Review by Frank Plowright

Sam and Duncan are introduced searching for their abducted young daughter. It’s no ordinary search, though, as they’re wearing exotic armoured suits and accompanied by a talking frog, or toad, as they later clarify. As scene-setting opening pages go, Riley Rossmo’s sample art takes some beating. It precedes a heady rush of action strangeness as both protagonists and readers come to terms with the out and out weirdness of a world beyond our own, a world where science and magic mix.

The art’s magnificent. Rossmo has for a long while been a uniquely interesting artist whose talent shines through, but doesn’t seem best applied to superhero comics. Here he creates his own visual aesthetic where pretty much anything can happen, and then makes that aesthetic fit the real world equally well. Sam and Duncan can return home, but their home is as chaotic as the world they leave.

Without Daniel Warren Johnson, though, Rossmo wouldn’t have those worlds to create. Exploring the world of dreams is hardly a new concept to comics, but the unique selling point Johnson offers is that it’s the dreams of a six year old being explored. Unable to waken, Penny constantly cycles her dreams, reconstituting the familiar, yet also manifesting a solid environment that can be accessed and travelled across. However, Penny’s dreams can also be accessed by nightmare creatures known as the Cascade who’re gradually occupying more of her mind. There’s a tipping point after which there’ll be no chance of her awakening again.

In addition to providing a strangely compelling world of the familiar mixing with the exotic, Johnson throws in a dose of emotional reality in a particularly strong scene. It’s more likely than not that parents who’ve experienced the death of child will separate, and Johnston introduces tension via different perceptions of what’s necessary. Sam as a mother will do anything for her daughter, and if that means killing strange, aggressive creatures in a dreamworld, she’s up for it. Duncan, though, is having greater difficulty coming to terms with that necessity.

Johnson keeps throwing in shocks, and Rossmo keeps drawing the hell out of them. This is one incredibly impressive action fantasy, and everything’s turned upside down when this volume ends. It concludes in Vol. 2.