Things I Loved About Comics This Year Part 3: The Dead Walk!

Revival by Tim Seeley and Mike Norton

When is a zombie story not a zombie story? Well, Riddler, when it’s a Rural Noir! (I seriously did not notice that it said “A rural noir” above the title of every issue until the latest one. But in all fairness, this issue is the pulpiest).

Sexy lady? Check. Dead guy? Check. Thing is though, in the rural town in this rural noir, dead guys don’t stay dead. But not in a way you’d normally expect. They’re not eating the flesh of the living (yet). They’re not seducing young virgins and drinking their blood (yet). They’re not even a jumble of body parts sewn together and re-animated by electricity (yet?). No, these are simply people who have died, come back to life, and are having a little bit of trouble with the concept.

The normal, rural folks in this small, rural town are also uncomfortable with the situation. They’ve all been quarantined by the CDC, and when no one new can come or go into a small down where the dead have come back to life, well, people are going to be a little on edge and might start hurling feces.

Revival has been a pleasant surprise for me. I hadn’t really read anything by either of the creators before. I just heard “Have you read Revival yet?” so many times that I had to pick up the first issue. And then the second. Then the third. And so on. Seeley and Norton are crafting a tense, scary, and rural tale (at this point you have to have caught on that I’m overusing rural, but if you haven’t, well, here’s this explanatory sentence!). They’re building a mystery where I need answers, but it’s not a “crackhead LOST fan need to come up with a dozen theories and if I’m wrong I’ll hurl feces at the creators” kind of need for answers. The characters they’ve created are just as compelling as the mystery.

MYSTERIOUS CAMERA PHONE IMAGE THAT YOU’LL NEED TO BUY THE SERIES TO DETERMINE WHAT IT IS! (just kidding, they haven’t told us what that IS yet, but it’s been creeping around the edge of the series, just waiting to jump in and open up a whole new bag of questions).

So, anyway. I’ve really enjoyed reading Revival this year, and I enjoyed even more the fact that I discovered this rural noir through word of mouth and not through some bland cheerleader review on a comic book ‘news’ site.

LEVAR BURTON MOMENT: You can buy Revival on Comixology, on Amazon, at your local comic book store, or check it out at your local library (maybe? I’ve never checked out a graphic novel/trade paperback at a library before, but have heard tales of some who have. So…do so at your own risk…muahahahahahahahah!)