By: Robert Kirkman (writer), Charlie Adlard (artist), Cliff Rathburn (gray tones), Rus Wooton (letters)
The Story: Is Rick going to try to find his vagabond son?
Review (with SPOILERS): Well…it was inevitable that the air would come out of the balloon at some point, right? TWD has been pretty hot and full of new direction and potential for the last 4-5 months, so we were bound to get an issue where Kirkman mostly spins his wheels.
Not much happens in this issue. We do learn that Negan still wants to do something lousy to Carl as revenge for shooting up his lair, but is that really breaking news? Negan doesn’t seem to be interested in much beyond what is good for Negan and Carl made him dive in the dirt while dodging bullets–of course he’ll do something lousy to Carl! There still might be a chance that he’ll take Carl “under his wing”, but he’ll be doing it to (a) torment Rick by watching his son turn bad and (b) to keep Rick in line by holding Carl hostage. In a way, that’s about the sickest thing that Negan can do to the little guy: become a father figure to Carl and then betray his trust. If it goes that way, it’ll remind me of that movie In the Company of Men where two office workers make a bet about whether one of them can get the cute – but deaf and horribly shy – summer intern to actually fall in love with him. She does fall in love and all along you expect that this Lothario will actually turn over a new leaf and return her love, but in the end, he’s just a cold hearted jackass who wanted to win the bet. I still have a hard time liking Aaron Eckhart in any role because of that movie.
The only other piece of news is that Rick actually has been looking for Carl and now knows where Negan lives. But, this isn’t earth-shattering either. The confrontation between Rick and Negan on the road – so similar to the last time they met on the road and Glen got his brains smashed – was tense, but that’s about it for the issue. There just isn’t a lot of meat on the bone.
Instead Kirkman spends a decent portion of the issue with the common-folk of Arlington as we see who is/isn’t pleased with Rick’s leadership. These Arlington residents are currently neither fish nor foul. Kirkman hasn’t developed any of them enough that we care about their fate (or see them as threats to Rick), but he’s not letting them be totally anonymous either. It would be nice to trust what Kirkman is doing, but he’s left a lot of dangling story threads in Arlington over the last couple years.
The one clever thing he brings up again comes from the discussion between Aaron and Eric over Negan taking half of their stuff. TWD has never been gone in for subtle allegory, but it’s not hard to see similarities between Negan and whatever governmental entity the reader lives under. One could argue that Negan isn’t doing anything but taxing his outlying provinces. Perhaps those “citizens” think the tax is too high or perhaps they don’t feel like the “security” that Negan provides is worth 50%, but welcome to the real world, folks–you can pay or you can leave. Good luck finding a better deal elsewhere. If you want to stay, you’ll pay the tax or go to jail – or get your head bashed in. Maybe Grover Norquist survived the zombie apocalypse?
The art in this issue isn’t “bad”, but it also isn’t Adlard’s finest hour either. He has a lot of loose panels that are a little lacking in detail or lacking in backgrounds. It doesn’t harm the storytelling, but it does make the issue less of a rich experience than we’re used to. We also get a few splash pages: two full-page and one double-pager. This is probably more how Kirkman wrote the script than anything to do with Adlard, but when I saw all of these I couldn’t help but be cynical about the original art market. I mean, Kirkman hasn’t written a lot of scenes that are going to generate great original art sales for his partner for months. So, here we get one of Jesus kicking a zombie in the face ($), one of Rick and Negan facing off ($$) and one double-pager of Rick, Andrea and Michonne facing a horde of zombies ($$$$$$$$$). That double-pager may be the most expensive piece of art that Adlard has yet sold from the series. Plus, there were a lot of other zombie-fighting pages ($). It’s probably unfair to put much of this on Adlard, but when the issue is kinda a letdown and the art isn’t quite as zippy as usual, it does put you in a cynical mood.
Conclusion: Well, we were overdue for a non-eventful issue.
Grade: C+
– Dean Stell
Grade
Conclusion