Recent events have thrown Alexandria into turmoil, and now Rick, Dwight, Eugene and Negan all have something to prove. Meanwhile, a new world order awaits...
Robert Kirkman is an American comic book writer best known for his work on The Walking Dead, Invincible for Image Comics, as well as Ultimate X-Men and Marvel Zombies for Marvel Comics. He has also collaborated with Image Comics co-founder Todd McFarlane on the series Haunt. He is one of the five partners of Image Comics, and the only one of the five who was not one of the original co-founders of that publisher.
Robert Kirkman's first comic books were self-published under his own Funk-o-Tron label. Along with childhood friend Tony Moore, Kirkman created Battle Pope which was published in late 2001. Battle Pope ran for over 2 years along with other Funk-o-Tron published books such as InkPunks and Double Take.
In July of 2002, Robert's first work for another company began, with a 4-part SuperPatriot series for Image, along with Battle Pope backup story artist Cory Walker. Robert's creator-owned projects followed shortly thereafter, including Tech Jacket, Invincible and Walking Dead.
Volume 15 was not all that exciting or intense to me as prior volumes of this series have been in terms of the drama, horror, and edge of your seat excitement. This volume read more like a bridge to the next big storyline collecting issues #169 - #180 of the monthly comic series. I would say a total of four major things happen in this volume. One, a new kind of character is introduced in the form of a chatty Kathy rifle toting, purple haired, pink wearing gal named Juanita Sanchez a.k.a. "Princess". Two, Maggie confronts Negan. Three, the group comes across The Commonwealth including the one running it in the form of Pamela Milton the Governor. And four, Michonne meets her long lost daughter, Elodie. Other than that I didn't find this read engaging enough and I am guessing not all will go as smoothly in the Commonwealth as it appeared.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Loved reading this. Negan is entertaining as always cursing up a storm. The new character Princess is a spitfire. Another new community that could help Rick & the others or be another horror. I’m excited to see what the next “book” will bring.
Ok, yeah. Things are getting a bit repetitive in this ol’ universe. I think both the comic and the show should really start heading toward closure. That being said, I really enjoyed the new character, Princess. She’s a kick in the pants.
In this volume we get more humor, more love, more hope,... less action, less zombies, more dialogue,... Because of the slow pacing it's better to read this in a collection like this one. Kirkman succeeds in making this comic book series feel fresh after more than 4000 pages of survival horror. Aldlard's gets a quite a few creative challenges with the direction this story goes. Anyway : looking forward to book sixteen.
Olipas kivaa pitkästä aikaa hypätä The Walking Deadin maailmaan, etenkin kun mukaan tuli uusia hahmoja. Tyhjästä kaupungista poimitaan matkaan persoonallinen Prinsessa ja ryhmä tapaa Commonwealthiksi kutsutun alueen johtajan. Kuten olettaa saattaa, ei tuokaan yhteiskunta ole aivan ongelmaton.
Recent events have thrown Alexandria into turmoil, and now Rick, Dwight, Eugene and Negan all have something to prove. Meanwhile, a new world order awaits...
Collects THE WALKING DEAD #169-180.
Rebuilding time. And Eugene’s radio friend gives them the go ahead to come meet her community, so Rick sends a delegation. POV changes repeatedly as we follow Alexandria, Hilltop, Negan, Jesus & Aaron, and the delegation.
Oh, yeah. There’s no way this is going to end well. I’m getting so tired of this shit. Maybe I’ll read book 16 when it comes out. We’ll see.
Rick Grimes is a strong-willed deputy who missed the end of the world because he was in a coma for a month after getting shot in the line of duty. Shaken, starving and confused, Rick escapes the horror of the abandoned hospital only to be met with something far more terrible. Not only has the world ended, but the dead have learned to walk and to kill without mercy. After learning that his wife and son have fled to Atlanta from a single survivor and his son, Rick goes on a journey to reunite with his family and search for more survivors.
Rick quickly has to come to terms with the fact that the world has ended and only a select few survived. The dead have risen from their graves and they prey on the living. In a world where every minute feels like hours, where there's no such thing as law and order, where finding a small meal is a tremendous task, the walking dead are quite possibly the least threatening thing for the survivors to have on their breaking minds. Humanity is pushed to the brink of destruction, forcing them to embrace their cruel and primal nature in order to survive. Sometimes you have to be more concerned about who you let into your community so they don't kill you in your sleep and steal everything you once cared about. Rick has no choice but to abandon the ways of law and order that he's upheld as an officer for so long in order to protect the few loved ones he has left. He has to become a monster to protect his crew or risk being devoured by those who became more monstrous than him and even the walking dead.
