But alas the surprise by a commenter:
I am slowly working on a paper where I will present (what I think is) a new suggestion that Rev 1:7 may have at first been intended as an account of the one like a son of man falling dead from the sky, and that Rev 1:12-18 was meant as an account of the figure being resurrected soon after. I am aware this is radically different from how those verses have traditionally been understood.
Whether that figure was originally meant to be Jesus, or (say, in a version of Revelation prior to Christian interpolations as J. Massyngberde Ford, James Tabor, and some others postulate) was meant to symbolize Israel, is outside the scope of my research, but I footnote it as a possibility.
The scene in Rev 1:12-18 takes elements from one particular vision in Daniel and also mixes in some elements found elsewhere in Daniel. I find it fascinating how John transforms Daniel's version - I argue that every single changed detail appears to serve the purpose of making John's version look like a resurrection account rather than like an epiphany. For now I'll just mention three quick examples: the re-ordering the visual elements into sequence of increasing brightness is unique to John (John makes them dynamic--changing right before his eyes--rather than a static snapshot of what the figure looks like at a particular moment), John changes "sound of a multitude" to "sound of many waters" as water in revelation symbolizes life, and John's adding the sword "coming out of" could refer to the sword (possibly already implied in v7) being extracted from the body it had just been piercing.
I have a shareable first draft of the paper, but it needs significant revision and additional footnotes before I could consider it actually publishable. My progress on the paper has been extremely slow. I started it a couple years ago, and I have been very slow at doing further research for it. Also, not being in academia myself and not having any much formal training in academic writing, I extremely wish I had a coauthor who could help me at this stage - if anyone reading this wants to help, please direct message me. I am undertaking this project only because I feel I've stumbled onto a thesis that I strongly believe needs to be vetted by the wider academic community, even though I don't really feel sufficiently knowledgeable and skilled to complete the task of properly arguing for it on my own. I desire to offload some of the more difficult parts of the research onto someone else who can help me.
My current draft of the paper already has much more to say about the passages in question than I can fit into this already too long Facebook comment. In particular, it explains my reasons for suggesting that 1:7 should not be read merely a summary statement of the future parousia as it's normally interpreted, but rather as the figure falling dead from the sky in order to set the scene for verse 12. One problem in 1:7 is to explain why the tribes of the earth are "mourning over him". I do not find popular explanations for the mourning (such as people fearing coming judgement) convincing in the slightest. The most obvious reason to mourn over someone is that said person has died, and this linking of death with mourning has repeated precedent in the Hebrew Bible, including in the context following Zech 12:10, the very verse which John quotes from, and probably expects his audience to recall. The figure is meant to be seen as dead when seen in the sky, in that way Revelation begins with the just introduced protagonist seemingly already defeated.
On a related note, I am still pondering how Rev 1:7 relates to Matthew 24:30-31. (What makes these two verses interesting to me is how they both combine Daniel 7:13 with Zech 12:10, a very peculiar innovation which similar verses like Mark 13:26; 14:64; Mt 26:64 don't do.) Is one derived from the other or are both derived from an earlier source or tradition? I suspect the combination of Daniel 7:13 with Zech 12:10 is an original idea by the author of Revelation, and thus the verse in Matthew is secondary to it, but it's hard to really be sure of such things.
The same commenter shares my doubts about Paul:
Anyway, Nick, what motivated you to bring up Paul in response to a comment about Revelation?
(my bold)
A "figure falling dead from the sky" has been obviously killed in heaven.