Right There On The Shelf: The Walking Dead #89 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review may contain spoilers. Such as the fact that zombies have taken over the world. Tread lightly.

There’s been a lot of handwringing in the comics / zombie community (Which is a small community, but they throw great parties… except at the end your dick rots off. And not because of the zombie thing. But I digress.) about how AMC fired The Walking Dead showrunner Frank Darabont – about a week after he hyped season two at SDCC, no less – and how that and threatened budget cuts meant that the The Walking Dead was doomed.

And as someone who watched that show from the first episode and who bought season one on Blu-Ray the day it came out, allow me to go on record to say: who gives a shit?

Sure, the show is fun, and anything that puts comic stories in front of Joe Blow can only be good for the industry (Ghost Rider movies excepted), but the show was only ever second fiddle to Robert Kirkman’s original comic book. And if you’ve ever seen the show and you haven’t checked out the comic book? Well, that’s stupid. And you’re stupid for not doing it.

That said, The Walking Dead #89 is not the place for a new reader to jump in. Kirkman generally writes in six-issue story arcs (All the better for collecting into trade paperbacks), and we’re at part five here. So if you don’t already know what’s going on, I have to reluctantly recommend that you don’t buy this book… which is a shame, because it’s the best issue in a while. Which is saying something, because they’re almost all good.

If you do choose this issue as a jumping-on point, the plot is pretty simple: Rick and his crew have joined (And pretty much co-opted) a community of survivors in a defensible position against the zombies. Prior resident Nicholas is inciting a rebellion against Rick’s leadership. That’s pretty much the whole story… and yet there’s so much going on here that a two-sentence plot summary does Kirkman’s writing a disservice.

I’ve complained a couple of times in the past week about comic books that go out of their way to include subtext and symbolism, and have often done it poorly. This story… well shit. I’ve read it three times, and the first time I was convinced it was a parable about America’s two party system – after all, the line, “If you’re not with me, you’re with THEM!” seemed a little on the nose.

The second time through I decided it was a workplace story – you’ve got a guy rebelling against the boss, and maybe he has a point, but he clearly doesn’t know the reasoning behind all the boss’s decisions, and even if he did, open rebellion against the man who feeds your family is a questionable choice with an obvious conclusion.

The third time I decided it was a workplace revenge story about The Walking Dead show: this new motherfucker thinks he can waltz in, question the decisions that brought everyone here, and we just won’t do anything about it?

And at this point, I’m convinced that the fourth time I read it, I will think it is about ponies. There’s that much going on in this issue, and it’s a testament to Kirkman’s writing that I can see all those things, while none of them get in the way of the story, which is electric and ends on a cliffhanger and a closing line that must be making Tony Daniel weep with frustration.

When it comes to the art, well, Charlie Adlard’s style is so ingrained with The Walking Dead that I feel I almost don’t have to mention it. The only issue I have with his style is that sometimes he draws characters similarly enough that it can be hard to tell them apart, but frankly, any artist juggling a cast as large as The Walking Dead’s would probably have the same issue. Regardless: where the Walking Dead TV show is being budget-bled to cut down on special effects zombie shots?

Thanks to Adlard, Kirkman doesn’t have that problem.

Where the rubber hits the road, The Walking Dead #89 is a great issue of a great book. The second season of the AMC show starts on October 16th at 9 p.m. eastern time. The Walking Dead comic book starts, well, right fucking now. Go see it. Stop being stupid.