SPOILER ALERT!!
Only read on if you know what happened or don't care.
And, so it's over.
Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard and the whole Image Comics and Skybound teams of creators and editors and comic book magic makers have brought the most famous zombie-apocalypse series of all time to a conclusion.
Ding dong, The Walking Dead is dead.
Dead dead. Not like dead but still animate, as in walking: a roamer. But dead as in over, caput, finished, given an ending and closed to future business.And they did it in a most awesome way, one that I dearly love, though one that may have infuriated many fans (though I haven't checked yet to verify that suspicion).
They didn't tell anyone.
No one knew that The Walking Dead issue 193 would be its last until it arrived at comic book stores. The company purposefully solicited future issues of the comic with already drawn cover art, even though the issues were neither being produced nor would they be published.
Holy CLIFF HANGER, Batman!!
That's right, chum.
Surprise! Your favorite comic is done.
Fans were shocked and outraged enough when -- in what has now become the penultimate issue of the comic series, issue #192 -- arguably the book's main character, Rick Grimes, was shot to death. People should have suspected that the book may not survive his death.
Kirkman teased Rick's death at the end of #191 as the assailant shot Rick, and Rick said "What have you done?" in the final panel, implying that like so many brushes with death and near misses, he would survive this, too, continuing his work to rebuild the world after the zombie apocalypse. After all, he's still talking.
But that was not to be. Issue #192 resumes the scene in Rick's bedroom in which Sebastian, the son of the former leader of the Commonwealth, the large, protected community that the band of survivors found in the last story arc of the comic book. More on why the execution (ugh - pun) of Rick's death and all of issue #192 brilliantly set up #193, the final issue.
And yet, despite Rick's death, all indications from Kirkman, Image, and Skybound suggested that the comic would continue without its main character much like the TV show will do. And though Kirkman insisted that Rick's death was a long term plan -- and surely it was -- fans still speculated that he killed off the character to bring the comic book in line with the TV show. (SIDENOTE: Apparently, Rick is not dead in the TV shows story but rather he left the storyline the show depicts, and the gossip indicates that he will star in a movie of The Walking Dead. I wouldn't know; I stopped watching the TV show; I am still trying to decide if and when I will catch up.)
Issue #192 provides an homage to Rick and his importance to the Walking Dead world including an all-cast funeral procession and a depiction of Carl's grief.Issue #193 time jumps many years into the future. Carl is married with a daughter. He wears an eye patch so as not upset his daughter. He kills a roamer who escaped from a curio show, like Old West traveling "freak" shows. In this future world, the zombies are all but extinct and are considered valuable commodities and private property. Carl is arrested, charged with destruction of very valuable property.
His "killing" of the zombie (and then the others in the curio show owner's wagon) mirrors the killing of his own father, who he found dead but animated in Rick's bedroom: "I didn't even see him. I just saw the dead," Carl said of shooting his father in the head. He reacts the same way in the final issue, more motivated to protect his wife and daughter from the dangerous practice of putting these animated killing corpses on display for entertainment and thrills.
In killing the one that escapes and then killing the others in the collection, Carl is doing the "right" thing, much like his father, more homage to Rick Grimes.
The comic shows a court scene in which Carl is put on trial and wherein its decided that Carl is right and that the practice of putting the roamers on display be outlawed.
The comic ends with Carl reading to his daughter and talking about the importance of his father in creating the safer world that they now enjoy.
It's a good ending.
It's the ending they all deserve.
As a postscript, Kirkman writes about why the comic is not continuing and why he decided to surprise readers (actually trick readers) into thinking it would continue until the day issue #193 arrived in stores.
I am not going to take the time to scroll through the discussion (linked below) to chart if most readers liked this surprise end or not. Comic round up reports a critic rating of 8.7 and a user rating of 9.2, which shows me that most readers did like the comic. In fact, with a higher user rating, clearly, the readers REALLY liked the ending.
Could Kirkman have conceived a different ending or even executed this ending differently? Sure.
Could the final sequences be something other than a bedtime story, which, yes, some critical critics will find cliché? Sure.
Do I like the bedtime story ending? FUCK YEAH.
The Multiversity critic who gave the book and the bedtime ending a 3.0 fails to see the way the father and child bedtime shows the best of the life we enjoyed before the zombie apocalypse and the life that Rick Grimes ensured for the people he left behind, most importantly his son Carl. To dislike the ending is almost to dislike childhood, love, fatherhood, and happiness. I value those things most highly. For me, the ending was the perfect thing.
Those who castigate the ending as over maudlin either miss the point of such moments as the most precious things they are entirely or are just unhappy people. What? Should we have had Carl beheaded instead? Return home to find his family slaughtered by zombies? To have Carl himself become a zombie? Please. Lauding hope highly and deifying Rick Grimes seem to be the direction in which we have always been headed in this comic book. For me, it works. Strikes me that the Multiversity reviewer is just being contrary because most of his peers were not.
I liked it. Loved it, even.
Thanks for one of the best all around reads of my life in comics, Robert Kirkman. That's awesome.
SERIES ROUND UP
https://comicbookroundup.com/comic-books/reviews/image-comics/the-walking-dead
PENULTIMATE ISSUE #192
https://comicbookroundup.com/comic-books/reviews/image-comics/the-walking-dead/192
ULTIMATE - FINAL ISSUE - #193
https://comicbookroundup.com/comic-books/reviews/image-comics/the-walking-dead/193
DISCUSSION
https://www.skybound.com/comics/the-walking-dead/the-walking-dead-issue-193-the-farmhouse-reader-discussion
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1907.16 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1473 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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