Sleepwalker issues 25 through 29 are not labelled as a single story the way the “Mindfield” issues were, but they are every bit as much an ongoing story as that arc was. In fact, they come directly out of “Mindfield” so they’re kinda still that story. We’re definitely in the era where self-contained issues are a thing of the past.

Things looked good for Rick Sheridan at the end of last week, but they immediately go about as badly for possible. He was no longer connected to Sleepwalker so surely he could get his life back on track, right? Well, one of his love interests, Janine, turns out to be the granddaughter of his landlords and they tell him that because he’s been so unreliable he is losing his job as superintendent to her, as well as the free apartment that comes with it. His ex-girlfriend Alyssa seems willing to rekindle at least their friendship, but having been subjected to Sleepwalker’s warpbeam (via Rick, though she doesn’t know that) she has gone from a staunch supporter of Sleepwalker to wanting him brought to justice. And then Sleepwalker shows up and says that he will die if he can’t go back into Rick’s mind to feed on mental energies. And then the Mindspawn (whom we are meant to believe are Sleepwalker’s people, but also not) show up to use Rick’s mind as their portal into the world and Sleepwalker proves his loyalty to them by seemingly killing him. It’s pretty clear that Sleepwalker has simply stored Rick’s mind in a sci-fi weapon, but he loses that and Rick is “dead” for the rest of this batch of stories. He even gets a funeral and Alyssa swearing to avenge him.

Thus, Sleepwalker gets to deal with the dozens (maybe hundreds) Mindspawn as they rampage through Brooklyn. He does this by posing as one of them, even challenging their leader so he can become their leader. This doesn’t make him look good in the eyes of most of the populace, so the finally-returning head of NYPD’s Sleepwalker task force Detective Perez does the only reasonable thing: she calls in the Avengers to deal with the Mindspawn invasion.

I assume that this lineup of Avengers is not one of the most popular ones: Black Widow, Hercules, Black Knight, Crystal, and the Vision and seeming very of the era. But I have no strong interest in the Avengers as a group at the best of times, so this grouping works perfectly acceptably for me as the kind of big name powerful superheroes you call in to deal with something like this. And they’re the only guest stars from the greater Marvel Universe in this batch of issues too. The stories may have gone fully serialized, but at least they don’t rely too much on guests.

During the invasion, Sleepwalker does help some innocent civilians, but it isn’t enough to turn the tides of public opinion when Alyssa tell the Avengers and cops and national guard about what he did to Rick, so most people do in fact now think Sleepwalker is evil. He goes on the run.

That was the first three issues of the week, the big Mindspawn Invasion. It was annoying because they all look so much like our titular character that sometimes I can’t tell when I’m looking at our guy or not. The next two deal with the fallout. Sleepwalker saves a poor man in an alley like he’s Spawn or something and the man, named Pike, gives Sleepy a place to stay in his improvised shack under an overpass.

The government, meanwhile, managed to capture exactly one of the Mindspawn (the leader that Sleepwalker overthrew) and in the fancy secret prison hospital where they are studying him, they also have a serial killer. That serial killer escapes his own confinement and tries to kill the captive Mindspawn which naturally results in the Mindspawn and the killer merging into a new being that decides to go by the name Psyko! If you were told to design a stereotypical ’90s comic villain with the caveat “no cyborgs” you’d not take long to come up with Psyko. He’s a massively muscled monster man who revels in violence and he’s “crazy” so he says “funny” things such as when Sleepwalker punches him and he says “You like me! You must really, really like me!” He also has the power to make innocent people “go crazy” and he has the weapon that contains Rick’s mind, so obviously Sleepwalker needs to get in there and fight the guy.

During the ensuing fight the people of New York are still not quite sure what side Sleepwalker is on, so then we get another returning character: Spectra, the Mistress of Light who was the villain during the first half of the story where Sleepwalker got addicted. It turns out that she hasn’t stayed on the life of crime and now intends to do good by bringing down Sleepwalker. And that’s the cliffhanger this batch ends on.

As I’ve pretty much said, this is all coming directly out of the “Mindfield” story and each issue flows directly into the next never leaving me with a satisfying conclusion. It doesn’t feel like a complete meal. I like seeing Perez and Spectra return. I can say I’d be highly amused if we never see Janine again and that story just ended abruptly with Rick getting kicked out of his apartment and then “dying”.

What is important to note is that there are only four issues left of this book, so next week will be the end of the Summer of Sleepwalker!

The second season of the Invaders begins! In this one, David Vincent foils another alien plan. They tried to infiltrate NORAD and shut down their scanning do-dads so that they can have a bunch of flying saucers land without being noticed. Here’s some of the things worth noting:

To infiltrate NORAD an Invader woman poses as the new wife of a NORAD major (Dan Keller) who recently lost his wife. The idea that he remarries a quarter year after his first wife’s death is raised as a weird thing, but that could easily be a result of mind control, given that as it is she is using a mind control device to make Dan give her secrets. This device is different from the usual little hypnotism crystals they use, it’s an actual thing placed on Dan’s head that leaves a sore spot on his forehead. I assume this setup is for more long-term hypnotism than the crystals or something. So while mind control may explain why he remarries so soon, what I don’t think we know is if the Invaders bumped off his first wife or simply took advantage of the situation when she died. It doesn’t matter, and they are certainly callous enough to have done it, I kinda prefer the latter.

Speaking of killing humans, the thing that sparks this episode is a doctor seeing the Invader woman fall off a horse and checking her for a pulse, finding none, and calling her in as dead. The Invaders then proceed to do a pretty brutal drowning of that doctor. When it turns out she isn’t dead, after the doctor’s report was made public, Vincent correctly surmises that if a doctor checked a person and found no pulse, it could be an Invader. He’s very good at his job sometimes.

