Chadzilla ROARS!!! (The Official Blog of Chadwick H. Saxelid, Writer)

The Walking Dead #89 - 92 & 93 - 96 (A Larger World)

"An army of roamers is one thing...  An army of people is another."

Rick and company continue to rebuild the tattered remains of The Community.  The project seems to be going reasonably well, although they are running frighteningly low on certain supplies.

Then a stranger arrives.  One who offers a unique opportunity.  But can the man, and what he represents, be trusted? 

Let me tell you, after I went through everything the character named Jesus - a name that, like Chad, seems never a good one for a character to have - goes through, I would not trust Rick, at all.  But The Walking Dead is the ever ongoing story of Rick and company, not the saga of the besieged peaceniks that live in the Hilltop compound.  Why Jesus is okay with his treatment, I don't know.  

Having read The Walking Dead for almost seven years, and counting, I fully understand Rick's fatalistic paranoia and mistrust of the man called Jesus.  Rick looks at him and only sees a potiental sadist, not a potential savior.  But that mistrust and paranoia is dragged out over several issues.  Rick's distrust of, and abuse of, Jesus went on for so long that I started hoping that the crap would hit the fan and something interesting would get spattered across the page, because the crap I was reading was not only boring, it felt pointless.  When I finished issue 95 I wondered if I would even bother to try and read the book through to issue 100.  Somewhere among the last 25 or so issues I just lost interest in the surviving characters and their always collapsing world.  But I had one issue, #96, left to read, so I read it.  

And I knew that I would read The Walking Dead to issue 100.  Writer Robert Kirkman makes a plot turn that is so utterly insane, I have to find out what happens next.  While reading the last few pages of issue 96 I began giggling and, when I finsihed and closed the issue, I immediately started playing the theme to The Magnificent Seven.  If this plot turn plays out the way I hope it will, then it just might ressurect my dying interest in the book.

The Walking Dead #86 - 88

Rick continues to try to rebuild The Community and make it both defensible and sustainable.  Carl wakes up from his coma, but he has some disturbing gaps in his short term memory.  A disgruntled and angry resident, one that blames Rick and Co. for all the bad that has happened, begins sowing the seeds of revolution.

There is more, but it is all of the Soap Opera variety.  Andrea and Spencer have "relationship" issues.  Mr. Handle Bar Moustache Douche-bag Dude (I don't even remember his name) has a rather unique (and dickish) reaction to Rosita's leaving him.  Maggie doesn't want Glenn going outside of The Community to risk his neck yet again.

Yadda-yadda-yadda.

In my review of issues 61 through 85 I blathered and pontificated at great length about how familiar and easy to see the formulaic story cycle of Robert Kirkman's popular comic book series has become to me.  Having already done that, I find myself at a loss for words about what to say about this trio of issues, because nothing new or interesting is happening in them and I do not wish to repeat myself.

It's just the same old stuff, only with new faces.  Mr. Handle Bar Moustache Douche-bag Dude's betrayal of Rosita is not all that different from Tyreese's betrayal of Ms. Clingy-Go-Bonkers Chick* with Michonne back when Rick and Co. were living in the supposed safe haven that was the supposed abandoned prison.  The fermenting revolt within The Community doesn't come across as any different to me than the one that was planned by the prison inmates, who were just as pissed off by Rick's passive-aggressive authoritarian rule as the angry Community members are.  Both groups thought they had it pretty good until Rick and Co. showed up and everything went to Hill in the proverbial Handbasket. 

While Carl getting a portion of his head blown off was a nice "gotcha moment" for the series, one that I will admit to not seeing coming, his recovery is leaving me cold.  I don't know what it says about me as a person (or as an amateur critic) to say that I was hoping that the kid would die, but I think his doing so would have made for a more interesting story for Rick.  (Make him into another Governor, say.)  But now that Carl appears to be on the mend, and with yet another revolt and gun fight amongst the human survivors appearing to be on the way, I now find myself hoping that it will be Rick that will get offed.  Because doing so will make for a more interesting story for Carl.

But I doubt that will happen.

*Again, I have forgotten the charactor's name and I am not inclined to dig out the Survivor's Guide to refresh a needless memory.

The Walking Dead #61 - 85

61: When no one else dares to deal with the murderous child Ben, Rick's son Carl does what needs to be done.

62 - 66 (Fear the Hunters): The group learns that they are being hunted by a group of cannibals.  That is a big mistake on the part of the cannibals.

