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More of a fuss should have been made. A thread stretching to multiple pages, with all kinds of dead-ends and hissy fits and arcane interpretations, is without doubt deserved. So while it's still available, while it's still the best value comic you'll ever see (104 pages, one complete trippy story, £3. Get in.) let's have some props for Revere.
(there will be SPOILERS)
Surely if there's ever been a Barbelith comic, it's this one. Dystopian near-future dessicated London, Tarot and astrology driving the plot, cynical-but-naive hero, and a plot of rebirth and apocalypse. Revere is the Invisibles' Jack Frost and Promethea in one. He's saving the world by destroying it.
The first book is the story of his initiation. He begins knowing nothing, instinctively adept at combat and able to leave his body but with no idea of his significance in the grand scheme of things. In the second he comes under attack, loses his house and his mother, finds a girlfriend for the first time ever, loses her and loses everything. Takes a leap of faith and leaves the material world. Book three's the preparation for the apocalypse. Revere's ready now. It takes place almost entirely on the spiritual plane, the Tarot references and Zodiac stuff clicking into place. The locations and mysteries of the first book, unusually for a John Smith comic, are revisited with the knowledge of what's happened. It all ends suitably mystically and mystifyingly.
All this beginning from a wonderful 2000AD baseline of strange futures and regular violence, and not going anywhere near where you thought it would. Much is left happily unexplained: Revere's mum is a floating head, they live in a house of symbols, the astral plane is just next door. It's written with the economy that only six-page chapters can provide, subplots set up in a page, the world explored in two. Even the climactic battle only takes three. Simon Harrison's art has never been better, restrained but still corrupted and weird for the more traditional sequences, blossoming to something entirely new when the story requires it. Stylistically artist and writer are well-matched here.
I was hoping, given the preponderance of magic types on here, that some of the symbolism and the more intriguing thematic elements of the series would be analysed. John Smith could well be making it all up, I wouldn't know, but there appears to be some structure behind it. Even one-fifth of the attention given to, say, Klarion would prove rewarding. And if you've not bought this already, especially if you're in the UK, there's still time. It's in newsagents even. You could pick it up at the train station. Remember that time you saw Rogan Gosh or Flex Mentallo in the comic shop, and thought hey, I think I've heard of that, maybe I'll pick it up sometime? And then you never, ever had chance again? Don't let that happen this time. Buy Revere. And let's talk. |
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