Straight Out Of A Dream: Queen of Bad Dreams #1 Review

Words: Danny Lore/ Art: Jordi Pérez/ Colorist: Dearbhla Kelly/ Letterer: Kim McLean/ Vault Comics I read that the elevator pitch for Queen of Bad Dreams was “The Sandman meets Blade Runner”. Beyond that, the narrative would center a female main character among Brown and Black women, queer women and also non-binary folks. What if dreams broke through into reality? By the end of the first issue, I began to have a better understanding of the structure of this world and its rules. Here, dreams are powerful to a degree that fragments of figments of can escape to have their own autonomy. What does this mean? A person can dream up things, persons, and creatures capable of escaping into the real world Those who do make a scene, wreak havoc, and ultimately end up in the crosshairs of an “Inspector Judge”. Enter Daher, a woman who is a veteran IJ. She’s a highly skilled person who knows how to track these figments. Once caught, Daher has the authority to either ‘reinsert’ the figment into the dream world, or grant them agency in our world. So she sounds legit, right?

I’m really digging the writing of such a female character with a job that literally holds the weight of what happens to someone’s existence in the palm of her hands, penned by a writer who doesn’t identify as White or Male. I’m also always excited to see new comic book writers debut and show us what they are working with. In such a story dealing with dreams, the abstract, and the merging of worlds could have many readers …