When I first heard of Image's horror comic, Revival, and when I read its synopsis, I was immediately surprised at how similar to The Walking Dead its plot line appeared. In a small, rural town in central Wisconsin, the dead have began to rise and walk among the living. But, in contrast to Robert Kirkman's long lasting post apocalyptic Zombie serial, the undead in Revival aren't flesh eating remains of the once-living; they're merely confused and depressed people who are disappointed that they weren't even good enough for death to accept them. It's a horror apocalypse for those brought up on daytime soap operas and other never ending pop-cultural phenomenon that are more style than substance.
In the first Trade Paper Volume of Revival: You're Among Friends, we're introduced to the central characters of Wausau, Wisconsin, during a particularly frosty winter in the American Midwest. There is Officer Dana Cypress, a single mother and a daughter to the town's Chief of Police. Her younger sister, Martha Ann, is a soul searching girl who meets death firsthand, only to be revived like most of the dead citizens in or around Wausau, due to a central mystery that remains unsolved in this first issue. Additional characters are Mr. Abel, an enigmatic type who seems to be a rebellious exorcist, bent on either extracting the "devil" out of the unfortunate possessed, or at least pretending to do so. Ibrahaim Ramin is a new forensic for the Wasau Police Department, a man with whom Dana comes very close to having an affair with, without ever realizing they're practically colleagues. All of these characters seem to have been placed here straight out of some sort of investigative, CSI type of crime show from CBS network. Whether or not that is a good thing is really hard to say at this point, but one thing is for sure: the characters and the main storyline all lack certain conviction, and most unfortunately, they remain somewhat detached from their audience of readers.
Add to the above mentioned elements a tall, skinny, strange demon-like creature, who roams the nearby woods, all the while muttering incomprehensible things to themselves and those they happen to run across, and the result is a story whose idea is both half baked and also a bit washed up, since it clearly borrows from previous "here-come-the-undead-once-again" comics, without adding anything impactful of its own. Revival certainly is a nice try from its duo of writer Tim Seeley and artists Mike Norton and Mark Englert, but it sadly arrives too late, at a time when most readers will clearly be able to see through its thin and uninspired storyline. I certainly hope that future issues will keep my interest more so than this first one has, because I will surely lack motivation trying to continue with the reading, which so far has been all style and very little substance.
C
No comments:
Post a Comment