Sleepless #11 Review

Writer: Sarah Vaughn / Artists: Leila Del Duca and Alissa Sallah / Image Comics I am so sad to finally see this issue as it brings the finale of fave series Sleepless. This is where the fates of Poppy and Cyrenic are finally decided. It has been an exciting ride, with all the pieces finally falling into place to reveal Poppy’s enemy. We learn the the mastermind is: Oranto!? Not the one who smiled and counseled both princess and sleepless knight as one of their few allies in court?!

One of the major themes of this comic is that the Sleepless are ever ready. The implicit meaning is about anyone who strives to always be vigilant, perhaps on the edge of constant anxiety. That kind of hyper-vigilance can lead to weakness that spells your doom. This is what our Princess Poppy and the knight of hers, have always been attempting to be, and failing at. Now in the final issue we see that fleshed out in another way in revealed baddie Oranto, who has waited and waited for his chance to strike, staying vigilant and on his toes year after year. I have enjoyed the mentioning of time in the writing by Vaughn as a theme as well. It seems like Poppy and Cyrenic were always running out of time as a pair: to discover who wanted her dead, to find out who was around the corner, to reveal plots made in the dark. And yet these two were always running out of time individually: Poppy herself, was running out of time to figure out how to leave court to join her mother, running out of time to not get m…