DOKTOR SLEEPLESS VOLUME ONE: ENGINES OF DESIRE

author:
WARREN ELLIS

illustration:
IVAN RODRIGUEZ

Graphic Novel
216 pages
Avatar Press

Warren Ellis’s work can do strange things to genres. In some cases, it serves as rock-solid examples of the form—his long-running Transmetropolitan, for example, in the realm of political science fiction. For others, there’s deconstruction afoot: witness Planetary, which explores and critiques a century of pulp heroics even as it serves as a fine example of the same; or the more recent Aetheric Mechanics, which starts out as a sort of steampunk Sherlock Holmes pastiche and evolves into something much more ominous. In recent years, Ellis has turned his attention to the detective story, with the 2007 novel Crooked Little Vein and the ongoing comics Fell and Desolation Jones. More recently, he’s again taken on ongoing, large-scale science fiction with the online FreakAngels, with artist Paul Duffield, and Doktor Sleepless, with artist Ivan Rodriguez.

From the first page of the first Doktor Sleepless collection, Engines of Desire, where protagonist John Reinhardt adopts the “cartoon mad scientist” persona of Doktor Sleepless, we’re off to an uncertain beginning, knowing little about Reinhardt’s motives and even less about his reliability. Throughout the volume, Reinhardt delivers lengthy speeches about technology, futurism, and authenticity—stirring stuff, but delivered as part of a persona, and presented with ambiguity over whether or not this is something to be welcomed. Reinhardt’s actions as he makes his way through the Northwestern city of Heavenside—renewing old acquaintances, exploring technology he created years before, baiting local authorities—leaves it unclear whether he’s a visionary, an antihero, or something more sinister. And while Reinhardt is presented initially as supremely competent, Ellis and Rodriguez subtly hint throughout that his command of the situation is less assured than he might believe.

If there’s a flaw here, it’s that Rodriguez’s art isn’t always up to the scale of the project—some of his characters have a tendency to look alike, and there’s awkwardness to some figure positioning in the book’s early parts. That said, the final section of the collection finds Rodriguez’s art having made a significant leap into a much more expressive style somewhat reminiscent of Ellis’s Planetary collaborator John Cassaday.

Overall, Engines of Desire is an intentionally bumpy read—certain plotlines, including the revelation of Reinhardt’s plans, his relationship to the technology that fuels the city’s underground culture, and his reunion with ex-girlfriend Sing Watson achieve resolution within the span of the book, while others are set up to run for a longer duration across the series. It’s what ends up making Doktor Sleepless intriguing: the sense that, for all his pontification and carefully considered plans, we might ultimately be reading less about the evolution of its title character’s plan and more about his undoing.

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