Line #89 ComicBook/Revival


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/revival_hc_9.jpg]]
2	In Rothschild, Wisconsin, a small town surrounded by farms, people die sometimes. One day some of them come right back to life, just as if nothing had ever happened.
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4	Some people handle it better than others.
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6	Dana Cypress, a divorcee with a young son, is an officer in the Rothschild police department, and she's put in charge of policing the "Revivers," right as their existence is becoming national news. Now she gets to deal with the crimes that follow from the phenomenon, the media circus that erupts around it, and a series of increasingly violent murders committed by the revivers themselves.
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8	''Revival'' is a "rural noir" comic book published by Creator/ImageComics, written by Tim (''ComicBook/HackSlash'') Seeley and drawn by Mike Norton. It ran for 47 issues, from 2012 to 2017, as well as one crossover issue with ''ComicBook/{{Chew}}''.
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11	!! This work contains examples of:
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13	* ActionBomb: [[spoiler:Diane acts as a suicide bomb to kill everyone in the courthouse in issue 29 on Ed Holt's suggestion, sticking an explosive inside her chest.]]
14	* ActionGirl: Em gets a defining character moment in the first issue by wielding a scythe against a reviver. She gets several more combats and is undefeated post-Revival.
15	* ActionMom: A few.
16	** Dana Cypress is a police officer responding to the most violent reviver-related crimes in the area. Her son Cooper thinks she's a superhero.
17	** Weaver Fannie is a ninja assassin. Her daughter Atlee thinks she's a superhero.
18	** Louise Cale is a fierce military administrator who also evenly matched a ninja assassin hand-to-hand. No word on what her son Jacob thinks.
19	* ActualPacifist: Randy the morgue technician becomes one after discovering that the John Doe he was incinerating came back to life mid-burn. Randy quit the job immediately to avoid injuring anyone else who might come in as a corpse-but-not. He's one of the leaders of a pacifist group that meets near the end of the series; by then the conflict has escalated to a shooting war between the US military and the libertarians' militia.
20	* AnOfferYouCantRefuse: [[spoiler:Ibrahim Ramin]] is forced to inform for the CIA because his brother will be indefinitely imprisoned otherwise.
21	* AndIMustScream
22	** Jesse Blackdeer is in constant agony due to his revival during his own cremation.
23	--->'''Emil Amherst:''' He has ''second'' and ''third'' degree burns over a hundred percent of his body. Normally, burns that deep destroy the nerve, and are considered [[FeelNoPain "low to no pain"]]. But due to his state of reanimation, [[BlessedWithSuck he's constantly regenerating nerve tissue]]. Conversely, the damage is such that the process of healing we've seen on other revivers has been abated. Essentially, this man is trapped in a state of ''perpetual burning''. He's in an induced coma because being conscious and outside that chamber? It would be a ''living hell'', in the most literal form of the word I can conceive of.
24	** [[spoiler:Aaron Weimar]] is repeatedly drowned and revived by the water of the Silver Creek for weeks.
25	** Arguably all of the revivers. They are incapable of feeling happiness and have no further goals in life. They're just there.
26	* AnyoneCanDie: The whole book is about death explored by multiple regular fatalities over the series. Some are only briefly introduced, but most have significant characterization before their deaths to increase the impact.
27	** All of the Revivals were dead as the series begins, of various causes. Several die again over the course of the series. [[spoiler: They're all finished off in the final issue.]]
28	* BadFuture: Inverted. Em uses reviver telepathy to sent Patricia a vision of what the future would be if they both lived. Patricia gets to experience that good future though it will never come to pass.
29	* BigBad: PlayedWith. Technically, [[spoiler:Lester Majak]] is the main villain of the majority of the plot, having murdered Em and [[spoiler:accidentally kickstarted Revival Day in the process]], but by the time the audience figures this out, that person has been eclipsed by [[spoiler:General Louise Cale's goal to conquer life and death]].
30	* BodyHorror: The revivers get a very strong healing factor and greater than normal strength, which restores them to health and awareness without changing anything about their physical appearance.
31	** Arlene Dittman is shown ripping out her own teeth because they keep growing back and interfering with her dentures.
32	** The junkie used by the Check brothers is kept strung out on drugs while he's slowly vivisected and allowed to regenerate.
33	** Jordan Borchardt slices off her own eyelids to better experience the afterlife.
34	** Rhodey Rasch has become the star of his own series of extreme sports videos, going viral by virtue of his inability to die from failed stunts. He also has a pay-per-view website devoted to gruesome self-harm.
