Comic Review: Sleeping Beauties #2 (IDW Publishing)

The second issue Sleeping Beauties #2, a new IDW title this month, keeps us anxious. Anxious for more!

Based on the novel by Stephen King and Owen King, Sleeping Beauties is adapted by Rio Youers (Canadian, author of novels Old Man Scratch, Point Hollow, The Forgotten Girl, etc)

Without revealing too much, a non-spoiler version of the story premise is that women, when they fall asleep, are falling victim to a virus, one that seems to have originated in Australia. Hmm, what a close parallel to today’s ‘new normal pandemic panic’. There is the usual rattling of political swords and blaming of the various stakeholders. But in its midst is a stranger, a woman who appears to have emerged from the woods, and intuitively knows ‘things’. About strangers, she meets while she’ walking down the street, the people that she meets each day. Stranger danger!

Artist Alison Sampson (British, Hit-Girl: Mumbai, Winnebago Graveyard, The Wicked + The Divine, Genesis, etc) is awesome at the rendering of the horror, suspense and mundane day-to-day proceedings of our people of colour, our sisters and brothers, mothers and others. The facial expressions draw us in, make us trust the narrative, and connect to it.

Colourist Triona Tree Farrell (Irish, Web of Black Widow, Doctor Strange Annual 2019, etc) continues to play colours against each other for truly unusual and interesting effect: dark brown facial shadows against cobalt blue backgrounds, vibrant cadmium reds against light green. Fun amidst the car crashes, the character clashes, the singed lashes of the story horror.

This is a wrecking ride that you’ll want to hop on. The theme park of terror, the screams of the non-living, the captured and held tightly wrapped and warped.

Sleeping Beauties #2, IDW, $3.99 for 25 pages of comic content. Mature