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Review: “Revival” # 22

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“Revival” #22 keeps the action and plot twists building as the story sticks to its new setting. The whodunit mystery continues to unravel as regulars become suspects and a new threat rears its ugly head. The death count keeps piling up in this exciting “Revival” installment.   

revival_22

WRITTEN BY: Tim Seeley

ART BY: Mike Norton

PUBLISHER: Image Comics

PRICE: $3.99

RELEASE: July 23, 2014

Reviewed By Jorge Solis

For an entire day, the dead of rural Wisconsin suddenly came back to life. An endless parade of government agents, reporters, and scientists hound the “Revivers,” asking them why they have returned. Sheriff Dana Cypress now has to visit New York because there is a reviver on the loose. Her masked murderer may have been resurrected while he was in the middle of being cremated. As the Big Apple faces a new zombie threat, Dana’s dead sister, Em, is about to discover how big of a douche bag her boyfriend really is.

Writer Tim Seeley knows how to mix sex and violence in his narrative. In the opening pages, Seeley builds on the sexual attraction between Em and Rhodey Rash.  As the sexual innuendo builds to a climax, the reader really starts to feel like a voyeur. Rhodey was secretly taping his intimate moments with Em, just so that he could make money off of her. The story then moves elsewhere, showing a painful depiction of a zombie baby being beaten.

I am very much liking the interaction between Dana and her new partner, Enrique Puig. On one hand, Dana has met her intellectual match as they both have the skills to be great detectives. On the other, Enrique can sense a barrier between them. Notice how persistent Enrique is as he tries to get her to say his first name, but she won’t.  

Artist Mike Norton delivers a nice twist to the police procedural part of the storyline. Usually in these detective tales, we have the mandatory police chase. Norton delivers on the chase, adding a bead body falling down from the sky. In a wide shot, Norton captures the dead body diving face-first into the car’s windshield.  

Norton illustrates a very creepy and twisted scene between Em and Rhodey. In his web cam show, Rhodey wears a leathery bondage mask during his presentation. Because he is also a reviver like Em, Rhodey isn’t afraid to slice himself up. Norton highlights the squirm-inducing moment, without going overboard, as Rhodey cuts his own penis off.

“Revival” #22 delivers cringe-worthy material that will keep you up late at night. I can’t wait to see how the next issue tops all these crazy moments.

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[Review] Graphic Novel ‘Tender’ Is Brilliant Feminist Body Horror That Will Make You Squirm & Scream

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Tender Beth Hetland Graphic Novel

Beth Hetland’s debut graphic novel, ‘Tender,’ is a modern tale of love, validation, and self-destruction by way of brutal body horror with a feminist edge.

“I’ve wanted this more than anything.”

Men so often dominate the body horror subgenre, which makes it so rare and insightful whenever women tackle this space. This makes Beth Hetland’s Tender such a refreshing change of pace. It’s earnest, honest, and impossibly exposed. Tender takes the body horror subgenre and brilliantly and subversively mixes it together with a narrative that’s steeped in the societal expectations that women face on a daily basis, whether it comes to empowerment, family, or sexuality. It single-handedly beats other 2023 and ‘24 feminine horror texts like American Horror Story: Delicate, Sick, Lisa Frankenstein, and Immaculate at their own game.

Hetland’s Tender is American Psycho meets Rosemary’s Baby meets Swallow. It’s also absolutely not for the faint of heart.

Right from the jump, Tender grabs hold of its audience and doesn’t let go. Carolanne’s quest for romantic fulfillment, validation, and a grander purpose is easy to empathize with and an effective framework for this woeful saga. Carolanne’s wounds cut so deep simply because they’re so incredibly commonplace. Everybody wants to feel wanted.

Tender is full of beautiful, gross, expressive artwork that makes the reader squirm in their seat and itch. Hetland’s drawings are simultaneously minimalist and comprehensively layered. They’re  reminiscent of Charles Burns’ Black Hole, in the best way possible. There’s consistently inspired and striking use of spot coloring that elevates Hetland’s story whenever it’s incorporated, invading Tender’s muted world.

Hetland employs effective, economical storytelling that makes clever use of panels and scene construction so that Tender can breeze through exposition and get to the story’s gooey, aching heart. There’s an excellent page that depicts Carolanne’s menial domestic tasks where the repetitive panels grow increasingly smaller to illustrate the formulaic rut that her life has become. It’s magical. Tender is full of creative devices like this that further let the reader into Carolanne’s mind without ever getting clunky or explicit on the matter. The graphic novel is bookended with a simple moment that shifts from sweet to suffocating.

Tender gives the audience a proper sense of who Carolanne is right away. Hetland adeptly defines her protagonist so that readers are immediately on her side, praying that she gets her “happily ever after,” and makes it out of this sick story alive…And then they’re rapidly wishing for the opposite and utterly aghast over this chameleon. There’s also some creative experimentation with non-linear storytelling that gets to the root of Carolanne and continually recontextualizes who she is and what she wants out of life so that the audience is kept on guard.

Tender casually transforms from a picture-perfect rom-com, right down to the visual style, into a haunting horror story. There’s such a natural quality to how Tender presents the melancholy manner in which a relationship — and life — can decay. Once the horror elements hit, they hit hard, like a jackhammer, and don’t relent. It’s hard not to wince and grimace through Tender’s terrifying images. They’re reminiscent of the nightmarish dadaist visuals from The Ring’s cursed videotape, distilled to blunt comic panels that the reader is forced to confront and digest, rather than something that simply flickers through their mind and is gone a moment later. Tender makes its audience marinate in its mania and incubates its horror as if it’s a gestating fetus in their womb.

Tender tells a powerful, emotional, disturbing story, but its secret weapon may be its sublime pacing. Hetland paces Tender in such an exceptional manner, so that it takes its time, sneaks up on the reader, and gets under their skin until they’re dreading where the story will go next. Tender pushes the audience right up to the edge so that they’re practically begging that Carolanne won’t do the things that she does, yet the other shoe always drops in the most devastating manner. Audiences will read Tender with clenched fists that make it a struggle to turn each page, although they won’t be able to stop. Tender isn’t a short story, at more than 160 pages, but readers will want to take their time and relish each page so that this macabre story lasts for as long as possible before it cascades to its tragic conclusion. 

Tender is an accomplished and uncomfortable debut graphic novel from Hetland that reveals a strong, unflinching voice that’s the perfect fit for horror. Tender indulges in heightened flights of fancy and toes the line with the supernatural. However, Tender is so successful at what it does because it’s so grounded in reality and presents a horror story that’s all too common in society. It’s a heartbreaking meditation on loneliness and codependency that’s one of 2024’s must-read horror graphic novels.

‘Tender,’ by Beth Hetland and published by Fantagraphics, is now available.

4 out of 5 skulls

Tender graphic novel review

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