Brontoforumus Archive
Discussion Boards => Media => Topic started by: Thad on February 15, 2008, 11:02:31 AM
-
Walking Dead #46: action-packed but predictable. You know what's going to happen on the last page from what happens on the first page: it's a comic book. No body = not dead.
[spoiler]That said, one major character DOES unambiguously die this issue, and it's not somebody on my list of likely characters to die, though in hindsight it probably should have been.[/spoiler]
So what happens next ish? [spoiler]I have to believe Michonne just pulls the fucking trigger and finishes it this time. The question is whether she can get out of there alive afterward; I'm going to have to go with "probably not".[/spoiler] And Kirkman's already as much as admitted in interviews that they're going to lose the prison and be forced back out onto the open road.
-
Walking Dead #46: action-packed but predictable. You know what's going to happen on the last page from what happens on the first page: it's a comic book. No body = not dead.
Walking Dead #47: don't put your cliffhanger last page on the cover, dammit.
So what happens next ish? [spoiler]I have to believe Michonne just pulls the fucking trigger and finishes it this time. The question is whether she can get out of there alive afterward; I'm going to have to go with "probably not".[/spoiler]
Wrong. I'm pretty disappointed that Kirkman punked out here and resolved the standoff in such a hackneyed, implausible way.
That said, I know why he did it, and here it is:
And Kirkman's already as much as admitted in interviews that they're going to lose the prison and be forced back out onto the open road.
In hindsight, that couldn't possibly have happened if [spoiler]Michonne had just killed the Governor. This issue made it abundantly clear that the rest of Woodbury would not have pressed the attack without him. He's the crazy motherfucker driving a tank through the prison gates. No Gov = Rick and the gang successfully defend the prison = stagnant setting.[/spoiler]
So I'm disappointed, but I'm going to allow it. And I'm going to have to admit that the book affected me. It's rare that a comic actually makes my pulse race. (Of course, I also had a much stronger dose of coffee this morning than usual, and I'm sure that contributed.)
I still want to see [spoiler]Governor[/spoiler] dead by the end of the arc. [spoiler]Yes, he's a great damn villain, but the "no one is safe" mantra has to apply to villains too. Having him be indestructible diminishes him. He already beat death once; that's enough.[/spoiler] This book is effective largely BECAUSE it's not usually subject to cliche copouts like what happens on page 2; I'm going to have to grudgingly allow it this time, but it had goddamn well better not happen again next issue. No more tricks, no more cute stuff. I want to see a body.
-
I for one am very much looking forward to them hitting the streets. They've been in that prison a long damn time.
-
Re: Walking Dead 48
what the fucking hell kirkman
-
Y'know, maybe it's taking breaks from Walking Dead and catching up three or four issues at a time, but of late I started to feel that the cast was getting too big. I wasn't really sure who most of the characters were anymore.
[spoiler]It did not occur to me that Kirkman might be feeling the same way. And would take active steps to remedy that. Damn.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Rick and Carl are alive. Michonne was last seen alive. Uhhh, whatsherface, Andrea was last seen alive, I think, though okay I kind of forget who Andrea actually is. Did I miss anyone?[/spoiler]
-
[spoiler]Rick and Carl are alive. Michonne was last seen alive. Uhhh, whatsherface, Andrea was last seen alive, I think, though okay I kind of forget who Andrea actually is. Did I miss anyone?[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Didn't the people who got on the RV and trucked out survive? Or at least potentially survive? I forget.[/spoiler]
-
[spoiler]I think the last we saw of all them was when the RV got rammed by a truck. Andrea or whoever that was got thrown clear, but the rest are unknowns.
I admit, I totally don't even remember who was in there.[/spoiler]
-
Y'know, maybe it's taking breaks from Walking Dead and catching up three or four issues at a time, but of late I started to feel that the cast was getting too big. I wasn't really sure who most of the characters were anymore.
"Of late"? He's been introducing and killing off characters at a pretty rapid pace pretty much since day one.
There was a period where he printed a character guide at the end of every issue, but he abandoned that because maintaining it probably took as much effort as writing the damn book itself.
[spoiler]Killing off Billy and Hershel was pretty lame. He'd already said he was going to ease off whacking members of Hershel's family. (Maggie's still alive as far as we know, right?)
Dead children are the storytelling equivalent of Godwin's Law: the absolute lowest form of communication.
Really? THAT'S what it took for people to start to notice the Governor wasn't such a great guy? Shooting a woman carrying a motherfucking baby? All the other shit he did short of that was too subtle?
At least he got the bullet to the brain. If he'd killed off Lori and the baby and let the Gov live, that would have been worse yet.
But it seems like, oh, I don't know, shooting an old man in the head while he knelt over his dead son crying might have been enough to get the point across.[/spoiler]
Anyway. All in all, the arc served its purpose of getting them out of the prison, tying up the loose ends in the Governor/Woodbury plot, and getting the adrenaline running, but the "cliffhanger ending resolved on the first page of the following issue" stuff got way too cute and he took the "NO ONE IS SAFE" message a lot farther than he needed to.
So I'm still onboard -- this is, after all, still a more pleasant reading experience than Michonne getting raped for the bulk of two issues -- but there are definitely cracks showing here. Too much "I need to get to point B from point A, now how can I do that?" backward-thinking, and too many developments that seem like they occurred purely for shock value.
-
Okay I just sat down and reread the entire series, and the last bits made more sense having done that. By my count, we've got [spoiler]Rick and Carl definitely alive; Michonne and Andrea last seen alive; Dale, Glenn, Maggie, Sophia, and the twins unknown but probably as alive as Andrea. And we never did get resolution on what happened to Andrew.[/spoiler]
-
No body = not dead.
-
Walking Dead: we've been dealing with these quieter issues since the EVERYBODY DIES arc ended, and I like them. But of course the longer they go the twitchier I get, worrying about the next massacre.
