The Walking Dead vol. 23: Whispers Into Screams

This latest volume contains a lot of good stuff:  Carl beating down two bastards with good reason, more information about the Whispered and what their deal is, Carl potentially finding love, an assassination plan gone awry, Carl doing something potentially very stupid for said love, and Jesus Saving.  All of this is handled with Robert Kirkman’s knack for knowing when to adhere to convention and when to subvert yet.  Yet, as good as this stuff is, the most interesting thing about this volume may be how little a certain character figures into it.

The threat of the Whispered, humans who wear skinmasks and live among the zombies, is reiterated here as Jesus’ search party has a close encounter with a random group.  Not only does he survive, but he manages to take home a captive:  A young girl named Lydia.  While the plan is to interrogate her for what she knows about her “people,” there are other pressing issues in Hilltop at the moment.  After two boys attack Sophia, Carl nearly beats them to death with a shovel.  The boys’ parents are furious about this and the perceived soft touch that Maggie uses when dealing with Carl.  This paves the way for Gregory, the former head of Hilltop, to offer his own solution to the issue at hand.  One which involves him becoming a leader again with a minimum of bloodshed.

In some ways, the turns these particular threads take are fairly predictable.  Lydia and Carl are isolated at the same time, allowing them to get to know each other across their respective cells.  The parents of the kids who were beat down by Carl are real jerks, but given some actual justification for their actions by what the boy did.  Gregory’s manipulation of all this follows a well-established formula that would see him resume leadership of Hilltop for an extended period without anyone realizing the truth until it is Too Late.

The good news is that none of these threads play out in quite the way that you’d expect.  After reading the whole volume, I’m actually somewhat convinced that Lydia is on the up-and-up with Carl.  Granted, there are some telltale visual cues in the art — mostly in the smiles — that indicate otherwise, but there’s an unguarded moment between Lydia and her mother at the end which tips the scales for me.  You’ve also got Carl’s brutally straightforward way of letting the girl know that he trusts her, but won’t allow her to hurt anyone close to him.  It’s a smart move on his part and it lest the readers know that he’s not thinking (entirely) with his penis on this one.  As for what he does at the end, well, even though I doubt any good will come of it I think the boy can take care of himself well enough.

As for the Gregory/Angry Parents plot, I was expecting this to last a lot longer than it did.  All of the familiar signs were in place for his plan to succeed and usher in a new age of chaos for Hilltop.  Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for us readers, Maggie shows that she has the kind of foresight needed for dealing with situations like these.  And Jesus.  Remember kids, Jesus Saves.

I could also go on about how the new group in Alexandria is acclimating to their situation.  The thing is that thread is put on the back burner here, save for a few scenes showing that they’re committed to finding out everything about their new home before deciding what to do next.  To Andrea’s credit, she’s being quite accommodating in letting them know what’s going on after they broke into her house.

All of this is great, and that’s before I get to the most interesting part about this volume.  You see, while “The Walking Dead” is very much an ensemble book with a large, diverse cast of well-developed characters, one of them has always been “first amongst equals:”  Rick Grimes.  As the de facto leader from the start, he’s been the closest thing to a protagonist the series has with most of its arcs hinging on his actions.  There have been many character deaths so far and likely many more to come in this series.  The thing is that if anyone in the series could be considered “safe” or even “unkillable,” Rick would be that person.  Thinking of “The Walking Dead” without him seems, well… unthinkable.

So how many pages does he get in this volume?  Three.

That’s right, blink and you might miss seeing Rick as he leaves Hilltop and returns to Alexandria.  I’m not complaining about this.  Sometimes its good for lead characters to fade into the background for a bit and allow the rest of the cast to become more developed and take the story in a different direction.  There’s no question that approach works here.  I was fully entertained reading about what Carl, Maggie, Lydia, Jesus, Gregory, and everyone else were up to here.

The reason I bring this up is because now that the series has shown it can keep its narrative momentum going without Rick calling the shots, does this mean that he’s not “safe” any longer?  It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that Kirkman has been thinking about killing the ostensible protagonist of this series since day one.  After all, even if you can torment the man with the death and dismemberment of those around him, and even lop off an appendage, there’s always going to be that feeling that he’ll come out of it alive.  There’s been no doubt that Kirkman has gotten a lot of good material from seeing how Rick has responded to the challenges placed before him.  The end result has been the establishment of two, stable self-sustaining communities which have carved out a modicum of civilization from the zombie-infested countryside.  It’s an impressive legacy for anyone to leave behind in this world.

He might have to if this volume is any indication.  Yes, the Whispered are being positioned as the next big threat facing the two settlements, but the conflict with them may end up forging the next group of leaders for these two communities.  I think Rick’s a great character and would love to see him live through this conflict and to the end of the series.  But I don’t think that’s part of Kirkman’s plan for him.  I can’t say when it’ll happen, though I’m sure Abraham will agree with me that it’ll occur when I’m least expecting it.

On that note, here’s to another successfully entertaining volume of “The Walking Dead.”  Fully satisfying in the ways that its creators intended, and in one that they likely didn’t.  All of this could be meaningless speculation on my part because there’s one other thing to remember here:  Jesus Saves.

(Seriously, after this volume I want a “The Walking Dead” “Jesus Saves” t-shirt now.  Just put a bunch of panels where Jesus has shown up and saved someone with those words on it and I’d totally wear it in public.)