Ed Brubaker And Sean Phillips' Sleeper Gets An Omnibus

[Rich Johnston]

I mentioned this is a previous post. But it probably deserves a headline of its own.

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, known now for their work on Criminal and Fatale, have worked on a number of previous projects. More of you will know Gotham. Less of you may be familiar with Sleeper.

Point Blank was a Grifter mini-series by Ed Brubaker and Colin Wilson for Wildstorm, with Grifter trying to deal with ex-WildCAT Tao's criminal organisation, failing badly, but leaving one character, Holden Carver, as a sleeper agent within Tao's group.

This led to Sleeper, a superhero noir comic, which ran for two series by Brubaker and Phillips, at a time when Wildstorm was publishing some of the nest and most cutting edge superhero comic books around. That's before DC Comics diluted their content and the books and eventually the line died though a thousand cuts. Sleeper was a book that struggled to find an audience, relaunched once, and was then cancelled.

Nowadays, however, Brubaker and Phillips have more of an audience, and one willing to pony up the cash for big expensive collections of their work, such as Marvel's Criminal. And DC appears to have decided, it seems, that they'd like a little of that, with an oversized hardcover collecting the Point Blank and Sleeper series in one large volume.

Especially with a Sleeper movie option still on the cards.

[Mad_Man_Moon]

good move by DC. awesome books, anyway. get hold of this however you can afford it, peoples

[die-yng]

Also I'dd like to add that the book wasn't cancelled prematurely, Bru and Phillips brought it to a satisfying and fitting conclusion, just don't expect a happy ending in a book like this.

As far as Superhero noir goes, I like Sleepers more than Incognito, which is a good book, it's just that Sleepers is better.

Thanks to Rich for pointing out this great title once more and also for reminding us that Wildstorm's demise wasn't because they didn't have good ideas or books, no a lot of it was because of unbelievably dumb editorial involvement by DC.

[Kuma]

While I like Sleepers, I think id rather have a nice deluxe Criminal omnibus.

[die-yng]

Obviously that has to be Sleeper in my above post.
Spelling once more appears to be my enemy today!

Lol, just noticed what a great Image Rich chose for this article...

Of course he stole it from me, as my Avatar shows!

[DJ_Convoy]

While I like Sleepers, I think id rather have a nice deluxe Criminal omnibus.

They have 'em, chief! Get thee to Amazon-

[Qward-O]

Also I'dd like to add that the book wasn't cancelled prematurely, Bru and Phillips brought it to a satisfying and fitting conclusion, just don't expect a happy ending in a book like this.

As far as Superhero noir goes, I like Sleepers more than Incognito, which is a good book, it's just that Sleepers is better.

Thanks to Rich for pointing out this great title once more and also for reminding us that Wildstorm's demise wasn't because they didn't have good ideas or books, no a lot of it was because of unbelievably dumb editorial involvement by DC.

I love most of Brubaker's work. I really like Incognito and Sleeper about the same actually. If one likes Planetary and certain of the 20th century pulp hero magazines like Doc Savage, The Shadow and The Spider then you can see the brilliant stuff that Brubaker was incorporating into "INCOGNITO". I was really hoping that Brubaker and Phillips would have continued INCOGNITO but alas the taste of modern audiences leaves much to be desired.

And you're totally right about DC screwing up Wildstorm. The second Jim Lee betrayed Wildstorm to DC in order to cash out all the series were doomed - it would only be a matter of time. And here we are.

Finally, I would have loved to see a corrupted version of Tom Strong in "INCOGNITO".

I guess everyone already knows that Brubaker is leaving Captain America (another great run)

[Joe Kalicki]

You people are being dumb. DC published every word of the most critically-acclaimed Wildstorm runs, including Sleeper, Authority, Planetary, Wildcats 3.0, Stormwatch: Team Achilles. . . You might not like the direction the books ended up taking, but they only reason they ever changed was because of sales, not editorial interference. The universe was a tough sell and needed to be relaunched a lot to get it enough attention to stay afloat. Keep in mind, the Eye of the Storm mature comics era came years after DC bought Wildstorm and was itself a relaunch of the concept.

So get your facts straight and know what you're talking about before tossing "blame" around because some books you liked didn't sell well.

[carriertone]

I am really looking forward to this! I loved Sleeper, and never read Point Blank, so I have a spot on my bookshelf saved for this.

- C!

[die-yng]

You people are being dumb. DC published every word of the most critically-acclaimed Wildstorm runs, including Sleeper, Authority, Planetary, Wildcats 3.0, Stormwatch: Team Achilles. . . You might not like the direction the books ended up taking, but they only reason they ever changed was because of sales, not editorial interference. The universe was a tough sell and needed to be relaunched a lot to get it enough attention to stay afloat. Keep in mind, the Eye of the Storm mature comics era came years after DC bought Wildstorm and was itself a relaunch of the concept.

So get your facts straight and know what you're talking about before tossing "blame" around because some books you liked didn't sell well.

Yeah, we are being dumb... Says the guy who defends DC's every whim and decision and goes on to... what a surprise! defend DC.

They fired editiors that had fantastic working relationship with the creators! They censored the Authority (I remember one silly panel were they added a neon green neglige on the nude Swift, even though the original image didn't show anything in itself)! They meddled in the ABC line and they stole every new promising artist and put them on the DCU books. And that's just the things I remember without really thinking about it or resorting to google etc..

They even cancelled the Boys, when Wildstorm finally managed a successful series again... yeah, right. I thought you liked Wildstorm Joe, couldn't you at least once stop being such a tool?