I'm starting to like Eugene; the "let's examine the zombies scientifically" angle has been floated before, but with him it's his WHOLE DEAL.
I'm going to be pissed when they kill him off and he takes all his secrets to the grave.
Or when he turns out just to be a sci-fi nerd who made the whole thing up. Whichever.
-
Walking Dead #56 feels like the best ish in a long while for some reason. I really like Abraham's character development, and it's quite well-foreshadowed -- after two issues of lecturing people on never using guns, he just starts waving one around; I briefly thought it was simply a plothole, but should have known that his erratic behavior meant something.
A great bit with Rick, too, and his struggle between being the capable, self-assured leader he started out as and the wounded basket-case he's become. He seems to be actually subconsciously sabotaging himself at this point; after doing something ballsy and heroic, he turns right back around and does something stupid and careless.
The only thing that's disappointing is that I think it's pretty clear how this conflict is going to end -- [spoiler]Abraham and Rick butt heads again, Abraham tries to kill Rick, kills somebody else by accident -- my money's on Eugene, but it could be Rosita, or anyone else -- and then is either killed or kills himself[/spoiler].
The early twist, while [spoiler]telegraphed on the cover[/spoiler], is probably the best part, not just because [spoiler]Maggie's death would have had all the ugly consequences the other characters describe[/spoiler], but because it puts the reader in the same place it puts the characters -- we've been trained to accept certain rules at this point, and seeing them broken puts us off guard.
(On the other hand, it was yet another example of an [spoiler]end-of-issue death followed by a beginning-of-issue "Just kidding!"[/spoiler])
The lettercol deserves special attention too. Kirkman's thoughts on Marvel's rising cover prices mirror my own comments from a few posts ago, and in fact are almost verbatim what the guy behind the counter said when I was buying books the other day: what happened to $3.25, $3.50, and $3.75? (He was actually referring specifically to the TMNT books, which DO sell for $3.25, where Marvel is jumping straight from $2.99 to $3.99. Speaking of which, Tales #53 is 56 pages for $3.25; you're not going to find that anywhere else.) I'd forgotten Walking Dead is still only $2.99; it IS absurd that Marvel's starting to charge more for its books than the indy publishers do.
And Kirkman states the obvious -- that while he can't promise anything, raising cover prices during a recession seems like a pretty dumb idea.
..."Walking Dead" and "Comic industry shooting self in foot" each seem like they could carry their own threadsplit.
-
Walking Dead #57 is the most horrible, evil fucking issue in a long time. Straight-up [spoiler]Deliverance[/spoiler] shit.
And the Next Issue blurb suggests no reprieve is coming; it shows [spoiler]what appear to be Carl's flailing hands coming from off-left, while Rick tries to save him and Abraham holds him back[/spoiler], with the caption "THE UNTHINKABLE".
Now, I don't think the issue is going to go down exactly as implied, because you don't telegraph something like that without there being a twist somewhere in the issue.
BUT, Kirkman proved with "NO ONE IS SAFE" that he can fucking-well deliver on the threat of a cover blurb, so I'm confident something very bad IS going to happen.
Prediction: [spoiler]Carl doesn't die; Rick dies saving him. It's been clear for ages that Rick's going to die well before the series is over, and the "I'll do anything to protect my son" stuff near the end was pretty clearly foreshadowing of SOME sort. That and Abraham coming back and announcing Rick's dead is going to lead most of Rick's group to suspect foul play, which has all sorts of interesting possibilities.
Failing that: Rick and Carl both survive, but at least one of them suffers an amputation -- I would lean "Carl" since Rick already has one. Since Whatsisname died of blood loss, it was never definitively determined whether amputation could stop the spread of the infection or not. ...actually, did he turn into a zombie? That was a long time ago.[/spoiler]
-
Walking Dead #60: well, that's another full six issues with [spoiler]nobody dying[/spoiler]. I mean, a couple horrible things happened -- Maggie tried to kill herself and Carl was almost raped -- but by this book's standards, the last twelve issues have been downright fucking SEDATE.
It looks like that's about to change. Dale wonders, at the end of the issue, if they're going to find themselves meeting someone "even worse" than the Governor -- not likely, but the preview pics for the next arc make it clear they're about to meet some more nasty people. Someone in the lettercol wonders what happened to the Hestons and Nugents of the world in the zombie apocalypse, and it looks like we're about to find out; the promo pics show the heroes being hunted by militia men.
It's still going to be tough to top the viciousness of the Made to Suffer arc -- and I don't really want to see Kirkman try, because I have a sneaking suspicion that he could if he wanted to -- but very bad things are going to happen.
Likeliest picks to die: Dale and Morgan. Least likely: Rick, Carl, Eugene, Abraham, Michonne -- which means one or two of them may die anyway just to shake things up. Anyone in-between is a distinct possibility.
EDIT: Oh hell, why not, quick rundown on my reasoning:
Dale: he's old, he's crippled, and there's a rift growing between him and Rick. Odds are that before he goes he'll catch Rick talking on the phone and there will be a big blowup. (Also, one of the preview pics shows him literally with a target on him. Though that could be misdirection.)
Morgan: An obvious one. He's fucking crazy and I don't think there's much left of his character arc.
Rick: He's going to die sooner or later, but I don't think now's the time. A few issues back, after the "Carl almost gets raped" story, would have been an appropriate time, but at this point I just have a feeling he'll be sticking around for a few arcs yet.
Carl: Rick's not going to outlive Carl. He'll die protecting him, or at least trying to. Either they die around the same time or Carl outlives Rick.
Eugene: Maybe he doesn't belong on the "unlikely" list. I still think Kirkman's sudden about-face after a few dozen lettercols' worth of swearing he'd never reveal the cause of the outbreak is more than a little suspicious. It's still quite probable that Eugene either dies or turns out to be lying before we get any answers. But I have a hunch he's going to make it through the next arc.