Despite zombies running the world and having the series named after them, what really sets this series apart from the average zombie apocalypse tale is the focus on realism and the daily struggles, flaws and depth of the characters. There's plenty of badass zombie killing action, but the action often takes a back seat to give the characters plenty of times to share their extremely tragic yet endearing stories, grow through mutual suffering and learn to adapt to a world that has left them to die. Even after the world has ended, many people still can't see eye to eye. They turn on each other and kill each other when they should come together. Others form alliances in spite of their differences and try to rebuild over the corpse of everything that was lost. The daily human drama and conflict is more intense than any monster apocalypse could hope to be.
We watch Rick struggle to balance his old moral code with the many necessary evils he has to commit in order to survive and make the world a better place for the ones he holds close. We watch people like Glen, Dale and Maggie attempt to find love in spite of having every reason to be filled with fear, hate and self-loathing. Characters like Michonne have to learn how to forgive themselves and convince themselves they deserve to be loved despite all the blood on their hands. We watch the weak like Carl and Andrea become strong and sometimes the strong become evil like The Governor. Even monsters like the wicked yet oddly lovable Negan are given the chance to find new ways of redeeming themselves by struggling alongside the other survivors that have all been changed by the horrors of the fallen world.
The pacing is extremely slow and I can understand why that may be a turnoff for a lot of people, but I eventually learned to enjoy watching the characters grow, overcome their trauma, find meaning in life and learn to love again. The characters are forced to do many terrible things to survive and it haunts them every waking moment. The ways they overcome these regrets is very realistic, human and hopeful. The slow pacing really gives the feeling that we're living beside these people. The way every tiny detail of their lives and who they are is explored makes them feel very real and believable.
When I first starting reading the series, I wasn't expecting it to have such an uplifting ending. It seemed so bleak and nihilistic for a long time and things would go horribly wrong even when they seemed to be going so well, but the finale channels all the pain, suffering and betrayal of the previous volumes and tops it off with a very touching and inspiring finish. This was never a story about hopelessness. It's about learning to appreciate the little things, learning to forgive yourself and learning to move on even when it's hard. When everything seems lost there's always more to be found, even when we believe otherwise because we convince ourselves that we don't deserve to be happy ever again. Instead of dwelling on what was lost, strive to try and make things better than they were before.
I've never been a huge fan of zombie apocalypse stories, but The Walking Dead had enough heart and strong social commentary to make me stick by the characters until the end and I enjoyed every moment of their long trial.
There are two highlights in this penultimate Walking Dead volume that keep this from being a two star yawnfest.
1.) Michonne's storyline. Much deserved. Surprising. Well-conceived. Well-handled dialogue. It's surrounded by an absolute mess of Over The Top Overreaction stories, but it manages to hold on to its authenticity despite that.
2.) The discussions of class in the post-zombie world. We've had glimpses of communities with people like The Governor, Negan, Ezekiel of The Kingdom, but overall The Walking Dead has been a fairly communist world, and that's what has made it work. So the idea of finding out there is a much larger community that thrives because of Old School capitalism is intriguing. I don't think it's handled well, but I like that it's brought up at all. And it certainly makes me appreciate Rick's characterization even more.
But despite a few good moments, this story drags. I don't just mean this volume, I mean the whole series. It makes me wonder if Kirkman chose to end The Walking Dead at 193 because he saw that, despite some interesting ideas that he'd introduced, that his story was stale. His characters were losing their ability to grow anywhere interesting. He introduced an absolute Cousin Oliver in Princess. She serves no purpose except to be quirky. It's not funny. It's not interesting. It doesn't add anything to the story. Also his Spoiled Rich Brat character is just not believable, despite the current political climate and the situation the characters are in within the context of the story. I have the unfortunate knowledge of where his character is headed, and it's a let down that he's made important.
On the flip side, Adlard plays to his strengths in this volume. The sixteen panel grid pages are gone. The cramped, dialogue-filled boxes are abandoned, allowing him more space to convey body language and facial grammar. There are better camera angles. His work is so much better when given the space to breathe. I'm glad Kirkman's scripts gave him the opportunity to return to that form.
Finally, at the penultimate issue. It's weird that it sets up what could be a long arch for the second to last in the series. It's also weird to throw in a fresh welcoming character just before the end, even going so far to put her on the cover. They should've introduced Princess (who is really just a more grown Ed from Cowboy Bebop minus the hacking) WAY earlier in the series, especially in the dragging mid-section, where she would've have time to develop with everyone else.