Speaking of Vincent being good at his job sometimes, this is one of those rare occasions (maybe the second or third time) when he’s shown up at a place undercover! He goes to NORAD using an alias (Robert Davis) and pretending to be a reporter! Good for him! Unfortunately for him, it’s probably too late for David Vincent to go undercover given his time spent publicly fighting aliens. NORAD’s security guards have a whole headshot of the man that they carry around on their clipboards just in case he shows up. We have to assume most government security have been briefed on the man at this point.

And also, I think this is two weeks in a row that the Invaders have used their vaporizer guns to vaporize a car they think their target is in, so they assume the target has been vaporized, but actually the target got out just in time to avoid it. I feel like if you use weapons that vaporize the proof you killed your target, just take a moment to look around a little more. Just to make sure.

Anyway, as I said, Vincent wins in the end, though Dan Keller dies. It’s all a pretty standard Invaders fare at this point, but it isn’t a bad start to season two.

That’s right. I’m older now. Wanna make something of it?

This week I am looking at issues 20 through 24 of Sleepwalker, which make up all but part one of the story “Mindfield”, because I covered part one last week.

One thing I have consistently talked about during this read-through is how much I like it when a comic tells a whole story in itself, so I was prepared for that to end during this six-part tale. But really, “Mindfield” still mostly lets its chapters feel complete. Part one last week was setup and ended with Rick Sheridan and Sleepwalker smooshed together. Part two features the partially-amalgamated duo fighting the Chain Gang and ends with Rick’s half falling asleep and SW trying to correct things, except his mind winds up in Rick’s body and vice versa. Part three is about Rick in Sleepwalker’s body fighting 8-Ball and Hobgoblin and it ends with him having his throat slit. Part four is Rick-as-Sleepwalker being pulled into the Mindscape where he has to deal with all sorts of monsters sicced on him by Cobweb. In part five, he meets a team of apparent Sleepwalkers who oppose Cobweb (a plot twist about them is coming that I remember from my childhood, but which doesn’t come up in these issues). And then part six is the climactic fight back on Earth. Overall, each chapter does give you a complete story for your 1990s dollar-and-change, they just happen to each have a cliffhanger leading you into the next one. Nothing wrong with that.

Apart from Cobweb, who is mostly working as the behind-the-scenes mastermind, the ongoing villains of the piece are the Chain Gang, which is a shame because I find them interesting. They started the story in the mind of Rick’s dog Rambo, but for the rest of the story they are in the mind of his love interest (original recipe) Alyssa Conover. And in there they find a way to mind-control her, so she spends the story trying to kill Rick (who is actually Sleepwalker going about his attempts to keep Rick’s life intact). One of the funniest things to me in this arc is that during the time when Rick is in the Sleepwalker body and can only come out with SW (in Rick’s body) is asleep, Rick finds himself in places that make him think that SW has hooked up with both of the women in his love triangle, but he is in no way jealous of Sleepwalker for it. He’s basically like “Way to go!” I wouldn’t have thought Rick was so mature.

While Alyssa spends most of this story under mind control, Janine doesn’t do a whole lot more. Though she and Rick (as far as she knows) go on their first date, it quickly devolves into a Sleepwalker story, so that relationship may not go much further. I genuinely don’t remember.

In the end, when Rick (as Sleepwalker) sees the Chain Gang (as Alyssa) about to stab Sleepwalker (as Rick), he uses his warpbeams on her. The usage of the warpbeam on a living being is one of the biggest crimes among Sleepwalker (the Sleepwalker)’s people (the Sleepwalkers). I have to say, while there is some body horror as Alyssa is twisted by the warpbeam, that turns out to be temporary and the only apparent lasting effect is that it got the Chain Gang out of her head. Sleepy mentions that he worries it could have done psychological damage and, weird as it is to say, I hope it has, because if she’s just fine after that then Sleepwalker’s vow to never use it on anyone is kind of meaningless.

And then the final fight with the Chain Gang opens a dimensional rift. Sleepwalker could use it to go home, but Rick pulls him back through right before it closes so Sleepy can help clean up the whole supervillain situation. So now Sleepy being trapped on Earth is directly Rick’s fault (though so far Sleepy says he understands the decision), but things have changed because he can now be there while Rick is awake, side-by-side.

I guess the other thing I need to report on is the guest appearance of Hobgoblin in the early issues. It’s a clear attempt to cross over a popular villain for the sales bump. 8-Ball is at the Bar With No Name (cameos: Speed Demon, Beetle, Mr. Hyde, a bartender who appeared in the Bar in a Captain America issue but not THAT bartender who appeared in the Bar in a Captain America issue) and he is bragging about beating Sleepwalker. Hobgoblin comes alone and he and 8-Ball wind up with a bet that whichever of them can kill Sleepwalker first gets the golden trophy and $100,000. During the fight (where, as I said, Hobgoblin slits Rick’s Sleepwalker throat) 8-Ball can tell that this is not the same do-gooder he has bested twice before. 8-Ball calls off the bet and lets Hobgoblin keep his money, because it wasn’t a fair game and that matters to him. Meanwhile, Hobgoblin asks the bleeding to death superhero about it and when he says he’s Rick, Hobgoblin believes him because he says nobody on their deathbed lies (tell that to the genetically-modified actress who played Aunt May that time). Naturally, neither criminal bothers to call help for the guy they just almost murdered.

But perhaps the most important news of all: the Next Issue blurb in issue 24 proudly announces that a foil-wrapped cover is happening next issue! All hail the foil!