Zander Cannon’s new comic book Sleep, from Image Comics, will keep you up at night. Not because it’s gory or includes a lot of jump-scares — it doesn’t. In fact, the opposite: the book exists in the down times between those more action-focused scenes of a monster/horror movie. Instead, the spiraling tension of the eight-issue series will wind you up until, like the main character, you’re about to explode.
The book follows a man named Jonathan Reason. He’s small, unassuming, religious, and doesn’t make too much of an impact on the small town he lives in. That is, until he goes to sleep, per the title of the book. When he wakes up every morning, he finds that people have been ripped apart, and there’s a path of destruction left in the wake of whatever attacked. Slowly, it begins to dawn on Jonathan what the reader realizes early: whatever attacked is likely Jonathan.
Each issue keeps whatever is happening to Jonathan off-panel, but amps up the cost of the destruction higher and higher each time, as Jonathan falls apart with the weight of what he thinks he’s done — and is unable to control. Later issues muddy the water a bit with clues that things are not what they seem (as of this writing, the fifth issue of eight has been released). But as we follow this small town, the book expands dramatically in scope to tackle issues of good and evil, and how we can follow a religious path while evil lives inside of us.
Those are some big topics to tackle, but wherever you fall on the religious spectrum, Cannon keeps the story engaging and respectful… It’s not (at least not yet) about the failure of the church, so much as how we can find solace in the ideas of scripture, even in the darkest of hours. And his art contrasts beautifully with the action… His figures are cartoony, the colors are simple blacks, whites, and grays with splashes of red to indicate danger, or where the monster may lie. And that simplicity allows the focus to lay directly on the emotional destruction of Jonathan, and the town around him.
While it’s unknown at this time what the eventual thematic or plot outcome will be, the extraordinarily stress-inducing book is such a fantastic character study that I sort of hope we never get to see the monster… Whatever lies in our imaginations is as awful and terrifying as what lies in Jonathan’s; and that’s the whole point, perhaps: the evil we imagine for ourselves is (hopefully) so much worse than whatever we put out into the world, and what we put on ourselves. And that feeling doesn’t go away, even when we fall asleep.
Sleep #1-#5 are on sale at comic book stores now. Sleep #6 will hit stores on October 29, with Sleep #7 following on December 10, 2025.
It’s spooky season, and you know what that means: time to curl up with a comic book or graphic novel that will scare your socks off. With that in mind, we’re posting a new horror book to check out every day of October, for our 31 Days Of Halloween Comics. Awoooo! Looking for the rest of our picks? Check them out on the Halloween tag.
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