Walking Dead #114
Written by Robert Kirkman.
Illustrated by Charlie Adlard, Cliff Rathburn.
To explain “Walking Dead” #1-114 would take a lot longer than a 500-word blog post. What I would recommend is picking up the first trade paper back of the series. Libraries carry TPB now, it’s free! Do it!
If you’ve never read, watched or heard about “Walking Dead,” the setting is the zombie apocalypses. Robert Kirkman has crafted this not so perfect world where people are just trying to survive. The zombies are the backdrop, the key to this series is the interaction between humans. The battle between those who continue to fight for humanity and those who have completely lost it. Over the course of 114 issues there have been several evil men that have tried to destroy humanity but there has been one soul that has stood up to them time and time again, Rick Grimes.
This is a non-superhero comic book but Rick is your hero and Kirkman has tried to breaking him for more than 100-issues straight.
“Walking Dead” #114 is the build up of a story-arc that started in a gut-wrenching 100th issue that introduced a very evil gentleman named Negan and his baseball bat “Lucille.” This is a mature audience book (R-rated) and Kirkman gives Negan a dialogue that makes me squirm in my chair. What ever is the highest level of evil that is Negan. Kirkman plots Rick and Negan against each other in a power struggle and Rick’s son Carl is the perfect instrument to break Rick’s will.
What Kirkman does extremely well is scare the reader in way that you’re afraid to buy issue 115. Something bad is going to happen and that usually means that a character that you care about is going to die. I don’t want to spoil anything for new readers or viewers of the television so but Kirkman is a very cruel writer.
As far as a breakdown of the issue, Kirkman has raised the bar so high with epic issues in the past, therefore I’ve seen this setup before. My questions is, “What bag of tricks can Kirkman conjure up this time around?” The issue comes a crossed flat. If this happened in the TPB of the story-arc I can just continue to read but in the comic book world you have to wait 30-plus days. It’s a completely different style of writing and a hard one to master. You have 22-pages to hook a reader and then have him or her come back a month later to buy another.
I was expecting a better last page of the book and it just wasn’t there but I’m still afraid to buy the nest issue!
Story: 8/10 • Artwork: 8/10 • Overall 8/10
Cover: Walking Dead #115
