JohnLees
Wednesday, May 19, 2010, 08:13 PM
Hey clubbers! A few days late is an improvement on several weeks late, but still, let’s get straight to business. The comic series we’ll be taking an extended look at for this meeting is The Walking Dead, the zombie saga from writer Robert Kirkman and (as of issue #7, with Tony Moore on art duties for the first 6 issues) artist Charlie Adlard. Now, unlike with The Sandman last meeting, where we just carried on chronologically from where we left off the previous time the series was featured, with The Walking Dead we’ll be skipping 7 whole graphic novels’ worth of content, picking up after the climactic events of the eighth volume, Made to Suffer, with what very much marked a new chapter in this story. By taking this large gap between volumes in our recommended reading, I hope to illustrate just how dramatic the changes these characters have gone through on their grim journey are, and hopefully to demonstrate that, even with all the worthy material that has come before, it is with these more recent volumes that it’s really become clear what this overarching narrative is truly about.
The Walking Dead was first discussed back in Meeting #12: Comics and Horror, with me qualifying this quote from Jesse Schedeen, from the IGN article “The Walking Dead TV Wish List”, by saying it was too early to talk about its relevance based on just the first graphic novel, Days Gone Bye:
Carl is a young boy whose gradual loss of innocence is perhaps the great tragedy of Walking Dead. It could even be argued that he, not Rick, is the most vital character in the story.
With these later volumes, we really get a fuller sense of the point Jesse Schedeen was making. The previous graphic novel came to a catastrophic conclusion, with the loss of the longstanding status quo of the prison home setting, much of the ensemble cast being killed off while the rest are dispersed, and the shocking death of Rick’s wife Lori and their newborn baby. So as the ninth volume, Here We Remain, opens, the dynamics of the book have been stripped bare, with the ensemble set-up giving way to Rick and Carl alone, a father and son out in the wilderness. And as Rick passes into a deep state of unconsciousness from an infected gunshot wound (or a deliberate overdose of antibiotics and pain medication, depending on your perspective) Carl is left to defend him, becoming the sole active character for a large chunk of the graphic novel. And so, for the first time in the series, Carl becomes the primary character driving forward the narrative. With his speech to his unconscious father over pages 37 and 38, we see how Carl has forced to transform from an innocent child to a hardened, resourceful survivor:
I don’t think I need you anymore. I was scared at first when you got sick – but now, I’m not. I’m not scared at all. I don’t need you to protect me anymore. I’m strong… I’ve grown up, I think, a lot. I’m not an adult yet, but close. Close enough. I don’t think you could protect me anymore anyway… I’m not a kid anymore. I’m not. So I’ll be fine if you have to die. If you died I’d be okay. Everybody dies… it doesn’t matter. So do it. If you have to. I’ll be dine if you do. If you die, I’ll be okay. I will.
Of course, these cold words are in stark contrast to Adlard’s depiction of the visuals, with Carl slumping onto the floor and sobbing as he says them. And later on, we see him take his words back as we see that, for all his attempts at bravado, he is still a frightened child. And this seems to be a dominant theme of Here We Remain: the tension between Carl’s innocence and the corrupting forces of the world all around him. The violent killing of three zombies across pages 32-34 is all the more disturbing for the fact that it’s a young boy doing the killing. And on page 24, when he thinks Rick is dead, his first instinct is to grab his gun and prepare to shoot his own father in the head to prevent him coming back as a zombie. And the book ends with Rick giving his son the warning, “You are not safe,” making Carl promise to never let his guard down, and be wary of even the other survivors in the group – a story beat that is coming back into play with current issues of The Walking Dead, with Carl unable to adjust to being a regular kid who plays with other kids in the relative safety of the new community the group have found themselves in.
An important turning point in this arc of Carl’s comes on page 17 of Volume 11, Fear the Hunters, with Carl being the one to take the action none of the adults are able to go through with: killing Ben, a young child the same age as him, because of his burgeoning homicidal tendencies. Of course, the irony of this – and the previous debate over whether or not a child killer should be treated the same as any other killer – is that Carl may be developing homicidal tendencies of his own. In the pivotal “confessional” scene of Volume 10, What We Become (which I’ll discuss in more detail later) Carl admits to being glad that he shot Shane way back at the climax of Days Gone Bye, and wishes he could have killed The Governor and helped his dad kill the attackers from the night before. And on page 74, he tells Rick, “I have thoughts… I’m scared if you knew the thoughts I had sometimes that you’d hate me.” This world is not only robbing Carl of his childhood – it’s gradually turning him into a killer.
As I said back in my list of the top 10 comics of the 2000s – where this series ranked #2 – The Walking Dead is ultimately the story about a father and a son, their paths intertwined. And just as Carl descends into darkness in these three volumes, so too does Rick. To once again rehash a quote from my earlier analysis of The Walking Dead, let’s take another look at Robert Kirkman’s take on Rick’s character development, from the writer’s introduction to Days Gone Bye:
With THE WALKING DEAD I want to explore how people deal with extreme situations and how these events CHANGE them. I’m in this for the long haul. You guys are going to get to see Rick change and mature to the point that when you look back on this book you won’t even recognize him.
Sure enough, the Rick Grimes of volumes 9, 10 and 11 is a very different character from the hope-driven hero of those early chapters, to the point where he even looks barely recognizable. Each of these graphic novels contains one pivotal sequence in further advancing this unnerving transformation from relatable protagonist to something far more sinister, and I’d like to explore each sequence in turn to see what it says about Rick.
