DREAM SEQUENCES: COMICS REVIEWS. Raise your hand when you spot the growing obsession!

Finder: Dream Sequence: A big and creepy story about the perils of being the audience or the artist–living in someone else’s dream, and being the one whose dreamworld attracts so many tourists.

Magri is the creator of Elsewhere, a virtual reality filled with landscapes and lightning storms that he has never seen, but has imagined so vividly that everyone else wants a piece of the dream. Ayo works standing up with a box around his head, crammed in among other office drones like a Dilbert sardine, and spends all his free time plugged in to Elsewhere. (There’s a logic hole here, I think–why don’t people just work from home, rather than dealing with these insanely crowded head-cubicles?)

When a ferocious wolfman-like beastie starts rampaging through Elsewhere, Ayo is left with a messed-up head, Magri is confused, and the corporate masters who profit from Elsewhere face a potential PR nightmare.

“Dream Sequence” is probably the most physically brutal of the Finder books I’ve read. Hoo boy, does bad stuff happen in Elsewhere! And in Magri’s memories, too. Talk about “a world of hurt”…

…which is part of my problem with the book. Magri, as a character, does not work, I think. He’s too dissociated, wounded, and vague. (I should note that I ran into the same problem with the narrator of “Judica me Deus“–it’s really hard to write intentionally unformed, blank characters without frustrating the reader or copping out on crucial character-formation tasks. So I sympathize with the problem here. But still, Magri doesn’t work.) He wanders through the book fulfilling various cliches of martyred artistry, rejected child, and repressed anger. Ayo comes across much more powerfully, in part because his voice is more distinctive, less gray and static-y, even though he gets much less screen time.

So: There are several great sequences and moving images, but ultimately, no.

Finder: King of the Cats: I was going to review this. But then Unqualified Offerings got there first, and said maybe not exactly what I would have said, but definitely what I should have said. I’ll just sign on to his review. (Plus you get a bonus review of “Eightball #22,” free inside each specially-marked package!)

Finder: Talisman: At the Small Press Expo, Carla Speed McNeil said that this book garnered bushels of letters from librarians, telling her that her book had made them weep. It’s easy to see why: “Talisman” is an ode to bibliomania. (Interesting to contrast with the far more jaundiced view of living-through-others’-dreams presented in “Dream Sequence.”)

Because this is McNeil, you can expect clean, evocative art. And I think I could read about the Grosvenor family, who starred in the “Sin-Eater” books, more or less endlessly. They’re terrific characters, and several scenes in “Talisman” gain new potency when you realize how they fit into the “Sin-Eater” sequence. (“Can you kill my husband for me?”) We get to see a family drama first through the adults’ eyes, and then through the eyes of a child living out her own adventure often disconnected from the family’s rhythms.

But my general conclusion, after reading all these Finder books–all of which are very good, I should note–is that McNeil is at her best writing plot-driven stories rather than idea-driven stories. In “Sin-Eater,” which I can’t recommend highly enough (really, you owe it to yourself to check this out), the themes emerge gradually from the surf of plot and character. The other three volumes all seem more like the idea came first, and plot accrued around it and was ultimately dominated by it. Many writers work well that way. McNeil, with her hawk eye for character, ambivalence, and conflicting impulses, does not.

Jinx: A big hulking noir romance from Brian Bendis. The good stuff: compelling characters, lovely art, very effective use of noir visual effects–the book really does translate noir directly into comics. I loved that, since I’m a) hooked on the noir style (except for its overly slick, all-surface manifestations), and b) fascinated by “crossover” possibilities in different art forms–whether and how comics can do what we normally expect from music, or movies/prose, etc. Anyway, the book looks great, and the visual effects underscore the story and characterization nigh-on perfectly.

The bad stuff: pacing. Jinx starts fast and propulsive, but somewhere in the middle the pace flags and never quite recovers. The too-short chapters add to this problem. The middle feels saggy, overstuffed.

Overall: I am fascinated by noir and a fan of Bendis generally. So I definitely wrung my money’s worth out of this fat book. But if neither of those descriptors fits you, you should look elsewhere for your fun.

Like a River: Story of a near-despairing Russian widower whose estranged son returns to try to put their relationship, and his father’s life, back together. Harsh, ramshackle drawing; taciturn, equally-matched characters (nice to see that the narrative doesn’t overbalance to favor either son or father); poignant story. This was really good. It probably won’t change your world, but it is well worth your time.

Breakdowns thought that the “fixing a roof = fixing their relationship” and “life = river” metaphors were a bit tired. I agree w/r/t the river, but actually, I thought the book did a good job of presenting several different task-metaphors (not just the roof) and treating each one only glancingly as a metaphor. So you get a more realistic sense of how a family is patched back together, one small task at a time, each task a battle of wills but no one task assuming especially heavy metaphorical baggage. Recommended.