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The Walking Dead Comic thread

Started by Goaty, 14 July, 2012, 06:13:28 PM

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Goaty

It been great last few years but 100th issue - WTF!!

TordelBack

I'm going to go with 'a bit fecking much' myself. It's not the incident itself, since worse things have certainly happened, it's more the drawn-out nature of the (ahem) execution.  I'll probably come round to it in a while, I usually do, but still.

BPP

about that time of 'ennie, meanie, miney, moe' it felt like a drawn out exercise in torture=porn comics.

Probably will read better in a trade.
If I'd known it was harmless I would have killed it myself.

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The Adventurer

It sure was an issue of The Walking Dead.  It's weird though [spoiler]Glenn's death[/spoiler] didn't really have the punch I expected. Frankly I felt more of a kick in the teeth when [spoiler]Abraham[/spoiler] bought it a few issues ago, mostly because of how sudden it was.
Still think this book is generally pretty awesome.

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Alski

Great stuff, I was reading with mouth open and breath held.
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SmallBlueThing

Finally! I can read this thread- and thanks, goaty me old love, for starting it... even if it's been a literal hell not to be able to click onto here for a few days. My copy arrived an hour ago, and here i am.

Woah. I was kind'a expecting glenn's death due to kirkman's double bluff tease in the letter column a few issues back (and due to a half-glimpsed comment by pete wells in the 'which comics made you blub, thread, harrumph harrumph) but im not too bothered about spoilers and the power of the writing should always carry it anyway. And here it did. Scariest thing is quite literally where do they go from here? If this were any other narrative we'd now be awaiting the slow build-up to vengeance. Chances are that's not going to happen though- having gone that route with the governor, it would be simply a repeat. Or would it?

Second scariest thing- it could easily have been one of the kids.

SBT
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Greg M.

Walking Dead - I quit. My fondness for this series has been steadily dwindling for a long time now, particularly during the last year, where to me it's been feeling awfully tired and lacking in new ideas - ironic, since sales-wise #100 has apparently done phenomenally well, and I expect the series will continue to go from strength to strength in that regard. But #100 pretty much crystalised everything I've not enjoyed in the series - the sadistic streak, the desire to shock, the now near-complete lack of likeable characters [spoiler](Glenn was pretty much the only character left in the story I had any interest in)[/spoiler], the endless cycle of misery. To my mind, it's almost become the comic-book equivalent of 'Eastenders', with its cast of unpleasant characters doing unpleasant things and having unpleasant things done to them, ad infinitum. 'Cept with 'The Walking Dead', there's no escape in the back of a Walford taxi heading to a better life. Don't get me wrong - Kirkman and Adlard deserve major plaudits for all they've achieved with the book, and for those still loving the series, more power to you - I respect that it's still working for you, and I definitely hope you continue to enjoy it. But for me, the tipping point has been reached, and I'm out.

SmallBlueThing

Completely understand, greg. While reading it did cross my mind that many people would feel as you do. Personally, as long as it keep delivering characters i grow to care about, and then offing them in ways that make me feel physically ill, im in it for the long run. Yes, it's as manipulative as shit- but if only eastenders writers were as good at characterisation as kirkman! I may watch if they were.

Niggle: despite a few years now of defending the series against accusations that it needs more zombies, id say that it now needs more zombies. Or to be precise, it needs a long running storyline in which zombies feature as more than a random threat in two panels. Keep the human drama central, but stick them somewhere the zoms can get at them. I know 'if this were real' you'd do your best to get far away from them- and that's when the interpersonal stuff would occur... but the comic needs to suspend a bit of disbelief and shovel in some undead about now.

SBT
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Greg M.

Quote from: SmallBlueThing on 16 July, 2012, 01:20:50 PM
Completely understand, greg. While reading it did cross my mind that many people would feel as you do. Personally, as long as it keep delivering characters i grow to care about, and then offing them in ways that make me feel physically ill, im in it for the long run. Yes, it's as manipulative as shit- but if only eastenders writers were as good at characterisation as kirkman! I may watch if they were.