35	* BodySurf: The Passengers try this near the end of the series. Several are radicalized by imprisonment and begin taking over armed members of the US military to attack, skipping to new hosts when the old bodies get killed.
36	* BondVillainStupidity: The soldiers Dana and Em meet on the roof of the hospital. They literally have their targets surrounded at gunpoint but the superior officer takes time to clarify to his own men that they have orders to kill, listen to and then negate the protests of the targets, and count to three before firing. [[spoiler:Atlee]] has plenty of time to show up and save the day.
37	* BulletproofHumanShield: Several revivers volunteer as this during the shootout at Silver Creek to defend the Cypresses.
38	* CameBackWrong: A reviver remembers everything about his or her life, but some of them don't have the same emotional connections thereof. Several have picked up a really vicious tendency towards self-mutilation.
39	* ConservationOfNinjutsu: Weaver Fannie equipped with a ninja sword engages the US military equipped with assault rifles. She makes mincemeat of them until she is challenged to single combat by Cale. Cale (with her rifle as a melee weapon) fights her to a standstill [[spoiler:until Fannie stabs through her own body to kill them both]].
40	* ContrivedCoincidence: The Revival incident isolates a specific area around Wausau, Wisconsin. The military administrator happens to personally know a secret ninja assassin who lives less than fifty miles away.
41	* CreepyChild: As a reviver Jordan Borchardt projects an emotionless disposition. Like others she has no compunctions against self-harm, which makes for a WhamShot at the close of one issue. Later she claims that guards don't notice her passing because she's so lifeless.
42	* DarkSecret: The dead coming back to life brings a lot of people's skeletons out of their closets even before the Revival action starts.
43	** Multiple kinds of LoveTriangle. See below.
44	** Thang Vang reveals she stole from her former employer.
45	** The Hine stepsiblings [[spoiler:are having an affair and murdered their father to finance it]].
46	** The Check brothers [[spoiler:murdered their transgender mother/former father]].
47	** Wayne Cypress [[spoiler:was drunk the night he crashed his motorcycle, killing his wife]].
48	** Lester Majac [[spoiler:committed a murder to set off the Revival.]]
49	* DeathOfTheHypotenuse: Technically how the love triangle between Aaron, Nethiya, and Em ended. Em got better. [[spoiler: In the finale it's implied that Em broke it off with Aaron when she discovered he was going to help Lester with the revival ritual. Moreso, as a reviver Em's emotions would be repressed making a continuation of the affair unlikely.]]
50	* DeathSeeker: [[spoiler:Diane Dillisch]] is an unregistered reviver who becomes more violently self-destructive over time from pills to self-decapitation, eventually succeeding at terrible cost. The spouse attempts to keep this under wraps to protect both of them.
51	* DisguisedHostageGambit: Used by the militia late in the series, causing the deaths of [[spoiler:Janae and Jacob]].
52	* DramaticallyMissingThePoint: After Jordan's revival, Dr. Borchardt asked her if she'd seen God while dead and was disappointed when Jordan said her eyes were closed. Jordan proceeds to cut off her eyelids so her eyes will be open the next time she dies.
53	* DrowningMySorrows: May Tao turns to this after several failed stories shake her faith in her own journalistic chops.
54	* EvilOldFolks: [[spoiler:Anders Hine]], [[TheDogBitesBack though not without reason]].
55	* EyepatchOfPower: Both Edmund Holt and Des.
56	* FantasticFragility: The loophole that allows the Revival ritual to be undone only exists because one of the revivers happened to be pregnant at the time.
57	* FirstEpisodeTwist: Em is an unregistered reviver murdered the night of the Revival incident. Keeping Em's secret and investigating her murder drive Dana for the rest of the series.
58	* FourStarBadass: General Louise Cale. She's an unmerciful administrator but that doesn't slow her down in a combat situation.
59	* FunctionalAddict: Derrick regularly smokes weed and used to be a dealer before the quarantine. He's holding down a job as a freelance tattoo artist and has a stable relationship with Nikki. Despite Dana's low opinion of him, he watches Cooper responsibly and performs several high-risk ventures for her.
60	* GoryDiscretionShot: The series has frequent and brutal depictions of gore, but refuses to show November Dismember taking a knife to his own genitals.
61	* GrandTheftMe: Inverted by Jordan. With her own Passenger dead, Jordan invites another reviver's Passenger into her body and then imprisons it by force of will to prevent it from bonding with and destroying its true body.
