Zeb Larson reviews The Walking Dead #141…
No cover page of The Walking Dead ever seems to accurately reflect the events in the book. You might be led to think, based on the cover, that Negan will somehow take advantage of his opportunity to escape captivity, but this is twisted substantially. The bulk of the action in this issue relates to Rick and his return home, though arguably the most significant action occurs in just two pages outside of the issue. I will be discussing spoilers in this review, so keep reading only if you’ve read the book or don’t mind.
Rick meets up with Dwight and a few of the survivors to hand off goods. Dwight admits that he doesn’t want to be leader of the group any more and Rick refuses, telling Dwight that he needs to allow the group to choose a new leader. When Rick returns home, he is shocked to find that Negan’s cage is open, but surprisingly, Negan is still lying on the cot. Negan tells Rick that he has nothing to fear from him and that he should try and trust as him, reminding him that if he’d wanted to escape he could have easily done so. Rick has none of this and tells him that he will remain locked up. When Rick discusses it with Andrea, she tells Rick that keeping Negan alive is too dangerous. Rick responds that if they go back to killing to survive, their system will collapse. We then see that Maggie has hanged Gregory.
Negan is a fascinating character, and this arc has brought that out. He’s not some lunatic like the Governor chasing vengeance for its own apocalyptic sake. Even if all of his actions are some masterful act of manipulation, he has far more than discipline than the Governor ever did. And some of his responses to Rick seem genuinely shocked that Rick won’t try and put the past behind them. Of course, establishing moral equivalency between Rick and Negan is a shell game, but I can’t help but suspect that Negan is genuine in some perverse way. Does that mean that Rick is going to need Negan in the future?
Now that Maggie has killed Gregory, that’s going to have to be a problem for the community. How will Rick react? Managing the tensions among the survivors, especially in the Hilltop may only be half the problem. The real issue is the question over Rick’s leadership style. Is it really effective to try and go back to the way things were when everything is so different? His way has worked so far, but it hasn’t been seriously tested since Negan was toppled from power. Could you keep somebody like Gregory alive?
Those aren’t all the problems. He hasn’t heard about Carl yet or the full extent of the Whisperer’s activities. There’s only one issue left in this story arc, but that’s enough to make things plenty messy.
Zeb Larson
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