Revival #18

written by Tim Seeley
art by Mike Norton

And then comes the dulling emotional letdown.  Disillusionment, I suppose.  Disillusionment and anger.  Em Cypress finds herself increasingly a pariah.  A chance encounter with Derrick on campus provides her nothing but a brush-off and a cold shoulder, perhaps—but not necessarily—more a consequence of her loneliness than his indifference.

But it is her confrontation with Aaron Weimar's wife Nithiya in the charred remnants of his office that really cuts.  Em's affair with her professor was inexcusably ill-advised, and her concern for him is rooted in her romantic affection, but it makes her worry no less legitimate and justifiable.  Nithiya's hatred for Em at knowingly sleeping with a married man is not so much unmerited as it is implicitly dismissive of Aaron's responsibility in the affair.  To blame the other woman for "[seducing] my husband with your little love poems and false innocence" (Revival #18: 14) is all too common misdirected invective that offers convenient excuses for the unfaithful husband, especially in light of Nithiya's own suggestions that Em is hardly the first.  The wife and the mistress's shared psychic kiss is more complicated, but also for Em a glimpse at Aaron's love for his wife and a final chance to feel once again rejected by her former lover.  That Em is also increasingly physically ill, waking from her sleep bleeding from her eyes and nose to vomit blood, is yet another aspect of her deterioration.

But it's young Cooper's painful, truthful realization that his mother, once the hero of his own comic books, the ever-vigilant protector, is vulnerable in this new world of the undead, and perhaps she always was.  Dana's frustration at her son's nightmares—though they are real, and Em should probably have told her by now—and her own sleeplessness, especially when compounded with the stress of the Revival and the physical pain of her injuries, make her eruption at Cooper sympathetic and her sense of failure as a parent poignant. 

Meanwhile, Revival's intrigue continues to tighten.  Dana finally begins making headway on the scarred man—the victim of a partial cremation on Revival Day—but hits another wall when she discovers he was always a John Doe.  Lester Majak's adorable pit bull Chuck disappears on a run in the woods with the "glowing men".  And local anti-government and completely unsubtle hot-heat Ed Holt persists in stirring trouble for Sheriff Cypress.  He and his followers—increasing in number the longer the quarantine remains in effect and farmers continue to feel neglected by law enforcement and government agencies—seem to be digging something up, perhaps literally, while Cypress remains on a stakeout outside Holt's home.

[March 2014]