(This is a new idea I have for an irregular series of posts. I often get certain characters stuck in my head and can’t stop thinking about them. For one reason or another they fascinate me, and I’m compelled to think about them. This is my way of articulating those thoughts. Hence: Character Compulsion.)
I recently read through Sleeper: Season One by Ed Brubaker. It’s a compelling undercover agent story set in the Wild Storm Universe, a comic book realm I’m not too familiar with, was purchased by DC in the 90s and in recent years subsumed by DC into the overall DCU multiverse (somehow).
WARNING: Plot spoilers below.
The main character of Sleeper is Holden Carver, who is tasked with infiltrating a highly powerful and influential crime organization comprised of super-powered criminals. The leader of this organization is a man called TAO, who holds three criminals in his confidence, whom he calls his “Prodigals.” Within the story, Carver works his way up to the level of Prodigal. He then begins an affair with one of the other Prodigals, Miss Misery.
Like all the other characters, Miss Misery has a superpower of sorts. She becomes stronger and more beautiful the more vile, malevolent, violent, and evil she acts. For instance: she gains power from beating someone for no reason at all.
At this point I’d like to go on an important tangent. I consider Sleeper to be unique for two main reasons. One is the panel layout. The artist, Sean Phillips, utilizes a unique style where on some pages he super-imposes small panels on a large splash page, and on others he has a more free-form, cascading effect. An example of the former is seen on the first page of the graphic novel, below:
The other unique feature is the way Brubaker goes about telling origin stories. In Sleeper, the criminals often work together as a team to complete their mission objectives, and there is a lot of down time between or after missions for the criminals to talk shop. One of the things they do to pass the time is share their origin stories, which as a rule they have to tell in third person.
In Sleeper, we get to hear Miss Misery tell her origin to Carver. Before she became Miss Misery, she was a good All-American girl, who always did the right thing. She went to college, grew up, and maintained her goodness, but in graduate school she fell ill. She was sick for over a year and no one could find out why, despite a barrage of tests and bouts of hospitalization. Then one day, she’d had enough and she lashed out at a doctor who had talked down to her, and she ran out of the hospital. She ran for blocks before realizing she suddenly felt better. She didn’t know what to think, and got sick again. Then to test out the theory, she stole a bottle of liquor from a convenience store, and drank it down. She felt better immediately. This put her on the path of becoming Miss Misery.
After telling her origin, she tells Carver that she is different than most “post-humans.” She tells him (I’m paraphrasing): “You probably see your life before and after you got your powers as somehow changing you. I don’t see myself that way. I’ve just become what I always was.”
Miss Misery may be the most interesting character in Sleeper, at least in my opinion. When you first meet her, she is despicable. She only pursues a relationship with Carver in the first place because, in her mind, it is bad (she was in a loose relationship with TAO, their boss).
However, as their relationship progresses, Miss Misery begins to fall in love with Carver. She no longer sees the relationship as wrong, and as a result, she begins to get sick. When that happens in the story, you realize that she still has the same moral order, the same sense of right and wrong, that she did before she became Miss Misery. That elicits a type of sympathy with the character you wouldn’t have expected. She commits evil acts in order to stay healthy, and is therefore a prime example of the ends justifying the means. But you have to wonder: is the supposed joy she takes in “being evil” her joy at being healthy, or is she taking joy in the act itself? If it’s the former, then her story is ultimately a tragedy, for she has to betray her values every day in order to stay alive; if it’s the latter, then she really is as evil as she seems.
I haven’t read Sleeper: Season Two, so I don’t know how Miss Misery’s story ends, or if it does. But one prevalant theme of Sleeper is that the characters are in one way or another cursed rather than blessed by their powers. The main character, Carver, can’t feel pain, and has trouble feeling anything or anyone else outside of himself as a result. Miss Misery, though she calls herself that because she creates misery for others, is likely just as miserable herself, forced to live in a condition of constant sin (sin is the best word to describe living in direct violation of your moral code)–because for her, ironically, the wages of sin is life. Even if it is a miserable life.
Posted by theshortestverse 