In Here We Remain, the key moment for Rick comes after the sequence where Carl temporarily took over as the book’s main character. Rick begins to take control of the situation, begins making decisions, and we think that things might be returning to some semblance of normality (if you can use the word in the middle of a zombie apocalypse) for Rick, in spite of his wife’s death. He starts making contact with a woman from another group of survivors over the phone, and from this we get the sense the plot is moving in one direction. But on page 62, we’re taken on a drastically different direction when the woman on the other side of the phone line says, “Rick… it’s me. It’s Lori.” And we realize that he has been imagining these phone conversations. But even with this realization, Rick takes the phone with him when he and Carl move on, picking up the receiver and placing it against his ear whenever he wants to hear his wife’s voice, even though he knows it’s in his head.
So, is Rick going crazy? Or is this a justifiable coping mechanism for dealing with his grief? Maybe it’s a little bit of both. On the sequence across pages 104 and 105, Rick and Michonne exchange stories, Rick telling Michonne about how he hears Lori on the phone after she confesses to him about talking to her dead boyfriend when she’s alone. “So we’re both crazy,” replies a smiling Michonne in her usual succinct style. Bearing this in mind, Rick’s angry defense of Sophia on page 98 for convincing herself that Maggie is her real mother takes on a new dimension: he seems hurt and angry at Carl calling her “crazy” and “stupid” for this behavior, because it’s like him saying that Rick is crazy and stupid.
As you’d imagine from a graphic novel titled Here We Remain, this idea of how people cope with bereavement is a dominant theme throughout the volume. We’ve talked about Carl and Rick’s reactions, and touched on Sophia’s. The very first page features Michonne forced to finish off her zombified lover Tyreese, shedding a tear for him on the following page. Later we see Maggie learning of the death of her father and brother. In one of the more poignant moments of the book, we see Dale awkwardly try to bring up the issue of Lori’s death to Rick, mentioning that he can sympathize due to the recent death of his own wife. And looking back at Dale’s role throughout the series, it seems to me like he was set up as a kind of precursor to the experiences Rick was destined to go through – in the obvious visual sense, he too lost a limb, but on a deeper level, all those conversations Dale had with Rick earlier in the series about how horrible it is to lose a wife in this way and how Rick should be thankful he hasn’t had to go through it are given a shade of tragic irony. But though they have had this bond of shared experience, in these volumes we’re focusing on for this meeting we see a growing void between the two men, with Dale highlighting the reasons behind it on page 77 of What We Become:
And why not? Is it Rick? You don’t want to leave him? A few weeks ago… I might have agreed with you. I used to think I knew him. Would have called him my friend. Now? That man is something different. He scares me.
Rick has changed. Dale sees it, and with the events of Volumes 10 and 11, we see it even clearer.
The sequence I wish to discuss from What We Become is not just a pivotal moment for this volume, or for Rick as a character. It’s arguably one of the pivotal moments in the history of the series. And for my money, What We Become could possibly stand as the finest volume the series has produced yet. To get an idea of what the sequence is, and how important it is, just look at the cover of the graphic novel. It features a blood-covered wildman, lunging out at us with a savage expression on his face, as if ready to kill. It might take us a few moments to recognize this as our hero, Rick Grimes.
The sequence in question is the aforementioned “confessional” scene, but I’m also including the scene that precedes it and prompts this discussion the following morning between Rick, Abraham and eventually Carl. Starting on page 58, we get a sequence where Rick, Carl and Abraham – separated from the rest of the group on a journey out to Rick’s old home – are ambushed by a group of bandits, who attempt to rape Carl. In response, Rick kills the bandit holding him at knife-point, not with a weapon, but by biting into his throat and ripping out his jugular with his teeth.
Not only is this killing horrifyingly savage, but it’s also familiar. Flip back to the start of What We Become. The opening is a highly effective scene, where what at first seems like a flashback to happier times when Rick, Carl and Lori were a family is suddenly revealed to be a nightmare, with Lori turning into a zombie and tearing Rick to shreds (tellingly, in his dream Rick doesn’t struggle, simply saying, “I deserve this. This is what I deserve.” as Lori munches on his intestines). But specifically, look at the first panel on page 5, with zombie Lori biting into Rick’s throat. Now compare that to the first panel of page 62, as Rick bites into the bandit’s throat. Not only does each panel depict the same violent action, but even the angling of the panels are practically the same, reinforcing the parallels between the two moments. I instantly recall Rick’s “We are the walking dead!” line from the conclusion of The Heart’s Desire. We originally think of the zombies as the monsters of The Walking Dead, but now we see Rick turning into a monster.
Continuing with this theme, I found page 64 to be incredibly powerful, and disturbing. In the first panel, Rick – drenched in the blood of the man he’s just killed, gore dripping from his mouth – barely even looks human. If it wasn’t for the anger in his eyes instead of a white void he could easily be mistaken for one of Adlard’s zombies. Greeted by the sight of this monstrosity, the last remaining bandit drops his weapon, gives up Carl, and flees. But Rick chases after him, hunting him down, not stopping until he catches up with the would-be rapist, who is now pleading for his life. But Rick closes in on him with the knife, and makes the kill. We don’t see Rick dispatching this man (though the repeated "SHUKK! SHUKK" sound effect tells us all we need to know) and it’s all the more effective for taking place off-panel. What we see instead of the murder manages to be even more unsettling. For the last 3 panels of page 64, we see Abraham holding Carl, trying to keep him from seeing the brutality his father is capable of. But as we zoom in on the shot, we see Carl not only turning around to look, but doing so with what seems to be an expression of grim approval.
