We are getting a 10th season and three movies dude so more adaptions of the walking dead.
We are getting a 10th season and three movies dude so more adaptions of the walking dead.
I think the idea is that we have been spending years and years watching society come back, and specifically Rick guide and shape society coming back. Each group, each community Rick encountered and joined and lead were the steps on the path you feel was skipped. Hell, readers were *already* giving him nonstop shit about his constant focus on society-building over dumb zombie action.
I think Kirkman saw the Commonwealth as that final group Rick encounters, that last stepping stone to reach the society they've all been looking for and trying to achieve. Of course it took Rick to "lead" this group too and change it to his own vision, and connect it with all of his other groups in order to reach that stable society they all wanted. But they were almost there. The leader of the commonwealth wasn't The Governor or Negan. With Rick's version of the commonwealth, plus the other communities, plus Eugene's railroad project I believe the place Kirkman took us was far along enough to justify the ending.
Now I agree with you that ideally there should have been more. Stuff got glossed over or set aside. I would've liked to have seen 12-24 more issues to further flesh all this out, and I'm betting Kirkman did have content for at least 6-12 more issues, but he didn't have content for 48 more issues, and (hilariously) rather than orphaning the last Compendium, he cut things a smidgen short.
I felt like I would have enjoyed the original ending he had planned, just not on the issue he had planned it. I enjoy the idea of a bleak, nihilistic ending where the living dead win; seems more keeping with the horror legacy of Romero's series, like maybe how Day of the Dead ends with them simply moving on an island and not worrying about saving humanity or understanding the plague. And even after reading the entire series since the beginning I don't buy all the post-mortem Rick praise, seemed pretty heavy handed and hollow.
The only problem with this is that it really ends the entire TWD universe once & for all, right?
With this ending he could revisit & jumpstart the entire thing with a new cast of characters/location reacting to a new walker-infection. Maybe even do a story anthology series with different writers/artists. Many years passed by from 192-193. Lot of potential for future stories still with this ending.
Remember, he did say that, Neagan lives, yes?
I'm fine with it ending here.
If they did pick up a different story during that time lapse it kind of loses the traditional Walking Dead narrative of following survivors right from the beginning of the zombie apocalypse. I remember Kirkman saying he was disappointed when a Romero Living Dead movie ended because he wanted to know what happen to the survivors after the end credits. He wanted to keep following them to their actual end; so it kind of makes sense for the comic series to end the way it did with Rick passing. I really wouldn't be interested in a spin-off that took place in the middle of the "trials"; I'm fine with definitive endings, I just wish it ended on more of a dire, non-optimistic note, something more keeping with Romero's movies and the horror traditions at large; the idea that society is pretty much doomed to failure in the wake of the living dead, which was how Kirk was originally going to end it. If they do a spin-off comic series about zombies just call it something else....
Last edited by KROENEN; 07-11-2019 at 09:19 AM.
Maybe focus on self aware zombies like zombiland saga?
I don't remember exactly when I started reading Walking Dead, but it must have been sometime during 2010 or early 2011. One of the guys at my comic shop told me I should try it out, and it was when they were doing the Image #1's for a buck, so what did I have to lose. I was hooked after that first issue and I started getting the collected volumes from the library. Once I ran out of the volumes at the library, I would buy 2 or 3 volumes at a time when they were on sale. I started buying it monthly with A Larger World, issue 93 and never stopped until 193. When I think back over everything that happened to Rick and Carl and all the others, it was an amazing roller coaster ride. Shock and horror followed by periods of peace and boredom followed by a bigger shock and the "bad guys", followed by more horror and unrest and then relative peace and boredom. Just like real life.
Unlike the Marvel comics I read, the consequences in this book were real. The losses were real and the deaths stuck. Rick lost his hand. Carl his eye. Lori and Judith killed brutally. Tyreese beheaded. Ezekiel beheaded. Rosita beheaded. Lots of beheadings, in retrospect. The cannibals. The Governor's twisted violence. Glenn's horrific murder followed by Negan's brutal rule and defeat and imprisonment and redemption(?). The Whisperer's effed up ways. And the festering from within which was sometimes worse than the actual bad guys. It was what got Shane and Dwight killed, and what ultimately killed Rick. The actual walking dead had nothing on the human's brutality towards their fellow humans.
