2000 AD: The Ultimate Collection #134. Originally serialised in 2000 AD Progs 510-519, 744-749, 809-814 & 867-872.

It’s August 1991. Apologies for missing last Monday’s post – turns out Covid Round 2 is not much fun! Here’s a new question for this blog: Can you analyse and review a series when you have no idea what’s going on with it? It’s time to look at Revere, so let’s find out.

I’ve covered a fair bit of writer John Smith’s work over this project, and he’s definitely been the most out-there of the 2000 AD script droids. But I had no idea quite how out there until I read through this collection. His other series portrayed wild voyages of the mind, but stuck to a recognisable plot structure. The three books of Revere eschew that in favour of a stream of consciousness approach that doesn’t make any allowances for the reader.

The three arcs of 6 episodes each follow Revere, a witch in a future London that has been ravaged by heat and turned into a paramilitary state. He undergoes various spiritual journeys to take on the role of reconnecting humanity with its shared origins. As a plot synopsis that’s understandable, but this is determinedly impenetrable stuff, and the behind-the-scenes material reveals a very personal project for both Smith and artist Simon Harrison.

On one hand, that kind of storytelling isn’t my kind of thing. I’m a nuts-and-bolts kind of reader, and while I can always appreciate flair in both story and art, I do like to clearly follow the ups and downs of a narrative and not be too confused. Revere is seeingly designed to frustrate that part of me. Smith always peppers his stories with some obstruse and twisting language, but this series is built on ideas and concepts that must only make sense to Smith himself. Psycahdelic journeys of the mind are never going to be a genre that appeals to me (putting my hand up as an incredibly boring person here!), and beyond some soldiers kicking in doors that’s the majority of the narrative.

But once I’d just accepted that this was going to be a bizarre ride of the imagination, I was able to enjoy it enough on its own terms. I have a weird sort of respect that this was even published in a comic for a general readership, let alone three series of it! I wasn’t a huge fan of Harrison’s art for Strontium Dog, but he’s a much better fit for Smith’s approach. Harrison’s gothic and garish work didn’t really help tell a very plot-driven story, but it adds a huge amount to the expressionist style of Revere. Harrison’s job here isn’t to illuminate plot but contribute to the atmosphere, and on that measure it’s a success. Even if this style of series isn’t my thing, 2000 AD as an anthology is richer for being able to include it.

The series is backed up by another psychedelic voyage with The Dead by Peter Milligan and Massimo Bellardinelli. The stream-of-consciousness madness is in common with Revere, but Milligan has a more conventional (well, in comparison to the rest of this collection) narrative that takes us from Point A to Point B (via alien-filled afterlifes). Milligan has only come up for me once before in this blog (see Hewligan’s Haircut), and we’re in similar metaphysical Alice-in-Wonderland-type territory here.

The Dead is set in a far future where humanity has become immortal, which somehow leads to monstrous beings from worlds beyond to invade both the land of the dead and Earth itself. Ineffectual human Fludd goes one a wild and wacky journey, starting with his own death, as he becomes more and more removed from his humanity in order to save it. Like Revere, there’s also a very good writer/artist partnership with early 2000 AD art droid Bellardinelli’s twisting biological linework a great match for Milligan’s esoteric explorations of other life and worlds.

This is one of those odd collections that I suspect I won’t revisit very often, yet I appreciate and respect what the creatives involved are trying to do. I may not understand most of it, but maybe that says more about my own boring tastes!

Next time: The life of a gunshark just gets more and more complicated in Sinister Dexter: Volume Five.