Comic Review: Revival Volume 1

Zombies are everywhere these days, but what if they weren’t just brain-eating shamblers?  That’s part of the premise of the Image Comics series Revival.  One winter day in a small Wisconsin town, the people who had died recently (numbering in the twenties) suddenly get up again.  Why?  No one knows.  Is it contagious?  Are they dangerous?  What’s happening?

These answers are not quickly forthcoming in volume one, subtitled You’re Among Friends, but people are still trying to figure a few things out.

So, what’s going on?  Well, the recently undeceased, called the “Revived” for lack of a better term, not only didn’t die, they don’t stay dead too easily either.  Most of them seem harmless.  One old lady, pictured above, is something of an exception.  Her teeth keep growing back despite her best efforts to remove them so she can continue to wear her dentures.  Yes, the Revived have some sort of advanced healing abilities, and may possess superhuman strength given that same old lady easily snaps a man’s arm at one point.  But, for the most part, the Revived are not monsters.  The real monster of this volume may be a run-of-the-mill human being.

At the center of the action are the two Cypress sisters.  Older sister Dana is a local cop and a single mom put on a special Reviver-based crime task force by her father the sheriff.    Her sister Martha, or Em, secretly is a Revived herself.  Em was murdered by someone she claims not to remember, though the volume has a few solid hints as to whom that person is.  In the meantime, there are religious fanatics claiming all kinds of things, the town is under quarantine from the federal government, and the CDC is baffled.  Why, for what seems like one night only, were the dead waking up? Why won’t they stay dead?  And what is that thing in the woods?

Writer Tim Seeley and artist Mike Norton have a really creepy story going here.  Volume One is pretty much entirely set-up.  An unsolved murder or two, plus what a woman known as Mrs. Vang was up to is still something of a mystery that may be answered in future volumes, and I think I’ll be checking them out when I get the chance.  Nine out of ten elderly fitness pervs.