Abraham and Michonne: the toughest characters in the book. They're going to be awfully hard to kill. Not impossible -- they're both a little crazy and neither one of them is bulletproof. My prediction is that if either of them is killed, it won't be by zombies.
And on the "maybe, maybe not" list:
Maggie: She's decided she wants to live. Uh-oh.
Glenn and Andrea: aside from Rick, Carl, and Dale, they're the last remainder of the original cast. Maybe that means they stick around, or maybe it means it's time for some housecleaning.
The twins: that bit with [spoiler]the cat[/spoiler] was creepy, and there's some serious Chekov's Gun going on there. I think something very bad is going to happen. Carl seems to be handling what's happened as well as can possibly be imagined (he's less crazy than most of the adults at this point), but the other kids don't have his fortitude. One of them is showing straight-up [spoiler]sociopathic tendencies[/spoiler] at this point.
Rosita: out of the entire cast at this point, we know the least about her. That could mean she's got some development coming, or it could mean she's a Redshirt. It could even mean a WiR situation where she dies and Abraham flips out.
-
Walking Dead is still consistently the only comic that really makes my heart race. Even this issue, which was clearly telegraphed by last month's, had me on the edge of my seat, not because the story was unpredictable but because it was so well-executed. I actually reread the last few pages immediately.
-
For anyone who wasn't aware (I wasn't until it came out), Walking Dead is currently being re-released as Walking Dead Weekly. They're the same issues, they're just being reprinted at a weekly rate as of this week, so if you've never read the comic there's a decent way of picking it up issue by issue to tide you over until the second season of the show. Although frankly when I saw the book, I was hoping it was going to be a weekly series of one-shots and vignettes unrelated to the main cast.
-
For anyone who wasn't aware (I wasn't until it came out), Walking Dead is currently being re-released as Walking Dead Weekly. They're the same issues, they're just being reprinted at a weekly rate as of this week, so if you've never read the comic there's a decent way of picking it up issue by issue to tide you over until the second season of the show.
Also a great way of filling in gaps in your collection, if you're already buying single issues instead of trades.
-
8 Easy Steps to Create a Walking Dead Storyline (http://www.the-gutters.com/comic/120-jeff-mccomsey)
...yeah, I don't really know how I feel about the latest issue. The Big Shocker was a suitable "holy shit" moment when I read it, but about an hour later I started to realize, wait a minute, that was kinda stupid.
The book IS awfully formulaic at this point, and while the village plot seemed to be breaking the rut, No Way Out has just restored the status quo. It's not that I want to see the cast safe within walls against the zombie threat, but, well, the 8 Steps pretty clearly describe what's wrong with the plotting of the book this far in.
-
I haven't met anyone who's liked where Walking Dead's been going since DC
-
The Walking Dead #84: Okay, not dropping it yet. I'm still skeptical that there's going to be a serious change to status quo, but Rick spent a three-page monologue swearing there will be, so I'll wait around to see.
-
(http://www.blogcdn.com/www.comicsalliance.com/media/2012/03/thelaughingdead2.jpg)
Man, Walking Dead, you know I love you, but #96 sure has a lot of people sitting around listening to some dude monologue exposition, even by your standards.
-
Walking Dead #100:
Okay, two things.
1. Jesus fuck.
2. So the new villain is...Robert Kirkman?
-
Spoilers?
EDIT: To clarify that request, I'm mostly interested in your elaborating on point #2.
-
[spoiler]The villain speckles the fourth wall pretty hard. He looks from character to character, each in turn, and says "Well, I don't want to kill any of you. Your story clearly isn't finished yet, if I kill YOU they'll call me a racist, there are so many things I want to do to YOU but killing is at the bottom of the list (but still on the list)..." And he just decides who he's going to kill by way of eeny-meeny-miney-moe.[/spoiler]
It all gets a little Morrisony.
-
do you think he actually rolled a dice
-
No, I think [spoiler]he picked the most obvious character. I thought for a minute that the "eeny-meeny-miney-moe" bit might have actually reflected him picking a character at random, but there's no way. He wasn't going to kill Rick or Carl, he wasn't going to kill Maggie right after she announced she was pregnant, and he wasn't going to kill Sophia because they just got done killing her on the TV series. And while I think he COULD still kill Michonne off even considering they're currently giving her TV incarnation a marketing blitz, I can't imagine her passively kneeling there and letting someone bash her head in; if it had been her, then the end result would have been similar but she'd have taken out at least three dudes along with her and the big new villain would have died within a few pages of first appearing.
So yeah, it had to be the guy who he's been joking about killing off for at least the past 50 issues.[/spoiler]
EDIT TO ADD: [spoiler]And it couldn't have been a different group of people in the van, either. Rick and Michonne as leaders, Carl because of course he would insist at this point, Glenn, Maggie, and Sophia because they had decided to move, and not Andrea because with Rick and Michonne gone she's the natural person to leave in charge/on guard duty. And was there somebody else? I'm pretty sure there was, but if so it was one of those minor characters who didn't matter and therefore was also not a candidate for getting killed off in the big #100.[/spoiler]
-
So bets on how many issues it will take for this current threat to be disposed of? I say 2 (3 max). Probably involving a mass of walkers chewing on him while he is made helpless.
-
So bets on how many issues it will take for this current threat to be disposed of? I say 2 (3 max).
Well, it's definitely not going to be 3 because the series is written for 6-issue trades and you don't stick your climax in the first 1/6 of your book.
It could be as quick as two but I don't think so. Kirkman makes a point of how this ISN'T like Fear the Hunters, which -- spoiler for a comic which is now several years old so I am not tagging it -- built up a threat and then had Rick and co completely fucking destroy them in under 20 pages. I don't think he's going to do that again; I think he's pretty clearly setting Negan up as more like the Governor than those amateurs.
