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Sleeper: Season One (2009)

by Ed Brubaker(Favorite Author)

4.35 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1848562942 (ISBN13: 9781848562943)

languge

English

genre

Science Fiction

publisher

Wildstorm Comics

review 1: Deep cover agent Holden Carver has landed himself in a nest of vipers where he can't trust anyone on either side, least of all himselfThis first issue of Sleeper is the first graphic novel I've ever read from acclaimed writing duo Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips of Criminal fame. Sleeper is the story of superhuman agent Holden Carver who is stranded in enemy territory while those he would call allies would surely destroy him all the same. Carver is a deep cover agent planted strategically in a super villain organization under the command of the mysterious sociopath Tao. Posing as a super villain is beginning to take a tremendous toll on Carver as he is forced to take innocent lives to maintain his cover but getting out of this mess is not easy as the only person who knows he... more actually plays for the "good guys" is currently in a coma due to unexplained circumstances. Master spy Jack Lynch recruited Carver when fate dealt Holden a tragic gift, superhuman abilities that allow him to take considerable amounts of damage while feeling no pain whatsoever. Holden also has a Wolverine-like healing factor that allows him to heal from almost any physical damage and the icing on the cake? well Holden is like a pain sponge and distributor. Any pain he would have felt from damage dealt to his body can be stored and then passed off to an unlucky enemy with a simple touch. These abilities make Carver a perfect candidate to infiltrate Tao's organization as an undercover supervillain and the problem is no one on his side besides the currently benched Lynch knows who he's playing for.This one was a real lucky grab for me. I knew almost nothing about this series when I purchased this except that this is one of the earlier collaborations from the Brubaker/Phillips super team. Like many of their other graphic novels this is a noir style crime story with a supernatural twist.The lead character Holden Carver is a tragic hero if there has ever been one. As a self proclaimed survivor he continues to infiltrate Tao's organization even after Lynch's coma although without much choice. To break cover would be to turn his new super villainous brethren against him while his so called allies continue to hunt him as a rogue agent considering they along with everyone else are unaware of his true purpose in Tao's organization. What makes Carver so tragic is that he continues to hold his cover without any true purpose. Without Lynch he really has no one to feed his stolen information to. So Carver continues murdering without payoff and it really starts to get to him. At some point in the story you start to wonder if he's still only killing to protect his cover or because he's getting lost in the role.Throw in the dangerous romance with the psychotic Miss Misery just to blur the lines a little more. Tao is another fascinating character in this story who's more than he seems. In truth what does a man who has no identity, no one to care for, feels no pain, and supposedly cannot die have to fear from anyone? I'm not sure but whatever "it" is apparently Tao has it. We don't get any real gauge of what Tao can do. He's sophisticated, calculating, and really damn smart. Often causing the reader to question if Carver or anyone else for that matter could really pull anything over this guy's eyes. The wild card here is still Lynch. The master spy gone silent is shown only in flash backs throughout this novel but his presence in the larger story is hard to ignore. He still has some part to play in this tale but what it is is hard to guess.One of my favorite aspects of Sleeper is the way super-villains are portrayed as humans. Take Genocide Jones for example: murdering and other evil acts are tolerated, hell even encouraged but child molestation and murder crosses his line and he'll gladly murder his superior if he catches them doing it. A genuine sociopath with a conscience, I love it! I look forward to reading the second and final volume of Sleeper as well as any other Brubaker/Phillips collaborations I can get my hands on in the near future. Highly recommended. 4.5 stars!
review 2: Sleeper is a crime/espionage/superhero tale from my favorite noir team of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Long on my to-read list, after working through the first volume of the pair's excellent Criminal earlier this year, I made it a priority to knock this one off my shelf and I was not disappointed. This first volume establishes all the key players, including our "hero" Holden Carver. Caught deep undercover in a precinct of super villains led by the ambiguously evil Tao, Holden sees his one way out go away when his supervisor, Lynch, is shot and slips into a coma. What follows is Holden's operations under Tao, as he straddles the line between "good guy" and "bad guy" while desperately trying to find a way out. Think, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold meets the Legion of Doom. What's tricky here, and more so in the second volume, is the limited likability of many of these characters. Holden's actions stay true in this text (though they change quire drastically in the next volume), but characters like Genocide and Miss Misery make it difficult to swallow some of the more in-your-face characterizations drawn for our leads. But that's really the point. It's easy to forget that these are antagonists we are spending the majority of our time with, and their actions hold true to who they are. Not much more can be said about this pair's ability to work together. Brubaker's plotting is superb, hitting on key note's of Holden's story without feeling forced. It's not necessary for us to be with him every step of the way. In fact, chapters usually see a skip of some months between action, forcing the reader to fill in the blanks on their own, or be surprised later on. less

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