This is Wednesday. New comics day. A lot of comics come out every Wednesday. Some good. Some bad. Some kind of in the middle. Not every comic has what it takes to be a Book of the Week. It takes a special breed of comic. Not just a good comic. It takes a DARN good comic.
OK, I'll give you a break on the phoney "Dragnet" narration for a while, but I can't promise it won't happen again. This week's Book of the Week is Dream Police by J. Michael Straczynski and Mike Deodato. These guys recently worked together on the controversial "Sins Past" story arc over in Amazing Spider-Man, but this book comes from Marvel's creator-owned Icon imprint. What that means is, we are getting something here unlike anything these creators have done before.
Dream Police is the story of a pair of cops, Joe Thursday and Frank Stanford, who patrol the Dreamscape beat. The Dreamscape is the place where all of our dreams actually happen. It's a huge city filled with dinosaurs, paranoia, orgies, naked people in meetings, frustration, symbolism, phobias and monsters in the closet. All these dreams, and the people who make them, have to play nice so they can co-exist. When things go wrong, it is time to call the Dream Police.
JMS goes all out to put together a story that is both fun and funny. Some of the humor comes from the silly circumstances faced by our completely serious heroes, and some of it comes from the craziness of the dreams themselves. Deodato's very subtle and realistic art helps ground the crazy proceedings by making everything feel down-to-earth and plausible, even when it isn't. Not only is this a great story from a pair of great creators, it is a completely self-contained, one-shot story. How often does that happen nowadays?
What we know so far: This week's Book of the Week-Dream Police. It's a comic. It's funny. Great art. Great story. Guaranteed. Buy it. Read it. Sleep tight.
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