67 - 70: The group are discovered and taken in by The Community, but many in the group have a difficult time thinking that their safe-haven is truly safe.

71 - 84 (No Way Out):  Drawn by the sound of gunfire, a herd of the undead swarms The Community.

85: Having defeated the herd and saved The Community, Rick tries to focus the survivors on realistic long term goals to not only rebuild The Community, but to make it both defensible and sustainable.  He also worries that Carl will not recover from his gunshot wound to the head.

And now (as of this writing) I am completely up to date with The Walking Dead.  After all that reading, my eyes feel like zombies.

Reading a grand total of 36 issues in a two to three day period of time had me taking notice of how writer Robert Kirkman tweaks and plays with his narrative formula.  The Walking Dead, like any series, cycles repeatedly through a variety of story templates.  One template is the emotional and psychological erosion of Rick's humanity.  

Rick likes to make a big show of his supposed reluctance at leading the group.  He even frequently steps down, or to the side, so that another might lead.  But things go wrong, of course, and Rick quickly steps right back up again and does "what needs to be done".  Rick does this because few, if any, are truly willing, much less even able, to admit "what needs to be done".  Whatever that action is, both on the surface and beneath it, is unpleasant and nasty.

But Rick does it anyway, even though he claims to not like doing whatever it is that has to be done, and afterward he makes a big show of hating himself for having done whatever it was that he did.  After every unpleasant action Rick has committed, he has a soul-searching moment with somebody (Shane, Lori, Tyreese, Dale, Abraham, The Community Doctor) who consistently waivers between supporting Rick's actions or condemning them.  Usually they condemn those actions, for dramatic tension, of course.  Whenever a character does make a show of supporting Rick or his questionable actions, watch out.  That is tantamount to the character announcing that he or she is retiring in two weeks, or that they have a baby on the way.  

A side pocket to this particular character cycle are Rick's father and son bonding moments, when they talk about all the horrible things they have recently done and how, as long as they feel bad about having done those horrible things, that means they are still good people and have not become bad people.  It's kind of like The Courtship of Eddie's Father somehow crashed into Night of the Living Dead.

Another cycle is the safe-haven one.  The group leaves Atlanta and finds a gated community it believes to be safe.  It isn't.  They wander across Herschel's farm and believe it to be safe.  It isn't.  Fleeing the farm brings them to the prison, which looks perfect.  It isn't.  After the prison falls, they try to survive on the road long enough to get to Washington D.C.  They can't.  Which brings them to The Community and, well, it's the gated community and prison all over again.  Same story, different location.

In each of the these locations, of course, there are plenty of arguments about what they should and should not do.  If there are newcomers to the group, or they meet another group, the question of trust always comes up.

Rick loses a hand to the Governor.  Dale loses a leg to the Hunters.

One of the prison inmates is a serial killer.  One of the group's adopted children is turning into one.

When the serial killer is discovered, Rick nearly beats him to death.  When the child murders his twin brother, Carl executes the boy.  Both of these events are linked to Andrea and Dale.  Andrea had been attacked by the serial killer at the prison, which left her face adorned with a nasty scar.  The murdering child and his victim brother were Andrea and Dale's adopted children.

And so on and so forth.  The series just cycles through the same stuff over and over, it just looks different enough each time to hold my interest and the difference keeps me from becoming bored with it all.  When I finished issue 85 I would have picked up issue 86 if it had been available.  I think that says it all.

The Walking Dead Volume 10: What We Become - by Robert Kirkman (Writer), Charlie Adlard (Penciler, Inker) & Cliff Rathburn (Gray Tones)

"It doesn't matter if we can live with ourselves... as long as we live."

Tempers flare and weapons are drawn between Rick and Abraham after Maggie attempts to hang herself.  Their anger at each other keeps the two on edge and near the snapping point, until they make a trip to Rick's former home to look for supplies.  During their journey together they come under attack and must defend themselves in the most brutal and unnerving manner possible.  Rick and Abraham go on to form a unique bond when they talk of where they began their journey and what horrible things they have done to survive this long in the world of the walking dead...

What a difference a single issue, or set of issues, can make.  I finished The Walking Dead, Volume 9: Here We Remain thinking that writer Robert Kirkman had not satisfactorily continued his story past the mass slaughter in Volume 8: Made to Suffer.  Here We Remain seemed to lose its narrative focus in its second half and the start of the next story arc seemed rushed and, even worse, felt a tad contrived.  But Robert Kirkman rebounds nicely in The Walking Dead, Volume 10: What We Become and delivers the kind of gruesome thrills, unpleasant violence, and fascinating characterizations that have kept me reading the comic for the past few years.

