The seminal Image reaches a new high and a new low as the 100th issue hits stands this week, variants and all. Who lives? Who dies? What is Lucille? Who will survive, and what will be left of them? Does Daryl show up?
For spoilers like that, look elsewhere. For a spoiler-free review of the issue, read on.
Written by Robert Kirkman
Illustrated by Charlie Adlard“SOMETHING TO FEAR” CONTINUES!
This extra-sized chapter contains one of the darkest moments in Rick Grimes’ life, and one of the most violent and brutal things to happen within the pages of this series. 100 issues later, this series remains just as relentless as the debut issue. Do not miss the monumental 100th issue of THE WALKING DEAD!
For one hundred issues, “The Walking Dead” has been one of the single most bleak comics on the stand. The long-running zombie odyssey has long since had a mission statement that there are few heroes and villains in their world, only survivors and obstacles (and zombies, but that’s neither here nor there, really). That’s the greatest trick the devil ever pulled with “The Walking Dead”; you’re suckered into thinking you’re going to get a horror book filled with zombies and related mayhem like your average horror flick, but the truth is you’re getting something much, much worse.
No, the shuffling brain-dead walkers the title ostensibly derives from is little more than bait on a hook. The book is truly a character study amidst an analysis of society. Yeah, the zombies are nice and all, and they certainly know how to pop up during the worst moments, but you end up reading the book to see what’s going to happen next to the people as opposed to just who is going to get bit. That’s all that matters: Who are the people left in the post-zombie world? What will they do to survive? When all society breaks and we’re left without iPhones and creature comforts, what will we do? And as Rick and co. built a new society with both carrot and stick in the past few arcs, we began to grow comfortable. Hope was delivered.
For ninety-nine issues, “The Walking Dead” has offered a theoretical answer to this one single question. With just one issue, Kirkman, Adlard and everyone associated with the book look you in the eye and breathe two words: “We’re fucked.”
As “The Walking Dead” #100 goes by, the noticeable detail is that zombies only factor in for about a panel. It stands out as different from past landmark issues in the series; issue #50, for example, still focused on zombies as the primary antagonist in the wake of the Prison story, set in a lonely world with not much to believe in. Issue #75 featured a human “villain,” but even then despite the bonus “landmark issue” material, the stakes were not raised conceivably as high. Yet with issue #100, there is no impending zombie threat. There is only Rick and the man on the other side of the field as the two alpha males stare each other down and we watch with baited breath for who takes down who first. The greatest villains of “the Walking Dead” have always been other people, and that statement is not something to take lightly.
Truth be told, though, that’s really what makes the book so great. We don’t need another zombie book, because there are new books just like it popping up from publishers big and small everyday. Zombies have become trendy, and our culture reflects that. “The Walking Dead” manages to escape that crutch, however, and it does it so well. Sometimes, to tell a thousand words, all you need is a single picture; sometimes two men sitting in a room and talking for an hour and a half can be more enthralling than a three-hour special effect-laden blockbuster summer movie. “The Walking Dead” #100 is that picture, it is those two men in a room, and damn it all if Kirkman and Adlard don’t nail the landing.
Without mincing words too much, it should be said upfront that this issue makes a certain promise and it delivers. Given that it is the hundredth issue of the landmark horror ongoing, we all expect something huge to happen and for things to be forever different going forward. That’s a tough promise to make to fans who have been reading a book for one hundred issues, especially after jaw-dropping stories like the Prison and the Governor and all of that entailed (which, to be truthful, nothing has really measured up to in the series since), but it is a challenge well met.
Continued belowOf course, that’s all because the team behind the book have a strong understanding of what they’re delivering. They know the characters inside and out, and where the heart of the book truly lies. They know the landscape, that the night is dark and full off terrors, and they know where those terrors hide. Kirkman’s writing is on fire with this issue, delivering a monologue that perhaps in any other situation or book would seem trite and ridiculous with the amount of profanity; here, it’s a foreboding piece that reaches its crescendo in a horrible way. Adlard’s art is broody, foreboding, dark and gloomy; turning the page isn’t simply what you do to keep reading, but rather a nervous action as you anticipate just what he’s going to show you next. Kirkman and Adlard have been working together for 94 issues now, and the team is still going strong in the best ways possible.
And, while the review began by promising to avoid spoilers, one thing can be said: if you’ve ever cared about the cast of the book, you’ll feel the effects of the issue in the pit of your stomach. It stings.
Now, to be fair, “The Walking Dead” #100 is far from a perfect comic by any means. It’s a great issue of the book, and will assuredly be a highlight of the year (top ten, assuredly), but there are a few obvious flaws — the first and foremost of which, if said, would be spoiling the book’s final moments. It’s a reasonably telegraphed bit that anyone familiar with Kirkman’s habits and certain tropes can see coming. There is certainly a level of predictability with the issue that comes with having a comic run for this long in a genre with a thousand tropes. There are only so many walls that can conceivably be broken on that front. And yet, the fact that the book’s apex is still ultimately painful, the fact that your mind can “solve the mystery” and your heart still hurts when all is said and done? That’s where the book shines.
“The Walking Dead” is a tough book. Reading it is hard, because with issues like this it is hard to be in a great mood afterwards. Writing about it is hard too, which is why “The Walking Dead Corollary” exists at Multiversity when one of us doesn’t want to write about something because it’s difficult. After a string of issues that left us as readers complacent and perhaps even a bit defiant when death wasn’t lurking around every corner, it’s nice to know that Kirkman and Adlard can still sufficiently beat us over the head to remind us exactly where we are, and why we keep coming back month after month.
Final Verdict: 9.0 – Buy
