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marlowe18. The Walking Dead vol 31: The Rotton Core by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, etc. - Just saw a meme that asked "When did you stop with the Walking Dead?" and that does seem to be a universal experience. No show on television had so much potential and so much disappointment. I'm going to repeat what I probably said in 2019 which is that for me The Walking Dead is great as soon as Negan shows up and loses its charm as soon as Negan gets written out. I'm not sure if they are keeping him around in the show but I didn't see much of him. I have no clue where I stopped. I don't think that I even got to the Whisperers on the show.
But as far as the comic - same damn thing. Write out Negan because he really doesn't have much to do. He's had his redemption arc going from villain to anti-hero to useful leader to isolated after saving everyone from the whisperers. And then we get the final boss - Some woman who smiles too much.
So here we are, in the volume before the volume with issue 193 where Kirkman shocked everyone by just fucking ending the whole story. And it makes sense that it's ending here because the overarching plot is the rebuilding of society. So readers have followed Rick and the rest of the characters from isolated camps to a farm to a prison to a suburban community to a confederacy of different communities, strengthened by fighting the Saviors who were the both the main antagonists and the most advanced post-zombie social order. After the Whisperers who were an interesting side quest as people who decided to live among the zombies (I wonder where the comic would have gone if the whisperers turned out to be zombies that had recovered their faculties) we get an entire city full of people who held off the zombies and live life as if nothing has changed.
And this is where it feels rushed. Kirkman was definitely building towards this ending, but he seems to be bored with the comic. Michonne going back to her law career and reuniting with her daughter is interesting but mostly this is a repetition of the usual tropes. One member of the group really loves the new community that they just found. Another member is severely distrustful. Rick is somewhere in the middle but at the end he figures out that something is wrong. The whole social order is built on everyone getting the exact same roles they had before the zombies. The leader seems ok but there are clues that not all is well.
Also the cops beat people to death and no one is happy except for the survivors.
So this one ends with Darryl acting like he wants to overthrow everything and Rick shooting him. And then Rick feeling like he did the wrong thing.
I spent most of this one trying to remember if Rick advanced the Broken Window theory of law enforcement. And when he did it. It actually makes sense that Rick would buy into that horseshit but I forgot the context.
Regardless, I have the last collected Walking Dead from the library. I wonder if it will be as tedious as these last few post-Negan collections or if Kirkman will get a little more energy from knowing that he's ending it.
But as far as the comic - same damn thing. Write out Negan because he really doesn't have much to do. He's had his redemption arc going from villain to anti-hero to useful leader to isolated after saving everyone from the whisperers. And then we get the final boss - Some woman who smiles too much.
So here we are, in the volume before the volume with issue 193 where Kirkman shocked everyone by just fucking ending the whole story. And it makes sense that it's ending here because the overarching plot is the rebuilding of society. So readers have followed Rick and the rest of the characters from isolated camps to a farm to a prison to a suburban community to a confederacy of different communities, strengthened by fighting the Saviors who were the both the main antagonists and the most advanced post-zombie social order. After the Whisperers who were an interesting side quest as people who decided to live among the zombies (I wonder where the comic would have gone if the whisperers turned out to be zombies that had recovered their faculties) we get an entire city full of people who held off the zombies and live life as if nothing has changed.
And this is where it feels rushed. Kirkman was definitely building towards this ending, but he seems to be bored with the comic. Michonne going back to her law career and reuniting with her daughter is interesting but mostly this is a repetition of the usual tropes. One member of the group really loves the new community that they just found. Another member is severely distrustful. Rick is somewhere in the middle but at the end he figures out that something is wrong. The whole social order is built on everyone getting the exact same roles they had before the zombies. The leader seems ok but there are clues that not all is well.
Also the cops beat people to death and no one is happy except for the survivors.
So this one ends with Darryl acting like he wants to overthrow everything and Rick shooting him. And then Rick feeling like he did the wrong thing.
I spent most of this one trying to remember if Rick advanced the Broken Window theory of law enforcement. And when he did it. It actually makes sense that Rick would buy into that horseshit but I forgot the context.
Regardless, I have the last collected Walking Dead from the library. I wonder if it will be as tedious as these last few post-Negan collections or if Kirkman will get a little more energy from knowing that he's ending it.