62	* GrievousHarmWithABody: [[spoiler:Rhodey Rasch]] gets one during his escape from containment by severing his own arm and sharpening the humerus to a lethal point.
63	* HealingFactor: The Revivers are effectively immortal. We see them survive massive trauma and blood loss regularly. Self-harm is pretty common.
64	* HollywoodExorcism: Blaine Abel has a side gig performing these. He genuinely believes in demonic possession and has (poorly) researched the subject. However most of his successful cases were themselves faking it and backed down when he called them out.
65	* HookerWithAHeartOfGold: Nikki. She's a stripper but she's drug-free and has strong boundaries against sex work. Overall she is a decent match for Derrick and a stabilizing force for Cooper. Dana certainly can't see past her profession and blames her for Derrick's failure to improve himself.
66	* HorrifyingTheHorror: Late in the series Jordan Borchardt gets to [[spoiler:imprison a Passenger in her own body.]] The Passenger in question finds this terrifying.
67	* HowTheMightyHaveFallen: Lester Majak got famous decades ago for his fitness book ''Strong Century''. He's still a local celebrity and quite fit for his age, but he's been coasting downward from that one success ever since.
68	* HumanResources: The miracle of the Revival creates an instant black market in reviver body parts for scientific and... other... purposes.
69	** Many citizens of the area dug up their dead relatives to sell as counterfeit reviver parts. This was common enough that one shipment filled an entire truck.
70	** The Check brothers are selling genuine reviver parts by hacking an unregistered reviver to pieces and allowing his healing factor to regrow him.
71	* INeedAFreakingDrink: Wayne after Diane's reviver reveal.
72	* IntrepidReporter: May Tao, who's brought to Rothschild by contacts within its Hmong community.
73	* ImAHumanitarian: [[spoiler: Dana takes a short field trip to New York City at one point, in an attempt to track down Anders Hine, who'd escaped the quarantine zone. When she finds him, he's decided to make money as an open buffet for experimental rich people, who hope to gain his immortality by eating his flesh. Unfortunately for them, the reviver's also poisoned the ''hell'' out of himself.]]
74	* IronicEcho: Before Martha comes back again, she's thrown in an open grave as one of the brothers say they wish that she'd ran, because it's more fun that way. Guess what she says after she comes back and rips one brother's throat out?
75	-->'''Martha''': Run. It's more fun when you run.
76	* KillItWithFire: How a reattached Passenger and reviver die.
77	* KillItWithWater: The only demonstrated way to destroy Passengers.
78	* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: The crossover issue with Comicbook/{{Chew}} begins with Cooper drawing his own crossover comic combining Comicbook/{{Saga}} with WesternAnimation/RobotChicken. When Martha questions how such a combination makes sense Cooper responds by invoking RuleOfCool and RuleOfFun.
79	* LittleMissBadass: Fannie's tween daughter Atlee is a ninja assassin to rival her own mother. She likes cartoons.
80	* LivingLieDetector: Em and a handful of other revivers can innately tell when someone is telling the truth.
81	* LoveTriangle:
82	** Aaron had an affair with Em. His wife Nethiya implies that this has happened before but it has no effect on her affection for him.
83	** Jamie Hettinga is cheating on her husband with Justin Hine.
84	** Derrick is still in love with Dana though she's long over him. Nikki is still in love with Derrick despite this.
85	** Joe Myers is still in love with his first girlfriend though he married another woman.
86	** Ibrahim may have had a relationship with his sister-in-law Ami while his brother was in prison.
87	* MagicalNativeAmerican: Lester consults with a Native American friend to address the Passengers around his property. Though the Passengers have arisen according to Hindu ritual, the chief is able to apply his own tribe's rites to trap them.
88	* MenAreTheExpendableGender: Every US soldier killed across the series is male except for Big Tina, though civilian deaths include females. Justified by the US Military, even today, being disproportionately male, especially with regards to front-line soldiers.
89	* TheMole: [[spoiler:Ibrahim Ramin]] is feeding information to the CIA.
90	* TheMutiny: [[spoiler:Louise Cale]] leads one against the replacement general at the end of the series, supported by troops eager to see death permanently averted.
91	* OurSoulsAreDifferent: [[spoiler:The Passengers are the souls of the revivers split from the recently dead during the Revival event. Passengers attach emotional weight to memory, so revivers lack emotional connections. Passengers have free will when separated from their hosts. When a Passenger reattaches to its host they are both destroyed. Passengers can also attach to other hosts as body snatchers.]]