As such, I expect him to last at least 7 more issues -- killing him off in #107 gives the last 1/6 of the trade to mop up and cry and bury people and do what they do.
There's also the possibility that they'll do like the first encounter with the Governor and have him temporarily defeated but out there somewhere waiting for a rematch. But that would get just a little TOO repetitive; Kirkman's already copied himself pretty heavily as it is. (More likely he'll get taken out and his men scattered but they'll still be around trying to regroup. They could potentially be an ongoing threat, indefinitely; "Watch out for roamers and those crazy fucks who still want to kill us.")
The bigger questions are, what role will Jesus and Hilltop play in bringing him down (I don't expect them to keep up this pacifist thing much longer), and will Rick and Co stay in the community and rebuild after the inevitable shitstorm, or is it going to be like #50 all over again and do the big ol' Status Quo Reset and Now They're On the Run Again?
-
You would think they'd eventually run out of zombies that could threaten them. I mean, yeah, 250 million people in the US alone, but I'm pretty sure that number's gone down a significant amount since day 1. To say nothing of zombies that exist in isolated areas. Was there ever any explanation about how long the corpses can keep moving before they rot away? Or are these the magical kind that ignore entropy?
-
That's really the thing that gets me about Walking Dead. The couple times I got interested in actually reading it I checked out a spoiler summary (I do this a lot). Few things turn me off a story like a soap-operatic neverending aimlessness and I really got that vibe in a big way from this series.
-
You would think they'd eventually run out of zombies that could threaten them.
Well, it's been a pretty long time since the zombies were a major threat. Even in that arc a year or two back where they managed to push down the fence around the Community, they wound up being dispatched pretty quickly.
They've kinda reached "Watch out fer snakes!" levels at this point; they're dangerous but if you take the proper precautions you stand a pretty good chance of making it out. (The current arc has had the first deaths of any major character since [spoiler] Dale [/spoiler], which was, Jesus, a third of the series ago now, and THAT was the first major character death since #50. ...I guess there was [spoiler] Morgan [/spoiler] back in #82, but I don't think he quite counts as a major character.)
Pretty much since they got to the prison, the series has emphasized other humans, not zombies, as the biggest threat and enemy. The book's not really ABOUT zombies; it's about the collapse of civilization, and a zombie outbreak just happens to be the trope Kirkman chose as the catalyst for that collapse.
It's been observed before, and none-too-subtly, but it probably bears repeating that the Walking Dead referred to in the title are not the zombies.
I mean, yeah, 250 million people in the US alone, but I'm pretty sure that number's gone down a significant amount since day 1. To say nothing of zombies that exist in isolated areas.
The book's largely focused on population centers, which makes a certain amount of sense given that the cast still needs to scavenge supplies. (They've talked about learning to make their own bullets but it hasn't happened yet; medicine and gasoline are another matter altogether and there's a pretty constant need for that stuff. The story hasn't gotten to the point where the characters have to start seriously contending with those things no longer working because too much time has passed.)
That said, yeah, it gets a little too convenient when a zombie herd just rolls through somewhere remote like Hershel's Farm for the express purpose of shaking shit up and forcing them to go back on the road again.
Was there ever any explanation about how long the corpses can keep moving before they rot away? Or are these the magical kind that ignore entropy?
Nothing much along those lines yet; IIRC they spotted a zombie that seemed like it was "sick" or otherwise less able than the others a year or two back but they haven't had much time to follow up. There have been a couple attempts to capture some for study but, as you might expect, they haven't ended well.
I think the entire storyline up to this point has taken about two years in-universe. There are hints that they're starting to bump up against entropy (bullets and canned food harder to come by) but they're still on the cusp. (And Kirkman may take some creative license with things like just how long it takes for gasoline to go bad; this is a guy who had a recurring theme about people not knowing the exact date up until someone in the lettercol pointed out that in a group this size SOMEBODY should have a fucking digital watch with a battery that's still good.)
That's really the thing that gets me about Walking Dead. The couple times I got interested in actually reading it I checked out a spoiler summary (I do this a lot). Few things turn me off a story like a soap-operatic neverending aimlessness and I really got that vibe in a big way from this series.
Even Love and Rockets?
Yeah, I'd certainly say that's the biggest weakness of Walking Dead; up to this point it's followed a pretty predictable pattern of "Wander around, meet new characters, lose a few along the way, find a place that seems safe, stay there until it starts to get boring, get chased out by zombies or rednecks (who also thin out the ballooning cast a bit), go back to step 1." The current arc, as I've said, is a pretty clear mirror of the Prison/Governor arc (coming to TV this fall!) and I'm hoping Kirkman finds something to do differently this time. (I'm thinking Rick and co manage to take out Negan with guerilla tactics and manage to stay in the Community, instead of being chased out yet again.)
There have been a couple of times I've come near to dropping it (there were two straight issues of graphic rape in the Governor arc) but so far Kirkman's managed to pull back from the brink and do something interesting each time.
He's also managed to keep a story going that actually AFFECTS me in a way few comics do; #100 was another issue that really got my adrenaline pumping. I don't honestly know how much of that is because of the tense pacing and the graphic violence and how much is because of the character-building -- I suspect that the same sequence would have had less of an impact if it had been one of the newer characters. (Abraham's group is really the most recent addition to the cast that I actually have any emotional attachment to, and that was nearly half the series ago. [spoiler]And even then, when Abraham got an arrow through the eye two months ago, I shrugged more than I gasped.[/spoiler])
The series is rapidly running out of characters I have a connection to. It's possible that, if Kirkman takes some time to build up some of the new cast, I could become as attached to them as I have to some of the veterans -- but it's also possible that the series has reached a point where I just see every new character as lunchmeat and I'll never be as attached to, say, Holly or Dr. Cloyd as I am to Andrea or even Eugene.
