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!

In this one David Vincent investigates the Invaders again (with a lead from a little girl’s story of seeing a melting truck that made the news) and he winds up in a plant they are using as a communications hub and kills an Invader in front of a crowd of people at the beach. Since he did all of this under his own name, as always, the Invaders know this is their constant enemy David Vincent and they have a chance to frame him. The body of the Invader disappears, as always, but they provide a corpse that is unidentifiable from the sea and claim this was the man Vincent killed. And what’s more, they claim is was Mr. Tate, another of their enemies, one who they think they killed in that melting truck incident. So Vincent is at risk of going to prison for a crime the Invaders committed. It may have worked, if Tate had actually been killed.

But Tate survived the attack on him and he stole a valuable file from the aliens that eleven of the highest-level Invaders, so they want that back. Anyway, Tate and Vincent team up. There’s a whole thing where the Invaders capture Tate’s estranged daughter as bait. There’s a bit where Vincent bribes a kid who works at a pharmacy for info, which the kid does for the money, but then the kid calls the cops on the suspicious man anyway. In the end the good guys win, though Tate is vaporized by one of the alien’s space guns, and we’re told that Vincent getting the file out and shutting down the communications hub is actually a major setback for the aliens. Most of the time Vincent is just barely getting by, surviving and doing what little he can, but we’re told this was a world-wide operation that he shut down. Good for him.

Overall it was a standard episode of the show, but no complaints.

Apparently there was an anthology horror show called Monsters that ran back in the days that I would have been most happy to watch it, yet I only learned it existed recently. Truly there is more media out there than any one person can pay attention to. But hey, once I found out there was an episode with a Beekeeper, you know I had to get in on it.

Homer P. Jimmerman is a very introverted man. He alludes to a phobia that keeps him in his apartment, which could be a fear of people or the outside world or who-knows-what. In any case, it is not a fear of bees, so to maximize his ability to stay inside, he operates a bee farm from inside his New York high rise apartment, the honey from which allows him to be utterly self-sustaining. And he succeeds at that!

He’s relatively new at beekeeping it seems, but creates a nearly perfect little ecosystem in his apartment complete with flowers and plants. He clearly cares for the bees and treats them well. He calls them his children and even plays them music in spite of the fact that he loathes music in all its forms (weird). The resulting honey is so delicious, and an aphrodisiac on top of that, that his neighbour forces himself to work as a business partner and it is extremely lucrative.

Also, somehow, he made a queen bee that could take human form.

That’s right. The situation that Jimmerman finds himself in is reminiscent of that Benedict Fields was in: a queen bee that can shapeshift into the form of a sexy human lady. Unlike Fields and his Queen, though, Jimmerman’s Queen does not love him and he does love her. She takes the name Desiree and poses as his fiance, but things don’t go well for him given she winds killing Jimmerman as soon as she feels he has outlived his usefulness. Then she mates with that neighbour/business partner guy (killing him as well). Desiree had plans that went well beyond the walls of Jimmerman’s apartment, so while he would have been happy to simply mate with her and die (got halfway there, pal!) she is off to spread her workers to the rest of the world.

Jimmmerman’s actual beekeeping is on a sci-fi level of impressiveness, but one of the things you don’t want is for the hive to turn against you, so he manages only Three Honeycomb out of Five. Also, for the record, Jimmerman gives a little speech where he spouts that stuff about the hive worshipping their queen, and it always annoys me to see this bit of anthropomorphism placed on bees, who do NOT worship their queen and the queen does NOT rule the hive. We claim that because we called them “queens” but if we called them “baby bee maker bees” or something we would understand that they provide a valuable role, but our human concepts of royalty need not apply.