Reverie Remembered

The city of Melbourne briefly became an active centre for Australian comic publishing during the early 1980s, partly buoyed by the earliest 'ComiCon' conventions being held there in 1979 and 1980, as well as being home to some of Australia's earliest, prominent comic fanzines, including The Australian Comic Collector (TACC) and The Fox Comic Collector.

Reverie was the first new continuous Australian comic to come out of Melbourne that was geared towards a mainstream audience. Launched in 1983, it ran for 7 issues, making its final appearance in 1987.

Published by Gary Dellar of Riddells Creek, Victoria, Reverie was an anthology comic similar in style and scope to the popular UK adventure comic weeklies of the 1970s and 80s, featuring several strips per issue. Indeed, Reverie was distributed in the UK and featured reprints of a British comic, Adam Eterno, in its first three issues.

Reverie appeared at a time when post-apocalyptic movies like Mad Max 2 and The Terminator were dominating the big screen, so it was no surprise that many of Reverie's earliest strips drew heavily on such themes.

Bloodsword (Nos.1-4), by Peter Hughes and Robert Shaw, was a sword & sorcery adventure set amidst an intergalactic war, while George Hall's Sandy Star: Rebel Force (Nos. 1-3) saw sci-fi action take place amongst the ruins of 30th century Melbourne!

George Hall's other serial for Reverie, Bloodgard, blended elements of science-fiction with the superhero genre. This was typical of other Australian comics from the early 1980s (most notably Tad Pietrzykowski's Dark Nebula), which were arguably influenced by the 'cosmic superhero' themes explored by American writer-artist Jim Starlin in such series as Captain Marvel.

Easily the best strip of this type to appear in Reverie was Kevin Jenkinson's Phoebe (Nos. 4-7). Set in the devastated wastelands of outback Australia, Phoebe was a grim, gun-toting heroine, battling armed gangs in a constant struggle for survival. Jenkinson, who was a regular contributor to New Zealand's prestigious Strips magazine, did much to elevate the artistic quality of Reverie, with his polished drawing style and storytelling techniques - qualities not always evident in the work of his fellow contributors.

Another noteworthy contribution came from writer-artist Rob Sharp, who penned two sci-fi strips, Jove Janus (Nos. 3-4), which looked like it was originally conceived as a newspaper strip, and Shadowkraft (Nos. 5-7). Filled with brawny heroes and buxom heroines, Sharp's slickly drawn comics packed considerable action into just a few short pages. (And, if I'm not mistaken, Rob Sharp may have gone on to form the Australian-based comics & commercial art studio, Sharp Brothers, with his brother Joe - though there's no mention of Reverie on their website, that I can see!)

No doubt inspired by the success of Richard and Wendy Pini's long-running American fantasy series Elfquest, Ian Thomas wrote and illustrated Maelstrom (Nos. 4-7), starring a feisty, axe-wielding dwarf and his trusty steed, Theow.

Previously appearing in Thomas' self-published, one-shot comic, Maelstrom the Green Dwarf (1983), this strip had a charming fairytale quality to it that set it apart from Reverie's frequently all-too-serious sci-fi and superhero stories.

John Dixon returned to the pages of Aussie comics for the first time in over 20 years, when Reverie reprinted one of his Air Hawk newspaper strip sequences, The Drafus Affair, in issues #4-7, along with a Dixon interview in issue #4.

Former Inkspots artist Fil Barlow contributed several one-off strips to Reverie (Nos. 5-7), using the trademark, jagged, surrealist style that he'd perfected while working on the Zooniverse mini-series he'd created for America's Eclipse Comics.

The fifth issue of Reverie saw the debut of The Electronaut, a superhero strip starring Susan Jessop, a young woman who is given a unique costume that allows her to harness electrical currents that give her special powers. A refreshing twist on the standard superhero formula, The Electronaut was written and drawn with great panache by Michal Dutkiewicz, who has deservedly carved out a successful career as a talented comics artist and illustrator, both in Australia and internationally (He also drew the cover illustration for Reverie #6, shown above.)

As with most comic book anthologies, Reverie was a frequently hit 'n' miss affair, in terms of its overall editorial quality. Some of the strips in the first few issues were embarrassingly crude, while other, more promising features, were sometimes abruptly discontinued, with little or no explanation for their departure.

Self-consciously 'experimental' strips, such as Comic Collage (No.3) and Dying Within (No.4), were sandwiched between the magazine's more mainstream superhero and sci-fi serials, indicating that the comic lacked a clear editorial direction from the outset, and was perhaps too reliant on whatever material was at hand in order to fill the pages.

A stylistic shift, of sorts, was evident as Reverie toned down the 'Ocker Australian' image of its early issues (courtesy of the talented humour cartoonist, Paul Harris), in favour of promoting comic book genres readily accepted by local and overseas audiences. Nonetheless, Reverie did showcase some interesting work by a new generation of writers and artists, briefly providing Australian readers with a much-needed showcase for local comics.

This is an expanded version of an article first published in the July 2003 edition of Collectormania magazine. Cover image courtesy of Tabula Rasa: Australian Comics.