Revival #11

written by Tim Seeley
art by Mike Norton

While Revival's story arcs are heavily serial, stretching over multiple issues often with slow, deliberate development, issue #11 is a direct continuation of the very focused conflict begun in #10:  the kidnapping of Cooper by the Check brothers and their discovery by "Reviver" Martha Cypress.  After having upended her kidnapper and would-be murderer Adam Check at the end of the last issue, Martha is now faced with his brother Andrew.  Her violence, understandable in the context in which it erupts, is nevertheless increasingly disturbing, particularly in light of the viciousness that it seems to stimulate.  In the span of moments, Martha has killed two men quite literally with her hands, actions whose magnitude she realizes only after she finishes.

This encounter, so far the sharpest of Revival's plots, is a confluence of many of the series' best mysteries and characters.  Not only is the personality of Martha Cypress challenged by the increasing strangeness of her new condition, she and Cooper are saved from eldest brother Anthony by the enigmatic ghost in the woods, whom Cooper has somewhat befriended.  While this figure hasn't come even close to being identified, it seems to be fundamentally linked to the Revival phenomenon, if unknown to most of the series' characters.  And, it turns out, to the mercy of the scavenged and mutilated meth user Tommy the Torso, the only known thing that can kill the Revivers.

[June 2013]