The Eisner Award-winning team of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips got together between 2003 and 2005 to write and illustrate a comic called Sleeper. Sleeper is about a double agent named Holden Carver who has the ability to store pain and transfer that pain through skin on skin contact, which also makes him impervious to pain while granting him a superhuman healing factor. Carver is placed undercover in Tao’s criminal organization by John Lynch, the director of International Operations, and quickly rises through the ranks becoming a Prodigal (one of Tao’s lieutenants). It’s there that he meets and eventually falls for another lieutenant named Miss Misery, who becomes stronger and healthier based on the level of her deceit or criminal activity, and befriends a bulletproof member of the organization known as Genocide Jones. When Lynch is shot by Grifter and falls into a coma, Carver loses touch with the outside world and the shit hits the fan.
Sleeper was published by DC Comics under their Wildstorm imprint and features characters from WildC.A.T.S and Gen13, and is a spin-off of Point Blank, which is also written by Brubaker. In 2008, there was talk that Sam Raimi was looking to adapt Sleeper onto the big screen with Tom Cruise as the star. At the time, Ed Brubaker said that it was at least the fifth time this was attempted. Now, however, Variety is reporting that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s production company, Pearl Street Films, is working on the adaptation with writers Shawn Ryan (“The Shield”) and David Wiener (“The Killing”). No actors or directors have been announced, but this time the adaptation may just happen due to Affleck’s newfound relationship with DC Comics and Warner Bros.
