Staff Picks (Jan14): The Returning #1

Publisher: BOOM! Studios

Everyone has wondered in some point in their life what happens when we die. Will we be greeted by loved ones long past, is there a white light, or do we get attacked by those evil shadows from the movie Ghost?

In The Returning by scribe Jason Starr (Wolverine Max) and artist Andrea Mutti (Daken: Dark Wolverine) we are treated to a unique twist on death. Thanks to the miracles of modern medicine some patients who have been critically injured or clinically dead can be revived. However, recovering from a near death experience (NDE) is just the beginning. Once these patients have died and been successfully revived they do not seem to be the same people their friends and family once knew. Instead their people are finding out the hard way that these people have become violent insane murderers.

Beth, our heroine, wakes up in the hospital after a near death experience of her own and finds the world changed. The reality that everyone now looks at her as if she were a serial killer poised to lash out at any moment and harvest their spleens is just making her life even more complicated. Add in a hefty dose of cyber bullying, some real life bullying, and raving townsfolk calling for her to be put to death before she snaps just like all the others who have had near death experiences and her complicated life has just became a living nightmare.

Pick up The Returning #1 from BOOM! Studios to see if Beth can cope in a world where everyone wants nothing more than to see the streets run with her blood.

~ Matt Demory