Dream Thief #3

written by Jai Nitz
art by Greg Smallwood

John Lincoln is becoming a dangerous and perhaps different man in his mask.  After two episodes of fulfilling the vendettas of dead men in his sleep, keeping their memories but himself unaware of his actions while he commits them, Lincoln is starting to take matters into his own hands, becoming increasingly comfortable with other people's revenge.

It begins differently, not remembering anything.  Though it slowly comes back, piece by piece, an accident of the relevant ghost as much anything, it certainly is a sign the rules of his new life are changing.  The hanging of a Mississippi Ku Klux Klan leader may have followed the pattern thus far, but his actions against the rest of his Klan chapter's pick-ups and his investigation into the life and death of his new ghost are all Lincoln's own.  And he's using the expertise he's accumulating from the other ghosts to help him out.  He's spending more and more time in each issue in the mask and even more time out of the mask serving the mask's purposes.  And, as John Lincoln himself says, "No problem.  I'm getting good at this" (Dream Thief #3, p. 22).

Dream Thief seems to be moving toward a fever-pitch of a finale.  Lincoln's relationships are suffering.  His friends are disappearing from his life, he's becoming increasingly suspicious of his sister who may have known about his now-dead girlfriend's murder of his first ghost Cordero, and his estranged and incarcerated father looms near in the future.  Dream Thief may at first seem episodic, with its vendetta-of-the-issue format, but more than that it's one man's struggle not to lose himself to forces outside of himself.  Issues #2 and #3 aren't as tightly packed or as individually satisfying as the series' exceptional opening chapter, but Nitz and Smallwood have crafted an excellent story.