Everything is different now.

Actually, everybody is basically dead now.

The new arc for the Walking Dead promises a change of pace after the recent high-octane battles with the Governor and his minions. This issue focused heavily on set pieces with an emotional impact. The story opens with Michonne in tears as she machetes her friend’s corpses to insure they don’t come back hungry. A moving set of panels has Rick Grimes needing his son to open a can of beans for him (he lost his right arm while a prisoner in Woodbury, a nice, middle American town where zombies and outsiders are used in gladiatorial combat).

The pace of this title almost has to change after a high body count over the last ten issues brought a definitive end to a lot of character arcs. Fewer characters mean a leaner story line, something the book probably needs at this point. Of the original group of survivors, we are down to Rick and Carl.

But not for long. Rick, overcome with grief at the loss of his wife, despair over the zombie-infested future and wracked with pain from multiple wounds, apparently decides to off himself with meds he finds in the latest hideout (or maybe he OD’d). Adlard draws these panels perfectly, letting us watch grief become panic and terror on Carl’s face as he sees his father slumping over, apparently dead, in the last panel.

What appears to be the death of Rick Grimes will amount to a reload of the series. Longtime followers of the Kirkman’s “humans running from zombies and dying in droves” narrative have likely seen this coming. The internal logic of the book has been to kill characters at any moment and most especially when the readers become attached to them and / or they seem integral to the continuing story. It makes some sense to get rid of Rick here at both a narrative and numerical turning point in the title.

Readers will disagree about how Kirkman killed off Grimes, especially if it becomes clear that Grimes willingly left his son alone in a world of the undead. Some will have wanted him to go out on a splash page, firing a shotgun, wielding his signature hatchet and swinging a chainsaw at the hundred thousand flesh-eaters that have surrounded him (all with his one good hand). I actually liked Kirkman’s decision here. I’m not the president of the zombie fan club and what makes this series worth reading for me is the writer’s and artist’s ability to capture a range of human responses to a world-as-we-know it-coming-to-an-end-and-we-may-get-eaten crisis. Suicide, especially for a character as emotionally and physically battered as Grimes has become, certainly would become one of those very human responses.

Still, we have to wait to see if the Rick the Indestructible is really deep-sixed. So far, we’ve just seen him take pills and slump over. The teaser cover for super-duper issue #50 asserts that Carl is on his own. We have to wait and see. Kirkman offed Tyreese when it was least expected and for a lot of fans, least appreciated. He could be head-faking us.

Kirkman is mostly the silent partner in this issue, letting the tale unravel through Adlard’s art. The art has been one of the great pluses of this book from the beginning, giving those of us who think the world needs fewer post-apocalypse Zombie books reason to pick it up. Get this one, especially if you haven’t followed the series and if, like me, an occasional viewing of early Romero takes care of most your zombie needs. It’s a great introduction to a good book that may be about to get better.

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