Revival #2

written by Tim Seeley
art by Mike Norton

After a dense but straightforward opening issue, Revival fractures into a more mosaic depiction of the "revival" crisis.  Officer Dana Cypress and her family remain the engine of the series, but the mystery behind the supernatural events begins to radiate to the rest of the Wisconsin community.

1.  The second revival of Arlene Dittman.  Martha Cypress's removal of the top of Ms. Dittman's skull with a scythe is not enough to keep her dead.  Like Em, who revived not only after her murder but also after Dittman's assault with the same scythe, the old woman was also able to heal herself.  As soon as the skull cap is replaced, Ms. Dittman begins to heal and reawakens as mad and deranged as before, teeth still regrowing from pulling them out with pliers.

2.  Mr. Abel's exorcisism.  A young, beer-drinking, motorcycle-riding demonologist arrives to save a young woman in a trailer park.  Despite spewing some rather unappetizing vomit and a few vulgar phrases in patchy Latin, Kelly Merret is little other than a hare-brained teenager hoping to capitalize on town's burgeoning paranoia to get a little attention for herself.  He's more than crude about it, but Abel sees right through her ruse.

3.  The haunting of Lester Majak and his pit bull Chuck.  Aging fitness guru and hip-hop enthusiast Lester Majak begins hearing strange sounds in the woods outside his secluded cabin.  It's strange enough to frighten his dog and unsettling enough to sound like a crying baby, perhaps even the same one the ghostly figure in Revival #1 is wailing for.

4.  The strangeness of Em Cypress.  Following her father's understandable (but professionally unacceptable) overreaction to his daughters' confrontation with Arlene Dittman, Martha sneaks into her sister's old room and steal an angel-of-death hoodie from a box in her closet.  She stalks a couple at a diner—though he later recognizes her—and picks a fight with a seemingly random patron just to get beaten to a pulp.  When Dana comes to pick up her little sister, what she sees in the rearview mirror isn't exactly Em.

Dana Cypress, to son Cooper:  "Things are still the same.  We still have to appreciate all the good stuff we have.  Our friends.  Our families.  Life isn't a video game.  Death still has consequences.  It has to.  What kind of people would we be otherwise, right?"  (Revival #2: 3-4)

As a protagonist, Officer Dana Cypress continues to impress.  She endures too much fatherly interference in her job as a police officer under him, but she's confident and stubborn enough to keep herself on the R.C.A.T. even after the situation with Martha.  Her flirtation and near-fling with C.D.C. representative Ibrahaim Ramin—unknown to her at the time—unmasks her as saucy and clever and a bit rowdy, the kind of woman who once would have owned an angel-of-death hoodie as much as the kind of woman who would have packed it away.

[August 2012]