Sleeper: CBR Interview, New Editions Forthcoming.

A couple brief notes about Sleeper.

First, a couple weeks ago Comic Book Resources featured an early, somewhat lengthy interview with Ed Brubaker, about the news of a possible movie for his and Sean's Sleeper. He explains that the story's use of characters from the wider WildStorm universe doesn't pose a significant problem, as the movie could rename and slightly tweak these characters while keeping the basic narrative structure intact.

Ed notes, "all but four characters were created by me and Sean just for 'Sleeper.'"

For the life of me, I can only think of three "outside" characters: Lynch, TAO, and Grifter. Sleeper's prologue, a mini-series called Point Blank, features a couple others, including Midnighter and Hawksmoor, but I can't think of a fourth such character that was in the story of Sleeper proper.

Second, last week Sean posted at his sight early drafts -- here and here -- of artwork for "a new printing" of Point Blank, by Ed and artist Colin Wilson.

(Sean also revealed an insightful and quite amusing look at a reference photo he used for Criminal, for what it's worth.)

In the notes at the back of the excellent new issue of Criminal that was released yesterday, Ed confirmed what Sean's blog posts suggested:

"...for Sleeper fans, there are new editions of Sleeper in the works, I just found out, so keep your eyes peeled for those."

This doesn't appear to be the Absolute edition I'm hoping for -- and I do hope that that comes out right before the movie, at the latest -- but this is very cool news nevertheless.

We'll keep readers posted on new info about Sleeper, in print and on film. In the meantime, how about "Bad Night"? The understated revelation about how Jake was crippled, and why, was simply brutal.

Buy Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips comics from Amazon.com