I've heard Kirkman say in interviews that when he started the series and thought of an ending he was going to go in the opposite direction, show a new society and city get overtaken by zombies. Pretty bleak ending after 10 plus years of suffering
Endings are not that hard, its the point pf the series, I think we all as writer shoukd always write the finaly first, the rest is just the road to reach it
@@vichobochowas going to say the same. Seems a few writers start stories with the Ending as an after thought or eventual epiphany. Eventually writing themselves off trail.
Or you get people like Abrams who starts a story with all those gimmicky “mystery boxes” but doesn’t have an actual ending in mind or any resolution to his mysteries or really any direction for the plot. Thats how you get messes like Lost or the new star wars sequel trilogy 😂
Despite The Walking Dead being one of the most iconic and recognizable IP's in modern media, it's source material feels SO underrated. Such a beautiful story from beginning to end.
How Kirkman ending his book like Invincible and TWD is why I respect him and rank him as my number 1 favorite comic book writer, man choose to end his story in a high note instead of stretching it out of demand or monetary to over complicated everything and flop at the end, this is something that make me wish that comic book and manga industry learn to follow.
I would love this, especially since we’d hopefully get to have more Steven Yuen as Glenn again and eventually a significantly less censored version of Negan.
I haven’t finished the video yet so I’m sorry if you covered this, but I think Rick’s death is so beautifully ironic and it’s the only way he could ever die. He finally completely let his guard down and felt safe and paid the price. And the scene of all the communities rallied together for his memorial is one of the few comic scenes to ever make me shed a tear. One of the greatest Characters of all times, Rick Grimes.
Some of the best advice i ever read as a writer: “Since a story is always a whole, and the organic end is found in the beginning, a great story always ends by signaling to the audience to go back to the beginning and experience it again.” - John Truby
When they were building up the last season of the TV show, they announced that Daryl and Maggie would have their own spin-off shows. I thought it was so stupid to announce this before the end of the season. It took away any tension that either of them would die before the end. Also we spent the last 11 years with these people, what more was there to say about them? Then I remembered the fake issues of the book and thought AMC were going to pull a similar stunt. Seeing as Andrea, Carl and Rick were no longer in the show, Maggie would get Andrea's ending and die surrounded by friends and family. Daryl would get killed by Sebastian and then finished off by Judith the next morning. I was so smug watching that last episode as I seemed to be the only one to have figured this out and everyone else was looking forward to these spin-offs. Needless to say, I had the rug pulled from under me. Rosita got Andrea's ending and we never got the Rick ending. Such a missed opportunity.
Dropped everything as soon as I got the notification! Robert Kirkman knows how to tell a complete story. Awesome, awesome episode! As always! Thanks Chris!
I could have done with an arc or two following old man Carl being a badass but as far as endings go I think Kirkman nailed it. Shout out to Tony Moore too, I don't think we would have the comic as we know it without his influence.
I read through the whole thing recently for the second time and I feel like all the great stuff in that last compendium does not get talkes about enough
As a manga reader this is impressive. If you look how hard Mangaka and their assistants works to pull this off. (And even in Manga 150 chapters long stories might be the most famous, they're actually the exception.)
Lets not undersell him, I think he did 187 issues in a row. Even did 2 issues a month for half a year. People underestimate how much dedication a comic artist needs for a single title while writers get to do multiple series at a time.
Great video hope you do a top 10 of the year usually my favorite video of the year always great to hear your favorite stories to get some great recommendations
I tapped out of the TV show right when Negan swung his bat. Didn't find out who he hit until a couple months ago. I loved the comic, and do intend to finish it, though I'm really early in the run. It was just difficult for a while to get my hands on the floppies.Still at the prison! I'm going to buy it in digital (if available) sometime mid-Feb. I laughed and laughed when I heard how he ended it. A character actually called the Swordman would have been a zombie shark jump.
I absolutely love TWD's comics and hate how the show still goes on. The comic actually had a story with a point and a good conclusion. Robert Kirkman told a really unique story with zombie media. Most zombie stories have a bleak ending or a really cliche happy ending like "the army shows up and wipes out the zombies", but TWD goes on long enough to have Rick push this idea to rebuild society in a better way, compared to making things like they were before the dead started walking. The show doesn't have any of those ideas and just wants to continue shambling along like the zombies in it, creating new spinoffs until eventually AMC can't get another penny out of it. Almost every twist the show did vs the comics' original story was dumber and made things worse.