That's an interesting thing to explore in and of itself, though -- the reader adapting to the situation and becoming callous. Because that is, after all, what the book is all about.
Dunno. The book IS certainly formulaic, but I still feel like it's got interesting things it hasn't said yet and interesting avenues it hasn't explored yet. I like to think there's some very interesting stuff still coming and Kirkman and Adlard aren't just running on fumes and shock value.
-
Welp, finally did what I've been threatening for the last three-and-a-half years and split Walking Dead off into its own thread. I find it hard to believe this is every post, but hell, it's good enough.
Interesting looking back at my old predictions -- you win some, you lose some. And it's a pretty good indication of what I was saying just now: yeah, the book's formulaic as hell, but Kirkman actually has a pretty good success rate at defying my expectations.
-
It's not that I think they're running on fumes per se... I mean this would only be the series second real BIG BAD DUDE story arc and there's lots of things they could do to shake things up. It's that the story doesn't seem to progress in a bigger way. If anything the opposite is the problem: They have a tank that's still mostly full, but they're sitting in the parking lot and idling.
Maybe Kirkman doesn't actually know how he's going to end it, maybe he just doesn't want to box himself in, but movement towards seeing the bigger picture has been excruciatingly slow or just a tease that goes nowhere [spoiler]say, the not-scientist or the news crew helicopter[/spoiler]. There's no movement towards seeing what happened overall, how society is going to change over the long term, if there are any large areas of survivors or bigger safe areas (maybe elsewhere on the planet). Having not read too many actual issues, I want to ask if any characters ever even display much curiosity about these things. I mean, I'd guess they they do now and again, but it wouldn't actually surprise me if they didn't.
Maybe Kirkman wants to keep a really narrow and local focus and the story will never end with any broader knowledge of what's happened or what's going on in the nation as a whole. And that's okay too! But that kind of story usually centres on character development, which is something you'd expect to have progressed much further after a full 100 issues and most of a decade or real time (and two years of story time). I guess Carl's had a lot of changes and Rick certainly hasn't been unaffected, but there have been a LOT more characters than that. And he's killed the better part of those.
____________
Oh one other note: Un-treated gasoline starts to degrade in as little as three to six months, due to a wide range of factors (evaporation of the more volatile elements, oxidation causing chemical breakdown and "shellac-ing", water condensation). Storage in totally sealed tanks with all air removed would partially address these factors, as does treatment with gasoline stabilizer, but in ZOMBIEPOCALYSE WORLDS, you can't reasonably expect most gas storage to have been proactively stored that way. Not that I'm complaining from a nitpick view. I don't care about that sort of creative license (unless it was like a decade after the apocalypse or some other stupidly long time). I'm just sharing that in case anyone was curious.
EDIT: While you were posting, all the posts disappeared!
-
I think the entire storyline up to this point has taken about two years in-universe. There are hints that they're starting to bump up against entropy (bullets and canned food harder to come by) but they're still on the cusp. (And Kirkman may take some creative license with things like just how long it takes for gasoline to go bad; this is a guy who had a recurring theme about people not knowing the exact date up until someone in the lettercol pointed out that in a group this size SOMEBODY should have a fucking digital watch with a battery that's still good.)
That's another thing that bothers me: just what are the survivors surviving on? Canned food is great and all in the short term, but a human body can only stand so much of the same before it starts to break down. Anemia, kidney stones, and scurvy are just some of the problems the people would face without a decent dietary intake, to say nothing about potable water issues.
-
It's not that I think they're running on fumes per se... I mean this would only be the series second real BIG BAD DUDE story arc and there's lots of things they could do to shake things up. It's that the story doesn't seem to progress in a bigger way. If anything the opposite is the problem: They have a tank that's still mostly full, but they're sitting in the parking lot and idling.
Yeah, I'll buy that.
Maybe Kirkman doesn't actually know how he's going to end it
I think he does, he's just taking his sweet time getting there. He said in the latest lettercol that he may not even be halfway done, and I think he means it.
movement towards seeing the bigger picture has been excruciatingly slow or just a tease that goes nowhere [spoiler]say, the not-scientist or the news crew helicopter[/spoiler]. There's no movement towards seeing what happened overall, how society is going to change over the long term, if there are any large areas of survivors or bigger safe areas (maybe elsewhere on the planet). Having not read too many actual issues, I want to ask if any characters ever even display much curiosity about these things. I mean, I'd guess they they do now and again, but it wouldn't actually surprise me if they didn't.
Actually I'd say the series is, most decidedly, moving toward a big-picture view of what other communities are out there, how they can survive, and what if anything they can do to rebuild -- that's been the major focus for at least the past year. We've been introduced to Jesus and the Hilltop, the existence of a nearby community, the possibility of trade, and the unsettling possibility that it's some kind of cult. With the introduction of Negan, we've got the most complex social structure the series has yet explored: not only do we have two different communities forging a trade relationship, we have them controlled by a de facto "central government" that just happens to be a violent, large-scale protection racket.
While I'm still willing to bet that Negan will be out of the picture around #107, there's a real possibility of playing that social dynamic for a lot longer, showing the Community struggling under his control, an embittered, oppressed populace struggling to survive long enough to take him down.
As for scientific interest, that's pretty crucial to Eugene's character even though his scientific credentials turned out to be fraudulent. He wants to figure shit out, he just hasn't had much of a chance yet.
Kirkman's been fairly clear that the virus will never be explained in the comic (which was the biggest indicator Eugene was a fraud in the first place), but I expect there's still a lot to learn about the zombies and how they function.
