Walking Dead 17: it's grim

This week saw the publication of the seventeenth Walking Dead collection, Something to Fear. Robert Kirkman really is the absolute master of holding out a tiny, frayed thread of hope and then snatching it away from you. For years I've read these books, watching this vivid, gripping world turn to ruin and cruelty and entropy; cheered for the small, bright moments; dared to hope that things were going to improve, the dark give way to dawn.

Yeah, like that's going to happen. If you're following the TV show, you'll have met the Governor, who is a king-hell villain of the first water.

He's not a patch on the bad guys in volume 17.

Further, deponent sayeth not.

The Walking Dead Vol 17: Something to Fear

Previous volumes

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: books • Comics • happy mutants • horror • Reviews • science fiction

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I read this on the train home from work, and just as I got to my stop, read *that* moment.
I haven’t had a piece of fiction take me so unaware and make me so physically queasy since reading Palahniuk’s “Guts” under similar circumstances.
semiotix

I realize any discussion of the comic is potentially spoiler-tastic for the show, and so I’ll keep my nose out of this thread except to ask one question for people who know both: roughly where in the comics series has the show caught up to? I.e., on a scale of Vol. 1 to Vol. 17.

I know they’re not perfectly in sync, but if anyone has a rough estimate, I’d appreciate it.
- http://newnumber6.livejournal.com Peter
  
  Probably somewhere between 7 and 8. The last new episode was called “Made To Suffer” and that’s the title of the 8th TPB (although it doesn’t neatly match up with the start of that arc or anything in it)
- nvlady
  
  They also hunker down in the prison for a while in the comic, like months, and judging by the speed of the show, I dont think that’s gonna happen.
- GregS
  
  In the comics, the story arc with the governor ends at the end of Vol. 8. The comic and the TV show are so different that it’s hard to come up with an exact comparison, but since in the comics Rick’s group discovers Woodbury in Vol 5 I’d say that’s approximately where the show has caught up to.
nvlady

Im waiting for the next issue of the comic coming out next week and I gotta say, I loath this new villan. Not a loathe like, “Oh boy! This is going to be fun!” but an, “oh gawd, I HATE this type of villain because they are so cardboard.” An extremely overly bombastic, playing milquetoast psychological games (“Here Rick, hold the bat I used to kill one of yours in front of your eyes!”), to a glaring over the top weakness that he thinks he does not have. He’s silly and not even up to being called a dictator let alone a villain.

I find him the weakest villain yet.
Againagain

(Ever so slightly spoilerly)

Though I should know better after 17 freaking volumes, I was so hooked onto that “tiny, frayed thread of hope” that this last volume broke my heart. It’s been a few days and I still feel like I’ve lost an old friend.
- nvlady
  
  I know! You kind of expected it though, after that news. But still. It was harsh. Though, the show version of that character is much better than the comic version.
gwailo_joe

I so want to *spoilspoilspoil* my guts out on this one…but I can’t bring myself to be the ‘Vader is Lukes Father!’ guy walking out the theatre…so

FUCKFUCKFUCK why do the good die whilst the evil and/or uninteresting keep breathing? Why is Rick such a mercurial leader? Why do people follow those that often do not act in the best interests of the follower?

And WHY do you split up the team at the worst possible time?!? ’Let’s follow the gimpy maniac who hears voices and makes terrible decisions 50% of the time…because he’s so good at killing people!’

Terrified morons…besides the five or so characters that are worth a damn: Zombies take the rest for all I care.

And the new ‘bad guy’ with his colloquial gab and extraneous zippers: how the hell can such a one as THAT gain the loyalty of so many?

Even if Rick plucks out an eyeball and literally skull-fucks that dude as Michonne pierces his perineum To The Hilt…

It wont be nearly enough.