And this leads into the confessional scene. An early exchange between Abraham and Rick tells us a whole lot about what stage Rick has now reached as a character. Abraham remarks that, “You’re never the same. Not after what you did.” And in reply, Rick simply states, “You can fake it.” These three volumes we’re studying for this meeting are full of references by various characters about seeing glimmers of “the old Rick”, with his diplomatic leadership and can-do spirit. But this tells us what these glimmers are. He’s faking it. He’s acting like he thinks he would have acted if he hadn’t been changed.
From here, Abraham goes into a story about his wife and daughter being raped while his son was forced to watch, and the vicious revenge Abraham took on those responsible. What he did was so violent, that it forced his family to abandon him, which ultimately resulted in their death. One comment he makes brings up parallels to Rick’s situation:
They left because they were terrified to be around me. They saw me as no better than the ones I’d killed. Maybe they were right.
And this brings up an interesting idea. The Governor and his crew, and the recently-murdered bandits, they were awful people, but in battling them, did Rick and the other survivors have to become equally awful? I recall how The Governor’s rape of Michonne paled in comparison to the stomach-churning mutilation Michonne meted out on him for payback. This is an idea we’ll explore a bit further in a bit, but first let’s look at how Abraham acts while he recounts his story. He is ashamed, often tearful. Though our original impression of the character when he first shows up is that he’s a hardened killer and a potential threat to Rick, this scene shows just how much of his humanity, and in turn his vulnerability, remains. Contrast his demeanor with that of Rick’s, as he calmly, coldly recounts the various horrible things he’s done over the length of the series to protect those close to him. They seemed understandable actions at the time they were happening, but listed back to us here, we realize just how much more ruthless these deeds are than the ones that haunt and torment Abraham. It would seem that, despite what first impressions might suggest, it’s Rick that is the truly dangerous one in this pairing. Rick follows this up on page 73 with what I feel stands as a kind of keynote speech for what he has become:
You said some people… it was like a switch went off… one minute they were good people – then this whole thing started and poof – they’re monsters. Thing is, I don’t think that’s an entirely bad thing. You and me – our switches flipped. We’re doing whatever it takes – whatever it takes to survive and to help those around us survive. The people without the switch – those who weren’t able to go from law-abiding citizens to stone-cold killers… those are the ones shambling around out there – trying to eat us.
And here we see an open acknowledgement of this idea that’s been building, one that I feel has come to define the series. This is why I mentioned that What We Become is arguably my favorite volume of The Walking Dead to date, and that it is with these later volumes of the series that the true meat of the story becomes clear. The idea that it’s humans that are the real monsters, not the zombies, is hardly a revolutionary one. But the clever twist The Walking Dead has steadily put into place is establishing that the human monsters are no longer outside threats like The Governor, but these characters we’ve come to relate to and care about. Rick, Carl, and to varying degrees the other survivors, they’re the monsters now.
This is why I think The Walking Dead Compendium (a great package, by the way, highly recommended) chose a great point to end at with the conclusion of Volume 8. Because everything that has come after that tragic climax has been part of what is very much a new chapter in the history of this series. While everything that came in those first 8 volumes revolved around Rick’s struggle to rebuild some semblance of their old society, build a safe, stable environment for his family to live in, Volumes 9, 10 and 11 have revolved around Rick no longer striving to make life somewhat like the way it was before, but instead adapting to surviving as part of this violent new world of the dead, at any cost. The whole sequence with the group revisiting Rick’s hometown, stopping at familiar locations from Days Gone Bye such as the police station, feels, as Carl puts it, “Weird.” So much has changed since those early issues. It’s like Rick and co. don’t belong there anymore.
I think a perfect personification in this shift in the book’s identity is the character of Morgan Jones. Morgan first appeared back in Days Gone Bye as a kind of reflection of Rick: an honest, caring family man trying to protect his son. After that, Morgan is not seen again until page 82 of What We Become, when Rick returns to his old home. In the time since we last saw him, we discover that like Rick, he too has changed drastically. His son, Duane, was killed by zombies, and turned into a zombie himself. Rather than killing him, Morgan tied him up, and had been killing trespassers and feeding them to his son. And judging by his behavior throughout the rest of the volume, it becomes clear that Morgan is insane, much moreso than Rick and Michonne. Given how ruthless Rick has become, we might expect him to kill Morgan, or at least view him as a liability to the group’s safety, but instead he brings him back with the others, and lets him join the group. I think he makes this decision because, in a way, Morgan is still a reflection of Rick. He’s what Rick would become if he lost Carl.
Finally, we’ll turn our attention to Fear the Hunters, which as well as working as an enthrallingly perverse standalone story in its own right, also manages to build on the previously discussed revelations about our cast of survivors gradually turning into the true monsters of the book. For a series that is very much a longform narrative, it might seem odd talking about a particular graphic novel working as a standalone story, but taken on its own merits, Fear the Hunters is a brilliantly structured riff on the old “sting in the tail” story, almost like something from Tales from the Crypt. See, I remember the original marketing for this arc, back before it was released in single issue format. It was all about building up the mysterious Hunters as the big new threat in the book, trying to make us view them as highly dangerous, the next level of threat out there beyond the undead. And when we meet the Hunters – a group of cannibals – they are certainly not pleasant individuals. But what makes the story surprising is that these Hunters are essentially MacGuffins, a mere plot device used to help illustrate the true message of the story.
