Again, It's More About The Living

The Walking Dead tpb Vol. 19 "March To War"
Image Comics
Robert Kirkman, writer
Charlie Adlard, artist

More bad stuff happening for Rick Grimes and crew. As usual, not everyone in Rick's latest blended group is satisfied with the former policeman's leadership. Despite the internal challenges, Rick, Jesus from the Hilltop community and King Ezekiel have agreed to join forces to eliminate the threat posed by Negan and his band of Saviors. The three make their plans for an attack and begin to train those among their ranks less used to fighting. But it is key to their plans to keep the attack a secret until they are ready to move.

That all goes out the window when Negan makes his regular visit to Rick's community for supplies and tribute several days early. A conflict breaks out before Rick's, Jesus' and Ezekiel's forces are ready, and things do not go well for our heroes in this latest volume.

There are a few scenes in this trade where a group is traveling from one place to another when they encounter a few zombies that have to be dispatched. Each instance is dealt with matter-of-factly while unrelated conversations continue. Most all of the real action of these issues, as is typical of this series, concerns the living and how they act and react to each other.

That is what keeps me coming back to this series trade after trade: a zombie apocalypse might have kick-started the events, but it is no longer the primary motivation or driving force of the series. Living, breathing humans are. Cruel, compassionate, helpful, savage humans. And Kirkman just keeps ramping up the tension and drama, book after book.

How Could I Have Doubted Rick?

The Walking Dead Vol. 18: What Comes After
Image Comics
Robert Kirkman, writer
Charlie Adlard and Cliff Rathburn, artists

Things looked very bleak for our band of survivors after they ran afoul of a street gang named the Saviors in the last collected volume of The Walking Dead. Some truly brutal things had happened courtesy of the Saviors' leader, Negan, and Rick truly seemed defeated. He agreed to turn over half of everything his group had to the Saviors in exchange for their "protection," thus falling in line as several other nearby communities of survivors had previously done.

It truly seemed like Rick had no other choice, that Negan had the upper hand. Even a number of Rick's own followers believed the former lawman was broken. Which is exactly what Rick needed to ensure that Negan and the Saviors would also fall for the ruse. Rick's real intent, this volume reveals, was to bide time and learn all he could about the Saviors, where their base was, how many men and weapons they truly had at their disposal. Once that was made clear, it all made perfect sense, so that I felt bad for believing less of Rick.

And this volume does reveal a lot of details about how the Saviors live and how Negan maintains control of his crew. The man is easily as insane as the Governor, although Negan's insanity manifests itself in vastly different ways. Unfortunately, things do not proceed exactly as Rick hoped when he started his plan to buy time and gain information. Rick does indeed gain some information and some much-needed allies, but as often happens in real life and with this ragtag band of survivors of the zombie apocalypse, some unforeseen curves are thrown into the mix. Just one of those curves is when 12-year-old Carl, disgusted by his father's apparent capitulation to the Saviors, decides to take on Negan's crew single-handed.

Just How Much Can These People Take?

The Walking Dead tpb Vol. 15: We Find Ourselves (collecting issue Nos. 85-90)
Image Comics
Robert Kirkman, writer
Charlie Adlard and Cliff Rathburn, artists

I've talked about discovering The Walking Dead before here and here. Here we are again at Volume 15.

These trades don't read like superhero trade collections. Collecting six issues is a standard length for a trade these days. Depending on story content, some might be only four or five, other might include seven or eight or more regular issues of a series. But with a typical superhero trade collection, there is a definite issue break. Often, specific covers are reprinted before each "chapter" of the story in a trade, but even without those, I suspect most readers would have little problem pinpointing the transition point between issues. Not so with The Walking Dead trades. Sure, I could count pages if I wanted to or maybe even spot the issue breaks in other ways, if I really wanted to. But my point is that these trades truly read like one long ongoing story. The transition from issue to issue is smoother in these books as one chapter naturally flows into the next and each book flows into the next and these people's journey just plays on and on. That's not meant to be a criticism or a subtle way of complaining that the writing is boring and drudges on. For me, it helps give me that sense of how much these survivors have faced since their world turned upside down.

This trade opens after a rather horrific zombie attack seen in the last trade. After losing the prison they'd called home for several issues (and a few more cast members), Rick Grimes and company make their way to a walled community. They find a group of people living there in relative peace, but these folks have become somewhat complacent by their circumstances. That's what led to the attack in the last trade. Now the folks who are left must clean up the zombie carcasses, some of whom used to be friends the day before and repair the damage to the wall. They don't stop there, however; Rick, now in charge of this larger group, solicits ideas to fortify the community's defenses, make them stronger and more secure. And the newcomers must also deal with some of the long-timers who aren't too keen on Rick being in charge.

As this tale wears on, it is becoming more and more obvious the toll being the leader is taking on Rick. He feels responsible for all the life and death decisions he is forced to make, and fears that they are becoming easier to cope with.

This continues to be a story not about zombies so much as about the people trying to continue to survive in a world filled with zombies -- what they are forced to do to survive, what they are willing to do to survive, and how those changes and decisions affect and change them. Yep, still very much enjoying this series.