92	* OurSpiritsAreDifferent: The Passengers are glowing humanoidish figures heard whispering in the woods outside town. They're visible to humans and on cameras, capable of moving like a gas, unable to cross salt, susceptible to physical restraint, and can be killed by drowning.
93	* OutsideContextProblem:
94	** The US government isn't prepared for the dead to return to life and handles it like a disease outbreak with a heavy-handed quarantine. [[spoiler: Then a heavy-handed concentration camp, then a heavy-handed extermination.]]
95	** Dana, trained law enforcement officer, is initially sent to address a livestock dispute. This escalates to a melee fight with a reviver who happened to live nearby.
96	** Scientific analysis of the revival is pretty much useless since it's based on Hindu mysticism.
97	** Dana and Em are investigating Em's murder. They do not expect an Amish ninja assassin to get involved.
98	** All of these serve to emphasize that ''death itself'' is an OutsideContextProblem from the perspective of any given living thing.
99	* PhonyPsychic: Rose Blackdeer's day job, supplemented by drugging and hypnotizing her clients.
100	* PregnantBadass: [[spoiler:Martha "Em" Cypress]], though she doesn't find out until the end of Issue 23.
101	* RankScalesWithAsskicking: Louise Cale is an experienced military administrator who fights a ninja assassin hand-to-hand to a stalemate.
102	* RapidFireNo: [[spoiler:Em Cypress]] lets out one of these after realizing [[spoiler:she's pregnant]].
103	* RightWingMilitiaFanatic: Edmund Holt, Des, and their recruits.
104	* RuleOfCool: Late in the series Weaver Fannie is introduced. She is an Amish ninja assassin single mother who is recruited and immediately betrayed specifically to add her to the Cypress sisters' team. This rule is the only excuse.
105	* SaltSolution: A line of salt on the ground is an impenetrable barrier for the Passengers.
106	* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: The Hunters of the Beast militia run for the hills when Em beats them all handily [[spoiler:while pregnant]].
107	* SecretUndergroundPassage: Used by Holt's militia to undermine the quarantine.
108	* SequentialArtist: Cooper Cypress is an aspiring comic artist. He even gets a plot-relevant commission from Jordan.
109	* TeenPregnancy: [[spoiler:Em Cypress is pregnant with Aaron Weimar's child at nineteen years old.]]
110	* {{Telepathy}}: Em and a handful of other revivers can read minds by kissing the subject. Em even reverses this ability to commune with Patricia in the finale.
111	* TheEndOrIsIt: [[spoiler:Nithiya escapes with a copy of ''Banks of the Broken Creek'' and buys a house at the side of a river.]]
112	* ToiletPaperSubstitute: Holt uses this to show disrespect to Wayne's trespassing ticket right in front of him.
113	* UndeadChild: A rare non-evil version. [[spoiler:Martha Cypress]] was pregnant at the time she was revived and the reviver infant represents a bridge between life and death. When the mother reclaims the infant's Passenger, the mother is destroyed but the baby is bonded with it and lives.
114	* VillainousBreakdown: [[spoiler:Losing [[MoralityChain her wife and son]] to Des and her militia's DisguisedHostageGambit prompts Cale to begin outright extermination to take control of Silver Creek's mystical properties and resurrect them both.]]
115	* WhamEpisode:
116	** Issue 23: [[spoiler:Em is pregnant.]]
117	** Issue 42: [[spoiler:Lester Majak is revealed to be Em's murderer.]] This one is especially notable in that it starts the final arc, instead of being at the end of the previous one.
118	* WhamShot: In standard comic book style several issues end on one.
119	** [[spoiler:A car accident reveals smuggled human body parts.]]
120	** [[spoiler:Anders Hine escapes the quarantine on a bus.]]
121	** [[spoiler:Jordan Borchardt cuts off her eyelids.]]
122	** [[spoiler:Em Cypress is pregnant.]]
123	** [[spoiler:The Silver Creek runs red with blood and is clogged with bodies.]]
124	* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Dana takes a field trip to New York and discovers that someone is shipping reviver flesh out of town. The recipient is killed, as are his future clients - but did his past clients become revivers?
125	* WhoWantsToLiveForever: The revivers are universally emotionally detached. Their families are left with an echo of the person they were, a constant reminder that makes it impossible to grieve and move on. Revivers can feel no joy or accomplishment for themselves which leaves their existence a hollow mockery of life.
126	** At one point, Em experiences a dream of a world in which nobody dies. The universe ends up completely packed wall-to-wall with bodies unable to do anything.

Context ComicBook / Revival