After 63 pages of build-up, we finally get to see the Hunters, and… well, they’re rather underwhelming. The big evil speech by ringleader Chris feels a little contrived, like he’s trying a bit too hard to be scary. And from there, their mystique quickly evaporates as the group is exposed as rather ineffective and even incompetent. Yes, they kidnap Dale and eat his one remaining leg. But Dale gets the last laugh, as he reveals that he has been bitten by a zombie, and on page 70, begins to hysterically taunt them about exactly what they’ve been eating:
I’m tainted meat! You’re eating tainted meat! TAINTED MEAT! TAINTED MEAT! HA! HA! HA! HA! TAINTED MEAT!!
And this is pretty much the last we see of smiling, calm, in control Chris. From here on out, the Hunters revert to steadily escalating degrees of panic and grasping attempts at damage control. Their attempts to scare the survivors and weaken their resolve feel pretty amateurish. Is it simply bad writing on Kirkman’s part? I don’t think so. I think it’s deliberate. We’re not just supposed to see the Hunters as not very dangerous. We’re supposed to see them as nowhere as dangerous as the survivors. When it comes to violence, the killer instinct… the Hunters aren’t even in the same league as our ensemble cast. As Rick says on page 88, “They’re f**king with the wrong people.”
And that brings me to Rick’s pivotal moment in Fear the Hunters. When Rick chooses to confront Chris, it’s almost hilarious how bush league Chris is in comparison, how hard he tries to be menacing, yet how less menacing he is than Rick, who for the most part is just quietly listening. And when the moment is right, Rick reveals that his meeting with the Hunters was in fact an ambush, with Andrea, Abraham and Michonne (and new arrival to the group, priest Gabriel, who remains a passive observer) surrounding the rival group and taking all their weapons. The fact that this is done efficiently, effortlessly, once again emphasizes how much more dangerous the survivors are. Chris’ pleas and promises to leave the survivors alone prove to be pointless, and across pages 112 and 113, we get an incredibly odd, unconventional double page spread, which is just a close up of Rick’s somber face as he says, “Hold him down.” I think giving this rather stationary, intimate moment a double page spread serves to underline the enormity of what is about to happen.
The next 6 pages are totally silent, and make up one of the most powerful sequences the series has ever featured. Across the first 2 pages, 114 and 115, we get a series of fragmented shots of puddles of blood, mangled body parts and used weapons. Then across pages 116 and 117, we get a shot in silhouette of the last (apparently disemboweled) corpse of the murdered Hunters being tossed on a fire, where the other bodies are already burning. And underneath it, a close-up of Gabriel’s terrified eyes, tears running down from them. Evidently, he had little idea of what kind of group he was joining. And finally, on pages 118 and 119, another double page spread, this time of Rick, Andrea, Abraham and Michonne (as well as the horrified Gabriel in the background), with the four of them appearing emotionless in response to the mass murder they’ve just committed.
This is not just a pivotal moment for Rick, but the group as a whole. This is what they have had to become to survive. They have all lost loved ones, and that has changed all of them. Fear the Hunters? No, but perhaps we need to start fearing the survivors.
The other pivotal development of Fear the Hunters is the death of Dale. After the funeral service, Rick touches on what role Dale played in the narrative on page 130:
Dale has me rethinking a lot of things. He resisted things that I deemed necessary. He wouldn’t allow himself to be completely changed by his surroundings. I thought that made him weak, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe he was strong to resist those urges. Maybe he was stronger than any of us to hold on to his humanity and refuse to let it go. What we’ve done to survive… sometimes I feel no better than the dead ones.
But on this note, this is why I think Dale had to die at the conclusion of Fear the Hunters. As mentioned earlier, up until this point, he had served as a kind of precursor for the path Rick’s life would take. But through all his suffering, Dale remained a decent, non-violent person, someone who avoided conflict where possible and clung onto the old standards and rules of a now-lost society. This new world didn’t change him. But it has changed Rick. He has gone past a point of no return, and so Dale can no longer stand as that marker for where Rick is headed. He’s headed down a far darker path. The whole group has. Dale would not have fit in amongst that double page spread of Rick, Andrea, Abraham and Michonne. The only function Dale could therefore serve was as a tether to the old ways, to that old world. And as sad as I was to see one of my favorite characters bite the dust, cutting that tether opens up some fascinating and disturbing plot possibilities for the remaining characters.
In the recent single issues that have since followed Fear the Hunters – soon to be collected in a graphic novel entitled Life Among Them – we see the survivors finding a new home amidst a community of what thus far seem to be ordinary, decent people. And the dynamic that seems to be building is that the survivors can no longer fit into a “normal” world like this, and perhaps the community has more to fear from the survivors than the survivors do from the community. Across Here We Remain, What We Become and Fear the Hunters, and soon into Life Among Them, we see this overarching story unfolding, of Rick, Carl and the others losing touch of their humanity, venturing past the point of no return and truly becoming the “walking dead” that the comic’s title refers to.
The AMC TV adaptation of The Walking Dead has been officially greenlit, with talented British actor Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes, and a season of 6 episodes is set to start in October. If the TV series stays true to what have emerged as the core themes of the comic, particularly over these three graphic novels, then I feel The Walking Dead will stand as a worthy companion piece to AMC’s other original dramas: Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Like those shows, The Walking Dead is a twisted examination of the American Dream, studying both the collapse of the family network and the moral decay of its protagonist. But The Walking Dead has zombies in it too.
Meeting #29
You demanded it, so here it is. As requested, the next series we’ll be taking a detailed look at is Dark Horse’s comic book continuation of the celebrated TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We’ll be looking at the first three graphic novels collecting what has been titled Season 8 of the Buffy saga, and using it as a case study in our discussion of what does and doesn’t work in adapting a TV series into a comic series.