But there was beauty and hope as well. I thought Andrea's death was handled respectfully. Rick sparing Negan ushering in a new era of order. I thought Michonne reuniting with Elodie was sweet. I loved the late addition of Princess (I'll maybe miss her potential future stories the most!) and I hope we meet her on the show (I'm a little behind, on season 9 so they may have already for all I know.). The loving relationships of Michonne & Ezekiel, Maggie & Glenn, Rick & Andrea, Jesus & Aaron, Magna & Yumiko.
My only complaint, is as the series went on, I couldn't connect with the growing cast of characters. I wish he'd kept the cast a little tighter. He'd introduce a new character, and then they'd be relegated to the background, and I had a hard time remembering who was who. To be honest, I had to scratch my head on who Earl was in the final issue, and why he was significant.
I, for one, loved the ending. I love that it was not a happy ending per se, but a realistic ending. Rick's death was unexpected and upsetting, but Carl surviving (and thriving) is what Rick fought for the entire series. So I guess in that respect, it really was a happy ending. I thought he touched on each main character just enough. Princess and Mercer together was a nice surprise. Carl and Sophia together was exquisite. Herschel being an a-hole was a bummer, but I liked his explanation to Carl towards the end of the book. Eugene still being Eugene was perfect. Michonne and Maggie running things, seemed appropriate. Magna & Yumiko and Jesus & Aaron seem to still be together and happy. Seeing Pamela visiting Sebastian felt like closure. Even Lydia had a nice wrap up to her story. I guess I would have liked a substantial Negan scene...but his ending felt somehow right too.
I'm also glad Kirkman went out on his own terms. There were times the book felt stale, but then it would get interesting again. I think he just wanted to stop before it felt permanently stale. I respect that. I read the entire run of Invincible. I've been reading Oblivion Song since it debuted and I'm really enjoying that. I started Outcast, but fell off after a year and a half. I may go back and finish it at some point. So, without really trying, I'm kind of a Kirkman fan, I guess. I enjoy his storytelling, and I will miss this world and these characters. Yes, we still have the shows and I enjoy them, but I'm a bigger TWD comic fan than I am a show fan. And with so many of the main comic characters gone from the show, it's starting to feel like something else entirely.
Anyway, I felt like I had to write something about the end of The Walking Dead, so I'm happy to have this forum to do so. The arc of the entire story is mind-blowing. To watch society completely broken down and see what it took to build it up again, I wonder if Kirkman isn't some kind of soothsayer. It almost feels like, with the way our society is now, after some sort of apocalypse, it could go exactly the way Kirkman wrote it. I hope not, but in the end, humanity does come together to build a new livable society, and maybe something even a little better than before.
Last edited by stwaz; 08-03-2019 at 11:32 AM.
Same for me, exactly. I liked Rick and everything, but turning him into a messiah type and then having society rebuilt was really not in keeping with the tone of the entire series. This felt like, dare I say, fan fiction. It was almost the same concept as Day of the Dead - but without any of the desperation or despair elements. Just kind of hollow as an ending to this epic series.
Every day is a gift, not a given right.
Finally caught up.
Ended like a corny kids film for me - could have said something thought provoking on human but just meandered towards some bland conclusions.
I feel like the Walking Dead ended up being the thematic opposite of the Living Dead movies. Day of the Dead embraced an almost nihilistic acceptance that society would not be rebuilt and that they would never understand the plague or overcome the dead, that whatever they did it would make little difference; it stood completely against the 80's optimism of everyone is special and could change the world. The Walking Dead is kind of saying it just takes one man to turn it all around no matter how desperate everything seems. It's overly optimistic, almost to the point where it ceases being about horror and more about leaving everyone with the "feel goods" at the end. The more I think about it the more I really dislike it...
Its optimistic in a really odd way tho - we see a society that's gone from what was basically a commune under Rick to a capitalist society with money, private property, and presumably taxes to pay for railroad and a world where you get preferential treatment from law if you know right people. That could have been presented as humanity slipping back into pre apocalyptic status quo but instead was seen as a sign of hope even when at certain points in story (esp. with Michonne) that pre apocalyptic world was a time when people never truly lived.
It was a woolly fluffed ending for me. A big point could have been made but was avoided
I agree, part of what made Romero's movies compelling to me was the idea that society was basically doomed to fail; doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over. The Living Dead were the new status quo, not something to be overcome, but rather the new accepted state of the world.