Written by Marc Guggenheim
Art by Justin Greenwood
32 pages, color
Published by Oni Press
A couple of years ago, Oni Press debuted Resurrection, a title that detailed just what would happen after the end of an alien invasion, once the planet is finally free. After six issues and an Annual, the book went on a temporary hiatus. Now it’s back, and this time in full color. But in an effort to bring in new readers, I fear that Marc Guggenheim is trying to push too much too fast into its new first issue.
When the "bugs" finally left Earth, after almost ten years of warfare, things seemed good for about 30 seconds. Now the planet’s population is reeling from not only all the destruction and death they’ve had to live through, but their sudden newfound freedom. Now the survivors are scattered across the planet, moving towards a new civilization. Or is it anarchy that is the final destination?
I feel a little bad for Guggenheim, to be honest. With the comic starting over with a new #1 and now in full color, he’s got to try and bring brand-new readers up to speed while not leaving older readers behind. It’s in many ways a losing situation no matter how you look at it, because almost certainly someone will end up feeling a little frustrated. Guggenheim ends up revisiting some scenes of the original series here; you get the basic idea of what’s happened, or at least the pieces of story that are continuing into the all-new Resurrection. The problem is, we end up with several scenes that feel rushed and disjointed, jumping from one moment to the next. There are just so many ideas and moments here that they can’t all comfortably fit into a single issue, and everything ends up feeling a little rushed. I think I’d almost have rather seen some of this tackled in exposition, because there’s just so much ground that it’s trying to cover.
Don’t get me wrong, a book that tries to tackle a lot is much preferable to one that doesn’t have high ambition. I think there’s still a good solid core of story here to attract readers and at the end of the day it’s still a good read for those who give it the time needed to fully parse just what’s going on here. It was nice to see a bit of Mount Weather make the cut for what’s being continued into the second series, and I think Guggenheim does a good job of bringing to life the idea of just what post-invasion Earth would really be like. Resurrection‘s new debut might be full of short scenes, but they do add up to a good atmosphere.
On the downside, I’m not sold on Justin Greenwood’s art for the new Resurrection. I hate to admit it but if I hadn’t known better I’d have thought that Sara and Suzanne were the same character, save for different hair color. The art is a little too cartoonish for the scripts, here; this is a grim, war-torn setting and the overly simple art just doesn’t quite click in my head as connecting. There’s an unfortunate sameness to so many of the characters that I had to re-read a few times to make sure I knew just who was in each individual scene. Hopefully with future issues he’ll grow into the title a bit more, but at least for the moment it isn’t quite working for me.
Now that all the staging is done, hopefully Resurrection volume 2 will do what the first volume did so well—tell interesting stories about post-invasion Earth. I’m certainly sticking around for a few more issues to see how it progresses. And, if you’ve never read Resurrection before, then take my word: it’s normally a lot more smooth and solid in terms of storytelling. With a collection of the first volume also out (and bargain-priced), it’s fortunately very easy to discover how true that is.
Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books