By Kirkman, Adlard, Gaudiano & Rathburn
Publisher: Image
ISBN: 9781607068822
Rick and his small group had thought they’d found relative peace in a walled community, but all sense of safety has been stripped away by the protection racket offered by Negan and his cohorts. What it has done is draw Rick’s community closer to two other similar groups of survivors, also under the boot-heel of Negan. Rick has now joined these communities together under the common banner of ending Negan’s hold over them all, which means a direct confrontation and the inevitable casualties it will bring.
Despite his private reservations, Rick knows that for everyone’s greater good it’s a stand they must make, but although things go initially to plan they soon find the very sanctuaries they are fighting for under threat as the human cost grows and grows. They’ve struck a mighty blow, but it just isn’t enough.
So, twenty volumes in Robert Kirkman is still delivering an eminently readable story of survival and hope in the face of horror and desperation. No-one is safe from the cull, or at the very least from a slight trimming of body parts, but what keeps its grip firmly on your attention is that, aside from the terror of zombie apocalypse, this is essentially a tale of attempting to survive in the face of adversity – so what would you do in such a situation?
In Negan Kirkman and Adlard have created a villain even more despicable than the Governor. He’s a man clearly not firing on all cylinders, except that most of the time he is more than competent at dealing with those around him, leaving his idiosyncratic behaviour an unpredictable and dangerous element to his character. He really, really doesn’t deserve to survive this, but that certainly doesn’t mean he won’t.
It feels as if this chapter of Rick’s story is winding up, so regardless of the outcome we could soon be pushing into new territory which is always interesting to explore under the circumstances of the story. However, in the meantime, we’ve got at least one more volume to tie up how they deal with the consequences of the conflict. To think that once upon a time their biggest fear was the zombies.
And if you enjoyed that: Part 2 to All Out War follows soon
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