5 out of 5

Big Ideas in media normally fall apart by the tale’s end, the excess added on to the Bigness in order to fluff it out to feature length becoming apparent as the external threads they are.  Often the final product can still be entertaining – sometimes great – if care is put into strengthening those ties, but it’s much easier to rest on the laurels of the Idea, and thus do we get of lot of bluster in movies, books, comics, and whatever else that leaves you with an “If only…” dissatisfaction.  ‘The Dream Thief’ is a big idea.  But Jai Nitz essentially reverses the formula, starting with story first and then using the Big Idea to tie it all together, making for a 5-part series which is the best of two possible worlds – the pieces of the puzzle just as cool looking as the flashy final product.

So John Lincoln steals an African mask during a hazy night of weed smoking, then wakes up wearing the mask, next to a dead body.  …And then suddenly he finds he has the memories (and muscle memory) of a dead person – not of the body he’s next to you, mind you, but involved with in it some way.  As the memories trickle through, Lincoln will recall how the person’s whose thoughts – or, eh, dreams – he’s stealing (Get it?) was unjustly offed due to direct or indirect actions by someone(s), and then John would hunt down and deal that person some revenge.  Then wake up next to their corpse.  Maybe he’s in another state.  Maybe the dreams belong to a woman, or a gay pornstar.  Maybe he killed his own girlfriend as a result of this process.  Maybe every time he goes to sleep, the mask takes over and turns him into a vigilante, leaving him with the skills and talents of the avenged.  Handy when they’re boxers, lawyers, card sharks.  ..But is it the mask doing this, or is it something that runs deeper?  Why is his father writing him from jail, seemingly aware of his status as  a ‘Dream Thief’?

And somehow Jai gets all of this hefty story across while giving us, issue by issue, another incident of thievery, which genre steps through mystery and action and heroics with ease, illustrated with amazing confidence by newcomer Greg Smallwood, who uses a nifty track of partitioning panels to show when Lincoln is drawing from his usurped-dreams reserve for ‘powers’.  His dusky, heavy lines have the natural flow of Michael Lark but without the ‘drawn from life’ distraction; Sean Phillips with more straight lines.  It’s a great look, and added to the negative gutter space, makes for a really unique visual sense that perfectly matches Nitz’ flipping between pulp adventures and gritty revenge.

The focus isn’t the mask.  It’s an excuse to tie together a whole bunch of short crime tales.  But instead of stopping there, Jai makes all the side characters in Lincoln’s life interesting and realistic – his lawyer buddy, his cop sister – and dots the mask baskstory with just enough details to anchor it to the series and not just leave it at Big Idea.  Supposedly this could be a run of mini-series, and the setup perfectly lends itself to that/  I cannot wait.