Reviewer: Tim Stevens
Story Title: Pawns and Kings
Written by: Ed Brubaker
Art by: Sean Phillips
Colored by: Carrie Strachan
Lettered by: Jared K. Fletcher
Editor: Scott Dunbier
Publisher: Wildstorm Comics
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again…I hate reviewing this title on an issue by issue basis. I really do. Each issue is individually excellent, true, but the real hook of the book is how all the pieces fall together over time. However, this time around, I have drawn the issue of Sleeper where several pieces reveal themselves at once.
“Pawns and Kings” is exemplary, the best issue of Sleeper: Season 2 since, probably, #1. The action centers on Holden, Miss Misery, Grimm, and Triple X-Ray performing a nighttime raid on a Lynch owned and run facility in the hopes of acquiring a master code breaker. Of course, things do not work out quite as planned. The mission takes on a very different purpose and Holden is reminded of something that he was all but convinced he had left behind. Then, in the wake of the team’s failure, Tao makes it very clear to Holden what he can and is willing to do to ensure that Holden stays loyal to the goals of the group.
A lot of Sleeper: Season 2 has been dedicated to the machinations of Tao and Lynch as they play tug of war, each using Holden as their ace in the hole. Thus, the action quotient has been somewhat reduced. However, “reduced” does not mean “absent” and it is issues like this that proves that. The raid on the code breaking facility is brutal, claustrophobic, and chaotic. What is most impressive about the sequence, however, is that the team of Phillips and Strachan manage to convey all those feelings and still make the action seem distant, disconnected. It is a move that places the reader in the same shoes as Holden. In addition to his “power” not to feel pain (or anything), he has become so shut down, so empty emotionally, that even as he is aware of the carnage, the action seems to just swirl about him.
It is this emotional distance that makes the scene where Holden finally reaches the code breaker so effective. Without giving it away, the scene makes it very clear that no matter how much he thinks or wants to be emotionally dead, he can still be pushed, he can still react. Two later events, a decision by Grimm and an encounter with Tao, build upon this motif, but Brubaker’s script is never stronger than when Holden enters the code breaker’s room.