I wish the comic would’ve went more like the show and that’s coming from someone who read the comics before the show came out. The commonwealth arc of the comics was the most boring thing I ever read and the show made it so much better. It was exciting and killed off Sebastian, which should’ve happened in the comic. Killing Rick off was also the stupidest decision the comic made. At least the tv show avoided doing that. They had so much potential to go on with the comic for many more years or do spin offs and didn’t. That’s part of why I prefer what the show is doing to the comics.
Thanks for this video Chris. I hadn't thought about The Walking Dead in a while. You've brought back a lot of nice memories, and your analysis is great
I know the initial shock of 193 being the finale really rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, myself included. The issue, in a vacuum, was a good send-off. After watching this, i have an appreciation for Kirkman's rug pull.
I'd been going off the series over the last year so was really pleased it ended and didn't drag itself out anymore. Impressed me Kirkman seemed to realise it wasn't so good anymore and he'd done all he could with the series. Was a pleasant surprise.
the thing i love about the walking dead and invincible is that theres REAL SUBSTANTIAL growth in the story and characters (rick and mark in particular) throughout the story theres a real sense of seeing these characters throughout different stages of there life and its fascinating to see thers a real sense of growth and is something a truly love about kirkman and his books
To this day I remember when Rick said those words “Don’t you get it? WE ARE the Walking Dead!” Boy, that hit me hard. It was one of the best dialogues ever in a comic book, and it was so true to the story and characters. Damn. Now, several years later, when I was reading las issues without knowing what was going to happen; When Rick said “We are NOT the Walking Dead!” I almost spit my coffee! This is it, I thought. We are almost to the end of the series! I swear I just knew it was close, but really had NO IDEA Rick would die soon! Oh my, I felt sad, I took a moment to think and digest it. Seeing Rick getting shot and later as a walker, it hit me. I remember my wife asking me “are you alright? What’s wrong?” I could not tell her that I felt like I just got news that an old friend had died. That was The Walking Dead Characters to me. I really came to care about them, and that is why I quit the show when they killed Carl. Now seeing Rick dying, I understood, finally understood that Kirkman was ending the series. This was probably the last issue. Last issue came, and it was what everyone had wanted since the eatly issues. Carl surviving. Making a life for himself. What a great ending.
I love that, like Watchmen, TWD is cyclical and is designed for you to go back to issue 1 upon completing the final story. An amazing book that the show ultimately failed.
My biggest gripe with modern media is the refusal to let stories end. So many IPs now are all about franchising and trying to milk things with forced sequels or spin-offs for as long as possible that having a self-contained narrative with a definitive beginning and end has become a lost art
Great episode! I've been watching a lot of older episodes lately, you should promote your huge library of videos more, because a bunch of people only watches the newer stuff but there's so much great and fun episodes that deserve more views
As someone that hasn't read the comics, I find Negan the most fascinating narratively. In storytelling 101, any "evil" character turned "good" that HAS killed people (on-screen or beloved characters) HAS to die in order for their redemption arc to come full circle. TV Negan escaped this rule cause AMC wanted to milk money out of the character. But now that you made me aware that "Negan Lives" is a thing- I can finally put to bed this argument I have with my friend. He doesn't go through a redemption in the comics- he's just alive and still coming to terms with his consequences.
YAY! the resolution and sound are much better!! Though movement still reveals some distortion, there's still reflections in your glasses and a few pillows around the room would help the sound more. Still GREAT WORK, as ever. Followup audio at 9:45 is much cleaner. Also, it should be easy to work in these re-shoots without calling attention to them, if only you can keep the audio consistent. Perhaps do the whole show with the big mic visible, in a decorated recording studio instead of a rec room. Thanks for letting me offer feedback.
12:14 Malibu did that back in the 1990s with thier Exiles series too. And yea, retailers were not happy that they had to refund orders on comics that the publisher had no intention of publishing.