Maybe Kirkman wants to keep a really narrow and local focus and the story will never end with any broader knowledge of what's happened or what's going on in the nation as a whole. And that's okay too! But that kind of story usually centres on character development, which is something you'd expect to have progressed much further after a full 100 issues and most of a decade or real time (and two years of story time). I guess Carl's had a lot of changes and Rick certainly hasn't been unaffected, but there have been a LOT more characters than that. And he's killed the better part of those.
I wouldn't say the series has been light on character development at ALL. It's had a bevy of memorable, relatable characters. Rick and Carl are the biggies, of course, and I think in the end this comic will be Carl's story as he's the one growing up in this world and being influenced by it most strongly. Rick's also changed quite a lot from the beginning, and his growing paranoia and callousness have become a major theme in the comic (and shown up a bit on the show).
Michonne hasn't changed much from her first appearance, but we've seen how she responds to being dragged through hell. (Haven't read the prequel in Playboy yet; it might shed more light on how she got to be who she is now -- she was a lawyer before, yes?)
Andrea's really grown up as a character too; Glenn and Maggie have changed pretty dynamically. Abraham turned out to be a more complex and nuanced character than I initially expected, too; we've had some recent insight into what Rosita's been through, and I think Eugene's got some interesting stuff yet to do too.
Other characters of note throughout the series have included Dale, Tyrese, Lori, Carol, Morgan, and Hershel -- though I have to admit, I can't think of any others off the top of my head, and again, the last really interesting characters to show up were nearly half the series ago. Heath and crew have potential, but honestly I probably couldn't name them out of a lineup; the priest is an interesting character but I can't even remember his name.
And the Governor was a legitimately great villain. Haven't read the prequel novel but it's piqued my interest.
That's another thing that bothers me: just what are the survivors surviving on? Canned food is great and all in the short term, but a human body can only stand so much of the same before it starts to break down. Anemia, kidney stones, and scurvy are just some of the problems the people would face without a decent dietary intake, to say nothing about potable water issues.
They had Hershel with them for nearly half the series; between his farm and the garden he started in the prison they'd have had at least some fresh produce during that time. I think they've managed to get a little bit of hunting in here and there but not much. They've talked about trying to become self-sustaining at the Community but winter is coming and they haven't been able to get a garden growing or find any game to speak of.
So yeah, mostly canned food. I could see that creating some health problems for characters down the line, but that requires them living long enough. Most of the medical problems the cast has sustained up to this point have been of the hand-cut-off/shot-in-the-face variety.
They haven't made much of an issue of potable water, since again, they've largely been bouncing from one location that already had it to another. Hershel's farm, the prison, the Community; and most of the time they've been traveling in-between they've had cars, so they could have had big jugs with them. (They had to leave the prison in a hurry but part of the setup was that they'd already had vehicles ready to go in case such an emergency ever happened; they were stocked with gas and I expect they'd be stocked with water too.)
-
I wouldn't say the series has been light on character development at ALL. It's had a bevy of memorable, relatable characters. Rick and Carl are the biggies, of course, and I think in the end this comic will be Carl's story as he's the one growing up in this world and being influenced by it most strongly. Rick's also changed quite a lot from the beginning, and his growing paranoia and callousness have become a major theme in the comic (and shown up a bit on the show).
Michonne hasn't changed much from her first appearance, but we've seen how she responds to being dragged through hell. (Haven't read the prequel in Playboy yet; it might shed more light on how she got to be who she is now -- she was a lawyer before, yes?)
Andrea's really grown up as a character too; Glenn and Maggie have changed pretty dynamically. Abraham turned out to be a more complex and nuanced character than I initially expected, too; we've had some recent insight into what Rosita's been through, and I think Eugene's got some interesting stuff yet to do too.
Other characters of note throughout the series have included Dale, Tyrese, Lori, Carol, Morgan, and Hershel -- though I have to admit, I can't think of any others off the top of my head, and again, the last really interesting characters to show up were nearly half the series ago. Heath and crew have potential, but honestly I probably couldn't name them out of a lineup; the priest is an interesting character but I can't even remember his name.
And the Governor was a legitimately great villain. Haven't read the prequel novel but it's piqued my interest.
Fair enough. I guess what I'm getting at is that from a distance the initial impression is of a book centred around Rick and Carl, with the main tent poles being the story of Rick's leadership of small local groups and Carl's, well... Carl's Bildungsroman I guess. There's a supporting cast and they've had some changes, but after 100 issues we have the same two tentpoles and they are about as important as they have always been.
Over time, I would expect the former to grow smaller and the latter to begin to dominate, but I'm not sure if that's really being paced as it should. Of course in retrospect like this, that's an easy armchair criticism. But the track record for extremely long-running creator-owned comics is very spotty - doing stuff like this is nothing like writing and editing a novel for 8 years and then releasing it, or even writing GRRM-style. This is an intense task that dominates a person's whole life while it's being produced and not many creators (or their creations) survive that. I guess that's likely the source of my misgivings.
-
This could go in a couple of threads but I'll toss it in here just because: The Walking Dead game from Telltale is pretty good. I just played episode 1, and it serves as a semi-prequel to the comic in some small ways while setting up to forge its own tale. It's a game more or less about several different choices, big obvious ones (PICK WHO YOU SAVE FROM ZOMBIES) and much smaller, subtler ones in how you talk to the people around you, and the devs are taking note of an insane number of variables to possibly determine what does and doesn't affect the game once the final episode rolls around. Unlike Mass Effect or, well, a lot of other games, there's a ticking clock on your decisions here that ratchets up the tension quite a bit.
I played it with story notifications off (something that tells you when characters will remember decisions you made or give you hints about the game) but with clickable hot spots turned on, since otherwise it can be a little pixel-hunty in a few places. Also, the achievement pop-up notifications can kind of be hilariously inappropriate, so you might want to turn those off too if you want immersive gameplay or something. Two episodes are available out of five so far, and it's $15 on Steam today.
-
...I KNEW we had more Walking Dead posts in that thread.
