For 2020, I took it upon myself to finally finish a number of comic series that I had started, in some cases years ago, but never got around to finishing for one reason or another. That mostly worked out in my favor. For 2021, I figure I might want to finally finish the Image Comics series Revival.
I don’t have a whole lot left to finish the book, and I actually have plans for different comic milestones this year, but for right now, how about my thoughts on Revival‘s sixth volume, subtitled Thy Loyal Sons and Daughters?
To summarize, Revival is set in a small town in rural Wisconsin where, for reasons no one quite understands, a number of people who all died at about the same time came back to life. These people cannot seem to die, quickly regenerating when given any sort of physical damage.  There is a way to kill them, but it involves helping the physical body meet the soul, and the souls of these folks are seen as pale white things wandering the forest. That said, souls can be destroyed by running water for some reason, and one or two of the “revived” are in that camp with no hope of a final death.
In the middle of this is the Cypress family. Wayne Cypress is the chief of police. His older daughter Dana is a cop on the force, a single mom to Wayne’s grandson Cooper. Younger daughter Martha, or “Em,” is a college student.
Oh, and Em is one of the revived, a secret only Dana and a few others know about. However, one of those others is a man who was a bit unhinged to begin with, and that fellow murdered a reporter friend of Em’s who also was in on the secret. Given his religious-based lunacy, the fellow is quickly taken in by the local militia who see conspiracies behind the federal government’s quarantine of the town while everyone tries to figure out why anyone could just come back from the dead.
Oh, and the feds, under the auspices of the military, rounded up all the revived folks they knew about and keep them in a lab/prison.
Now, six volumes in, and with only two left, this would be the one where Wayne finds out his younger daughter was murdered, and that’s why she died in the first place before coming back. Em is also pregnant somehow, but with Em’s secret out, she’s locked up with the other revived, and that means Dana needs to finally put all the clues together and figure out what the hell happened to her sister.
Writer Tim Seeley seems to be wrapping things up here. There are a few answers, though not many, about what’s going on, but there’s still no clue as to why aside from a strong hint that whoever is responsible for both the revived existing and Em’s murder might be the same person. The feds, in the form of the army and the CIA, don’t seem to be too interested in helping anyone, and the rest of the town is a bit too traumatized by what happened in the previous volume to really fight back against the feds. That really just leaves Dana to help out Em, and Seeley does have some nice flashbacks to show a time when the sisters weren’t so close while also showing why Dana cares as much for Em as she does. That’s good stuff, and while I wouldn’t rank Revival as one of the greatest series I’ve ever seen, it’s still a good and enjoyable one.
8.5 out of 10 Killer John Does.
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