I honestly had low expectations for Reveal, because while an anthology from Dark Horse sounded like a neat idea, it also seemed like they had crammed the initial issue too full of licensed properties and a couple of their high-profile commercial properties, rather than focusing on the more artistic and esoteric sides of their stable. As it turns out, Reveal has an esoteric bent throughout, including among other things a very different artistic style on Spyboy and Buffy, the introduction of a pair of new concepts, an interview with Guillermo Del Toro and Mike Mignola and a revealing and effective story by Joe Casey. When a piece of original comics work by Pablo Picasso is more of a curiosity than the strongest feature in the book, you know that what you have in your hands is a pretty solid anthology.
Reveal opens unassumingly enough, with a Lone Wolf 2100 story. It is what I've started to expect from that creative team with my limited exposure, which is gorgeous artwork and an interesting exploration of a cybernetic future, with the ties to Lone Wolf and Cub being more of a jumping-off point than anything else. Also familiar is a Spyboy story and a Buffy story, but both of these have something unusual about them. Alex Maleev's artwork seems to inspire a more gritty and less goofy tone from Peter David, and the result is the strongest Spyboy story I've read, while Lobdell and Nicieza seem to have tailored a Buffy story to fit the cartoony artwork of Jeff Matsuda, and his artwork works better here than it has for me on Buffy stories in the past.
There are also a few short features that fit in with the more artsy and unusual tone I was expecting from this anthology when it was first revealed. R. Sikoryak mixes the sublime and the ridiculous by casting Beavis and Butthead in Waiting for Godot. B&B have missed their fifteen minutes of fame by about five years, and the strip itself isn't as funny as the idea, but just thinking to put them together gave me a chuckle. Picasso's strip... well, there's no point in critiquing it, it's Pablo Picasso doing comics, for God's sake!
But the real treasures in the book come from three stories original to this book. "Devil's Footprints," the new horror story by Scott Allie, Paul Lee and Brian Horton, makes its debut in this issue and its an impressive piece of work, establishing the characters and tone of the book in a short space and whetting my appetite for more. "Robox" is damn near impossible to describe except by saying that its a kids and robot comic with a wonderful sense of humor and beautiful art by Craig Thompson and Dave Stewart, and it was one of my favorite features in the book. It might have been my favorite if not for "Autopilot" from Casey and Phillips, which has already earned a bit of well-deserved buzz as a result of Casey's revelations about his experiences on Wildcats, X-Men and Superman as well as a general look at the life of a comic-book creator. It's somewhat surprising, but also oddly calming, to learn that someone who has what many would consider a dream job still suffers from the same job anxiety and difficulty that we all face.
Reveal has a bit of everything, and what's surprising is that this mix of tone, genre and creative talent comes together in such fine fashion. It serves as both a glimpse at Dark Horse's regular output and a teaser for new projects, as well as the introduction of stories that find their one and only home here, and I find myself anticipating the second issue much more than I was the first.