This one builds off of The Whisperer's arch, which in hindsight was WAY too short. There's a lot more interesting ideological ground they could've covered there. But instead they resolved it they way this series resolves many situations: outright bloodshed. So, where do you go after defeating the extreme naturalistic adapt with the current state of the environment camp? Easy, introduce the super classist and fascist established state that has all the comforts and horrors of modern human civilization. After beating Lord of Flies, time to go straight to 1984.
It's a neat idea, and one that fits well in the genre and general storyline, it just feels terribly misplaced. The fact that this is being introduced now, in the second to last book, leads me to believe I can figure out the ending to the entire series. It would've been much nicer to have The Whisperer Arch and then this happen in those dreadful repetitive mid-chapters, where they would've had time to breathe and grow. Sadly, it's getting all of this higher tier ideological struggle of which direction humanity should go in right at the end, instead of giving it the proper room to explore.
Best for: Readers who understand that survival is only the first test—and rebuilding is the real battlefield. Skip if: You only come for the chaos. This is a volume of consequences, not carnage.
Book Fifteen is a quieter burn—still sharp, still dangerous, but less about the sword and more about the scar. The Whisperer War is over, but trust is in pieces. Rick has blood on his hands. Maggie has her own vision. Negan walks free. And every survivor is asking what comes next.
Some want justice. Some want revenge. Some want nothing at all.
This arc is political, emotional, and often uncomfortable. The communities are tense. New leaders emerge. A familiar face returns with news of something even bigger—a civilization that didn’t just survive, but thrived. And suddenly, everything Rick’s built looks smaller than he thought.
This is the calm after the storm. But every calm has its price.
Please, for the love of God, kill Rick Grimes. Take a note out of George RR Martin's book and don't be afraid to create an awesome character just for the sole purpose of ripping them away. The appeal of this world is its brutality. Life is even more precious due to its ephemeral nature. Shake things up. I had been advocating the television series to kill Rick instead of Glenn and I feel like they lost me at that point. I held on and once they killed Carl, that was it. I have not watched since.
I am at that same point with the comic now.
One of my friends said that they were done with this series on the last volume, which I thought was pretty good. But volume 15 felt very "old hat." We have another Governor, another jerk son, another community we disagree with to create dramatic tension at the end of the volume.
Come on. Let's light things up before it's too late. . .
Dayum! A lo happens in this installment. Not only do we need a spunky new character, we meet a whole damn new community! Rick is still reeling from the loss of Andrea, Carl is still pining after his new little girlfriend leaving poor Sophia behind in the dust, Maggie may have a new fuck buddy, Jesus and Aaron are officially out and open, and Neegan is out on his own with permission from Rick. Hilltop is slowly rebuilding after the devastation from the last book and a small group of people from Alexandria ride out to meet the people that Eugene has been talking to on the radio for weeks. All in all, there are a lot of plot lines, a lot of action, and it's damn fun! I especially love Princess, the wild girl they encounter in the city. She reminds me a lot of Tank Girl. Another great installment and I feel like it may be leading us up to a conclusion? Probably not, but you never know!
I put off reading this book for a year after its release date since my interest in continuing the series was waning, only deciding to pick it up now since the the end has abruptly come in the recent past and I might as well finish since I've already read this much. Not a whole lot of memorable events happen on these pages: a major villain is unceremoniously dispatched, there is messy fallout from the previous volume, and the group comes into the orbit of another community with questionable leadership. Yep, this all feels fairly familiar. I don't known what to make of Princess thus far; she's certainly a burst of much-needed energy, but her comic relief feels forced. I enjoyed getting some unexpected humanity from Negan, and him referring to a sunflower as a sexy motherfucker made me laugh out loud.
Aw shoot. Another colony with a pecking order comes into contact w Rick and the gang. Negan comes out as a human being with feelings, and we get to see post zombie apocalypse Pittsburgh! Having lived in pittsburgh for a long time, seeing the skyline from the bridge was a treat! Heading into the last volume, I anticipate another showdown. This time w the commonwealth and their richy rich upper class. Maybe that’s my only bugaboo with this volume. The Commonwealth organizing itself along pre-apocalypse class lines seems normal but my thought goes to, how did they get all the infrastructure set up and get buy in from the workers!? “Good news, everyone! You can build a new society that looks a lot like the old world where your life kinda sucked compared to mine, the ruling class!” There’s hints of dissent in the ranks, but we’ll see what happens in the final stretch…
The war with the Whisperers is over and rebuilding begins again. Rick frees Negan but doesn't allow him to stay in any of the communities, sending him out on his own, and causing controversy at home. Eugene and his radio buddy make plans to meet and this introduces a new and unknown element into the rebuilding world. What will the rebuilt world be like, how will the characters react to their new place in the new world order, and what does the Commonwealth and their Governor bring with it? The new characters and relationship dynamics are interesting, the art again does a great job of conveying a bleak feel to the post zombie apocalypse world. Collects The Walking Dead #169-180.
