All those problems that have been building up the past few issues? Well, some of those are about to get some resolution, but don’t get too excited! We still have so many more questions that need to be answered.

I often think that with ‘Revival’, it would work better, story-telling wise, as a trade than it does issue by issue, and this is because it has a tendency to jump from storyline to storyline too quickly for a once-a-month reader to really remember what’s happening with it all. I’m still of this opinion, and highly suggest you pick up “Volume Two: Live Like You Mean It” when it comes out July 2013 if you haven’t been keeping up with the story, but issues like this one tend to change my mind a little bit. This issue was solid and on task. It may not wrap everything up in a neat little bow, but you wouldn’t be reading this series if that’s what you wanted anyway.

But let’s focus on this issue, shall we?

Remember how Coop, his dad and his dad’s girlfriend were tied up in drug dealer’s shed waiting for their inevitable deaths? Remember how Martha was trying to save them but ended up almost getting buried with Tommy the Torso? Well, that finally gets resolved in this issue and it’s pretty sick what we learn, and pretty predictable how many more questions we get instead of answers. Derrick and Nicki are useless, and  Martha pretty much single-handedly takes down each one of the Check brothers and saves her nephew’s life with the help of the alien-like creatures. Why they are helping and why they are uttering something that vaguely sounds like “no passenger” is another story all together.

But, really, we’re not going to get answers about the alien-like creatures anytime soon. We’ll get a lot more questions, though, and that is a fact.  When Martha goes back to try and put Tommy the Torso, who the Check brothers have been keeping doped up so they can cut him apart body part by body part to sell, out of his misery, the alien-like creature enters his body and burns him alive while he smiles happily. What’s even more strange – though, maybe not seeing as she constantly has weird episodes involving them – Martha seems unsurprised by this turn of events. Some revivers, it appears, can die with the help of the alien-like creature and this leaves her unphased. I like to think that it gives her hope, and that’s why she stands over his flaming body. She hopes that eventually she will die too.

Remember Ibrahim’s story? Where he’s trapped on a racist and militant Libertarian’s property? Well, problem solved. Dana and the Sheriff show up just in the nick of… wait, turns out he didn’t really need saving at all. It also turns out that the drama was for nothing and the moral of the story is that you shouldn’t judge racists so harshly… I guess… They will cut you out of a bear trap and help you into the car to get to the hospital. I’m not sure if Seely’s trying to be ‘Grand Turino’ with this, but I’m pretty sure that with all the set-up this particular guy is getting, we’ll probably know within the next few issues. For what though, I haven’t even got an inkling. Still, though only a very small and minor part of this issue, Ibrahim’s dramatic-nothing does lead to one scene that I hope has emotional continuity later on. The Sheriff talks to his daughter, Dana, about trust when she confronts him about why Ibrahim was sent to Edmund Holt’s house. The Sheriff responds that he wasn’t the one who did it, and ended it with “You trust me. And I’ll trust you. It’s the only way we’ll survive this. No lies, no secrets.” It seems clear that there are going to be a lot more stand-offs between father and daughter, and we’ll just have to see what is going to come of it.

The issue ends with a sort of acceptance between Dana and Martha after Dana comes back and realizes that her son had been in danger the whole time she went to go check on Ibrahim (which I’m sure will guilt her in the next issue). Martha recites one of her poems as an ominous set of events play in the background, the most ominous being that it looks like Anders, the murderer from a few issues back, is on a bus and leaving the town of Wasau altogether. It’s almost time for volume three of ‘Revival’, and it’s only just getting started.

 

REVIVAL #11
Story by Tim Seely
Art by Mike Norton