The Edge Online - Reviews: David Britton's Lord Horror

Reverbstorm parts 1-4 (David Britton's Lord Horror #s 8-11)
David Britton and John Coulthart
(with Michael Butterworth, Kris Guidio, Bob Walker and others)
Savoy, A4 graphic novels, £3.50 each
Review by David Clark (1995)

Interview with Michael Butterworth, 1995.

The first four parts of eight. The much delayed (chief obstacle to the schedule, the absurd legal system of Savoy’s native Manchester, well-documented elsewhere*) new Lord Horror series picks up, in a way, where Hard Core Horror left off. It’s another alternative twentieth century, another alternative apocalypse (but it’s definitely our century, our apocalypse), this time drawn almost entirely by John Coulthart, illustrator of Hard Core #5. Featuring the ongoing relationship between William Joyce (aka Lord Horror) and Jessie Matthews, Reverbstorm, as its editor and co-publisher Michael Butterworth says, is concerned, basically, with bondage. Hard Core Horror’s concentration camps were ‘on a macro scale, man’s inhumanity to man; this inhumanity is on a micro scale, on a relationship level.’

Reverbstorm, then, takes a closer look. Each issue – album is probably a better word – is a collection of artworks, mostly drawn, mostly with quotations and/or dialogue. Historical figures feature: Jessie Matthews and James Joyce, again. Storytelling is infrequent at best; some pages form comic strip sequences, some don't (as far as I can discern; there's a certain amount of surrealism involved). This is not a comic strip though, this is a serialised graphic novel, and as such it deals with its authors' preoccupations and ideas.

And each part includes a few pages of ‘Savoy iconography’, disturbing photo and graphic montages, due to take over at the end of this series. Michael Butterworth again: ‘Like the photos we had at the end of Hard Core Horror, which brought the whole thing into ghastly reality, Reverbstorm will gradually get more extreme . . . until, at the end, you’ll have these severe reality pictures to press home the point.’ The production values are, typically for Savoy, very high; as with Hard Core Horror, the paper won’t fade and the covers are stiff. The design is as outstanding as the artwork and the photos.

The setting is different this time; another part of the twentieth century, and the other side of the Atlantic, although it’s implied that there are aspects of every city here. Hard Core Horror ended in Auschwitz, and we begin here with its latter day equivalent: New York! Butterworth: ‘The whole city is like Auschwitz because it’s our premise that the death camps were a role model for how the world is going now, I mean the whole world is like a death camp at the moment. As resources dry up and there becomes more and more people, with people competing against the environment, it’s going to get like a death camp. Which is what happened in Auschwitz: they weren’t all envisioned as death camps at first, they were labour camps. But as the war was lost and dwindling resources ran out, the Nazis kept the best of the resources for themselves and the camps got shittier and shittier . . .’

Reverbstorm's artwork makes this point perfectly. It’s a familiar theme: look again at Manchester as it appears in the early issues of Hard Core Horror and intermittently in Meng and Ecker (especially see Fudge and Speck’s discussion of Ken Reid**, in Meng and Ecker #4). Go back even further into Savoy history to James Cawthorn’s stunning depiction of a Moorcockian other London in the long out of print The Jewel in the Skull (probably the UK’s first full-length graphic novel of the modern kind). Maybe Reverbstorm’s city is what the Londra of Moorcock's Hawkmoon books looked like. Also, take a close look at Manchester's industrial architecture and the mess that’s being made of London. The unfolding cityscape here (Coulthart promises further development in the remaining four chapters) is Savoy’s most intense expression of this vision yet. Where Savoy will go after this I’m not sure; maybe after Reverbstorm it'll be the turn of small town America, even Blue Velvet/Twin Peaks territory (there’s a hint of it in #2). Or perhaps that kinds of sickness will be reserved for another series.

In the meantime there’s more to be found in Reverbstorm. I’ve said nothing about the quotes that the iconic artwork is laced with, the numerous musical references or the astonishing CD single that comes with # 1, a collaboration with Paul Temple which blends opera with northern soul with what sounds like the Valkyrie themselves, riding furiously on the storm. The lyrics pertain to Reverbstorm but, considered just in terms of music, there's nothing else like this track. Savoy’s music usually sounds like ours remixed by aliens, but this is even stranger. It could be a massive club hit (though it won't be). It's certainly possible to credibly argue that Savoy are at their best when they make music.

Or about the text pieces (extracts, presumably, from David Britton’s forthcoming Meng and Ecker novel, currently called Muthafuckas***, sequel to 1990’s Lord Horror.) You’ll have to see for yourselves.

Reverbstorm is strong stuff. Savoy say it needs to be, and I have no argument with this. But I will say that I would have preferred to have the whole eight issues worth of material in one or two larger volumes. Reverbstorm doesn’t need cutting, but even if proceedings are trouble-free, it could take a long time to finish and publish. I’d always rather have stuff at once, even if that means waiting for it to appear in the first place. Brilliantly drawn and designed (as ever, even Savoy's press releases look great) and painfully mesmerising.

*See Savoy.

**Ken Reid created the long-running Fudge the Elf strip for the Manchester Evening News. Savoy published two collections, which are still in print.

***Now called Motherfuckers. In other words, don’t bother emailing to tell me I misspelt it in 1995!