issues 1-12 (previously collected in the trades-Sleeper: Out in the Cold & Sleeper: All False Moves). I know this is almost always at the top of people's list when they're asked what to check out from Wildstorm.

I can't praise this enough. I actually felt it lived up to my expectations. fans of crime and noir graphic novels will enjoy this for sure.

Sleeper is one of my favorite series. In this comic, we follow a sleeper agent, Holden Carver, who is undercover in a super powered criminal organization. The leader of this organization is a genius man called Tao. Tao creates random acts of violence around the world and Carver is supposed to find out why Tao acts like that and hopefully get intelligence for the government. The problem is that the only government agent that knows that Carver is undercover is in a coma after being shot a few months ago.

Holden Carver is in the dilemma that nobody can take him out of his undercover job and that escaping the organization would be extremely difficult. This is why the first story arc is called "Out in the Cold", a title that reflects what our protagonist is going through.

The first story arc is fantastic in getting us into this world. Making us feel what Carver is going through and see the contradictions he lives, as his best friends are super villains and the woman he once loved is trying to capture him (thinking he went rogue).

The second story arc really elevates the story to a whole new level. One spy finds out that Carver is an undercover agent and he tries to get him out. The three part story is fantastic, leading to one of the best issues I've ever read in comics, Sleeper #8, the story is superb, and the art is really incredible. Sean Phillips draws noir better than anyone and he really makes one feel for Carver in this book.

The season has a good ending while showing us a cliffhanger moment to set up the next season. This is a truly fantastic series. I highly recommend it.

I initiated the reading of Sleeper Season One with great expectations given the amount of praise it has received from so many sources. However, I found that the main character, Holden Carver `s actions swinging from clichéd witty responses to guilt ridden unexplainable reactions, stretches its credibility. The plot, although interesting at some points drops in free fall when some of the characters react in very foreseeable "tough" ways which bring the story closer to a B-movie than to an innovative thriller. To its credit, I have to admit that I kept reading the book to its end. But for the readers that are looking for new angles and approaches to low life characters and violence, I think that they will better off reading "100 Bullets" from Brian Azarello or "Stray Bullets" from David Lapham (very difficult to find).