RECOMMENDED READING:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home
Joss Whedon and Georges Jeanty, Paul Lee
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: No Future for You
Brian K. Vaughan, Joss Whedon and Georges Jeanty, Cliff Richards
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Wolves at the Gate
Drew Goddard, Joss Whedon and Georges Jeanty
Meeting #30
Villains United
Secret Six: Six Degrees of Devastation
Secret Six: Unhinged
The Walking Dead was first discussed back in Meeting #12: Comics and Horror, with me qualifying this quote from Jesse Schedeen, from the IGN article “The Walking Dead TV Wish List”, by saying it was too early to talk about its relevance based on just the first graphic novel, Days Gone Bye:
Carl is a young boy whose gradual loss of innocence is perhaps the great tragedy of Walking Dead. It could even be argued that he, not Rick, is the most vital character in the story.
With these later volumes, we really get a fuller sense of the point Jesse Schedeen was making. The previous graphic novel came to a catastrophic conclusion, with the loss of the longstanding status quo of the prison home setting, much of the ensemble cast being killed off while the rest are dispersed, and the shocking death of Rick’s wife Lori and their newborn baby. So as the ninth volume, Here We Remain, opens, the dynamics of the book have been stripped bare, with the ensemble set-up giving way to Rick and Carl alone, a father and son out in the wilderness. And as Rick passes into a deep state of unconsciousness from an infected gunshot wound (or a deliberate overdose of antibiotics and pain medication, depending on your perspective) Carl is left to defend him, becoming the sole active character for a large chunk of the graphic novel. And so, for the first time in the series, Carl becomes the primary character driving forward the narrative. With his speech to his unconscious father over pages 37 and 38, we see how Carl has forced to transform from an innocent child to a hardened, resourceful survivor:
I don’t think I need you anymore. I was scared at first when you got sick – but now, I’m not. I’m not scared at all. I don’t need you to protect me anymore. I’m strong… I’ve grown up, I think, a lot. I’m not an adult yet, but close. Close enough. I don’t think you could protect me anymore anyway… I’m not a kid anymore. I’m not. So I’ll be fine if you have to die. If you died I’d be okay. Everybody dies… it doesn’t matter. So do it. If you have to. I’ll be dine if you do. If you die, I’ll be okay. I will.
Of course, these cold words are in stark contrast to Adlard’s depiction of the visuals, with Carl slumping onto the floor and sobbing as he says them. And later on, we see him take his words back as we see that, for all his attempts at bravado, he is still a frightened child. And this seems to be a dominant theme of Here We Remain: the tension between Carl’s innocence and the corrupting forces of the world all around him. The violent killing of three zombies across pages 32-34 is all the more disturbing for the fact that it’s a young boy doing the killing. And on page 24, when he thinks Rick is dead, his first instinct is to grab his gun and prepare to shoot his own father in the head to prevent him coming back as a zombie. And the book ends with Rick giving his son the warning, “You are not safe,” making Carl promise to never let his guard down, and be wary of even the other survivors in the group – a story beat that is coming back into play with current issues of The Walking Dead, with Carl unable to adjust to being a regular kid who plays with other kids in the relative safety of the new community the group have found themselves in.
An important turning point in this arc of Carl’s comes on page 17 of Volume 11, Fear the Hunters, with Carl being the one to take the action none of the adults are able to go through with: killing Ben, a young child the same age as him, because of his burgeoning homicidal tendencies. Of course, the irony of this – and the previous debate over whether or not a child killer should be treated the same as any other killer – is that Carl may be developing homicidal tendencies of his own. In the pivotal “confessional” scene of Volume 10, What We Become (which I’ll discuss in more detail later) Carl admits to being glad that he shot Shane way back at the climax of Days Gone Bye, and wishes he could have killed The Governor and helped his dad kill the attackers from the night before. And on page 74, he tells Rick, “I have thoughts… I’m scared if you knew the thoughts I had sometimes that you’d hate me.” This world is not only robbing Carl of his childhood – it’s gradually turning him into a killer.
As I said back in my list of the top 10 comics of the 2000s – where this series ranked #2 – The Walking Dead is ultimately the story about a father and a son, their paths intertwined. And just as Carl descends into darkness in these three volumes, so too does Rick. To once again rehash a quote from my earlier analysis of The Walking Dead, let’s take another look at Robert Kirkman’s take on Rick’s character development, from the writer’s introduction to Days Gone Bye:
With THE WALKING DEAD I want to explore how people deal with extreme situations and how these events CHANGE them. I’m in this for the long haul. You guys are going to get to see Rick change and mature to the point that when you look back on this book you won’t even recognize him.
Sure enough, the Rick Grimes of volumes 9, 10 and 11 is a very different character from the hope-driven hero of those early chapters, to the point where he even looks barely recognizable. Each of these graphic novels contains one pivotal sequence in further advancing this unnerving transformation from relatable protagonist to something far more sinister, and I’d like to explore each sequence in turn to see what it says about Rick.
In Here We Remain, the key moment for Rick comes after the sequence where Carl temporarily took over as the book’s main character. Rick begins to take control of the situation, begins making decisions, and we think that things might be returning to some semblance of normality (if you can use the word in the middle of a zombie apocalypse) for Rick, in spite of his wife’s death. He starts making contact with a woman from another group of survivors over the phone, and from this we get the sense the plot is moving in one direction. But on page 62, we’re taken on a drastically different direction when the woman on the other side of the phone line says, “Rick… it’s me. It’s Lori.” And we realize that he has been imagining these phone conversations. But even with this realization, Rick takes the phone with him when he and Carl move on, picking up the receiver and placing it against his ear whenever he wants to hear his wife’s voice, even though he knows it’s in his head.
