By: Robert Kirkman (writer), Charlie Adlard (pencils), Stefano Gaudiano (inks), Cliff Rathburn (gray tones) and Rus Wooton (letters)
The Story: Rick and Gang have besieged Negan’s compound. Now what?
Review (with SPOILERS): Well, what do you know? Rick learns lessons from past experiences!
The big plot twist in this issue is that we were expecting a gun fight and instead Rick twisted the script by causing just enough of a ruckas to draw all the zombies down on Negan’s position. Remember how Rick and Gang were mobbed by zombies inside Alexandria back around issue #83? Well, that zombie mob was caused by Rick and Gang having a quick gunfight with some roving thugs at the gate. If I remember correctly, over a series of 5-10 issues before the zombie mob, TWD showed us little snippets of shooting noise in Alexandria catching the attention of various zombies in the DC-area… And that led to a major zombie herd mobbing Rick’s people.
So, it is a neat plan. It isn’t what I expected and I’m glad that the comic has the ability to still surprise. Surprises are fun and that’s my main take from the issue (despite some of the criticisms I’m going to level below). It’s also fun to see the zombies actually be a threat again after being pushed to the background for nearly 30 issues now.
Maybe part of the reason that it wasn’t expected is that it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I mean, we’ve never had any indication that Rick was aware of how the zombie herd descended upon Alexandria? It isn’t like he’s been going around hushing people or saying, “Stop all that shooting! You’ll draw the zombies down on us!” Heck, just a few issues ago, Rick staged an impromptu attack on Negan’s men that lead to a few shots being fired. Why didn’t that draw the zombies in? Not enough noise?
Anyhow, I think it’s safe to say that there are some plot holes in this one. But I still enjoyed the plot twist just because it was something different and I feel like TWD has been very predictable recently. Just the strength of this twist makes me mostly overlook the other weak parts of the comic.
The other weaknesses come in the form of the mayor of Hilltop and Holly’s sacrifice/plight. The thing with the mayor of Hilltop pissed me off a little because it’s kinda insulting to us monthly readers. Last month, the big cliffhanger reveal was that NEGAN HAD THE MAYOR ON HIS SIDE!. It turns out that didn’t matter at all; which is kinda what we all expected anyway since the mayor is a chump. It’s just a little insulting to have a cliffhanger resolved in such a trivial and throwaway fashion. If that’s all you’ve got, don’t bother making a cliffhanger out of it.
As it comes to Holly, I’m of two minds. On one hand, you can get irritated that we’re being asked to care about a character who Kirkman himself hasn’t cared about in a very long time. It’s common storytelling practice to build-up your supporting characters so that they feel important and then when you kill them, it seems like the comic is willing to “kill anyone,” even if the franchise players remain standing. But, Holly hasn’t really been built that way. The only thing we really know about her is that she got sweet with Abraham and caused Abraham to dump Rosita… And that was about 20 issues ago. I’m not sure she’s had a line of dialog since then. Imagine if Maggie hadn’t been exiled (by Kirkman) to the Hilltop and it was Maggie who took Rick’s place in smashing Negan’s fence. It would make sense. Maggie has the same motivation as Holly, but we would be very nervous about what Negan would do to precious Maggie.
On the other hand, how many people expected Holly to enter the story this way? Even if it isn’t great character building, it is unexpected and it makes sense for her character to feel that way. It isn’t like Rick, Andrea and Gang are The Avengers who get to make all the decisions for all the common people… They’re all just people and Holly could totally knee Rick in the stomach and take his car.
It’s funny because I just typed more about the mistakes in this story than I lingered over them while reading. I’d advise you to just try to go with the flow and enjoy it. That’s generally what I did.
And damn, is Negan is just too much fun. I love the rich profanity he uses. You could almost imagine if the comic TWD story was a live action TV show, there would be some supercut on YouTube of Negan’s profanity. I love how when things go wrong, Negan gets excited and starts swearing, but you never get the sense that he’s the sort of guy who would empty his bowels into his pants.
The art looks really nice. Even with the addition of an inker, the art doesn’t look appreciably different than what readers have grown to expect from TWD. My suspicion is that Charlie Adlard is giving the inker fairly detailed pencils to keep the look “close.” In fact, this art looks crisper than some of the last year’s issues where the characters were starting to get muddy. I don’t know if that means we should keep Stefano Gaudiano around long term, but it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if they did so. The thing that always impresses me about the art in TWD is how “real” the characters have become. I recognize all of them. I may not know all of their names because of character-building problems, but I recognize all of these folks. They feel like townies that you see at the grocery store but don’t know personally. That’s really hard to do. Think of all the time in superhero comics where we complain that everyone has the same face. Adlard’s drawing area must be littered with little faces pasted to the wall so he can copy them over and over.
Conclusion: Just enjoy the action and go with the flow! There are a few glaring story problems and they will bother you if you slow down to think about them. But you could do that, or you can just enjoy Negan’s plight.
Grade: A-
-Dean Stell