Another incredibly strong volume of the Walking Dead from Robert Kirkman. I thought the series was at risk of losing momentum but the discovery of a new community of human has added a new dynamic to the long running narrative. The Commonwealth as it is known is far more advanced in terms of political and military organization yet the society is dominated by a class like structure. The broad cast of characters leads to only limited character moments but the majority of these are strong and serve as interesting developments that will undoubtably have a greater impact later on. Still the top of the class for long term, ongoing comic storytelling.
"The Walking Dead: Libro 15" es el décimo quinto libro colector de la serie.
Incluye las historias "Los límites que sobrepasamos" y "Nuevo orden mundial", volúmenes 29 y 30 que corresponde a los números del 169-180 de la saga.
Este libro sirvió de inspiración el final de la 10ma temporada de la serie.
Nos adentramos en el arco final de la saga. La muerte de Beta me pareció algo apresurado y no tan acorde al personaje. Por fin alguien le estaba poniendo los puntos sobre las íes a Rick, pero el poder del guión lo volvieron a dejar como el héroe indiscutido. Aparecieron la Mancomunidad y Pamela, y como dijo Michonne, si algo es muy bueno, hay que desconfiar.
I really enjoyed learning about the new society our survivors travel to discover and the diversity of our characters was visibly discussed. I appreciated the inclusion. However, there were points where this graphic novel seemed there was nowhere else to go from here. We're talking book 15...Rick is almost out of story worth telling. That being said, I still so much more enjoyed the graphic novel series as opposed to the TV show since the show has killed, or run off, every character I've cared anything about.
Meh. Another all drama collection and then introduces another potential villain at the end (reminiscent of a former villain just in better wool). I found this book very frustrating, there wasn't really any zombie action, and it took too long for another villain to show, hopefully not just as a social-drama foil either. I'm really hoping after this one the action and story picks up if not I may put this series down for good.
Technically didn’t read the hard cover as it’s not out yet, but it’s easier to review the story as these books instead of individual chapters.
Really enjoyed it, this new community scares me a little, will have to put a reminder on my calendar for when the next book collection is out, very eager to continue but I won’t until I have the lot lol
Book Fifteen explicitly confirms my theory that The Walking Dead series is a explorative narrative of the rise of civilization. It seems to pull from classic philosophical views of Hobbes in places, but also has a touch of anarchist tendencies, though how pronounced is debatable. What I hope to see is a playing out of historical resistance to state building...eat the rich.
What do you do when you find civilization again? Do you take it at face value or do you look below the surface?
The world expands, but dangers do not change, can the original survivors find somewhere they fit in?
New characters show more aspects of life to reflect on, and it is interesting to see how they interact with all these characters we have known for years.
I'm really enjoying the new character Princess. I wish she came into the series earlier. She's amazing! Also - omg michonne! Is everything going to finally work out for her? I can't wait to find out.The books are however getting a bit repetitive. Still - I'm enjoying it as much as I always have. Can't wait to start reading the next book ❤ (Literally, gonna begin today!).
This book continues to be of the highest quality. The tension in these pages is wound up so tightly and masterfully. Even after all the survivors have been through, through the harrowing experiences we've witnessed, there's still a lot of danger and plenty to lose. This book is beautiful and fits nicely among the stories that came before and the ones that come after.
Después de la última saga, tocan historias más tranquilitas. Se acerca el final poco a poco y es muy interesante ver cómo difieren los puntos de vista de los personajes principales a la hora de reconstruir la sociedad: ¿probar con un nuevo orden mundial o volver al antiguo reparto de clases sociales?
Another good one, though I think some loose ends got neatly snipped without much fanfare. That was a little disappointing. But some cool new characters are introduced, and we see a new problem forming. It is always interesting to see how Kirkman will highlight the issues we currently have in the world as fiction in a horror comic. It's impressive.
An in betweeny kind of feel to this one - wrapping up some story lines and setting up some new ones which look promising with the Commonwealth and its class system. Now I am all caught up and have to wait, boo. Recommendations for other graphic novel series to sink my teeth into much appreciated.