Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) (Walk In #1)

Characters
Main Hero: Ian
Minor Heroes: Astrid

Main Villains: Unknown

P'Shat

Ian is a poor, world traveling guy from Manchester who lives through his wits, and by taking advantage of people who believe that since he's British, he must have money. He tries to settle down, but he keeps having black-outs and waking up weeks later in another city. Also, he is having visions of a futuristic people, and he can't tell whether or not he is hallucinating.

Today he's in Moscow, eating the free buffet in a burlesque club and trying to hide the fact that he doesn't have any money for tips. When the bouncer tries to throw him out, he says that he's really a part of the act -- a "Dreamcatcher" who can tell you your dreams. He also gets to crash with Astrid and her stripper friends, but this doesn't work out too well, since they've also got a really bad German band crashing there.

Ian's act is a scam, similar to carnival "fortune tellers" who speak from generalities and let the gullible feed the details, but one night he is challenged by a heckler who has seen his act multiple times. In response, Ian focuses in and REALLY reads his dreams, telling him about how he dreamed of killing his brother and burying the body.

As he goes to the window that night to avoid the annoying all-hours practice session of the German band, he sees that his "vision" is replaced by an entire futuristic city.

Drash

Okay, I'll be honest. If you were to have asked me, say, last month, "Who were the members of the Eurythmics", I would have answered clearly and without hesitation: "It was Annie Lennox and that other person!"

If you were then to ask me, "Who is Dave Stewart", I would have responded, with less certainty, "Um, didn't he pitch for the Phillies back during the time I was listening to Annie Lennox and whatisname in the Eurythmics?"

Now, I would have gotten both questions right, but I would have completely missed that the OTHER GUY in the Eurythmics was actually ALSO named Dave Stewart (and also, that the pitcher became much more famous after he was traded to the Oakland A's, but Phillies Phans can't be expected to care about the American League.)

I also would have done better than "Walk In"s Wikipedia page, which currently links to an Eisner award winning colorist also named Dave Stewart as the creator of "Walk In", rather than the non-Lennox Eurythmics guy.

I'll tell you, I'm a sucker for this type of "Is it Real or Is It Memorex" Total Recall/Matrix-type story. And this one is very well done, at least for Issue #1, with characters I don't know yet.

Also, on a scale of 1 to 10 for exploitative-stripper scenes, where "10" is "Friday night at midnight on Cinemax," and "1" is a "supervised grade-school performance of 'Gypsy'", this is really closer to a 3, which is surprisingly low for an "R-rated" comic book.

I continue to love all of the variety in the Virgin comic books line, and recommend them all (I actually own all of them!) So, that's all for this one. No deep thoughts or literary criticism. Just a good story. Maybe they'll do an Annie Lennox one next!