A lot of bad things happen in What We Become, a lot of very bad things, and even worse things are talked about.  Although nothing in the previous nine volumes has been particularly upbeat or life affirming, especially the mass slaughter in Made to Suffer, there was something melancholic about this set of issues.  Rick has spoken with a variety of people (some still alive, but most dead and gone) about the very same thing that he speaks with Abraham about.  I think the big difference this time around is that both Rick and Abraham have done some really nasty stuff to either stay alive or to avenge the death of a loved one (or loved ones) and, while they still both struggle with the question of what kind of human beings they have become, both men are resigned to the simple and unpleasant fact that they are pretty much okay with what they have done.  The world has changed for the worse and they have changed along with it.

The character building strength of this volume does not quite make up for the shoddy stumble in the previous one, though.  I still think that shuffling the time-line and locations of many of the events in issues 52, 53, 54, and 55 would have made the flow of the story smoother and even given it some more emotional power.  The cliffhanger that ends issue 55, which begins What We Become, is far better suited to be the cliffhanger for issue 54 and Here We Remain.  

I also think that Kirkman is writing around the issue Rick's cognitive dissonance (speaking on the phone to Lori's "ghost") a bit too easily.  At this point in the book, at least.  Michonne has been talking to herself in private since she was first introduced and is still doing so.  I think that having Rick so easily overcome his trauma weakens both the strength of Michonne's character and Rick's own grief issues.  I have been down both the grief issue road and the cognitive dissonance road and I can tell you, from my own painful personal experience, that it is NOT that easily overcome.

The Walking Dead Volume 9: Here We Remain - by Robert Kirkman (Writer), Charlie Adlard (Penciler, Inker) & Cliff Rathburn (Gray Tones)

Rick and Carl are alone and struggle to stay alive.  Their survival is threatened, however, not by the walking dead, but by Rick becoming deathly ill...

Volume 9: Here We Remain almost gets me to the point where I stopped reading The Walking Dead on a regular basis.  The story arc collected in the previous volume, Made to Suffer, left me feeling emotionally gut-punched and hollow and it has taken quite awhile for me to get back into the series.

I really liked the first half of Here We Remain, when Rick and Carl were truly alone and it was uncertain whether or not Rick would live or die.  Charlie Adlard really milks the atmospherics during these issues.  Even though this is my second time reading them, I was still creeping towards the edge of my seat and wondering whether or not Rick were alive or had, in fact, become a zombie.  Carl is really put through the emotional wringer during this time and he truly comes into his own as roamer killing badass. 

Less effective are Rick and Carl's reconnection with the few survivors from the Governor's catastrophic attack on the prison.  This section of the story feels really rushed and it lacks a certain amount of necessary catharsis.  Instead of having these emotionally wounded and undoubtedly weakened souls regroup and reform a new kind of bond, writer Robert Kirkman instead thrusts a trio of hardass survivors into the mix in the final pages and then he has everyone rush off to start a whole new story arc.

While starting a whole new story arc is all well and fine, not to mention pretty much necessary, introducing Abraham and company so late in this collection throws it off its emotional balance.  These characters literally pop up out of nowhere and all the screaming and shouting and fighting that they cause by doing so shatters the quiet and solemn dread of the first section, in a very bad way.  No one seems to be acting, or even reacting, in a way that feels normal or natural after having been through the ordeal of the attack on the prison.  It just feels wrong.  There really should have been at least one or two more issues that dealt with the grief issues and obviously fraying sanity of all involved.  Rick getting phone calls from his dead wife and having guilt laden conversations with her deserves more attention than a mere handful of pages and a quick explanation to Michonne.  There had to at least be one more moody issue in that.  Why not have Rick sneaking out in the dead of night and sitting in his car and talking and sobbing into the phone?  Why not have him hear the baby crying in the background? 

Abraham and company's arrival really should have been held off until the end of issue 54 (where this collection ends) and have been made into an ominous cliffhanger that started the next story arc.  Instead the new group is rushed in at issue 52 or 53 and Kirkman wastes no time having them convince Rick and the other survivors to come with them to Washington D.C.  