Man, what is UP with the SMF search function?
-
I played episode two of the game a little while back, and goddamn. Just, goddamn. It goes to some well worn post-apocalyptic / zombie tropes, but the conversation system is more fierce than the first episode by far when it comes to the tension, and the little things that it remembers from episode one go a long way toward making things feel organic.
For instance, tiny dialogue related spoiler, [spoiler]I kinda loved how in the first game when Clementine was trying to find a word for how bad a barn smelled and I chose "it smells like shit" because ha ha cursing, when she then says "it smells like shit!" upon finding a barn in the second game and all the parents glare at you I felt like the worst dad ever.[/spoiler]
I am more excited for episode 3 than I am for anything else Walking Dead related right now.
-
http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/the-walking-dead-issue-100 (http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/the-walking-dead-issue-100)
This review gets a little too melodramatic at times, but many of the author's points are valid. At some point, Kirkman hit the same wall that a lot of continuity-heavy comics do: readers will eventually get numb to shock. There's only so much gas you can get out of the "someone will die!" gag before it just becomes another plot point at best, gratuitous at worst.
-
Kirkman and Moore settle, on undisclosed terms. (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/walking-dead-robert-kirkman-lawsuit-373667)
Well, all's well that ends well, I suppose.
-
A friend had a question about getting into the series. I couldn't answer it but maybe someone here can?
So, I was trying to look at it and get an idea of how many walking dead comics there have been. The answer seems to be 103; however, all of the "complete collections" seem to be bound as 96 is the complete collection and sometimes I see it as 102, and it's pretty confusing.
If you happen to know, can you explain to me, what I would need to do, if I wanted to read "all" of the walking dead comics?
-
Latest issue (just out this week, if I'm not mistaken) is 103. The trades are split into 6 issues each, meaning the latest trade will be vol 17 and go up to issue #102. Vol 18 will of course be released some time after #108 is out.
There are also those big Compendium editions that hold 48 issues each; that's probably where the 96 comes from as there are only two of those so far.
tl;dr: All 3 are correct.
#103 is the latest single issue.
#102 is the latest collected issue.
#96 is the latest issue to appear in a giant Compendium edition.
-
Thanks.
-
Most cost-effective way to read the entire series to date is probably buy the two Compendia in paperback, then start picking up individual trades once you're done with those.
Support your local comic shop. (http://www.comicshoplocator.com/)
-
Support your local comic shop. (http://www.comicshoplocator.com/)
That locator thing is fucked. I gave it a postal code on Vancouver Island, and the two results it gave me are in Winnipeg, Manitoba and Fort Wayne, Indiana.
-
Hm.
Well, on the one hand, it was another damn "Where's Carl?" issue.
On the other hand, I do believe this is the first time the answer to that question has been "Out [spoiler]mowing down a line of motherfuckers[/spoiler] with a machine gun."
Which I guess is kind of the holding pattern the series is in: it's a bunch of stuff we've kind of already seen but with enough little variations that, at least to me, it continues to be interesting. I don't know what's going to happen next, except in broad strokes.
It IS an awful lot like Woodbury, and Jesus is an awful lot like Michonne. But I don't think he's going to spend two issues being raped.
I WAS a little surprised that [spoiler]he was captured[/spoiler], but then [spoiler]he escaped[/spoiler], which pretty much just reset things. Except with the wrinkle that [spoiler]there are now a handful of Negan's thugs who know what Rick's really up to -- but who conveniently won't tell Negan about it[/spoiler].
Meanwhile, we're seeing the risks of Rick's gambit realized pretty much immediately. By deliberately undermining his own credibility as a leader, he hasn't just convinced Carl of the need to take things into his own hands, I think he may well be looking at a revolt. Michonne, despite her agreement with him a couple of issues back, is awfully scowly; it'd be interesting to see her try and take control. I can't imagine why Rick didn't tell her the plan -- of all people, she's the one he can trust to play along.
(That is, unless he DID tell her -- we don't know for certain that he didn't.)
-
I've mentioned before that there are these weird little moments where something in the comic echoes something that just happened on the TV show, or vice-versa.
Negan telling Carl to take off his bandage would have been creepy enough all by itself, but it also played uncomfortably similarly to the Governor telling Maggie to take off her shirt.
Wonder how much of this is coincidence, how much is subconscious, and how much is just plain coincidental. I'd say Negan is certainly the result of Kirkman immersing himself both in season 3 and in the Governor novel and deciding he needs another Governor-like villain. Negan's clearly different from either version of the Governor in temperament, but his behavior's not significantly different.
There's something weirdly childlike about him, too; I think he sincerely feels bad when Carl starts crying.
Anyway. Another talky-talky issue, but one that serves to slowly turn up the creep-o-meter.
Halfway through the arc. I think if the next three issues are brisker, the Negan plot might get resolved by the end of it, but that's going to rely on a lot of factors. Jesus could come to Rick with plans for a surgical strike (which would lead to ANOTHER bit of dovetailing with the TV show -- I haven't seen the finale BTW so spoilertag any talk of that episode please). I imagine if they barricaded the exits and started a fire they could wipe out nearly all the Saviors in one fell swoop, but there's still the question of getting Carl out and, if possible, recovering the supplies Negan took.
(It's probably safe to assume that Jesus knows Negan has Carl; I imagine he kept an eye on things after his escape. And even if he doesn't, that's going to be Rick's natural assumption.)
-
Perhaps Negan will pull a Hook and try to turn Carl against Rick?
-
Maybe. I don't see it working out so well, though. Carl may be pissed off at his dad, but this is all about protecting and avenging his people.
But, as the finale (yeah, just watched it) pointed out, Carl's also geared to operate on the assumption that his dad might die and he'll have to be self-reliant if that happens.
-
Man, REALLY feeling the writing-for-the-trade right now. The last two issues just feel unnecessary.
