Review: Dream Thief #5

I always have trouble assessing endings, which is probably related to the difficulty of writing endings. Trying to take something that otherwise had momentum from one installment to another and ending it in a satisfying way is really difficult, and I don’t begrudge anyone the difficulty in doing so. Unfortunately, for something that I’ve been so enthusiastic about so far, Dream Thief #5 (written by Jai Nitz, illustrated by Greg Smallwood) leaves me a little mixed with how it wraps the series up.

Like I said with the end of the last issue, they changed the way that the issues had typically ended up to that point. We’d always seen John right after he wakes up from a murderous rampage, but in that issue, it ended right before he was knocked unconscious and went on one of said rampages. I really liked the change of pace, and this picks up logically from that point. The problem is, it gets confusing rather quickly, and I had some difficulty with following exactly what was going on and why. Part of this is directly caused by that change of pace – while it was a welcome change, it also completely threw me off and I spent a lot of the issue trying to catch up with what was happening.

You’re definitely going to want to reread the previous issues before picking this up. So much from the early issues is referenced, so once I went back and read those, everything came together and clicked in such a way that wrapping up the story actually became pretty satisfying, if still somewhat disjointed. My one problem, and maybe it’s just me, comes from one element of the story that wasn’t set up well and always feels like a cheap way to tell a story. It doesn’t ruin it and I don’t want to spoil it, but it has nagged at me consistently since I read it.

Greg Smallwood continues to be really good, but I don’t want to talk about his art here. Instead, I’m going to talk about the last few pages of the issue, after the editorial page. For each issue (and these better be compiled for the trade), they include other artists’ interpretations of the characters and various scenes at the very end. I’ve quite enjoyed seeing those, especially since you often get locked into a specific look and feel for a character during a specific artist’s run on a comic, and seeing all of these reminds me of how much of an impact the artist and their style has on a character – it isn’t quite the John Lincoln I’m familiar with, and getting that reminder when I’m such a writing-oriented reader is something I need, along with a really interesting extra feature that most comics would never really feature.

Overall, my recommendation is simple. If you liked the previous issues, you’ll want to see the end and it’ll be worth your $3.99 to get there, even though it doesn’t quite feel like the rest. If you haven’t been interested, there’s nothing groundbreaking here that’ll bring you in. If you’re on the fence, you might want to wait for the trade to come out (they announce on the editorial page that it’s coming out March 12, 2014, though I’ve seen no official confirmation from Dark Horse). Regardless of that, I’m a little mixed, but I think I need to give it some time to sink in before I really pass judgment on how it ends (maybe I’ll revisit it when the trade comes out).

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) wants to like endings, but finds that he oddly likes the perpetual middle. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.