So, is Rick going crazy? Or is this a justifiable coping mechanism for dealing with his grief? Maybe it’s a little bit of both. On the sequence across pages 104 and 105, Rick and Michonne exchange stories, Rick telling Michonne about how he hears Lori on the phone after she confesses to him about talking to her dead boyfriend when she’s alone. “So we’re both crazy,” replies a smiling Michonne in her usual succinct style. Bearing this in mind, Rick’s angry defense of Sophia on page 98 for convincing herself that Maggie is her real mother takes on a new dimension: he seems hurt and angry at Carl calling her “crazy” and “stupid” for this behavior, because it’s like him saying that Rick is crazy and stupid.
As you’d imagine from a graphic novel titled Here We Remain, this idea of how people cope with bereavement is a dominant theme throughout the volume. We’ve talked about Carl and Rick’s reactions, and touched on Sophia’s. The very first page features Michonne forced to finish off her zombified lover Tyreese, shedding a tear for him on the following page. Later we see Maggie learning of the death of her father and brother. In one of the more poignant moments of the book, we see Dale awkwardly try to bring up the issue of Lori’s death to Rick, mentioning that he can sympathize due to the recent death of his own wife. And looking back at Dale’s role throughout the series, it seems to me like he was set up as a kind of precursor to the experiences Rick was destined to go through – in the obvious visual sense, he too lost a limb, but on a deeper level, all those conversations Dale had with Rick earlier in the series about how horrible it is to lose a wife in this way and how Rick should be thankful he hasn’t had to go through it are given a shade of tragic irony. But though they have had this bond of shared experience, in these volumes we’re focusing on for this meeting we see a growing void between the two men, with Dale highlighting the reasons behind it on page 77 of What We Become:
And why not? Is it Rick? You don’t want to leave him? A few weeks ago… I might have agreed with you. I used to think I knew him. Would have called him my friend. Now? That man is something different. He scares me.
Rick has changed. Dale sees it, and with the events of Volumes 10 and 11, we see it even clearer.
The sequence I wish to discuss from What We Become is not just a pivotal moment for this volume, or for Rick as a character. It’s arguably one of the pivotal moments in the history of the series. And for my money, What We Become could possibly stand as the finest volume the series has produced yet. To get an idea of what the sequence is, and how important it is, just look at the cover of the graphic novel. It features a blood-covered wildman, lunging out at us with a savage expression on his face, as if ready to kill. It might take us a few moments to recognize this as our hero, Rick Grimes.
The sequence in question is the aforementioned “confessional” scene, but I’m also including the scene that precedes it and prompts this discussion the following morning between Rick, Abraham and eventually Carl. Starting on page 58, we get a sequence where Rick, Carl and Abraham – separated from the rest of the group on a journey out to Rick’s old home – are ambushed by a group of bandits, who attempt to rape Carl. In response, Rick kills the bandit holding him at knife-point, not with a weapon, but by biting into his throat and ripping out his jugular with his teeth.
Not only is this killing horrifyingly savage, but it’s also familiar. Flip back to the start of What We Become. The opening is a highly effective scene, where what at first seems like a flashback to happier times when Rick, Carl and Lori were a family is suddenly revealed to be a nightmare, with Lori turning into a zombie and tearing Rick to shreds (tellingly, in his dream Rick doesn’t struggle, simply saying, “I deserve this. This is what I deserve.” as Lori munches on his intestines). But specifically, look at the first panel on page 5, with zombie Lori biting into Rick’s throat. Now compare that to the first panel of page 62, as Rick bites into the bandit’s throat. Not only does each panel depict the same violent action, but even the angling of the panels are practically the same, reinforcing the parallels between the two moments. I instantly recall Rick’s “We are the walking dead!” line from the conclusion of The Heart’s Desire. We originally think of the zombies as the monsters of The Walking Dead, but now we see Rick turning into a monster.
Continuing with this theme, I found page 64 to be incredibly powerful, and disturbing. In the first panel, Rick – drenched in the blood of the man he’s just killed, gore dripping from his mouth – barely even looks human. If it wasn’t for the anger in his eyes instead of a white void he could easily be mistaken for one of Adlard’s zombies. Greeted by the sight of this monstrosity, the last remaining bandit drops his weapon, gives up Carl, and flees. But Rick chases after him, hunting him down, not stopping until he catches up with the would-be rapist, who is now pleading for his life. But Rick closes in on him with the knife, and makes the kill. We don’t see Rick dispatching this man (though the repeated "SHUKK! SHUKK" sound effect tells us all we need to know) and it’s all the more effective for taking place off-panel. What we see instead of the murder manages to be even more unsettling. For the last 3 panels of page 64, we see Abraham holding Carl, trying to keep him from seeing the brutality his father is capable of. But as we zoom in on the shot, we see Carl not only turning around to look, but doing so with what seems to be an expression of grim approval.
And this leads into the confessional scene. An early exchange between Abraham and Rick tells us a whole lot about what stage Rick has now reached as a character. Abraham remarks that, “You’re never the same. Not after what you did.” And in reply, Rick simply states, “You can fake it.” These three volumes we’re studying for this meeting are full of references by various characters about seeing glimmers of “the old Rick”, with his diplomatic leadership and can-do spirit. But this tells us what these glimmers are. He’s faking it. He’s acting like he thinks he would have acted if he hadn’t been changed.
