Review by Frank Plowright

Professor Angus has devised technology allowing children to enter nightmares, ascertain what the root causes are, and so bring restful sleep. He learned the hard way that children ought to be the participants when his wife became trapped within someone else’s nightmare and remains there. His son Tristan enjoys the missions for being able to use his legs again in dreams, and he’s accompanied by Esteban who’s been told he was discovered three years previously with no memory. He learned in The Girl From Déjà Vu that’s not the entire truth, and in fact he’s a dream creation who’s escaped to reality.

As Into the Woods opens Esteban finds himself in very difficult circumstances, living with his parents who claim his stories about visiting nightmares are fantasies he’s made up. Reader sympathies are going to be with Esteban, and we soon discover Esteban is within Professor Angus’ nightmare. The difference from the scenarios presented before is that Esteban is unaccompanied and with no-one to guide him from reality, at least at the beginning.

The concept of adventures within nightmares is only limited by the imaginations of creators Franck Thilliex and Yomgui Dumont, and the balance they have to maintain is introducing the surreal and impossible while retaining some grounding. It’s achieved again as in the first of two stories a sinister circus menaces the cast with some strange creations under their command. It’s a mystery with a solution obvious once revealed, yet likely not to be guessed beforehand, and eventually deals with Esteban’s fears in a smart way.

Dumont once again fills the pages with wonky people, but they so fit the scenarios, whether touring nightmares or in their reality. It’s strange they fit together so well as they’re very mismatched, some constructed almost entirely from curved lines and others gaunt and straggly. Dumont’s highlight is a busy spread during the title story in which one of the main cast’s dreams is explored and fantasy creations multiply.

The second of two original French graphic novels combined here (in smaller size) delves deeper into the continuing plotlines Thilliex has introduced. Alex, a boy at the local school, has come to believe Tristan is faking being in a wheelchair and is determined to expose the truth as he sees it, and Estaban is also concerned with ensuring a truth is revealed. Thilliex has also been thinking about the possibilities of fantastic creatures escaping from dreams, and ties in cryptozoological research.

Answers come tumbling out during the title story, which has fewer dream sequences, but higher tension due to the very personal nature of what’s at stake. It’s going to answer most questions readers have had since the beginning, yet ends with a cliffhanger introducing new factors. It’s great. Finding Alice is next.