The Dream Merchant is a new comic book series from Image Comics. It is a supernatural ride through a young man’s dreams. This new series is brought to us by Nathan Edmondson and the new and talented Konstantin Novosadov. Nathan isn’t known for supernatural story-telling but he weaves a story that has some intrigue. The Dream Merchant brings us into a man’s dreams and we see how it has affected his life.
The series starts off with a nice sized issue #1. The Dream Merchant throws us right into the main characters life and struggles with his dreams. The main character is named Winslow. He doesn’t know why he keeps having the same dreams over and over. It seems a bit wild that he is in a mental hospital but we can skip over that for the meat of the story. Throughout the book the dialogue is mainly caption boxes of the main characters thoughts. It is heavy dose of first person narrative, but it works pretty well in this first issue. We really get the sense of what is going on in Winslow’s head. He is not crazy but everyone thinks he might be because of all these dreams.
He meets a new doctor half way through the first issue. This doctor helps him to find out why he keeps having this one reoccurring dream. The falls into a dream state while the doctor is there, but this time it is not exactly the same. Someone or something is there coming for Winslow. He jumps up back into reality with a sense of fear from his dream. But is this reality really reality?? That comes to mind when reading issue #1 of The Dream Merchant.
The artwork is pretty solid for this type of story-telling. The change of scenes from reality to the dream world is noticeable from the change of colors in the panels. Konstantin Novosadov has a unique style to his line work. His work isn’t super detailed but gives you a sense of the characters. I think he fits in well with Nathan’s script of The Dream Merchant. My only drawback is some of the panels have a cartoony feel to them but then again it could all be part of what they want us to see in that panel.
Overall this book has some potential. I really dig dream style concepts and love to see them morph into something amazing. Will The Dream Merchant do that? I can’t tell just yet. Even though this first issue is a solid 52 pages it still felt a bit empty to me. It could be because the pacing of the book is a bit slower for a first issue into the series. I wanted to know more about this world Winslow lives in and what he is trying to get from his dreams. We will see where Edmondson and Novosadov take us when issue #2 drops next month. I will check it out and see what dreamy road they begin to spin this story.
So head on out to your local comic book shop for this and other great books that are out this week. Don’t know what came out this week? Well we here at Comic Booked have got you covered. Check them all out here.
Sounds like a good idea for a series. Different, at the very least. Might be worth checking out.
It's devastating how this book completely STEALS every idea from my own comic series Dream Reavers. In fact I gave Image a copy of my book a long time ago as well, but of course this series will sell more than my book ever will, only because it has the Image symbol on the cover.
Yes that does suck Raph. I have read your book as well and can see the similarities, but then again who knows when this comic was thought up.