Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews

Revival #1Revival #1
Image Comics
Seeley & Norton

Revival is a "rural noir" book that takes raising the dead into some different territory. The book feels like a slow burn, but it holds onto the horror elements throughout the first issue as the reader doesn't have a lot of time to relax. The first issue establishes the main characters, the situation they are dealing with and delivers some mystery and an obvious threat. Overall, this is a good opening issue.

The book is basically about a town that's been quarantined because they have had some folks rise up from death. This isn't really a zombie book though. This is basically regular humans that happened to have been dead and now are suddenly revived as if nothing happened. As you can imagine a lot of theories are tossed out there as the town is cut off from the outside world as a result.

The book follows along two cops, a father and daughter, as they try to keep the town functioning normally amidst the various government agencies and conflicts that have arisen because of the newly undead people. The book heats up in a big way by the end.

The first half of the book was very slow for me. The approach here was to let dialogue tell the story of how the town got the way it is and to provide an introduction to the characters. It felt very slow and I was bracing for a real slow burn kind of story where the suspense builds over a number of issues rather than just issue to issue.

However, the book launches into an aspect of horror very quickly with a twist of science fiction thrown in for good measure. I'm not sure what to make of the book, but I know I was racing through the ending and I was left wanting more. That, to me, is a good thing.

Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle ReviewsNorton's artwork is tremendous. He really has a knack for providing unique expressions on the character's faces and selling the dialogue through his pictures. Not to be put in a corner with only boring conversations to draw, Norton provides some frightening visuals at the end of the book that are not to be missed. This is a great artistic book.

Revival is a tough book to gauge. If the story launches into all hell breaking loose then I think this book is going to be a great one. If this book sort of hovers around the mystery and takes a step back for a bit then it might have a tough time recapturing the drama in the ending of this book. Either way, this book is worth picking up and so is the next one, from the looks of this one.

3 out of 5 Geek Goggles