The Dream Merchant #2

written by Nathan Edmondson
art by Konstantin Novosadov

The telling may be elegant and the ideas clever, but The Dream Merchant #2 is little more than exposition.  Having stolen a little distance from the alien Regulators pursuing Winslow, the Merchant of Dreams takes most of the issue to explain Winslow's dreams and begin his training.  On the other hand, the introduction of an FBI agent looking into events at the psychiatric hospital and the possible kidnapping of Winslow and Anne brings an unexpected and unexpectedly refreshing investigative angle to Edmondson's surreal dream tale. 

Some of The Dream Merchant's best storytelling is visual.  The disappearance of the Regulators with the coming dawn—a single-page, three-panel sequence on p. 10—is evocatively eerie.  The blossoming friendship between Winslow and fellow fugitive Anne is easily visible in their body language even as their social awkwardness makes it difficult for them to click in conversation.  Sleeping quietly on his shoulder in the truck speaks more for Anne than any of her gentle pleading for Winslow to embrace his unique situation.

Though its dream mythology is engaging and beautiful, its colonization metaphor is not.  A foreign race, who in Earth's earlier times traded peaceably with humans, now seeks to return only to take forcibly their resources and annihilate the species.  It's neither difficult to believe nor without numerous historical precedents in human history, but in the context of a dream saga, it comes across far heavier-handed than it should.