Impending Doom: The Walking Dead #94 Review

Well, Andrea’s dead.

Oh, not literally; at the end of The Walking Dead #94, she’s still walking around, hovering around Rick now that they’ve hooked up, vowing that she won’t leave his side and leaving him filled with apprehension for her safety and us filled a feeling that Andrea must have a hair trigger to be this involved with a man with no dominantly coordinated hand. Either that, or that Colt pistol isn’t the only Python that Rick’s packing. But I’m digressing already.

The point is that early in this issue, Andrea says something that feels so much like the kind of line someone says in a horror movie right before they’re run through by Jason Voorhees that I immediately thought that she might was well be wearing an “Eat Me (Not You Rick)” t-shirt. It’s the kind of thing that any savvy horror movie fan would take to mean that it’s time to butch up on your bladder control, because someone’s about to get butchered. In other hands, it would be an amateur’s move… but in writer Robert Kirkman’s, it feels like it serves an important purpose. That purpose being that these characters feel indestructible. And, considering they are still living in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, they should probably stop doing that.

This six-issue arc of The Walking Dead, A Larger World, has introduced us to “Jesus”, a long-haired, bearded stranger who promises our crew that there is a happier place waiting for them… so maybe I should temper my remarks about Kirkman’s subtlety in writing. Perhaps in the next arc we will meet “The Doctor”, who will show Rick his sonic screwdriver and take into space to “find a sonic screw.” But I’m veering off point again.

When Jesus arrived a couple of issues ago to offer Rick and company an alliance with Jesus’s group, he was met with aggression. After all, at other times in this series, meeting other groups of survivors hasn’t always worked out all that well. Case in point, The Governor, a man over whom Rick would wring his hands if he could find the dumpster that The Governor chucked Rick’s right hand into after cutting it off.

However, unlike during that encounter, our heroes have survived a lot… and have decided that they can take on all comers. This issue is about Rick, Andrea, Michonne and Glenn taking Jesus back to his people to see if they can be trusted… or if our protagonists need to conquer them. This is a logical stance for the characters to take considering what they’ve been through… but this issue is all about setting up what any of us who have gotten beermuscles learned a long time ago: the minute you think you’re a badass? That’s when you meet a badder motherfucker than you.

In this issue we see Jesus – despite being bound with his hands behind him – helping out in a zombie attack and moving cars off the road. On one hand, this is utterly unbelievable – as a dude with long hair myself, I can’t walk two cups of coffee back from Dunkin’ Donuts without my hair blinding me and causing me to spit hair like bipolar siamese cat, let alone take out a zombie. But these sequences serve an important purpose: they show the baddest of the regular cast that there is someone badder than them. Between the horror movie bravado tropes and these sequences, it effectively imparts a feeling of unease to the reader that maybe Rick and friends are in over their heads… and worse: they have no idea. Bad things are on the horizon here, and Kirkman delivers the message to us with effective character interactions, a rising sense of impending doom, and some good old zombie attacks.

Charlie Adlard’s art on the issue continues to serve the title better than almost anyone else I can think of. On one hand, it’s not anything special; his pages are all simple, old-fashioned rectangular panels with no weird compositions or even splashes until the final page. But the simple composition and black and white art allow him an iron-clad control over pacing, putting weight on key scenes like Andrea’s “Please kill me” speech and the reveal of Carl secretly talking to Jesus, and delivering solid, dynamic zombie action in the middle of the book.

This issue is yet another piece of the standard six-issue arc for the trade that is The Walking Dead’s stock in trade, which means that this issue might not be the best place to jump on. However, taking a step back, we’ve got zombie action, the focus generally stays on characters are familiar to new readers from the AMC television show, and enough generally-understood horror film tropes to pick up that, even if you don’t totally understand what’s going on based on not knowing what’s happened before, you know that bad shit is coming. This book effectively raises the tension level on the story, and raises the stakes for what’s coming… which is looking bad for some people. So pick it up and say goodbye to Andrea while you still can.