I've been a fan of Tim Seeley's work since i first checked out his horror movie-themed series Hack/Slash in 2011 and after spending a month in 2013 reading my way through that entire title, I began collecting his latest series, a Rural Noir called Revival, written by Seeley, and illustrated by Mike Norton. As often happens with collections, I ended up with five of these before I got around to reading any past the first volume, and that brings us up-to-date.
This week, I went through the first five collections and this series is pretty darn great. Having been a long-time fan of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead (whether in original comic, adapted television show, or even video game form), I wasn't exactly sure if I wanted to start another comic about the dead rising, but Revival is something entirely different.
Taking place in a fictionalized version of Seeley's hometown of Wausau Wisconsin, the story focuses on police officer Dana Cypress and the events set after "Revival Day", when the dead rose in the area surrounding the town, not as zombies, but apparently as themselves, and (mostly) wanting to get on with the business of living. The series works as a mystery, both on the large scale, as no one know why this specific geographical area has been effected, and on the small scale, involving murders, kidnappings and the types of crimes than can happen in a small town cut off from the rest of the world (Wausau is quickly put under quarantine by the United States Government).
Although the series does have a large number of truly gruesome scenes, much of the story is driven by family drama, Dana works with her father (the town's Sheriff), has a younger sister in college, and an eight-year-old son, each of which has their own secrets and story lines.
A really great series, and one I'm quite happy to have finally gotten around to reading!
As with many journeys, my blog this October began with a simple step. For the last year I've been excited for the day Ash vs the Evil Dead became available on DVD, and about a month ago it finally did! Snapping it up as quickly as I found it, I brought it home and prepared to watch the latest in one of my very favourite horror franchises, but then my wife hit me with a pretty good piece of logic.
You know, there's a lot of horror-themed things you've had around the house for a while now and haven't watched/read/played yet. How about you try some of them first?
And you know what? She was totally right.
So I went though my house collecting every horror-themed product I had purchased (or received as a gift) and hadn't got around to enjoying yet and realized something.
This is my October blog theme.
So here we go, a month cleaning up a pretty significant backlog of stuff, including comics, games, short stories, and films.
Welcome to Bookmonkey vs. the Hoard.
As we’re heading into my yearly Halloween-themed month, I’m currently at work reading the primary stuff I’ll be reviewing (the 2013 Penguin horror imprint), and am also hunting down a variety of films, comics and other related texts to chat about as well.
At this point I’ve got at least one movie connected with each reading (except for American Supernatural Stories – it’s my last one so I’ll be researching it later in the month), but have been happy to find related materials from all sorts of places (friends, used-book stores, Amazon, and in one case the special features of a DVD I’ve owned for quite a while now).
I’m still hoping to knock out a Charles de Lint review before we start but my reviews on new genre TV (Constantine, Gotham, American Horror Story: Freak Show, and The Walking Dead) will all have to wait until November.
Looking forward to it!