From here, Abraham goes into a story about his wife and daughter being raped while his son was forced to watch, and the vicious revenge Abraham took on those responsible. What he did was so violent, that it forced his family to abandon him, which ultimately resulted in their death. One comment he makes brings up parallels to Rick’s situation:
They left because they were terrified to be around me. They saw me as no better than the ones I’d killed. Maybe they were right.
And this brings up an interesting idea. The Governor and his crew, and the recently-murdered bandits, they were awful people, but in battling them, did Rick and the other survivors have to become equally awful? I recall how The Governor’s rape of Michonne paled in comparison to the stomach-churning mutilation Michonne meted out on him for payback. This is an idea we’ll explore a bit further in a bit, but first let’s look at how Abraham acts while he recounts his story. He is ashamed, often tearful. Though our original impression of the character when he first shows up is that he’s a hardened killer and a potential threat to Rick, this scene shows just how much of his humanity, and in turn his vulnerability, remains. Contrast his demeanor with that of Rick’s, as he calmly, coldly recounts the various horrible things he’s done over the length of the series to protect those close to him. They seemed understandable actions at the time they were happening, but listed back to us here, we realize just how much more ruthless these deeds are than the ones that haunt and torment Abraham. It would seem that, despite what first impressions might suggest, it’s Rick that is the truly dangerous one in this pairing. Rick follows this up on page 73 with what I feel stands as a kind of keynote speech for what he has become:
You said some people… it was like a switch went off… one minute they were good people – then this whole thing started and poof – they’re monsters. Thing is, I don’t think that’s an entirely bad thing. You and me – our switches flipped. We’re doing whatever it takes – whatever it takes to survive and to help those around us survive. The people without the switch – those who weren’t able to go from law-abiding citizens to stone-cold killers… those are the ones shambling around out there – trying to eat us.
And here we see an open acknowledgement of this idea that’s been building, one that I feel has come to define the series. This is why I mentioned that What We Become is arguably my favorite volume of The Walking Dead to date, and that it is with these later volumes of the series that the true meat of the story becomes clear. The idea that it’s humans that are the real monsters, not the zombies, is hardly a revolutionary one. But the clever twist The Walking Dead has steadily put into place is establishing that the human monsters are no longer outside threats like The Governor, but these characters we’ve come to relate to and care about. Rick, Carl, and to varying degrees the other survivors, they’re the monsters now.
This is why I think The Walking Dead Compendium (a great package, by the way, highly recommended) chose a great point to end at with the conclusion of Volume 8. Because everything that has come after that tragic climax has been part of what is very much a new chapter in the history of this series. While everything that came in those first 8 volumes revolved around Rick’s struggle to rebuild some semblance of their old society, build a safe, stable environment for his family to live in, Volumes 9, 10 and 11 have revolved around Rick no longer striving to make life somewhat like the way it was before, but instead adapting to surviving as part of this violent new world of the dead, at any cost. The whole sequence with the group revisiting Rick’s hometown, stopping at familiar locations from Days Gone Bye such as the police station, feels, as Carl puts it, “Weird.” So much has changed since those early issues. It’s like Rick and co. don’t belong there anymore.
I think a perfect personification in this shift in the book’s identity is the character of Morgan Jones. Morgan first appeared back in Days Gone Bye as a kind of reflection of Rick: an honest, caring family man trying to protect his son. After that, Morgan is not seen again until page 82 of What We Become, when Rick returns to his old home. In the time since we last saw him, we discover that like Rick, he too has changed drastically. His son, Duane, was killed by zombies, and turned into a zombie himself. Rather than killing him, Morgan tied him up, and had been killing trespassers and feeding them to his son. And judging by his behavior throughout the rest of the volume, it becomes clear that Morgan is insane, much moreso than Rick and Michonne. Given how ruthless Rick has become, we might expect him to kill Morgan, or at least view him as a liability to the group’s safety, but instead he brings him back with the others, and lets him join the group. I think he makes this decision because, in a way, Morgan is still a reflection of Rick. He’s what Rick would become if he lost Carl.
Finally, we’ll turn our attention to Fear the Hunters, which as well as working as an enthrallingly perverse standalone story in its own right, also manages to build on the previously discussed revelations about our cast of survivors gradually turning into the true monsters of the book. For a series that is very much a longform narrative, it might seem odd talking about a particular graphic novel working as a standalone story, but taken on its own merits, Fear the Hunters is a brilliantly structured riff on the old “sting in the tail” story, almost like something from Tales from the Crypt. See, I remember the original marketing for this arc, back before it was released in single issue format. It was all about building up the mysterious Hunters as the big new threat in the book, trying to make us view them as highly dangerous, the next level of threat out there beyond the undead. And when we meet the Hunters – a group of cannibals – they are certainly not pleasant individuals. But what makes the story surprising is that these Hunters are essentially MacGuffins, a mere plot device used to help illustrate the true message of the story.
After 63 pages of build-up, we finally get to see the Hunters, and… well, they’re rather underwhelming. The big evil speech by ringleader Chris feels a little contrived, like he’s trying a bit too hard to be scary. And from there, their mystique quickly evaporates as the group is exposed as rather ineffective and even incompetent. Yes, they kidnap Dale and eat his one remaining leg. But Dale gets the last laugh, as he reveals that he has been bitten by a zombie, and on page 70, begins to hysterically taunt them about exactly what they’ve been eating:
I’m tainted meat! You’re eating tainted meat! TAINTED MEAT! TAINTED MEAT! HA! HA! HA! HA! TAINTED MEAT!!
