By: Robert Kirkman (writer), Charlie Adlard (art), Cliff Rathburn (gray tones), Rus Wooton (letters) & Sina Grace (editor)
The Story: Life drags on inside the Arlington enclave.
Five Things: [SPOILER WARNING]
1. What a bummer resolution to the Rick-Andrea situation! Really? Issue #90 ends with Rick and Andrea having a passionate kiss and then we come back to the scene at an undetermined time later to see Rick pushing her away? That sucks! There’s no real problem with having the relationship “end” in this fashion, but why did everything have to happen off-panel? We don’t even know if they just kissed or slept together or had an affair for a week. This was a really unsatisfying way to handle two characters in which the readers have a lot of emotional investment.
2. Don’t like the Rick – Carl relationship either. Man, Rick just isn’t have a very good time. Now his son is getting all kinds of chippy with him. Hopefully Kirkman has a plan here because it isn’t fun to see Rick getting yelled at by his son. There were such great dramatic possibilities when Carl got shot in the face. Imagine if Carl had forgotten everything that had happened and had to be told that his mom was dead, that he’d killed Shane and later executed another child in cold blood, etc. THAT would have been incredible to see if Carl would reform in the same way that he had formed the first time. But, I really don’t get the point of having him get shot if it was just to have him scream, “You don’t understand!” at his father and argue with him about the proper terminology for this hole in his head.
3. Vague new threat. So…someone is watching the Arlington enclave. We’ve already seen that. In fact, one of the last crises was strangers attacking the compound. We don’t really need to see that again. Granted….it probably won’t be precisely that same scenario. This stranger could be friendly. They could be there with GOOD NEWS for a change. But, the fact remains that the cliffhanger on the final page didn’t hit with typical TWD crispness because it came out of the blue.
4. Maybe it’s over for the series? This is the nagging feeling I had as I read this issue. We were all quite excited about the TWD television show, but maybe we should have been careful what we wished for. The TV series has been “meh” and the TV series, along with the TWD novel and the TWD board game and the TWD video game (that’s in development)….not to mention new series like The Infinite…..might have been a bridge too far for Kirkman. The ongoing comic book story is very non-compelling right now. And, that’s a damn shame because there is still so much fun stuff to do with these characters, but we won’t get to do any of it watching them stewing in their misery in this little compound. Have Rick’s band decide the Arlington residents are too weak and have them leave them to starve? Have Rick’s band force the others outside the fence? Has Michonne run off on her own with Rick and Abraham trying to find her? Have them explore Washington DC to find an supply stocked bomb shelter intended for Congress people? Have them commandeer a boat and have them try to live on an island for a while? Any of these would be more exciting than what we’re getting right now.
5. Charlie Adlard is still getting it done. What a professional! The dude just cranks out issue after issue like a machine. Each issue is good and he never showboats. Most series like this would have full-page spreads of zombies all over the place so that Adlard could sell the art for a mint, but we never have that problem with TWD. It’s just page after page of wonderful sequential storytelling.
Conclusion: Has my favorite ongoing series jumped the shark? Who knows, but this series needs fixing asap because watching the way Kirkman has treated his characters the last few issues isn’t promising at all.
Jumping on point?: Not at all. We’re smack in the middle of a trade paperback, so this isn’t the place to hop on. You’d honestly be best served to start with the first issue and read forward from there (it’s a great ride), but if you’re really stubborn, you could probably start after at issue #49 which is where the second phase of TWD began.
Grade: D+
-Dean Stell
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