But hey, next month's issue's a multiple of 6, so even though it's clear at this point that it won't be the end of the Negan arc yet, it looks like Important Things will happen.
The cover has a guy with a tiger on it.
-
I talked a bit, after the season finale (http://brontoforum.us/index.php?topic=5627.msg255526#msg255526), about how, as high as the bodycount is in both the book and the comic, they nonetheless have to play by certain rules. The comic is written for the trades; you're not going to see a major character die in the second issue of a 6-issue arc.
And another thing occurred to me today: while #112 set up a perfect narrative moment to finally kill Rick off, and #113 is the penultimate issue of this arc and therefore a good spot for a big fuck-you cliffhanger, I knew Rick wasn't going to die for one simple reason: I hadn't seen a single "Holy shit you guys you guys The Walking Dead oh shit" headline on any comics news site today.
If The Walking Dead killed off its main character, that wouldn't just be all over comics news sites, it would show up in the mainstream press, too -- much less politely and with little or no proper spoiler warning, I might add.
What #113 is -- well, I'm going to put a spoiler warning here, but really the spoilers I'm about to give aren't about anything that happened so much as things that didn't happen.
What #113 is is a People Stand Around Talking and the Issue Ends Exactly Where it Started issue. I think it speaks both to Kirkman's greatest strength and greatest weakness as a storyteller -- this is some serious fucking decompressed trade-writing going on, and as much as he's ratcheted up the stakes you could skip this issue entirely and not miss a goddamn thing.
BUT, it still managed to preserve the tension, still managed to make my heart beat faster. I think that counts for something.
I really liked how Negan was played in this issue, too -- this is as off-the-deep-end-crazy as we've ever seen him, but he's crazy like a fox. He never loses control -- he screams and he curses and he talks about rubbing his dick on his baseball bat, but at no point does he get sloppy or make a mistake. It's an interesting contrast to the Governor, or at least the TV version of him, who seemed so tightly controlled and then just fucking snapped and blew everything he had in a single moment of anger. Maybe there's something to be said here about catharsis -- the Governor took command as a burden and hid his true nature from most of the people around him, while Negan delights in being top dog and not only is he not afraid of scaring or disgusting people, he takes utter glee from it.
And while I suppose it does sort of border on speckling the fourth wall again, when he explains outright that he's not going to kill Rick, his reasoning is sound. Rick's the leader; if he makes him a martyr then he's in for a world of shit, so really the only option he's got is to break his spirit. And he knows his only chance of that is to kill Carl, so that's going to be his focus now.
Anyhow. The next arc is All-Out War, so I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that Rick and Negan are both going to survive next month.
It's interesting ground to tread; of all this book's done in 113 issues, it's never really gotten into a legitimate war between two settlements. The Governor's attack on the prison and Rick's disposal of the cannibals don't count; those were not even contests, they were slaughter. What we're looking at here is something altogether more interesting -- two groups that are somewhat evenly-matched, both planning ahead for what's coming.
We saw a little bit of it in the skirmishes between Woodbury and the prison last season on the show, but this is going to be a lot bigger than that. We're talking two actual armies at this point -- small ones, sure, but still a lot bigger than any group of people we've seen prior to now.
-
I hate to be that guy, but can we just pick out the exact point where we each stopped giving a fuck? Because the author-surrogate "who should I kill" thing was probably where I realized I should just let this go. Fool me eight or more times, shame on me.
(Moron!)
I mean, at this point I would be immensely relieved if the author had a breakdown and turned this into two years worth of theological exposition with zombie Woody Allen. Or everyone explodes into amniotic fluid or whatever. That'd be fine. Just stop.
-
I hate to be that guy
You're not alone. This series has always seemed pretty bullshit to me in it's pointless circular masochism, yet it sure is well-loved.
Of course "You're not alone" may not be very comforting words if you look around in the lifeboat and the 'other guy' you see is Mongrel, but anyhoo...
-
Nah, I felt the same way. I got as far as book 3, where they get to the prison, and then they had this whole sequence where the farmer guy, who just got over the death of his wife and several kids (after Rick and company accidentally led the zombie to his farmhouse), is kind learning to deal with it. Then, as they're settling into the prison, this one former inmate is like "hey I can help out by cutting your kids hair if you'd like" and the farmer agrees, I believe because he wanted his remaining kids to feel some kind of normalcy again.
Then when they go back to them, later, all of the kids' heads were cut off by the inmate, in the barber chair. There's this panel were the farmer dad sees it and falls to his knees, cursing god, and I was like, "Welp."
-
I skimmed through cbr's of the next few, with the evil mayor and such, but it's hard to get invested when every new character they get is killed off not long afterwards.
I get that the series is about survival, and not so much building anything, but that's weirdly dull.
-
I think someone in Finalfight once talked about how funny it would be if there was a show where after each episode everyone dies and a new cast takes their place. Does that about sum up Walking Dead as a whole?
-
The moment I stopped caring about The Walking Dead as a comic was when I realized how much better it works as a dialogue driven adventure game.
-
I hate to be that guy, but can we just pick out the exact point where we each stopped giving a fuck? Because the author-surrogate "who should I kill" thing was probably where I realized I should just let this go. Fool me eight or more times, shame on me.
It's not a single moment; it's more like diminishing returns.
I know my uncle quit even thumbing through my copies after #50.
Me, I'm still entertained enough to keep buying copies, but it's certainly not fresh anymore and, as I noted earlier, I'm down to, what, three or four characters I give a fuck about?
Ezekiel's got some promise, though.
The moment I stopped caring about The Walking Dead as a comic was when I realized how much better it works as a dialogue driven adventure game.
The game really IS the best version of the thing. (Adding: I haven't read the prose novels.) Though it takes one more opportunity just to twist the knife in poor old Hershel.