Revival #7

written by Tim Seeley
art by Mike Norton

Revival has opted for a more aggregate story-telling approach to its Wisconsin-bred alive-again-ers.  While its first few issues pointedly raised several questions about the nature and cause of the "revival" itself and the "revived," subsequent issues have gravitated more toward individual stories tangentially associated with the event.  And narrative arcs are simultaneous rather than sequential, as comics—particularly those prepping for TPB-dom—are wont to be arranged.  This is not a criticism.  In fact, it gives Revival the sense of a longer vision, but it consequently elevates the demands on its readers, who must recall details from events several issues prior in order to begin piecing together the larger story Seeley and Norton are telling.

Issue 7 is the inevitable consequence of this mode of storytelling, a somewhat piecemeal single issue that struggles with its own cohesion but fits very nicely into the series as a whole.  Most of the issue is spent resolving the murder of Justin Hine, but interspersed within this story are the continued and escalating trouble along the quarantine, a very brief—i.e., 2-page—introduction to the gruesome Check brothers, a briefer—i.e., 1-page—glimpse of reporter May Tao, a tantalizing scene between Martha Cypress and fellow reviver Jeannie Gorski, and the discovery of some unexpected cargo in a highway crash.  Thus far, Seeley has quite admirably, in my opinion, steered well clear of cheap, summarizing exposition, but Revival is approaching a dangerous horizon, at which it will have begun too many threads to adequately engage any of them, and it needs an issue once in a while that suspends the more immediate detective mysteries, which have recently occupied most of its page-count, in order to address its central questions.

Norton's art is certainly adequate to the task, though not much exceptional is asked of him here.  He does adeptly handle the unenviable burden of differentiating so many secondary characters with few textual cues.  And some of the crowd and highway scenes reward close scrutiny.

[February 2013]