By Cat Wyatt

Lucy Dreaming #4 is the second to last in the series, so naturally, there’s going to be a huge revelation in this one. So far we’ve seen Lucy delve into the dream world, as she slowly learns about this new world and ability set she has. We have yet to see a major antagonist, which means we’re likely going to meet one here.

The issue starts out with a make-out session. Seriously, not even kidding. The first page is just Lucy and Welsey sucking face. They seem pretty content. Supposedly they’ve both been harboring feelings for each other for ages, so finally getting to be together like this must have been wonderful for them.

But they have other things to do, like have an honest and real conversation. Lucy has been hiding a lot of information from Welsey, and he’d appreciate some honesty right about now. So Lucy fesses up about everything. How their powers work, how his dad isn’t actually dead, the works.

He seems to take the news well…actually, he takes it too well, but perhaps he’s just not letting himself think about it too much? Anyway, he suggests they take some ambien to konk themselves out so they can have a bunch of fun dream adventures, which naturally Lucy accepts.

Finally! Lucy enters into a superhero dream. There’s a clear Green Lantern reference, as well as Doctor Strange, as well as dozens of others. It’s pretty fun to see their spin on things, naturally. They’re all fighting a giant villain – of the Galactus proportion. Lucy would have loved a fight like this normally, but there’s a major problem. She can’t seem to find Welsey.

What was probably obvious to us never even occurred to Lucy, at least not on her own. Welsey tricked Lucy. He got her to knock herself out so he could run off and work on his own plans. Presumably he wants to get his father back, but who knows how accurate that actually is. He’s been resentful of his father for so long, it may take longer to switch his opinion on things.

We’re still learning a lot about this world through Lucy, such as that the yellow liquid that powers the machine and Lucy’s abilities also influences the dreamscape of others. That technically means it also influences their mental state.

A relevant point, since the yellow substance is turning black, clearly being corrupted by something. You can probably guess who is the cause of this. Poor Lucy. Her lifelong crush tricked her, betrayed her, and is now apparently hurting others. That’s a lot to take on, and she likely hasn’t realized the depth of it yet.

Remember the villain that Lucy was fighting in her dream? It’s Welsey. He’s been having fun destroying things this whole time, ignoring her cries for him. He doesn’t care that the world is being damaged by his actions. He figures the world owes him or something, since his life sucked. A pretty selfish way of looking at things, but honestly we haven’t seen anything better from him so this isn’t terribly shocking.

Lucy is going to have to try and find a way to stop Welsey before it’s too late. The fight won’t be pretty, and it certainly won’t be fun. But she’s got to do it. Both her dream realms and the real world are at stake here, so she really doesn’t have much of a choice.

This issue felt like it was missing something. A shame, really. For such a huge betrayal and revelation there was relatively little emotional reaction to it. Especially when one considers the maturity of the characters involved. The emotional elements seem to get glossed over frequently, which it turn makes the whole series feel a little shallow. It’s still fun and interesting, just lacking some depth.

Score: 3/5

Lucy Dreaming #4
BOOM! Studios