by John Smith, Steve Yeowell and Colin MacNeil 

What to expect: A lush and sprawling Bondian epic followed by a claustrophobic and gory siege movie 

Review by Alex Frith 

The second Devlin Waugh collection has a rather poor reputation, mostly it seems because of a printing error. Now, I don't know if I got a lucky copy, but I have to say that the only problem I've found is that on three pages towards the end of 'Red Tide' itself, the word balloons are misaligned. Some of the art is obscured, but the story itself is not hampered. So I would say this collection is not worth passing over just for that - although obviously a corrected reprint would be nice, Rebellion! 

Anyway, let's get on with reviewing the content. 

Devlin Waugh was shunted into 2000 AD at a time when the Megazine was surviving off reprints, and presumably couldn't afford to print new adventures of its most successful creation. John Smith responded by crafting a Devlin tale that feels very different from his previous and indeed ensuing outings in the Megazine. The long-running 'Herod/Sirius' story (I don't know if it has an official moniker) is generally more child-friendly, shall we say, compared to Swimming in Blood, Fetish or Red Tide. When it was first printed I remember thinking that the whole thing went on for ever, and I could never quite understand what was going on, or why I should care, but I quite liked it. Read in one sitting, it still feels like it goes on for a very long time, but I do now understand what was going on, I still don't really care, but I love the characters and especially the art so much that it doesn't matter. 

As Floyd Kermode is ever-keen to point out, John Smith suffers from a need to invent vaguely clever sounding words by combining pseudo-science with sci-fi and occult phraseology. Never does he do this more than in 'Sirius', and it is pretty annoying. But if read carefully, these very phrases are key to making sense of the whole thing. Of course, this faux-future jargon does sound odd alongside Devlin's dear-old-Eton patois, but there you go.Anyway, the story. In a nutshell, a megalomaniac villain and his codenamed clones have plans that involve lots of people dying at the hands of aliens. Various occult types including a bunch of ne'erdowells band together to stop this villain, mostly by staying one step behind him, while trying to get hold of certain occult artefacts which they pray can stop him. Of course, what they most want is help from the big man himself, Devlin 'gay vampire' Waugh. And he's not playing ball. That is, until his formidable mother shows up in Book II. With that in mind, anyone enjoying 'Innocence and Experience' (aka Devlin Waugh: Origins) running in the Megazine right now could do worse than seek out this collection, as it explains a lot more about Devlin and his mum's strained relationship. You'll also be introduced to some minor villains who were used with much more prominence in 'All Hell'. 

The thing of it is, this epic is rather a lot like a James Bond film. Hero is unstoppable in a fight, has gadgets + outlandish vehicles, flirts with men all the time, and has help from well-equipped colleagues. And as with all Bond films, there's little suspense about what's going to happen at the end; instead there's room for a lot of fun along the way. Smith and Yeowell outdo themselves in practically every episode with creating new characters and using new settings, all of which add to the fun but take away from the plot. My particular favourites are the Jack of Mice and Knives, and the enduring Herod - the most fearsome killing machine I've seen since the Biorg from Alan Moore and Alan Davis's Captain Britain saga. Smith has built a very detailed world of the occult, all the while keeping it true to Judge Dredd's world (it's easy to forget that Devlin is a spin-off character sometimes). The causal browser will be impressed by the art and the rollercoaster pace; the careful reader will be rewarded by a glimpse into a world that it's be nice to see more of, if only Smith could take it more slowly with his characters... 

A few years later, Devlin was back in the Megazine. We see a return to painted art and delicious gore, this time courtesy of wound expert Colin MacNeil. 'Red Tide' was much heralded as a direct sequel to 'Swimming in Blood', although for whatever reason it took Smith a decade to write the thing. The description 'sequel' always makes me think of films, and this is appropriate here as Red Tide is very filmic. For a start, like all sequels, it copies the structure of 'Swimming in Blood' very closely but ups the bodycount. Both involve different groups of people being besieged in enclosed buildings, trying to reach each other, and everyone looking to Devlin to help. Devlin, of course, spends most of the time moaning and looking annoyed that he has to deal out so much violence, before then revelling in it. So no change there, then. One of the groups spends a couple of episodes in a garden-type place, as in the first outing. Landis, the villain from Aqautraz is back (although he's less Hannibal Lecter this time); even the endings are remarkably similar, what with Devlin undergoing another transformation. 

Otherwise, Red Tide is a different kind of film - it's not unlike a zombie gore-a-thon, only with mutant fish vampires filling the zombie role. As you'd expect, lots of people, including hapless Mega-City tourists, die in inventive ways, often screaming, and of course various people get bitten and we wait with baited breath to see if/when they will 'turn'. It's a fun romp, all very capably painted by MacNeil, although at times it's far too murky. OK, it's set a night, we get it - now draw it so that we can see what the hell is going on! As such, it's almost a diametric opposite from 'Sirius', with its clear-line art and constant psychobabble. Red Tide is definitely unpretentious, which is saying something for both John Smith and Devlin Waugh. 

A special treat at the end - we get a small taste of what could have been. Originally, Jock was the artist scheduled for Red Tide, and he knocked out the first 6 pages before being claimed by DC. His fully-painted pages are presented here, and lovely they are, too. I don't think his work is better than MacNeil's, mind, but Jock would have given the piece more of an action-moive feel, which I think would have have ben more fun. It's also interesting to see how two different artists respond to the same script. The one sad note is that Jock hadn't got as far as the introduction of the main character, so we never get to see what his Devlin would have looked like. Ah, well. 

In the end, I much prefer this collection to the previous Waugh trade. Smith has had a chance to refine his style more, so that the reader can follow the action more clearly, aided and abetted by two of 2000 AD's most consistent and beautiful artists. Sure, they're not as flashy or stylized as Sean Phillips or Siku, but it's much more pleasing on the narrative centre of one's brain. That said, we could do with a reprint of Red Tide to correct those lettering foul-ups, not to mention a new trade with Devlin's latest adventures added - there's life in the old undead dog yet, eh?