The Walking Dead, Volume 32: Rest In Peace Review (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard)

It’s… over?

Wha… no foolin’!? Sweet zombie jesus!

Yup, the series that became like the rotting, shambling corpses featured in its pages has finally come to a long overdue end. I kinda feel like Kent Brockman – why now, why not five years ago??

So after years of saying he’d end The Walking Dead at 300 issues, Robert Kirkman surprised long-suffering readers last month by answering their prayers pulling the plug early with issue #193, the various reasons for which he talks about in his lengthy afterword (basically he ran out of material).

So how is the final book? Like the last few volumes have been: not good! Rick clashes with the Hillary Clinton leader of the Commonwealth and her Joffrey-esque son, bringing a merciful end to that tedious storyline.

One of the funniest moments in the series for me was a speech Rick gave a while ago which ends with a double splash page where he looks at the reader and says “WE are the walking dead!” in an eye-rolling no shit Sherlock moment. The Commonwealth storyline builds up to Rick giving what’s meant to be a moving, emotional speech that ends with a reference to that earlier speech with Rick saying in a similar double splash “We are NOT the walking dead!”, totally undercutting the serious tone it was shooting for and reducing what should’ve been a powerful moment into laughter!

About the only notable thing to happen is a certain main character dying – and if you know this is the last book, you know the only character it could be - which I guess was kinda moving but also expected.

The twenty years later jump (it doesn’t say exactly how many years but it seems like a fair chunk of time) as an extended epilogue was interesting – briefly. It was sweet seeing who ended up marrying who and what the surviving characters did with their lives. And then it overstays its welcome. I mean, did we really need to have the story of Carl and Hershel’s court case over zombies as property (that’s just my phrasing – Kirkman got through the whole series without once mentioning the word “zombie”, so kudos for that!)? I guess it’s sort of amusing to see how the perceptions of the zombies have shifted because life has gotten that safe, but it just went on and on, seemingly only so we could see familiar characters older, and in new roles.

But I didn’t like the twenty years later world. It was essentially just the old west cowboys’n’injuns world – very unimaginative. The final image of the series is cute but the words preceding it are way too long-winded and dull to convincingly be read as a children’s book.

Overall there was an absolute shit-ton more exposition than usual, none of which I found especially compelling, and the forced action scenes with the zombies were rubbish – the zombies are too easily defeated now so there’s zero excitement seeing the characters fight them. I believe Kirkman when he says he ran out of material because I was yawning the whole time throughout this one. It’s a bit of a disappointing end to what was a decent series.

The Walking Dead definitely had its moments. About half of the books are really good, like the ones featuring The Governor and Negan. The series hit its peaks when it had strong villains for Rick and co. to battle against, that weren’t zombies, and they were both terrific bad guys. Speaking of, I wanted to see what became of Negan in the epilogue but, beyond a page hinting at his continued existence, we didn’t get anything more, which was a shame.

Then again, I’m sure that’s deliberate and Kirkman will return at some point to tell Negan’s story in full. Because even if Volume 32 is “the end”, it’s really only the end of this story arc. Let’s be real: the series is way too popular and profitable to never revisit again. I’m sure in five or ten years when Kirkman’s got more ideas, or HBO’s demanding more stories for a new TV show because nostalgia SELLS, he and Charlie Adlard will be back for more. Particularly as there are so many possibilities to explore. Besides Negan’s story they could tell the story of what happened in the interval between, or what happened in other areas of the world during this time, or even jump ahead of the time jump and see what the world beyond the new old west looks like.

Rest in peace? Bitch, please. This is comics – nobody ever stays deaded, not least a series about the undead!