All-Ages Honest-To-Goodness FUN!

Super Dinosaur 1-6, Origin Issue
Image Comics
Robert Kirkman, writer
Jason Howard, artist

This creative team was responsible for the 25-issue Astonishing Wolf-Man series which I very much enjoyed. They followed that title up with this one. The book follows the adventures of Derek Dynamo, a pretty brilliant young boy, his super-scientist dad, and his genetically altered tyrannosaurus Rex best friend. The T-Rex wears battle armor to enhance his natural, dino-fighting skills. There are other enhanced dinos, but they're some of the bad guys. So this series is all about fighting dinosaurs in battle armor. This is a truly fun book! Do you really need to know more?

Still Pretty Raw. Same Great Human Drama.

The first time we talked about Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead was here. As we discussed then, TWD is not your typical zombie tale, but it IS a very well-written and beautifully illustrated character study. At that point I had read the first three trade collections representing the first 18 issues of the monthly comic. Since then, I've bought and read the next seven trades, making me current through 10 collections or 60 issues, and this book is STILL incredible.

Rick Grimes is clearly the main character of this book, although Kirkman does an excellent job of giving each character his or her own voice and plenty of "screen" time. Rick is a cop, and the first issue opens with Rick and his partner in pursuit of a suspect. Rick is shot and ends up in the hospital in a coma. When he wakes up, he finds the world drastically changed, now being populated mostly by zombies. First thing Rick does is make his way home only to find the house deserted. He follows his family to Atlanta, but once there, he finds things even worse in the bigger city where even more zombies have gathered.

Fortunately, he runs into a young Asian man named Glen who has ventured into the city to gather supplies for a small group of survivors living in a camp just outside of town. Rick joins Glen in rounding up supplies, then goes back to the group, finding his wife, his young son and his partner among them. Reunited with his loved ones, Rick is content to stay with the group, but everyone in the group comes to realize they cannot safely stay in the open. So eventually, this small band of survivors hits the road seeking a defensible shelter.

Rick's group -- as he clearly becomes their de facto leader -- finds a gated community and a remote farmhouse, neither of which work out long-term, but both stops provide chances for drama, contact with more survivors, some of whom join the group, and many more zombies.

Finally, Rick's ever-changing group finds a penitentiary where they hope to set up a safe, defensible home. Of course, they first have to come to terms with the current occupants, a few surviving inmates and many, many zombies. As the small band of survivors begins to make the prison into a safe, secure home, Kirkman allows the reader to share in the characters' growing sense of contentment. You, like the characters, let your guard down, which makes it all the more powerful when Kirkman slams another large band of survivors into the mix with Rick's group.

I'll stop there in an attempt to keep the spoilers to a minimum, but as I said last time, I'm not a huge fan of zombie fare. The usual undead trappings are present in this story, because it IS a zombie tale. But it is also so much more than that. This is a solid human survival drama, and Kirkman is writing some of the best characterization I have seen from him. Once again, I highly recommend The Walking Dead!

Nasty. Raw. Brutal. Excellent.

We've talked here before about characterization and it's importance to story-telling. The characters have to be people the reader cares about for reading and enjoying to occur. The characters that populate Image Comics' Walking Dead series by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, Charlie Adlard and Cliff Rathburn literally come alive with their characterizations.

The series, for those unfamiliar with it, involves a cop who wakes up from a coma to find no one around but zombies. He has no idea where the zombies came from or what the heck is going on, but he sets out to track down his family and finds other survivors among the many Walking Dead. But this is more than just a typical zombie horror-fest. Kirkman describes the book as "the zombie movie that never ends," focusing not so much on the zombies themselves, but the living folk trying to stay that way. "I want to explore how people deal with extreme situations and how these events CHANGE them," he adds. "This is a very character driven endeavor."

Is it ever.

I'd heard good things about the book and was curious to try it. When I read rave reviews for something online, it is often hit or miss whether or not I will like it, and I DON'T care so much for zombie movies. So I decided to really give the series a try if I was going to try it at all. I bought the first three trades, collecting all of the first 18 issues of the series. If at the end of that, I still didn't like it, no one could say I hadn't given it a chance. I read all three trades in one weekend.
I could hardly put it down. The drama is intense. The action is exciting. The artwork and the gray tones are brilliant. And, as promised, the writing focuses on strong characters you come to care about as they try to survive in this world they barely understand. There are zombies, but they are more minor characters, almost scenery sometimes, for the main characters to play against.

Those first three trades were so good, I quickly found the fourth and fifth collections. I just read those two in two sittings recently, only pausing in between to go to work, and that only because my wife insisted I must. I have the next six trades -- Nos. 6-11 on order. When they get here, I fully expect to devour them hungrily and then die from waiting the many long months before the 12th collection is released.

This book is awesome! Check it out!!

And do so quickly, before these characters invade your television set in Ocotber. That's right! If you haven't already heard, Kirkman is involved with the production of making The Walking Dead into an hour-long drama series for AMC. The show doesn't even begin shooting until this summer, but AMC has already pledged to debut the show in October during their Halloween-season programming.