I also have to complain about the pipe dream MacGuffin that forces this new story arc into motion.  Again, here Kirkman squanders a wonderful chance for some serious talk amongst his characters about whether the scientist with the non-answer about a cause for the plague and instead he just has his cast quickly agree to run off on a life threatening fool's errand.  Whisky Tango Foxtrot!?!  What the hell is that about?  

Nothing in the last few issues in Volume 9 has the emotional heft or psychological realism that its first half does.  Reading them again only serves as a reminder as to why I gave up on The Walking Dead and, now that I am trying to come back, I am wondering if I really want to get caught up with all of the 25 or so issues that are currently stacked on my To-Be-Read shelf.

The Walking Dead Volume 8: Made to Suffer - by Robert Kirkman (Writer), Charlie Adlard (Penciler, Inker) & Cliff Rathburn (Gray Tones)

"There is evil in the world... and not all of it is in the form of those undead monsters clawing at our fences."

The Governor, having survived Michonne's torture, rallies his troops and the citizens of Woodbury and launches a winner take all attack against Rick's prison sanctuary.  Lots of bullets fly and more than a few bodies fall.

As much as I both enjoyed and appreciated watching the first season of The Walking Dead, it was difficult to well nigh impossible for me truly get into it.  Not with the knowledge of the traumatic events that occur in issues 43 through 48, which are collected in Volume 8: Made to Suffer, haunting my viewing experience.

Prior to these literally world changing issues coming out, Robert Kirkman had made comments, and heard numerous complaints, about how crowded and convoluted The Walking Dead had become.  There were grumbles about how the zombie threat had faded into the background and how the story had drifted away from survival horror and was threatening to become lost in the frothy escapism of soap opera.  The trend did not bother me, at all.  I thought that it was a nice change of pace, actually.  Having the characters move past the cliffhanger endings and having them live and learn within the harsh day to day reality of their new world, and how that living and learning changed them all for both the better and the worse, made for some interesting and oft times compelling reading.

Since The Walking Dead is a zombie horror story that does not end, Kirkman had been able to free his constantly shifting cast of surviving characters to move past the standard to the point of being a cliche survival and siege story.  Kirkman was also able to move past the now overly familiar George A. Romero collapse from an inner conflict story concept and deal with the emotional and intellectual aftermath of that conflict and collapse (i.e. survivor's guilt, post traumatic stress, the gradual loss of sanity and/or the seductive desire to just end it all).

As I said, it all made for some good to great reading.  But, truth be told, the book was getting crowded with characters and cluttered with story lines that were threatening to become impenetrable knots.  The book was long overdue for a comb and trim.

And what a comb and trim it turned out to be.  While I knew that there would be some unpleasantness, I did not expect the wholesale slaughter that capped off this particular story arc.  I was slacked jawed with shock when I finished reading issue number 48 and, for the first time in a very long time, I was genuinely horrified by what I had read in the pages of The Walking Dead.  Kirkman, Adlard, and Rathburn sucker punched me with the brutal reminder that all the characters I had come to know and care about existed in a world where no one was truly safe and where anyone could (and would) die at any moment.

There was a lot of death in this story arc and many of those deaths were hard to stomach.  I was so put off by the events and the return to square one cliffhanger that I almost stopped reading the book.  There is only so much pain and suffering that I can stomach, even in my horror stories.

While I still read The Walking Dead, I do so from an emotionally protective distance.  Kirkman and company will have to work some serious narrative magic to make me dare to care about the new characters that will be replacing those that have died.

The Walking Dead: Days Gone Bye (Season 1, Episode 1 - 10/31/2010)

After years spent reading the comic book series and months of having the television series teased to me, The Walking Dead finally debuted on AMC. 

It was well worth both the wait and the anticipation.  Writer/director Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist) and producer Gale Anne Hurd (The Terminator, Tremors) have done it.  They have turned a great comic book series into what looks to be a great television series.  The first episode was so good that, despite knowing that our Tivo was recording it, I found myself staying up late to watch it live.  (Yes. I have gotten to the point in my life where staying awake until well past ten o'clock at night is considered staying up late.)  Once the episode started, I was hooked and could not pull myself away until the hour and half long episode ended and the teaser for the upcoming season (a whopping six episodes) had aired.  Even my horror disliking wife found herself getting into the story and looking forward to the episodes to come.  That is good television.

