Sleeper Squad
Here is the current standard "NEW TO SLEEPER SQUAD?" block I put on the AO3 posts:
Best thing is always to begin at the beginning, but that's a lot, so here's the minimum you need: Our heroes Ruby and Leyna, and newcomer Jex, and their assortment of friends, lovers, allies, and enemies, all live their lives in Sleep, which is a virtual reality ... though they don't think of it that way. There are several very large Sleep complexes throughout the world -- cities, really -- and the one they live in is called A4.
All of these complexes, and pretty much everything else in the world worth owning, are controlled by the Barker family. Barkers are not always the greatest people in the world, but some of them have their moments. Leyna is a Barker, the daughter of Serene, but that was a secret for a long time, and Leyna's ambivalent about it.
Ruby and Leyna and their team deal with issues of unwanted manipulation. The "reality" of Sleep is easily altered, which is not itself a problem, but it is when people manage to impose those alterations on other people without their consent.
At the end of #29, A4 was infected with the Sprue, which led to the place fracturing into a number of different blocks with wildly different habits and appearances. Our heroes are based in Serenity, which is a pretty nice place, but some of the other blocks are not so nice, and sometimes Ruby and Leyna and their team are asked to intervene in those -- for example, to rescue someone who doesn't want to be trapped in them. As of #42, the Sprue has apparently been dealt with, but the fracturing remains.
... and if you think that's A Lot, you are not ready for the sheer mountain of backstory in this soap opera of lives and loves and heroes and villains and Weird Shit. Seriously, I know the backstory levels are daunting -- you should see my notes! -- and I have marked a couple of places which might be good starting points if you don't want to start all the way at the beginning. Also, starting with issue #30 I have tried to always explain who a character is we haven't seen in a while, and recap plotlines we're picking up after a long pause. But I can't stop to explain everything. There's too much of it.
CONTENT NOTE: Sleeper Squad is rarely my filthiest material, but because these stories have a separate audience on DA who get disappointed if an issue doesn't have fun and games, there is almost always some sex or kink (or kinky sex) in each story. Also, because anything can happen in Sleep, Sleeper Squad contains all of my weirdest physical transformations (so far!)
A resolution to a long-running Cobbles plot, insomuch as anything ever gets resolved here, and also other shenanigans.
We go to Spindrop at last. Somewhat flawed due to difficulty depicting action/motion, but fun is had nonetheless.
Some scenes in this are not nearly as gross as I wanted them to be.
Mostly the Highpoint plotline.
It's a Yards story! You know what that means: it's a long one.
All you ever wanted: sex dolls, robots, and bananas.
See the comment below at #40.
See the comment below at #40.
#40, #41, and #42 are a three-part story you don't want to start in the middle of. As the dates show, these three were really all done in one long bout ... and when I was finished, I was so exhausted that I didn't go back to Sleeper Squad for nearly two months. These are the culmination of the Sprue plotline.
Among other things, we begin a long-running Cobbles plotline.
The second major dose of Highpoint plotline.
Yards stories tend to be long. Here we get to the bottom of the mess in the swamp.
The issue that will have you asking "Exactly how many Janice Grells are there?"
On DA this is called "the one with the clowns."
Century, the last major zone of post-Sprue A4 we hadn't visited yet. Lots of robots.
In which we visit the Cobbles, where the rules are a little different.
Jex pays her first visit to the Yards (as do we).
In which we spend a night wandering the Souk and encountering various weirdness.
At the end of #29, there is a major continuity-changing event.
There's a three-year time gap between #29 and #30, and when we come back, things are not the same; thus this is a great place for new readers to start, because they'll be just as confused as new arrival Jex. Also: contains our first look at Highpoint.
We introduce a villain (but is she?) with a very different set of motivations. And then we crash.
This one could have been called "Melinda" with equal justification. Fasten your seatbelts.
Strange phenomena, backstory maintenance, Coldpoint ... and an escape.
A standalone adventure with Ruby and Chapman in an unpleasant scenario. Seriously, this one's rough.
Contains a great deal of weirdness. Does not actually contain Melinda.
We get inklings that things are kind of coming apart, and also solve the mystery of Judith Barker.
Breakups, Barkers, bitterness ... and That Page of Genealogy.
In which we finally deal with the Anomaly Patrol and the bee women.
In which Ruby and Leyna go someplace we've only ever seen once before.
Everything from #20 through #29 -- a year's worth of issues -- was, unusually for me, plotted roughly all at once. Here we begin a set of plots which will send us hurtling toward the event at the end of #29. You probably don't want to start in the middle of these, in other words.
See the commment below at #18.
As the titles imply, this is a two-parter; part 2 picks up right where part 1 leaves off and does not stop to recap. This story takes place in an extremely strange location and you're supposed to need a while to figure out what's going on.
As the title suggests, this is mostly about cleaning up the mess from #14-#16.
See the comment below at #14. All three of these issues suffer from overreach -- I didn't have enough tools to do the special effects the way I wanted and the lighting is sometimes not good -- but this one especially has problems, where it's often hard to figure out what's happening.
See the comment below at #14.
#14 through #16 are a three-part story ("Sleepless"); each one ends with a cliffhanger (after a fashion) and each picks up right where the previous one leaves off, without my stopping to explain or recap. These involve a major shakeup in the fabric of A4 and have lasting consequences.
"The Fisher Case" is a complete anomaly. It isn't really a Sleeper Squad story at all. It is a 1930's film-noir hard-boiled detective movie, and you do not have to know a damned thing about the rest of the Sleeper Squad goings-on to read it and enjoy it.
"Bliss" is the first of these I can look at and say that the bones were fully in place, so to speak. It's the first one where I really felt I had finally gotten everything more or less right. It also begins with an "Our Story So Far" recap (the last gasp of Ruby's narration). For these reasons, if you don't want to start all the way at the beginning, this is a fine issue to begin on.
See the comment below at #10.
#10 and #11 are essentially a single story. This is a major transition point, where a particular villain cements her "most evil to date" status, and a number of plotbunnies finally crumble into dust.
Another unusual one, this is more or less a standalone murder mystery, though it does also have bits of backstory maintenance. This one was somewhat hampered by my not yet having the special effects to do it properly, but the story holds up well despite that.
Mostly concerned with the aftermath of the events in #7. A two-page bonus, "Doubling Down," was posted a few days later; it doesn't have a PDF, but the images are linked above as pages D1 and D2.
A major dose of villainy from a character of later high plot significance.
This was supposed to be more or less a standalone, apart from introducing us to the Souk, but it has turned out to have been of
great significance in terms of characters we see much more of later. Visually, this issue was a serious disappointment to me; see
About the Comics for remarks on why.
Introduction of a major villain, and the first story to really exploit the hallucinatory possibilities of Sleep. There's one or two effects I'm not happy with, but on the whole this holds up well.
This should have been one issue. At the time I thought the stories should run about eight pages, and thus this one needed to be split. (These days, of course, a sixteen-page issue is a short one.) Anyway, if you read the PDFs you'll need two of them; if you use the individual images, I've numbered the pages as if they were a single issue. See
About the Comics for some remarks on this issue.
Introduction of a character whose evolution later could not possibly have been predicted at this point by anyone, not even me.
This story has been remade.None of the other early issues have been redone in this way, and very likely never will be, but in this case there were sound reasons. The version you see here was created and posted in November 2022; the date above is the date of the original version. For more on why I remade it, and the issues with the early issues in general, see
About the Comics.