I guess that's it - I did feel quite disturbed by #100, and in many ways that surprised me. I mean, I have a long-standing love of ridiculously gory Italian horror movies, for instance, so why should this particular fictional death provoke such an emotional response? As you say, that's probably a compliment to Kirkman, in that he created a character I cared about, and his writing sure as hell got a reaction out of me (even though I'd already suspected that particular character wasn't long for the chopping block). I find myself asking 'Am I just throwing my rattle out of the pram and having a tantrum 'cos Kirkman killed my favourite character off?', and I can't totally discount that. (And only a few months after [spoiler]my beloved Ben Daimio bought the farm [/spoiler] in 'B.P.R.D' too! Curse you, comics! You break my heart!)

TordelBack

#9
I'd be right there with you Greg, except that I already came close to quitting at the start of the Washington stuff when real-world abominations were being cited for shock value, and then again in the middle when I felt the storytelling had got very sloppy, and now here I am again - so I have to accept it's probably not going to happen this time either. 

I did think [spoiler]Sophia's hour had come around[/spoiler], so I was slightly relieved that it was[spoiler] 'only' Glenn[/spoiler].  I'm just not at all sure I understand why the graphically bullying alpha-male cruelty was necessary, when we already did exactly this twice back in Woodbury.  It was unsettling and upsetting, and all credit to Kirkman and Adlard for achieving in a world where I look forward every week to Spurious' Crossed webcomic and the wife and I giggle merrily over the cheek-shots in the Dredd clip and protracted disembowlings in Spartacus over tea, but I just wonder if it served any novel purpose beyond that.  It's not like we had achieved any relaxed status quo a-la the Prison that needed to be shaken up, things were in constant flux: this was just a result of an intelligence snafu.  Also,[spoiler] Glenn and Maggie's story[/spoiler] was just getting interesting too, so I feel a bit cheated of my investment there if the only reason was a [spoiler]gory main-character death[/spoiler] for some base-10 round number anniversary sales kick.

Still, I suppose that's exactly why I'll keep reading - to see why and where it goes now.




SmallBlueThing

As an aside, do we know if the comic goes back to its normal four-weekly schedule from #101, or if it's continuing to be three-weekly. Without wanting to drip piss on the parade, ive felt Adlard's art has suffered a teensy bit- a teensy bit mind- from the increased workload. And since he's 6 months away from 100 straight issues, what IS the US record for an artist staying on the same book?

SBT
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Greg M.

Quote from: SmallBlueThing on 17 July, 2012, 11:50:38 AM
And since he's 6 months away from 100 straight issues, what IS the US record for an artist staying on the same book?

I know that for Marvel it's Mark Bagley for Ultimate Spider-Man (111 consecutive issues) - not sure beyond that. I suppose the likes of Dave Sim's 300 issues of Cerebus rather puts that in the shade.

SmallBlueThing

Yeah, i thought of cerebus while writing that, and wondered if it was even worth asking! But bagley's number is withi sight. How many spirits did eisner do?

SBT
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TordelBack

Never denying the incredible achievement that is Cerebus, which is of course a Canadian (not a US) book, it's worth noting that in its second half there were a lot of text pages making up the 20-pages-a-month total, plus Gerhard was drawing all the exquisite backgrounds as well as doing many of the later covers, leaving Dave free to do the layouts and characters.

And the lettering.  And the scripting.  And handling the editor's note and letter column, and latterly the hate mail.  And the essays screeds rantings at the back.  And the publishing, including collections and monthly re-prints.  And the business, retailer, publicity and conference circuit side of things.  About the only thing he didn't do was proof-read and typeset the thing.  Which probably more than balances out the text-pages and backgrounds side of the workload

It's no wonder he went mad, or more precisely, 'did a Beaky'.   ;)

The Adventurer

Quote from: SmallBlueThing on 17 July, 2012, 11:50:38 AM
As an aside, do we know if the comic goes back to its normal four-weekly schedule from #101, or if it's continuing to be three-weekly. Without wanting to drip piss on the parade, ive felt Adlard's art has suffered a teensy bit- a teensy bit mind- from the increased workload. And since he's 6 months away from 100 straight issues, what IS the US record for an artist staying on the same book?

SBT

Current Record for a single artist Penciling/Inking the same book continually without relaunch or renumbering is Erik Larsen on Savage Dragon for 180 issues. With no end in sight. He also holds the record for most consecutive issues written/drawn by a single person (though Cerebus's 300 issues suggests Sim's in the lead. But he got help from Gerhard for backgrounds early on).

Stan Sakai would have the record if he hadn't had guest artists on Usagi Yojimbo 100.

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