 
Days Gone Bye faithfully adapts the first few issues of the series, bringing to life Robert Kirkman's characters and situations in a manner that feels natural.  After an unexplained mood setting opening involving a zombie, the episode goes back in time to an unspecified yet important point in the past.  Sheriff's Deputy Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and his partner and friend Shane (Jon Bernthal) have their lunch time discussion of the minor irritations and growing problems each are having in their romantic relationships interrupted by some fleeing criminals.  (Interesting to note, the chat the two have has evidently irked several online critcs and/or commentators.)  Rick and Shane (with the assist of some future zombies and/or zombie chow) manage to halt the criminals, but a gun fight breaks out and Rick is wounded and slips into a coma of unspecified length.

When Rick awakens, he finds that the world has changed.  The hospital is deserted and corpses litter its halls and parking lot.  The city also appears deserted, at first...

To say any more would spoil the episode for those that have not seen it, although those that have been reading the comic books will know precisely what is going to happen.  Up to a point, that is.  Although the first episode is very faithful to the book, both in terms of visual design and story content, it also makes some minor to slight alterations.  I do not know if those alterations will remain minor, or if they will take the series into a direction that is different from the book.  (Considering what happens in later issues, I am going to hazard a guess that it will be the latter.)

Regardless of the direction that Darabont and Hurd decide to take their series, I will be watching it for the forseeable future.

The Walking Dead Volume 7: The Calm Before - by Robert Kirkman (Writer), Charlie Adlard (Art) & Cliff Rathburn (Grey Tones)

I start this review with an admission that can also serve as an explanation/reason for my taking well over two years to review this particular volume: for quite some time I have been doubling dipping in The Walking Dead.  Not only have I been purchasing and reading the monthly serials, but I have also been purchasing and reading the trade paperback collections, as well.

The way it had been working out is that I would read the serial chapters every month, then, every few months, I would kick back and read the issues for a second time in the trade paperback editions and review them then.  Which is the reason why it has taken me so long to review Volume 7: The Calm Before (and the two volumes that follow it).  I have been putting it off, because I had no desire to revisit the emotionally devestating events (to me, at least) that are to come.  It has taken a long time (about two years) for me to fully recover and regain my interest (and love for) the series.

I have still been buying the comics, but I stopped reading them when the arc that begins in this volume concluded in the next one.

But I am getting ahead of myself.  More on the upcoming tragedy later, when I get to volume eight.  Volume seven, as its title implies, is the calm before that killing storm.

Not that things are all that calm, what with all the emotion fueled conflicts between the ever growing cast of characters.  Conflicts that make the book feel more like a soap opera that has been invaded by the walking dead, rather than an ongoing horror series.  On the action front, however, Rick knows that an attack from the Woodbury community is going to happen, it is only a matter of time.  What the group needs to do, and do as quick as possible, is to prepare itself for that battle.  Part of that preparation entails finding and raiding the National Guard Station that the Woodbury community has been pillaging for its weapons.  Easier said than done, because the survivors in Woodbury are not too keen on losing some, if not all, of their stock piled weapons.

Because of the high degree of human conflict, both the emotional kind and the more physical fight for surivial kind, the zombies and the zombie mayhem are pretty much put on the back burner.  They and the mayhem are still there, but the screaming matches, fist fights, and gun fights (not to mention a suicide and a childbirthing) all take center stage in this volume.  Not that it should bother any of the long time readers.  By this point in the series Rick and the rest of the crew have begun to feel not only like real people, but like old friends.

Old friends that are about to go to war...

And not all of them will survive.

TV Stuff: The Walking Dead series trailer.

This comic con footage makes the television series look both good and faithful to the source material:

Can't wait to see it!

The Walking Dead Volume 6: This Sorrowful Life - by Robert Kirkman (Writer), Charlie Adlard (Art) & Cliff Rathburn (Grey Tones)

"Well...this should be interesting."

Rick, Michonne, and Glenn don't have too much time to adjust to being captives of the sadistic Governor before an escape attempt is made.  It is not an easy journey back to the safe haven of the prison, where even more difficulties await their arrival.

The Walking Dead, Vol. 6: This Sorrowful Life contains what has to be the roughest, meanest, and plain old nastiest issue in the series...until we get to The Walking Dead Volume 8: Made To Suffer, that is.  (Those who read the series in its monthly serial format will know what I am talking about.)  Michonne deals out some brutal justice on the Governor that only goes to show how thin the line separating the good guys from the bad guys has become.  Then again, the erasing of moral and ethical lines has been the standard story subtext for this corner of the horror genre ever since George Romero showed how it was done in Night of the Living Dead.  No matter how badly you wanted the Governor to get what he so richly deserved, what he gets goes into the darkest regions of the truly monstrous.  Even Michonne is sickened by her own brutal actions. 

