By Cat Wyatt

Lucy Dreaming is a surreal and comical series about a young girl who learns that the dreams she has are more real than most people would like. In the last issue Lucy realized that she wasn’t actually dreaming at night, but transporting around. Here we get to see her reactions to everything she’s learned.

This issue starts off with Lucy having a chat with her parents. And before you start assuming they’re having ‘the talk’ with her, trust me, they’re not. Well, not the normal talk anyway. Lucy’s parents were and are scientists. They were working on a way to bridge the gap between ideas and the real world when her mother found that she was pregnant with Lucy. They were hoping their experiments wouldn’t have any effect on Lucy…but clearly they did.

Still, all things considered they’re being very calm about the whole thing. They said they were hoping this wouldn’t happen, but they’re showing no signs of being upset. It’s almost like they were expecting this to happen. Either their work has so overtaken their lives that this was just an inevitability for them, or they intended for this to happen all along. That or I’m just being paranoid.

Considering the day (erm, night) Lucy has had, it’s no surprise she believes her parents when they tell her this whole story. I mean, she’s already seen the proof to their words, so why would she fight them on this? That doesn’t mean she has to be happy with the truth, or with her parents. And like any pre-teen girl, Lucy reserves the right to stomp off and sulk (or you know, trash her room, whatever).

After such a rough night and total lack of sleep, it’s no surprise that Lucy ends up falling asleep during class. Which naturally leads her into another dream episode. This dream is actually pretty funny, in its own way. It’s clearly a riff on the Hunger Games, a fact that becomes more clear with each bit of information revealed.

Lucy appears in the new world as a green haired woman – one that’s being chased by a monster. Her covered up expletives are hilarious (seriously, they’re cleverly censored via ‘sticky note’, it’s amazing) and totally worth seeing. A blond girl named Splinter Lee saves Lucy. Her hair is pulled back and she’s carrying a bow and arrows…starting to see it yet? She’s very much into telling us her whole life story, including why she’s here to begin with.

By the way, this ‘here’ is a death match arena called Killfest. Yep, you read that right. Anyway apparently Splinter is very good at staying alive, and everyone knows her full story (minus Lucy, of course). Sure, it’s a little heavy handed in its teasing, but I’m fine with it.

Naturally Lucy decides to stick with Splinter until she figures out what’s going on, or how to get out of here. After, Splinter seems to be hard to kill, and that could be useful right about now. Which of course means something is about to happen.

Splinter gets blown up and shot at, yet she still seems fine. Granted, she’s pretty much out of this fight and can’t help the rest of the gang that’s been following her around, including Lucy. Lucy does the best she can during the fight (which is pretty great, for the record), but in the end one of the guys ended up saving her, while saying “douche is as douche does.”

Apparently hearing this was so shocking to Lucy that it forced her into consciousness (that or it was the fact that she was totally about to be eaten that did it)…and once I realize why, I can totally see why she freaked out. It would appear that Lucy isn’t the only dreamer here. How intriguing.

I’m liking the way this series is playing out so far. The humor is fierce, and it doesn’t bother hiding the fact that it’s poking fun at popular series. It is what it is, and it’s going to have fun in the process. Which is pretty cool, actually. I want to know more about the experiments Lucy’s parents have been working on, and I’d still like confirmation on how ‘accidental’ the whole thing is with Lucy being affected by what they’ve done. I’m hoping later issues will reveal this for us.

Score: 4/5

Lucy Dreaming #2
BOOM! Studios