Sleep #2 // Review
Jonathan Reason just might be late for work. He had another nightmare last night and he’s going to need to get to the coffee shop very, very soon. Everything seems at least a little dangerous to Jon right now. He’s nervous as hell about everything. The weird thing is: everybody else in town seems to totally calm. He’s beginning to wonder if maybe he might be involved somehow in Sleep #2. Writer/artist Zander Cannon continues an enjoyable mystery thriller that tucks-away little bits of atmosphere and various clues around the edges of the pages and panels of another thoroughly engrossing issue.
There are people lined-up outside the coffee shop when Jon arrives to open-up the shop. It takes a while for things to settle-down after the morning rush. Jon rushes over to the phone at the first opportunity. He needs to get ahold of Tabby, but all he can seem to get is her voicemail. Then PoliceChief Nicoli shows-up. Evidently there was a car crash the previous night. It’s a big mess. Early-on in the day and already things are looking pretty bad. They’re going to get a whole lot worse for Jon before the day is out.
Cannon is fairly brilliant with his execution of the tension. The dramatic contrast between Jon’s nervousness and everyone else’s generally relaxed state is never amplified to a point of being awkward. He’s clearly troubled and the rest of the world doesn’t seem to notice. Naturally he’s going to want to find a way to get secured. It’s still really, really difficult to read the second issue of the series and NOT think that Jon’s a werewolf, but Cannon is likely leading the reader in that direction to put them into a sort of comfort zone before the real horror springs into the panel.
Cannon’s overall sense of composition continues to be the most charming visual aspect of the series thus far. He directs the action across the page in a way that feels filled with detail without totally cluttering the panel. It’s a clever balance. The black-and-white of the series continues with shades of grey and the occasional shock of red. The drama plays across the page with largely silent intensity as alarmingly relaxed small town life continues to roam from one cover to the other. The visual simplicity of Cannon’s rendering continues to serve as a fun, little playground for Cannon’s script.
The series continues to hold just enough mystery to keep the pages turning. It’s nice, but it’s kind of difficult to pinpoint quite what it is that seems so appealing about it. Perhaps its the mystery itself that holds it all together...inspires the reader to look around the edges of the panels for any kind of hint or clue as to what it is that’s going on. It’s a good thing that Cannon is doing such a good job of spooling the mystery through the progression of the panels.
