I’m a huge fan of Robert Kirkman’s series The Walking Dead. Not huge enough to pick up the single issues, but enough to buy the trades. I’ve been sitting on Book 8 entitled “Made to Suffer” for some time now. I bought it off Amazon when I was buying a few other items and decided to throw it in the box. After finishing up The First Law, I found myself between books and decided to go ahead and delve back into the world of zombies.
Two words: Holy Shit!
If you don’t want anything ruined for you, stop reading now. I mean it. Stop.
Still here? Good. What Kirkman does here takes a serious set of balls. For seven volumes, he has gotten us to know these people, to care for them, and in part this has been done by inflicting small tragedies on them. Small, I say, in comparison to the enormous one of the world succumbing to zombies to begin with. But all that we have read so far is nothing compared to this volume.
I couldn’t put the book down. Volume seven had ended with an attack beginning on our survivors’ prison home, but eight leaps back a bit and shows us how the attackers arrived. For the first section of this book, you know where it is going, but getting there is no worse off for it. Once the attack begins, you find yourself wondering how the hell they will survive this, and bit by bit and piece by piece you see their plan form, you see that they are going to make it. Then Kirkman punches you in the gut and pulls the rug out.
Book nine is sitting on the shelf next to book eight, but I told myself I’d read another book or two first, to spread out the zombie awesomeness. But it is taunting me, and I don’t know how long I can hold out.
Probably the first time in a long time I was emotional while reading a comic book.