Parasomnia The Dreaming God #1: Spoiler Free Review

Cullen Bunn and Andrew Mutti’s high concept exploration of dreams returns. Get lost in a world created by the unconscious thoughts of dreamers and follow desperate parents as they search for their children.

Writer: Cullen Bunn

Art and Colors: Andrea Mutti

Letters: Simon Bowland

Standard Cover: Andrea Mutti

Cover B: Benjamin Dewey

Publisher: Dark Horse Comics

Price: 3.99

Release Date: August 17th, 2022

Deep Ideas, Shallow Characters

Parasomnia: The Dreaming God #1 picks up more or less where the first mini-series unceremoniously ended last year. In the dream world the Nameless Man continues to search for his son, confronting those loyal to the Faceless Queen along the way. In the present Fenny continues to hide Leo, and Leo’s parents Grover and Annette look for him in their separate ways.

The primary setting in Parasomnia: The Dreaming God #1 is a cyberpunk future. The unnamed man and his companion Kahnawake transition into the new dream world setting on the first page. The two characters never comment on this change, behaving as though they had never been anywhere else. This reads like a reflection on the shifting nature of dreams–how the nature of what the dreamer is experiencing can change at any given time without explanation or understanding.

Potentially connected to that change in setting is what appears to be the return of a concept mentioned by Leo’s father in the previous series: shared dreams. The implication in the first Parasomnia was that Leo, being kept unconscious by Fenny (the likely Faceless Queen), was the dreamer responsible for the world the Nameless Man inhabited. The final page of Parasomnia: The Dreaming God #1 introduces the possibility that someone else has begun to experience the dreams Leo is having. Shared dreaming, while not having a scientific basis, is a concept with a basis in multiple spiritual belief systems.

These ideas remain as interesting as they were in the first Parasomnia series, and the curiosity factor entices further reading. But like the earlier series, there’s virtually no character development and what little there is is confined to the dream world. We learn nothing new about Fenny’s motives or goals. Grover and Annette remain two dimensional, with no new revelations about either. And what little more we discover about the Nameless Man is entirely secondary to the plot he’s a part of. Ultimately the only reason the characters are compelling in Parasomnia: The Dreaming God #1 is because the story of a kidnapped child plays on our emotions. Beyond that there is little to connect with.

True World Building

Without a doubt the best part of Parasomnia: The Dreaming God #1 is the same thing that was the best part about the first Parasomnia series: the art. Mutti uses the same watercolor-esque style and it creates an ethereal quality, both in the dream world and the real world. In a way this adds to the big ideas Bunn is exploring with the narrative.

Mutti also succeeds in making the new cyberpunk landscape easily recognizable. And as the colonial era dream world was visually distinct from the real world with a predominantly brown focused color palette, so too is the cyberpunk dream world distinct from the other previous two established worlds with a yellow-green and gray-blue focus.

Final Thoughts

Parasomnia: The Dreaming God #1 is a high concept comic not unlike the issues that preceded it, and like those issues it benefits from multiple readings. The greater the interest in these concepts, the more likely a reader is to want to continue the series. And certainly Mutti’s art helps as it contributes to the immersion. The visuals are definitely a key selling point that elevates the book.. Nevertheless it is difficult to care about characters we know little to nothing about, and that makes it difficult–especially in the real world–to stay interested in what they are doing.

Originally published at The Comic Book Dispatch.