If you’re still following Revival at this point (there is no plausible reason why anyone wouldn’t be), you feel like Dana on the front cover. We’re trying to link all the characters together and come closer to solving Em’s murder. However, with each time we think we’re getting closer, by the end of the issue, the answers seem farther away. In this issue, we shift away from Em’s point of view and are put into Dana’s. She gets a call from her dad that Em was in an accident, which happened last issue. It’s the middle of the night on February 15th, so it’s been almost a month that the whole aftermath of Revival Day has been going on. We see Dana go into a room that is dedicated to solving Em’s murder and connecting different people in Wassau to it. There’s red yarn strewn from pictures and other documents, it’s clear that Dana is bound and determined to figure out this mess. We get a bit of a background as to why she became a detective in the first place: “This disorganized, senseless universe is what had taken my mom from me. If I could be a detective I could fix it. I’d be a modern Sherlock Holmes, always in control and always one step ahead of everyone.” She wants to save her sister and not have to lose her like she lost her mom. Speaking of characters being connected, we find out that Lester Majak is receiving help with his writing from Aaron Weimar. Majak actually runs into Em on campus, and they have a brief albeit awkward encounter since Em is on her way to see Weimar. When she’s walking away, Majak seems to have caught some suspicion in her voice, and he also sees her pant leg dripping wet. Also, one of the strippers at the club that Nikki (the girlfriend of Dana’s ex-boyfriend Derrick) works at used to go out with Anthony Check. May is actually interviewing her at the club, and Nikki overhears them talking and darts outside. If you recall, Em murdered all three Check brothers, so obviously Nikki doesn’t want May, the girl who broke the Reviver story, to know about that.
The government plays a part in this issue, as they begin to take farmers’ livestock because they think whatever caused Revival Day has affected the lakes and streams. This is also odd that Em woke up after she died in a lake, she saved Jordan from a ‘passenger’ in the lake, and she also got rid of another in a lake back in the beginning of the series; perhaps just a coincidence or maybe something bigger. The people are fed up with Mayor Dillisch, and one character in particular who was introduced in issue #11 won’t stand for it any longer… I can’t say enough about how much this series continues to wow me month after month whether it be the brilliant storytelling, the incredible art, or just how refreshing this book is to read. The only thing I can critique this month are two typos, one of them being: “…who let's you smoke weed all day…” Hey Image, need any more editors? But seriously, go pick this book up if you’ve thought about or have taken Revival off your pull list. Perhaps there have been less followers of it because it’s getting up in the double-digits. That said, there’s a lot of life left in this series (pun intended).
Score: 5/5
Writer: Tim Seeley
Artist: Mike Norton
Publisher: Image Comics
Price: $2.99
Release Date: 11/26/13