Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
Walking Dead #102
Image Comics
Kirkman, Adlard & Rathburn
Walking Dead issue 102 shows, once again, that this series isn't out of ideas. Not by a long shot. When we left off Rick and the rest of his survivors, they had a prisoner from the villainous group called The Saviors. As this arc races towards a conclusion one could have assumed that this issue would have ratcheted up the action. Perhaps involved some torture of the prisoner; maybe included a follow-up attack by the Saviors. However, this issue goes in a completely different direction as Rick admits defeat openly to everyone in the community. It's a powerful issue because this goes against everything we've seen from Rick in all of these years. I definitely recommend checking this issue out.
If for you happen to be a reader that jumped on to issue 100, you probably aren't going to be thrilled with the extremely slow pace of this issue. However, this issue's task is to convince the reader that Rick really has surrendered and it isn't believable if he simply announced it on one random page. The comic puts the intention out there and then spends the rest of the time trying to sell the idea to the other characters as well as the reader.
The issue contains a bunch of other subplots so that it isn't twenty pages of Rick trying to convince everyone that they are beaten as a group. The lack of bullets is explored, Rick informs others about the fate of Glenn and Jesus gets a little bit of page time. I can't help but think that this issue contains clues that will become clearer in the issues to come. One theory I couldn't shake while reading this issue was that Jesus is the real Negan. Just throwing it out there.
The only way this story pulls off the tearing down of Rick's leadership character is by Adlard's emotional artwork. Characters are angry with Rick, they are scared, they are very confused and Adlard does a tremendous job at selling this on their faces. Adlard does a lot of zooming in and it works well for effect. I enjoyed Adlard's art in this issue, which once again proves that he has a very wide range and isn't all zombie.
Walking Dead is still coming down from its heart racing anniversary issue. This issue is probably going to shock some people, and perhaps not for the reasons you might guess. Rick has been a flawed, but strong hero for so long in this series and the question is open as to whether those days are over for him. This is a very good issue.
4 out of 5 geek goggles
