The Walking Dead Comic thread

[IndigoPrime]

And then there will be the inevitable spin-offs, movies, lunchboxes, etc.

[Proudhuff]

has there been any word on dates for the final series?

I'm sure the last episodes of last season airs 4 Oct - there's 6 more episodes! The final season will be 24 episodes and be aired over 2 years and ending in 2022!!! A lot of episodes to fill

Good to know!!

[Colin YNWA]

120 days warning - HA! 120 weeks more like (well maybe, I ain't counting).

So finally read the rest of Walking Dead and it remains a page turner almost to the end. Then I'm glad I knew it was ending as it became a bit of a chore.

I always admired the way they closed it off the way they did. It felt brave and fitting to drop the biggest axe of all with out letting reader in. So fitting for a series that was always brave in the way it never allowed you to feel safe. Now having read the end it felt actually like putting a bullet through a corpses head before it got up and started rumbling on endlessly in its every present search for BBRRRRAAAIIINNNNSSSS.

What would have been Compendium 3 (I read the second half in digital trades so I'm estimating here) is just the same a 1 + 2 the comic equivalent of an airport novel. Gripping and an absolute page turner but with none of the substance you sense the writer wanted it to have. Charlie Adlard's art raised it up a level or two and too many damned splashes aside was consistently excellent.

Then as Kirkman plans his ending (judging by this farewell text piece at the end) the last 48 issues it slowly falls apart. Its as if for all the planning Kirkman put into the timing at the end was never really ... well planned. It seems at moments to be in a panicked rush to get everything in. Then it realises its got to fill those 48 issues, panicks there's not the story to fill it so clogs things up and slows things down by the endless tiresome speechifying. Often this happens in the same issue.

This lose of the relentless pacing really brings the series faults to the fore alas. The speeches (often made between just two folks, the dialogue can be so slilted and poor it all began to feel like speeches) and character moments that I think are meant to be deep and insightful, show growth and development but read as someone just trying to surprise with some horrible leaps of emotional logic (if there is such a thing. Hey I'll just pump my stumpy arm in the air and proclaim some truism and you'll all believe me and hail me the true leader of a ragged humanity if this story is to be believed) and just jarring. Kirkman proclaims its character driven, I read it as wanting to move the plot on in a specific direction and jamming the character's decisions into that progressing hole.

These problems have always been there, as we head towards the end they seem to dominate more and more.

Still I read it with a degree of glee remaining right up to that horrible epilogue of a final episode. Ouch that was terrible in the painful way we got to see everyone neatly wrapped up.

I really quite enjoyed the series for all my whining, on the whole. Doubt I'll ever feel the need to read it again mind.

[Barrington Boots]

Interesting thoughts Colin. I can remember being incredibly into TWD when it was first running but my enthusiasm gradually faded and I dropped it before it ended. I recently did a full re-read and it's definitely not as good as I remembered - it definitely starts dragging after a while and I think the character attrition rate, which seemed novel and interesting at the time, ends up being to its detriment. I think the very best of the series is definitely the Tony Moore-drawn stuff at the start (Adlard isn't responsible for the quality of writing, but I think the story is sharper then, and by the time the Governor arc is done, story quality has started to decline)

I've found a similar thing doing a re-read on Invincible - it's not as good as I remember. It may be that I'm not on the same wavelength as Kirman anymore.