Devlin Waugh: Red Tide – Volume 2
Created By: John Smith, Steve Yeowell and Colin MacNeil
Cover Art: Greg Staples
Publisher: 2000 AD / DC Comics
Format: Softcover
Rated: Mature
Cover Price: $19.95
The Vatican’s finest supernatural investigator is back It’s time to reacquaint yourself with Devlin Waugh — aesthete, athlete, wit… and vampire. Following his unwilling conversion to vampirism, Devlin’s social life has been ruined. Unable to walk in daylight, Waugh has instead retired, becoming solitary and bitter. But now something from Devlin’s past is coming, something terrible, and Devlin must steel himself for action once more.
Devlin Waugh: Hedonist, fop, lounge lizard, body builder practitioner of kem-kwong killing techniques, bloodsucker, secret agent of a far future Vatican, lover of chiseled young men, master of the occult, occasional friend to Judge Dredd, bare knuckle boxer of vampires, and world famous cat breeder. As co-creator John Smith describes him, ‘Imagine Noel Coward played by Arnold Schwarzenegger’.
Red Tide: A collection of 4 of his later adventures, modestly priced, blessed with a handsome cover, packed with a handsome protagonist, and subject of this review.
To read a Devlin Waugh story is, at first, an exercise. With writer John Smith’s knack for blunt, no-filler prose puncturing the page with scripts crisp enough to have come straight from the packet. Devlin is loud, brash, selfish, and over the top at all times which, if written without subtly, makes for a pretty unlikable bastard. Yet Smith handles him with ease, allowing this nuclear bomb of a character to come across as likable and, above all else, believable. Devlin isn’t just different to be different. Devlin hails from Judge Dredd’s “Megacity” studded future, wherein eccentricity is par for the course and normality is largely outlawed. This is all conveyed with Smith’s modus operandi: Exposition is a Hail-Mary, and action scenes end with little fanfare aside from a wink and a cigarette. Critical characters are introduced with nothing but a handshake, and the end of all four stories is the definition of a cliffhanger.
On an initial read, the three stories that make up the first arc, ‘Chasing Herod’, ‘Reign of Frogs’, and ‘Sirius Rising’, henceforth referred to as Part I as reading those three names over and over is just going to get old can come across as confusing, both in tone, pacing and even plot. It sets a stage, fiddles with the lights, blows up the theater, then drapes a curtain over the wreckage, content to bow with an arm full of roses to a mute, only slightly disintegrated audience.
Part I introduces no less then fifteen named and plot critical characters. Each has their own backstory, previous connections to one another, and a different type of real world based occult specialty.
Pole shifts. The planet Sirius. Fakir’s Rope. Megalodons. Ixaxaar.
Was any of that a potential spoiler? Absolutely. But does it all make sense? Part 1 can seem impenetrable at times, with pages of heavy theological discussion being fired at you in Smith’s trigger happy fashion with little room to reflect or breathe.
But then there’s Devlin.
To say anything else would spoil the fun. And that’s where Part I shines: in its namesake. If I was to quote him, if I was to set the stage with what he has to do with the chasing of Herod or the rising of Sirius, you would be able to piece together the narrative. To be able to have a character as well defined and comfortable in their own role in the world as Devlin, to allow the reader to follow along with a clearly defined, definitively stated through-line in a story like this on the well-chiseled back of a single man? It’s magic.
What could easily have been an epic mess of a theological, occult based comic about transcendence and evolutionary crossroads becomes anchored, believable and above all fun whenever the debonair dandy is on the page.
Steve Yeowell handles the art in the first three stories, competently framing each scene and deftly striking the perfect balance of over the top and grounded when tasked with Devlin’s more flamboyant gesticulations and facial expressions. There are some slight inconsistencies with backgrounds can come across as a bit vague, with some panels completely devoid of them. But all of the important shots are treated well and, above all else, he handles the outlandish concepts the first half of ‘Red Tides’ introduces without making them appear too silly.
Did I mention Part I is a bit of an exercise? Which brings us to Part 2, ‘Red Tide’, and really, it couldn’t be more different. ‘Red Tide’ is the lounging in the hot tub part after any good routine. Where Part I reduced the stage to rubble, Part II puts it back together.
Upon finishing ‘Sirius Rising’ and flipping the page, the shift is immediate and somewhat jarring. Especially if the reader is unfamiliar with John Smith’s original story back in 1991, ‘Swimming in Blood’. Devlin Waugh isn’t usually about the heady, the weird or the complex. Smith’s original creation was a straight up hack and slash: a muscle flexing, fisticuffs-fueled, one-liner stuffed action strip that showcased a lot of his talent for description. Coupled with the breathtaking hand painted pages of co-creator Sean Phillips, the story served mainly as an exercise in laser focused storytelling.
The writing was bursting with packed detail. The art was bursting with visual spectacle. And there was much rejoicing.
‘Red Tide’, is a direct continuation of that original Devlin Waugh style with beautiful hand painted art, this time from Colin MacNeil and coupled with Smith’s penchant for describing a violent death and a devilish quip from Devlin. There’s blood, it’s red, it flows on a tide. Many people perish, many vampires get punched in the jaw, and there’s the old Devlin Waugh savoir faire anchoring it all together. After the hard work of reading Part I ‘Red Tide’ is a jet of pure, hyper violent fun, and is bombastic in its own right. If Part I was not your cup of tea, I strongly suggest giving the book’s second half a try instead as the two have no connection to each other outside of the main man himself, of course. Usually this hard right turn would be a negative, what with all of the build up and plot Part I throws the readers’ way, but with such a character as Devlin it ultimately doesn’t matter. It’s simple, it’s fun, it’s loud and brash and over-the-top: It’s Devlin Waugh at his peak.
We’re here to see him. Simple as that. We wanted more Devlin and he was happy to oblige.
So there we have it: Two completely different stories from different publications with contrasting tones and art styles, both of which just so happen to feature one of the most charismatic, memorable, and entertaining characters ever to grace 2000 AD’s venerable Hall of Heroes. You can pick up both this book and ‘Swimming in Blood’ for next to nothing if only to spend an evening in the company of the lead man himself. Just don’t expose your neck to the man. Or touch his cats. Or drip wine on the antique rug.
‘Life can be simply ripping sometimes, what?’ -Devlin Waugh
‘Red Tide‘ was published with Rebellion’s permission by DC Comics in 2005. ‘Red Tide’ packages 2000 AD’s 1999 stories, ‘Chasing Herod’, ‘Reign of Frogs’, and ‘Sirius Rising’ (progs 1149-1173) with the titular ‘Red Tide’ from 2003’s issues 202-213 of 2000 AD spin-off, ‘The Judge Dredd Megazine’.
