By: Robert Kirkman (writer), Charlie Adlard (art), Cliff Rathburn (grey tones), Rus Wooton (letters)
The Story: What happens to a little guy who shoots up the warlord’s encampment?
A few things (with SPOILERS): 1). Notable for who isn’t in the issue. – Has there every been an Rick-less issue of TWD? Not only did we not see Rick, we didn’t see anyone else from the good guys. There wasn’t even a panel or two showing Jesus diligently making his way back to report to Rick. And I don’t think I missed Rick/Andrea/Michonne – not one little bit. Even as interesting as TWD has been recently, the action from our “main characters” has been very stale. I wonder if this is a warning sign? Like when you take a week off at work and they get along fine without you? Also, no zombies.
2). Really fleshes out Negan & his fortress. – Of course, the mystery man for the last year or so has been this Negan. We’ve learned bits and pieces about him the last few issues, but he really comes into focus here and he is SO believable. Honestly, in a post-apocalyptic world, it’s people like Negan who you have to fear. He’s (i) clever enough to have a plan, (ii) immoral enough to take whatever he wants, (iii) vicious enough to preemptively stamp out any rebellions, (iv) unpredictable enough that everyone is on edge around him and (v) physically imposing enough to stay top-dog. This last item is so important and had so much to do with why I don’t like the version of the Governor on the TV show; David Morrissey just isn’t physically powerful enough to get lunatics to follow him. Negan looks like he can probably beat the snot out of anyone on the property….and everyone knows it. He basically just helps himself to other men’s wives right in front of them and if there is any problem they get the iron. He’s just nasty and there’s never a calm moment when he’s on the page. Negan reminds me of Gyp Rosetti from Boardwalk Empire in terms of his constant menace.
A few words about Negan’s compound are probably in order….He really doesn’t seem to have a functioning group in place. There’s no gardening or anything like that. It also doesn’t seem like that big of a group. Could it be they’re surviving 100% by robbing other groups? It seems a little unsustainable to me, but I guess we’ll see how it turns out.
3). Carl’s eye! – Goodness is Carl a nasty sight! We’ve really only seen his eye bandaged up since he got shot, so it was easy to believe that he was just missing an eye. It’s a LOT worse than that: he’s missing a big chunk of his head. Even Negan seemed freaked out by his face, and when he teased Carl, we saw a slip in Carl’s hard exterior. Was Carl sad because he was getting teased or was he sad because it was Negan who was doing the teasing? It’s really hard to figure what’s going on with Carl right now. On one hand, there was no mention of his father and wanting to go home. On the other, Carl is on a mission to kill Negan and that fact seemed to slip to the wayside this issue.
4). Effective facial expressions. – I’m always impressed by artists who excel at facial expressions. So many of the interactions in this issue depend on those subtle expressions and Adlard comes up aces and shows how much Kirkman trusts him. Kirkman just knows that Adlard can execute on these scenes without having to write a lot of exposition-heavy dialog. Take that scene where the random guy brings Negan’s baseball bat up to Negan’s room. Adlard sells how scared shitless this guy is and also how much Negan is screwing with the guy. The same thing could be said of the scene where Negan makes Carl cry or any of the scenes with Negan’s harem of women.
5). The iron and planning ahead. – There have been times over the last year or two where I thought Kirkman might be ad-libbing a little on TWD. It was still entertaining, but I wasn’t sure there was a well-considered plan in place. But, that brutal scene where Negan irons the guy’s face showed that Kirkman might be paying closer attention than I’d thought. Through this, we learned how this guy Dwight got his face screwed up. Kirkman has done a lot to expand Dwight’s character recently and last issue, we learned that he isn’t exactly thrilled with Negan. Now we know why; it’s because Negan stole him wife, and then when he tried to do something about it, he got his face ironed. Is Dwight a possible ally for Rick & Co.?
Conclusion: Very, very strong. Kirkman and Adlard have turned this Negan into a very scary and powerful villain. Rick wasn’t in this issue and I didn’t miss him at all.
Grade: A-
– Dean Stell
Grade
Conclusion