And this is pretty much the last we see of smiling, calm, in control Chris. From here on out, the Hunters revert to steadily escalating degrees of panic and grasping attempts at damage control. Their attempts to scare the survivors and weaken their resolve feel pretty amateurish. Is it simply bad writing on Kirkman’s part? I don’t think so. I think it’s deliberate. We’re not just supposed to see the Hunters as not very dangerous. We’re supposed to see them as nowhere as dangerous as the survivors. When it comes to violence, the killer instinct… the Hunters aren’t even in the same league as our ensemble cast. As Rick says on page 88, “They’re f**king with the wrong people.”
And that brings me to Rick’s pivotal moment in Fear the Hunters. When Rick chooses to confront Chris, it’s almost hilarious how bush league Chris is in comparison, how hard he tries to be menacing, yet how less menacing he is than Rick, who for the most part is just quietly listening. And when the moment is right, Rick reveals that his meeting with the Hunters was in fact an ambush, with Andrea, Abraham and Michonne (and new arrival to the group, priest Gabriel, who remains a passive observer) surrounding the rival group and taking all their weapons. The fact that this is done efficiently, effortlessly, once again emphasizes how much more dangerous the survivors are. Chris’ pleas and promises to leave the survivors alone prove to be pointless, and across pages 112 and 113, we get an incredibly odd, unconventional double page spread, which is just a close up of Rick’s somber face as he says, “Hold him down.” I think giving this rather stationary, intimate moment a double page spread serves to underline the enormity of what is about to happen.
The next 6 pages are totally silent, and make up one of the most powerful sequences the series has ever featured. Across the first 2 pages, 114 and 115, we get a series of fragmented shots of puddles of blood, mangled body parts and used weapons. Then across pages 116 and 117, we get a shot in silhouette of the last (apparently disemboweled) corpse of the murdered Hunters being tossed on a fire, where the other bodies are already burning. And underneath it, a close-up of Gabriel’s terrified eyes, tears running down from them. Evidently, he had little idea of what kind of group he was joining. And finally, on pages 118 and 119, another double page spread, this time of Rick, Andrea, Abraham and Michonne (as well as the horrified Gabriel in the background), with the four of them appearing emotionless in response to the mass murder they’ve just committed.
This is not just a pivotal moment for Rick, but the group as a whole. This is what they have had to become to survive. They have all lost loved ones, and that has changed all of them. Fear the Hunters? No, but perhaps we need to start fearing the survivors.
The other pivotal development of Fear the Hunters is the death of Dale. After the funeral service, Rick touches on what role Dale played in the narrative on page 130:
Dale has me rethinking a lot of things. He resisted things that I deemed necessary. He wouldn’t allow himself to be completely changed by his surroundings. I thought that made him weak, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe he was strong to resist those urges. Maybe he was stronger than any of us to hold on to his humanity and refuse to let it go. What we’ve done to survive… sometimes I feel no better than the dead ones.
But on this note, this is why I think Dale had to die at the conclusion of Fear the Hunters. As mentioned earlier, up until this point, he had served as a kind of precursor for the path Rick’s life would take. But through all his suffering, Dale remained a decent, non-violent person, someone who avoided conflict where possible and clung onto the old standards and rules of a now-lost society. This new world didn’t change him. But it has changed Rick. He has gone past a point of no return, and so Dale can no longer stand as that marker for where Rick is headed. He’s headed down a far darker path. The whole group has. Dale would not have fit in amongst that double page spread of Rick, Andrea, Abraham and Michonne. The only function Dale could therefore serve was as a tether to the old ways, to that old world. And as sad as I was to see one of my favorite characters bite the dust, cutting that tether opens up some fascinating and disturbing plot possibilities for the remaining characters.
In the recent single issues that have since followed Fear the Hunters – soon to be collected in a graphic novel entitled Life Among Them – we see the survivors finding a new home amidst a community of what thus far seem to be ordinary, decent people. And the dynamic that seems to be building is that the survivors can no longer fit into a “normal” world like this, and perhaps the community has more to fear from the survivors than the survivors do from the community. Across Here We Remain, What We Become and Fear the Hunters, and soon into Life Among Them, we see this overarching story unfolding, of Rick, Carl and the others losing touch of their humanity, venturing past the point of no return and truly becoming the “walking dead” that the comic’s title refers to.
The AMC TV adaptation of The Walking Dead has been officially greenlit, with talented British actor Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes, and a season of 6 episodes is set to start in October. If the TV series stays true to what have emerged as the core themes of the comic, particularly over these three graphic novels, then I feel The Walking Dead will stand as a worthy companion piece to AMC’s other original dramas: Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Like those shows, The Walking Dead is a twisted examination of the American Dream, studying both the collapse of the family network and the moral decay of its protagonist. But The Walking Dead has zombies in it too.
Meeting #29
You demanded it, so here it is. As requested, the next series we’ll be taking a detailed look at is Dark Horse’s comic book continuation of the celebrated TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We’ll be looking at the first three graphic novels collecting what has been titled Season 8 of the Buffy saga, and using it as a case study in our discussion of what does and doesn’t work in adapting a TV series into a comic series.
RECOMMENDED READING:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home
Joss Whedon and Georges Jeanty, Paul Lee
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: No Future for You
Brian K. Vaughan, Joss Whedon and Georges Jeanty, Cliff Richards
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Wolves at the Gate
Drew Goddard, Joss Whedon and Georges Jeanty
Meeting #30
Villains United
Secret Six: Six Degrees of Devastation
Secret Six: Unhinged