My Summer Lair Chapter #332:Will God Bless Blaine’s Holy War?
Syfy is now four seasons deep on Resident Alien, a TV series adapted from Dark Horse comics.
And for their loyal nerdy viewers Syfy presents another comic book adaptation: Revival. I did not read Revival—a 47-issue horror comics series written by Tim Seeley and drawn by Mike Norton, published by Image Comics from July 2012 to February 2017.
Here’s the #SetTheVCR premise: the TV series opens on Revival Day, where everyone in a small Wisconsin town who died two weeks before the Big Day suddenly comes back to life. This isn’t Walking Dead zombies. The Revivers’ retain their personalities and their bodies are now endowed with strange new abilities, like a Wolverine-style healing factor and super-strength.
How do you reintegrate the ah…walking dead back into normal society? Or does normal society even want them back? Grief can’t swing from hurt to hope that quickly. With, a dark, noir premise like this there will be endless questions and endless fears.
Enter Steven Ogg, who plays the sinister Blaine Abel.
Blaine believes the Revivers are demons—the obvious work of Satan. Inside the quarantined town, he sparks his own Revival. Attracting and gathering a cult-like following among the sacred and unsettled townsfolk.
In Episode 3: Reality Check (broadcast on June 26, 2025), Blaine makes it clear he is preparing for “a holy war.” Yes, he issued those words.
In Episode 5: Triage (broadcast on July 10, 2025), as you’ll hear in this My Summer Lair conversation, Steven Ogg unpacks the strange markings on Blaine’s hand.
If you don’t recognize the name, you know the mullet: Steven played Simon in The Walking Dead and Rebus, a murderous synthetic android in Westworld. Like Blaine, Steven has a calling. He brings complex, unsettling characters to life with a distinct precision and passion.
Even Steven acknowledges Blaine is unusual addition to his unique gallery of characters. I swear dude’s catalogue of characters mirrors a rogue’s gallery of Batman villains.
Now, while Revival is centered around Melanie Scrofano as Dana Cypress—a small-town cop trying to solve the mystery—I’d keep my eye on Blaine.
When there’s an atmosphere of fear, Blaine’s “Revival” and his holy war becomes dangerously attractive. If you can’t provide foolish people with satisfying answers, you can give them direction and hate…is an powerful direction. Hate can third rail power a Revival.
A Programming Note: Revival episodes will be available to stream on Peacock one week after they air on SYFY.
And in Canada you can watch Revival on the CTV Sci- Fi channel when it airs weekly. Though it’ll stream on Crave the following day.
And I opened my conversation talking about Scared Shitless. That is Chapter 306…I spoke to director Vivieno Caldinelli during Blood in the Snow Film Festival.
Revival On Peacock @ W • T • F
Host Sammy Younan
Recorded: Monday, June 23, 2025 at 2:30 pm (EST)
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