Shannon Vokes Does Not Sleep When it Comes to His New Project – SleepRunners!

Reviewer: Ron Kerronian
Flash Rating: Sci-Fi Action Adventure

SLEEPRUNNERS ISSUE #1

A group of students promised a full college scholarship if they particpate in a sleep study find that the sleep world is no refuge from horror, it is just the begining.
Created by:  Shannon Vokes 

Written by: Shannon Vokes

Pencils by: Kewber Baal

Color by: Clarissa Filice

Publisher:  Knighty Knight Publishing http://www.sleeprunners.blogspot.com/

I first met Shannon Vokes ,the creator and writer of SleepRunners at PalmCon (A first of its kind event hosted in West Palm Beach Florida by Martin Pierro of CosmicTimes.net)

I was drawn to his publishing booth initially because I saw he had most of his family present, his son and daughter. These three were the forerunners for the book the other family members as Shannon puts it provide support from behind the scenes at coventions and during marketing efforts. So I got to talking about this book of his SleepRunners, the dark navy blue cover caught my eye.

Shannon Vokes Presents sleeprunners issue 1

I picked it up and flipped through a few pages, I felt it might be a worthy read, and it was. As you may have gathered the main premise of the story takes place in a quasi sleep/dream world. However, The conflicts are not only limited to the Dream world, they find their way to leak out into ours and when they do the consequences are often fatal. In this saga the lines between reality and dreams are blurred which is a soup that trapped me from page to page.

The cast of characters has enough three dimensional debth…which I feel will help them relate to various audiences, my favorite is Raymond. I like him not so much for his personality, but for what he represents as possibile…you see Raymond is disabled in our world, but in this new world he can do and be whatever he wants. “The writing is superb, Vokes rocks.” The Art is fluid, from Panel to panel (I see why Artist Kewber Baal has been picked up by DC comics for a brief project, he has now moved on over to the find folks at Dynamite Entertainment) so the Art can sand on its own feet without tons of unnecessary narration to lead the reader through the story. The colors are sharp and crisp, with little computer alterations/special effects…which sometimes can be harmful or benefitual to the entire enterprise, however, in this case it works. Based on what I’ve read in the first volume, I expect an exciting conclusion in the series coming volumes.

I say Kudos to Shannon, Kewber, Clarissa and supporters on a book well done.

This volume from a rating system of “A – F,” I give  a solid B+. This rating is awarded because the series managed to tell a complete and uniform story with a large cast of characters. The ending of the first volume does have the reviewer wanting more, the story is catching sufficient momentumt and I feel the audience will want to stay for the long hual.

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