Parasomnia
Cullen Bunn, script; Andrea Mutti, art & colors; Simon Bowland, lettering
Dark Horse Books, 2022
This dark fantasy tale is about two worlds split between dreams and reality. The cover picture makes this clear, but the story is more ambiguous (at least at first). A homeless man braves a nightmarish dreamscape to find his missing son--and battles a ruthless cult that seeks to rule the land of dreams--but initially, we see him brutalized by fellow street people, then facing them in the dream world as a mounted highwayman. I found the transition confusing here, and it took a while before the shifts between the worlds made sense. The missing boy also has his mother looking for him: and in our world the boy's abductor is known as "the faceless queen." The protagonist finds a way to restore the missing children to a town, despite not finding his own child. In the end he and his indigenous friend go off in search of the missing son. It is clearly not an ending, and Parasomnia: The Dreaming God is scheduled to continue the story. This is not one of Bunn's strongest stories, but Mutti's art makes it real. The collection concludes with alternate covers, as well as a sketchbook.
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