Dream Thief #1

After stealing an Aboriginal mask from a museum, John Lincoln realizes that the spirits of the vengeful dead are possessing his body and mind while he sleeps! His old problems have been replaced by bloody hands and the disposal of bodies—and now remembering where he spent last night has never been more important!

Here we have John Lincoln, your typical sleazeball who really only looks out for what’s best for him and his best friend, Reggie Harrison.  He does drugs, cheats on his girlfriend and steals, all while being an unemployed drain on society.  He’s a real winner.  However, that all changes when John wakes up after a wild time at a museum and finds himself, in some unknown location, wearing the mask he proposed to steal.  Then when he thought things couldn’t get much worse, he finds a body in the other room and his subconscious takes over from there.  In my opinion, a pretty cool concept.  I mean, this guy is subconsciously taking revenge as the victims, all the while completely unaware of his actions until after the fact.  A little blameless, as John has no control over his actions as of now, but nonetheless, he’s in the thick of things.  All of a sudden this new sense of responsibility has been thrust upon him and there’s no turning back.  Now we get to see how John deals with all of this and if he finally owns up to something without sleazing his way out of it. 

So, this one threw me a bit as I just couldn’t get behind the main character.  He’s just such a dirtbag that you almost want to see him get his comeuppance.  However, I think that’s how you’re supposed to feel about John.  Jai Nitz has written this despicable character that you really don’t want anything to do with and yet when its revealed that John has been taken over by these murder victims in order to exact their revenge on their killers, you kind of start to feel a bit bad for the guy, seeing the mess he’s unknowingly gotten himself into.  That’s some good stuff right there and I’m not talking about the drugs John had picked up.  It’s a hero is the villain is the hero situation, where you don’t really know if you want to root for the guy or see him fall.  The artwork by Greg Smallwood, has a nice Will Eisner-era look that really make the pages just come to life.  Couple that with an intriguing start to what looks to be a rather interesting series and you’ve got yourself something worth checking out.

Now like I said before, I just don’t like John Lincoln, but that was intended by the writer.  He’s definitely the anti-hero, going about things in all the wrong ways, but there’s still that glimmer of hope that John could redeem himself with this new found ability.  Well, I’m not sure if I would call it an ability so much as an involuntary act of empathy.  So, aside from that, there weren’t any other problems with this issue, at least that I found.

The hero that you just want to hate winds up with more problems than he knows what to do with.  If John Lincoln wants to survive this ordeal, he’s gonna have to start being a little less selfish and a lot more selfless.  Dream Thief is a story that transcends to a whole other plane of thought, literally, and sends you through a loop.  Go check out this creative new take on revenge and see where the mask brings you.  For more info on where to pick up this issue visit the Dark Horse website or the Dark Horse Facebook page.

Geek-o-Rama received a copy of this book for the purpose of this review. All thoughts, comments and opinions are those of the individual reviewer.