The Dream Merchant #3

written by Nathan Edmondson
art by Konstantin Novosadov

After tagging along with Winslow and the Merchant of Dreams for two issues, making sensible if tentative suggestions, Anne begins to show her mettle here.  I can't say that I advocate stealing firearms from police cars—or policemen careless enough to allow her to do so, for that matter—but embracing her delinquent past and asserting her quick-witted opinions—such as sartorial suggestions for the Merchant so she and Winslow, fugitives from the FBI as well as their mental hospital, "don't stand out like a homeless Indian wizard is leading [them] around" (The Dream Merchant #3, p. 5)—have made Anne the member of their threesome-against-the-dream-apocalypse to watch.  Winslow is far too self-defeating and self-pitying, and the Merchant is far too pushy and narrow-minded in his humanitarian mission.

Edmondson drops a few surprises in this stronger episode of his series.  The first isn't all that unexpected for the audience even if unknown to the Merchant:  Winslow can move, like the Regulators pursuing him, through his own dreams, translating him from place to place in the physical world.  It gives him an impressive range of movement and one that makes him a formidable opponent if he learns how to control his new-found ability.  The second, if not quite a surprise since the Merchant has frequently alluded to it:  his world is the source of our nightmares, visions of which we remember in our dreams, the frightening forms of his threatening alien species locked in our subconscious.  And, apparently, they are preparing an invasion.  If the glimpses of this invasion, seen in the final few panels of the issue, are anything to judge by, Novosadov's vision of this invasion should be something to whet the visual appetite.  His imagination for Winslow's dream world has thus far been the stand-out element of the series, and any developments that promise more are welcome indeed.

However, like The Dream Merchant #2, the finest storytelling moments of this issue come unexpectedly from the few pages dedicated to the FBI investigation into Winslow's kidnapping/escape.  Apparently, the Merchant has been identified as a person of interest in a few cases, including one that even to the FBI agent is listed as confidential.  Perhaps, despite his insistence that the authorities would give Winslow no credence if he approached them, the Department of Homeland Security—who turn him away at the besieged police station—may, in fact, have some inkling about these events.