While that particular issue is a horror classic, it fits seamlessly into Kirkman's continuing saga of survival horror.  The plot twists and dramatic sucker punches continue to come fast and furious as the events in the story continue to spiral out of control.

But the worst is yet to come...

The Walking Dead: Volume 5: The Best Defense - by Robert Kirkman (Writer), Charlie Adlard (Penciler, Inker) & Cliff Rathburn (Grey Tones)

"...it's only a matter of time."

While life inside the prison has finally begun to settle down, Rick and Tyreese's friendship remains strained.  Neither is willing to back down from the positions that led them to their violent fist fight in volume four.  Another confrontation is put on hold, however, when a helicopter flies overhead, only to plummet to the ground not too far from the prison.  Rick, Glen and Michonne head out to attempt a rescue, but find that someone else has already done the job.  There appears to be another cluster of survivors nearby...

The Walking Dead Volume 5: The Best Defense takes Rick, Glen and Michonne into some very dark territory.  As is the case with the zombie films of George Romero, the walking dead are not humankind's most dangerous enemy.  It's selfish nature is.  Reading the six issues collected in this volume sequentially, without having to wait a month, sometimes more, for the next chapter, I was again impressed with how writer Robert Kirkman ties everything together.  He not only keeps his multiple story lines moving forward at a brisk clip, he also keeps them coherent.

Although some might (and have) complained about the lack of zombie action in the recent arcs, I happen to think that it was necessary to focus on the human characters as their situation changed from the fight for survival to the struggle to build an entirely new kind of life.  The group can't stay on the road indefinitely, because gas and ammunition are no longer easily renewable resources and will eventually be used up entirely.  "I doubt there's anyone out there making new bullets," Rick says at one point.  That knowledge and the desperate greed it creates, because you can't run to the supermarket and stock up on supplies anymore (literally it comes down to whoever grabs and holds the biggest stash survives), opens the door to what looks to be The Walking Dead's darkest story yet.

"The thing you have to realize is that they're just us.  They're no different.  They want what they want, they take what they want and after they get what they want, they're only content for the briefest span of time.

Then they want more."

The Walking Dead, Volume 4: The Heart's Desire - by Robert Kirkman

Rick and his group of survivors manage to take control of the prison, but they find that their troubles are still far from over.  The arrival of a new survivor, Michonne, brings about a traumatic change in the group's relationships.  Just about everybody, except Rick, has trouble understanding that the living can be far more dangerous than the dead, and that the old way of life is gone forever.

The Walking Dead Vol. 4: The Heart's Desire collects issues nineteen to twenty-four of the ongoing comic book series, and it's the most dramatically potent run to date.  Taking a page from George A. Romero's playbook, Heart's Desire has the group become reasonably safe enough to allow for character flaws to start creating issues instead of the zombies.  The pressure builds until a messy break-up causes a possibly friendship ending fist fight between Rick and Tyreese.  That both Rick and Tyreese are equal parts right and wrong in the points that they make is a tribute to just how well creator/writer Robert Kirkman has developed his characters.  It is easy to understand and relate to each man's rage, frustration, and bitterness.  When Rick collapses afterward, the catharsis of the release of tension is almost physical.  When Rick awakens later, he is, once again, a changed man.

The book closes with a talky, but necessary, coda.  The rules have changed, the group has changed, and, in a speech clearly inspired by Romero's maligned masterpiece Day of the Dead, Rick tells the group that everything has changed, forever.  There will be no going back to the time of old, that a new and savage world is coming into being and everyone needs to be prepared to fight for survival.

Kirkman once stated in the monthly comic's letter column that the survivors are the real Walking Dead of the title.  Heart's Desire clearly shows that to be true.  Alive or dead, the enemy remains humanity itself.  Plain and simple.

The Walking Dead Volume 3: Safety Behind Bars - by Robert Kirkman

The Walking Dead Vol. 3: Safety Behind Bars starts with Rick Grimes and the group of survivors he is leading struggling to make a seemingly deserted prison their new home.  Still in shock from the back to back tragedies at Wilshire Estates and Hershel's farm, the group's optimism about a prison being a safe haven in which to start living again is non-existant.  Rick, Tyreese, and Andrea wade in and start cleaning out the prison's undead occupants.  But that is only the first and, as the reader quickly learns, the easiest hurdle the group must overcome.

