By: Robert Kirkman (writer), Charlie Adlard (pencils), Stefano Gaudiano (inks), Cliff Rathburn (gray tones) and Rus Wooton (letters)
The Story: After Alexandria is abandoned, both Rick and Negan prepare for the final battle.
The Review (with SPOILERS): This issue is mostly set-up for whatever comes next. Judging by the letters page, we have four more issues left in the “All Out War” storyline, so the pacing really makes sense: Rick and Gang are bracing for the final battle, Negan is preparing a special type of weapon and Dwight might have some help on the inside.
Starting with Rick & Gang, it’s all pretty standard stuff: Rick knows they need to attack, Andrea is vigilant, Ezekiel is pulling himself back together, Maggie is dealing with her new leadership role, Health deals with only having one leg, Jesus is having a moment of quiet… The only real call to action is that they don’t have enough food for the entire group. That fact tells us that everyone hiding inside Hilltop is not an option: The people in there NEED to fan back out into the countryside again, and that isn’t an option until Negan has been dealt with.
It’s all fine build-up inside of Hilltop; nice little character moments. I’m not sure that I care that much about character-building at this point in the story – I’d rather get onto the climax – but there’s nothing obnoxious and offensive about seeing this stuff. And hey, Jesus is gay! Who knew? Subversion is awesome…
Meanwhile over in Negan-land, things are getting decidedly weird. Negan has the great plan to smear zombie goop all over the Saviors weapons, and while I do think this foreshadows a sad death or two for Rick’s team (as they waste away from a scratch), it also seems really dangerous for Negan’s men. I mean, he has thoroughly coated the barbed wire on Lucille with zombie goop, would you want to ride down the road holding onto that thing? Oop! Hit a pothole and scratch your hand on the barbed wire. Seems like it would make more sense to just stop on the way to Rick’s compound and get some zombie goop on the way. And wouldn’t all of their weapons already have zombie goop all over them already? I mean, it isn’t like we’ve seen the Saviors pouring peroxide all over their weapons before.
I guess I’m a little unease about this whole “infected weapons” thing because it veers back into the “Science of The Walking Dead” and I’m not sure that science needs attention. The science makes no sense and is better ignored. It’s fine that there are zombies in the story and it’s fine that their bites are so bacteria-ridden that anyone bitten will die. But once it carries onto anything that touches a zombie, it starts to cause logic problems. So, just from the zombies walking around and bumping into stuff, wouldn’t half of the world be covered in zombie goop? So, if you fell in the road and skinned your knee and a zombie happened to have fallen there and left some goop behind —> You die! “But maybe the bacteria doesn’t live long outside the body!” Okay…then why will it persist on the weapons? It’s not a major story flaw, but I’m just not sure that the science of TWD needs attention. Shine the spotlight somewhere else FAST! Greg Rucka would give a nice little explanation of all this stuff based on hours of research, but Kirkman isn’t that sort of writer. He just writes without any research as far as I can tell. Hopefully he doesn’t paint himself into a corner. We’ll see how it turns out.
I’m intrigued by the situation with Dwight, Eugene and Creepy Young Man. I’ve said all along that someone like Negan is totally unsustainable. He seems like the kind of guy who could easily fight his way to the top of a lawless group, but would then get an icepick to the eye from one of his equally vicious minions OR someone who feels slighted by him. I’ll be curious to see where this storyline goes because I can’t imagine it would end with Negan charging his troops into battle and Dwight shooting him in the back and saying, “War’s over…” That might be realistic, but it’s not a very good story. I also liked the little reminder that Dwight is NOT a nice guy, so whoever comes after Negan might not be any nicer to deal with.
Probably the most interesting for me were a couple of understated scenes of the romantic type. I loved that scene of Ezekiel practicing his speech to tell Michonne that he’s going to man-up again. I’ve always been fascinated by Michonne and her obvious romantic interests in any black man who isn’t the minister. It’s really cool to see Ezekiel KNOW that his cowardice bothers Michonne and that he has to pull himself together. I also like how it isn’t remotely clear whether he really wants to toughen up OR whether he just wants to impress Michonne. Then we get a snippet of the whole Eugene/Rosita thing again. Both Eugene and Rosita are interesting because they’re having to become new people in the apocalypse. Eugene started out being a loser. Remember when his whole “Secret Scientist” plan came apart ~50 issues ago? Eugene said something about not being strong like Abraham or sexy like Rosita, so he wasn’t any use to anyone, and he created a lie to survive. Well, Eugene has kinda found himself a purpose running the ammunition factory (never mind that it’s the world’s most factually problematic ammunition factory). Now that he’s in custody, he actually seems like he’s been born again hard. Good man Eugene! Then you have Rosita who we don’t know that well. But from what we know, she’s basically made a career out of being the hot girl who gets the hot guy. She probably dated the captain of the football team in high school. Now in the apocalypse, she’s having to reinvent herself as a normal person who has NO skills and she kinda likes Eugene, but can’t quite wrap her mind around dating the fat guy. It’s just clever, understated storytelling, and Kirkman has been playing with these storylines for a LONG time, so it’s nice to see them getting continual attention and coming together.
The art is typically fine. The storytelling is never unclear and that’s what we’ve come to expect in TWD. I noticed that a few of the characters look more tightly drawn in this issue (Rick, especially) and I put that down to inker Guadiano probalby becoming more comfortable in his role. I’d bet he was very conservative and mostly just traced Adlard’s pencils are first and now is starting to let his own influence shine through. There are a couple more gratuitous two-page spreads that exist just for the original art market – especially that one of Negan with a row of zombies. I mean, that’s a $3K page for sure. As I’ve said before, I’m an original art collector myself, so I don’t mind the practice, but TWD seems to be more blatant about it than other comics I read.
Conclusion: This issue is mostly set-up. Other than getting a little to close to explaining the science of zombies, this issue is perfectly fine.
Grade: B-
-Dean Stell
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