I recently just checked out Sleeper by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. I had the Season One trade for literally years now but never read it. I moved a few months ago and during that move, I unearthed a few books that I had long forgotten I had, including Sleeper. I love crime stories and was in the perfect place to start reading it. And so I did.

I devoured it.

I haven’t torn through a comic series like that in a while. Ed’s writing was fantastic — I love the episodic way he told each chapter. Each story could be enjoyed on its own, but would continually add to the overall arc of the series. And Sean Phillips’ art was phenomenal. I’d never seen someone draw a story the way he did, with each page having a splash image frame the rest of the panels on that page. I thought it was unique and very cool. And his painted covers were absolutely gorgeous.

After finishing the series, I felt I had to do some sort of fan art to show my appreciation for the series.

Right after Sleeper, but before I did this drawing, I read a Parker story by Darwyn Cooke. When I went to do this drawing, the thought popped into my head, “What if Darwyn Cooke drew Sleeper?” So I had fun trying out a little more animated style than usual when doing this illustration of Sleeper’s main character, Holden Carver. I wanted to emulate the heavy shadowing style of Sean Phillips as well as the moody coloring he did on some of the covers. Lastly, I used part of the same layout design that was used on the Sleeper trades, but also added in some additional text elements — names, places, events, that affected Agent Carver during his double-agent life!

Obviously, I highly recommend the series. If you haven’t read it already, do yourself a favor and pick it up.

Reading Sleeper caused me to pick up the first 5 volumes of Ed and Sean’s crime series, Criminal. Looking forward to diving into that very soon!

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[9″x12″] Col-Erase Pencil -> Micron Pens -> Photoshop (for coloring) -> InDesign (for design & typography)