Of course, you can make an argument that it was bad storytelling, which I'm not gonna argue with.
Yeah, that's part of it.
I just like that anyone can die at any time in general, no matter what shit you think is making them "safe".
Not really entirely true. The TV show's already pulled punches -- (comic spoiler) [spoiler]the Governor spent two issues raping Michonne before she got free and spent the next issue torturing him[/spoiler], and (really major but years-old comic spoiler) [spoiler]his attack on the prison climaxed in Lori and Judith being simultaneously shot to death[/spoiler]. I'm pretty damn confident that's not going to happen on the show; I don't expect a basic-cable show to cross that line, no matter how vicious it's been up to this point.
The comic, by contrast, is a bit more beholden to storytelling tropes. It's still true that any character can die, but the "at any time" qualifier isn't really active. A major character who's been in the series since the beginning was killed off in issue #100; that character would not have been killed off in, say, #104. And, even given that qualifier, Kirkman still picked the most likely character to pick off -- hell, the villain even ticked off all the storytelling reasons against killing off each character ("I can't kill you, people will think I'm racist; I can't kill you because YOUR story's obviously not finished yet...").
Actually the show's kinda in the same boat. This was one of the biggest character deaths of the season (second-biggest, I'd say) and they saved it for the finale. And it was still [spoiler]a character I wasn't sorry to lose[/spoiler]. Hell, same with the other major character death, come to that.
So Walking Dead, comic and show, may be LESS bound by The Rules than other stories, but it's still bound by them.
Also, I'm going to call one more time that Carl is the one character who is completely safe in both versions. (Well, I mean, not COMPLETELY safe; he can be wounded, disfigured, subjected to any number of horrible punishments. But he's the one character I am confident will survive to the end of the story.)
The comic's in kind of a tough spot right now because it's running out of characters I care about and hasn't really introduced any new ones in about 50 issues. I mean, there are characters I LIKE, but if, say, Jesus gets an arrow in his back this month it's not going to have the kind of emotional impact that it would if it was Comic Andrea.
I think the problem is (1) it's been running for-damn-ever at this point and (2) the knowledge that sooner or later all these characters are going to die makes it hard to invest much in the new ones.
I think the TV show's at a real advantage over the comic, though, because it's got actors who can make bland characters more appealing.
Plus it's still got a pretty good supply of characters who've been around since the beginning, while the comic's down to...4, I think? Plus 2 more who were part of the cast before issue #30 and FEEL like they've been around since the beginning.