This safe haven isn't safe at all...

Robert Kirkman's excellent ongoing series really comes into its own with this six issue arc.  It seems that with issues 1 -12 (available in The Walking Dead Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye and The Walking Dead Vol. 2: Miles Behind Us) the story was just getting warmed up.  With Safety Behind Bars Kirkman unleashes an astonishing amount of plot twists and turns.  The group not only has to fight zombies, but a very human evil as well.  Mass zombie slaughter, suicide, murder...issues thirteen through nineteen had them all coming in sucker punches left and right, and the cliffhanger ending is the best the series has offered to date.

It is difficult to really discuss the story developments in too much depth, because I want to avoid spoilers for those that have yet to read it.  All I can say is that the characters take an emotional and physical beating in this Volume and, if the story continues to develop along solid lines, people will be reading and talking about The Walking Dead in the same way horror movie fans talk about George A. Romero's zombie movies.

Yes, The Walking Dead is that good.

The Walking Dead Volume 2: Miles Behind Us - by Robert Kirkman

Shane, the default leader of the survivor’s camp, is dead.  Shot to death by Rick’s son Carl while attempting to kill Rick.  Rick’s wife Lori tries to hide her shame and anger over her brief affair with Shane, when Rick was missing and presumed dead.  What she won’t be able to hide is the reality of her pregnancy, nor will she be able to ignore the inevitable question of just who the child’s father really is.  Rick is asked to be the group’s new leader.  Knowing that staying camped on the outskirts of fallen Atlanta is not an option, he gathers the survivors into Dale’s RV and they head out on the road, seeking a sheltered place where they can start to live again.  But where can you go when nowhere is safe?

The six issue story arc, numbers seven through twelve, contained in The Walking Dead Vol. 2: Miles Behind Us answers that question.  It also builds wonderfully on the potential hinted at in the ongoing comic’s first six issues, numbers one through six, that are available in The Walking Dead Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye.

 

 

 

 

While the story arc of Days Gone Bye suffered from an unintentional familiarity to that of the movie 28 Days Later, Miles Behind Us shows that there is plenty of unique life in writer Robert Kirkman’s seemingly simple concept of a George A. Romero zombie movie that never ends, and that he knows exactly how he wants to explore it.

  

 

What makes The Walking Dead series so potent is the depth that Kirkman brings to his characters.  The unspoken question of just who is the father of Lori’s baby coupled with the crushing weight of the responsibility of being the group leader, where every decision made has some kind of dire consequence, threatens to break Rick on more than one occasion.  Even a simple statement can set the man off.  When Dale informs Rick that the next day just might be Christmas, he explodes.  “Don’t tell anyone!  Do you hear me?  I don’t want anyone to know.  I don’t want to explain to my son that on top of all this other shit…Santa can’t find him.”  Those moments when the utter despair someone is trying so hard to hide is revealed are what make The Walking Dead a great story and not just a great comic.

  

 

But Kirkman does not stop with his main character and his family and leadership problems.  The story is structured as an ensemble, with every supporting character dealing with shock, grief, and fear on one level or another.  An individual’s ability or inability to handle a given situation, and the way it affects the others in the group, or Rick in leader mode, leads to numerous dramatic confrontations and troubled private conversations.  The characters seem to spend just as much time talking about the emotional toll of each and every problem they face as they do fighting to survive.  Considering that The Walking Dead is focused on the day-to-day survival of these characters, it makes the dramatic elements all the more believable when trouble hangs around even after the problem seems to have been resolved.  The emotional wounds of an event stay raw and heal very slowly, just like they do in real life, and this allows the story and its characters to take sudden and surprising turns and twists.

 

 

 

 

 

That is not to say that The Walking Dead is all about a group of shell shocked survivors feeling sorry for themselves and getting on each others nerves, far from it.  Kirkman keeps the pacing tight.  The zombies attacks seem to come out of nowhere in well-timed shock moments.  Just when you think someone is safe, he or she isn’t.  You start to know and like a character, then there is either a shocking revelation of that character's darker side, or he/she simply becomes zombie chow.  The Walking Dead never forgets the first and most important rule of no-holds-barred horror storytelling: anyone can die at any moment.

  

 

That makes it not only a great story, but a great horror story.