I have always thought of The Walking Dead as a very important comic book. Not because of the hugely successful TV series that it spawned, but because through its high profile, it helps to validate comic books as a deep and varied form of literature. When people think of comics, they think of superhero comics - capes and cowls and doomsday weapons in eyeball-zinging technicolor. But much like conventional novels, graphic literature comes in all different genres, and TWD is the biggest shop window we have for comics that aren't "comics".
We are now up to issue 170 in Image Comics' flagship publication, no reboots or new #1s here. Writing is as always by Robert Kirkman, and art is supplied by Charlie Adlard, Stefano Guadiano, and Cliff Rathburn. As far as I know it has been more or less this same team since day one, which along with Kirkman's other long-running book, the excellent Invincible (shortly coming to an end by the way, get it while the getting's good), highlights what an achievement in storytelling this series is. If you put the comics together in trade paperback form they merge seamlessly into an epic, one which I think we will only truly appreciate when it is finished.
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| "I don't care if it's a zombie apocalypse. We're men, and men pee in the woods. Now watch my back." |
This issue is very much a moving-on point in the story, where new storylines are seeded and serve to rekindle our interest in the characters and what is happening in the world which, all this time later, still hasn't revealed how all this got started. The nice thing about these new storylines is that some of them hark back to early issues and remind us of the situations that made this book so popular, and it's very clever writing on Kirkman's part to do that kind of throwback while still moving the story forward. The rich black and white artwork is as atmospheric as ever, and serves to remind at all times that no matter how happy the situation, the world they live in is truly terrible and unforgiving.
I really liked this issue, with some of the long-running story arcs that have been tied up in the last 2 issues, it had started to feel like watching a soap - you tune in just to check in on your favourite characters as much as for anything else. But here I found my interest, and concern for the safety of the characters, heightened to a level it had not been at with this book for a few months now. This with a few back issues would be a decent place to jump on with The Walking Dead, and you won't be sorry you did.
4 / 5
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