Revival #17

written by Tim Seeley
art by Mike Norton

There's an echo here of Revival's opening issue:  Professor Aaron Weimar—frustrated writer convinced of his own voice but ignored by everyone else, aldulterous lover of his young student Martha Cypress, and cog in the mystery of the "revivers" who somehow finds himself at the epicenter—offers an explanation to his wife, a letter and his weak poetry written to Em, his vain attempt to recapture his youth.  And it's a pale answer to Em's ode to death.  But as a swan song it is suits the somewhat pitiful man.  Weimar is easy to dislike in his selfish disregard for other people, his callous abuse of his wife's trust and his manipulation of Martha to coddle his own sense of himself.  But he's a man with regret and in owning up to that regret, he finds himself somewhat redeemed.

There's also a message about Revival itself embedded in Dana Cypress' investigation.

"'Keep the grand design in mind as you work, but don't forget that each little stitch is important.  Know where your fingers are, or be content with unexpectedly red thread.  Always work from the center out.'" (Revival #17: 21)

Seeley's storytelling is a blend of mysteries layered on one another, bleeding into one another, and slowly, steadily illuminating the corners of the rural Wisconsin community at the heart of the "revival".  The last several issues have been humming with grand-design fervor, and Dana's discovery of the Grist Mill—final resting place of Weimar's undiscovered body, home of a macabre collection of human teeth, and very center of the Revival quarantine—propels that mystery even further.  The imposing burn-scarred man, the arsonist at Weimar's office and his murderer at the mill, is similarly thrust into the spotlight.  Once suspected, now all but assured, he is a "reviver," supposedly resting in a coma at the creepy medical quarantine facility in the room beside Jordan Borchardt.  He is also, it seems, a father, perhaps the father of the mysterious baby the "passengers" wail for, perhaps a surrogate for Jordan herself, but he is known by Weimar, who it now seems knew far more than he ever let on.

Revival's mysteries are gripping, but it's Seeley's character work that sells it as a noir.  May Tao is this issue's finest development.  For most of the series so far, Tao was little more than a caricature of the ambitious journalist, nosy, pushy, and concerned with little else than a story.  After being alerted to the scent of murder by Abel, she proves a more than competent investigator.  But her research and proclamation to hidden Em have a doubleness.

"It was a simple trail!  Anyone who had been paying attention could have followed it!!  ANYONE WHO CARED!"  (9)

Certainly, this is true of the Check brothers' murders by Martha Cypress.  But, even more, it's true of the Checks' murder of their own father, a transgendered woman who sought refuge from prejudice in Los Angeles and was brutally murdered when she attempted to re-establish contact with her sons.  May's enraged compassion for Alice Check comes as a welcome surprise.  It may not resolve the moral questions of their murder, or the revivers' increased proclivity to violence, but it tempers an otherwise flat character's ambition by her prickly humanity.

[January 2014]