I was reading TWD in trade paperbacks as they were released, and eventually hit a point where I wasn't really motivated to read any more. In retrospect that was probably around the halfway point in the series (volume 15 or 16, I think?), but at the time it felt like it was just spinning its wheels, so I gave up on it. Don't get me wrong, it was still a well told story with likable characters. But it didn't feel like there was an end in sight; it was not as if we were following our plucky heroes on a quest to find the cure for the zombie outbreak, or some greater end goal along those lines. We were just following the characters from one settlement to the next, things would spiral out of control, people would die, and survivors would move on to the next settlement. Rinse and repeat. I understand that that's simply the nature of following the characters and their survival, but after a while I wanted to see some sort of light at the end of the tunnel for them. I wanted the series to feel less like a catalogue of their day-to-day survival (which felt meandering to me), and more like a story that has a beginning, middle, and ending. Now that the series is complete and I _know_ that there is an actual satisfying ending, I've been buying the colored re-release "Walking Dead Deluxe" issues ever since that started during the pandemic, and rediscovering my fondness for the series.
I read the Walking Dead every month from issue three on. Five years later I don't even remember the ending. So I don't think he nailed it. It was just okay but forgettable.
thanks for covering this!! I had some issues with my local book shop and they lost my order list around the time the Whisperers were introduced... i never got back into TWD, so it was really nice to see how it all ends. Hell maybe i should get off my ass and reread it from the negan saga and finish the series
I stopped reading the series around issue 100 or so, but I ended up reading the last issue and it was a very satisfying ending. But without the surprise of it all I think the impact would have been lost, as you said. Great video Chris!
Shout out to cliff rathburn who brought so much to this book, and is an awesome illustrator in his own right. Have loved his work for years. Also he grew up in a town called woodbury... have always wondered if the governor arch was a nod to his work...
Probably so. The survivors lived in Alexandria, VA because that’s where I lived when that happened. Robert would use towns and names of friends here and there.
@ComicTropes I went to school with cliff. We used to trade comics in grade school lol. Haven't talked to him in years, but I still enjoy his work. Love your vids!
Thank you for another Wonderful Video. The last Arch was great and even though i personaly didn't love the Epilogue, after the time jump, it was really well done. As far as levity goes i like the tone of the comics and feel like the Balance between good and Bad is way better than the TV Show. The Ending Kirkman chose is far more Interesting to me than the Zombie overrun earlier idea.
Not a fan of the ending. Followed the man's story for nearly two decades, survives hell and high water and then gets taken out like a chump. It might be cliche, but I prefer the go out in a blaze of glory or let him make it to old age.
I remember very vividly reading the last issue in the park and it surprisingly made me cry. I did not expect this story, as bleak as it was, to end as hopefully as it did. It's a memory I'll treasure forever.
I watched the series after a co-worker recommended it, but never read the comics as I quit the hobby back in 1989. Horror was #1 to me and recall getting into comics near 1972 with horror which did feature some zombies. Monsters & Dinosaurs were next after horror and then followed by heroes after 1973ish.
The Whisperers definitely aren't anarchists. Anarchism is essentially a form of stateless, classless socialism, that's based on mutual aid, the workers having communal ownership of the means of production and an opposition to all unnecessary forms of hierarchy (at least the most popular strain of anarchism, which is anarcho-communism as described in the writing of Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman etc. - Though the whisperers don't match the other strains of anarchist thought like Anarcho-Mutualism or Anarcho-Primitivism either.). Beyond that I love your videos, but that's a pretty big mischaracterization of what anarchists believe. We're more likely to be members of Antifa, not the whisperers lol
I only ever watched the first 2 seasons of the TV show, but have just recently finished reading the books (I have the 4 compendiums). I agree that it is a great story with a perfect ending
the ending of the walking dead comic is easily my favorite part of the whole series, and thats saying a lot because I genuinely love all of it except for maybe the last arc. Time scale is one of my favorite concepts that fiction plays around with and I really like being able to see carl and everyone else who made it out of the bullshit far off from it and just living their lives, because at the end of the day no matter what happens life has a habit of finding a way to go on. One of the best stories to sell the "things will be alright in the end" message in my opinion
Loved the video! The ending of the comics was mixed for me and for most of the folks I was watching at the time, so I haven't heard many takes like this. The epilogue with adult Carl was awesome. Period. No notes lol. The rest didn't go over so well as I recall. It felt like the arc had yet to really pop off, and the stakes of a riot didn't seem so bad compared to the heads on pikes we recently dealt with. Not to mention, millionaire Kirkman's attempts at social commentary on class were like 5 years too late and surface deep. (ironically the show had a similar issue when they did their version). I mention this frustration as a backdrop for an anticlimactic ending to the arc, followed by the protag being killed in an underwhelming way, followed by Kirkman's biggest troll yet - we are ending the comics at its absolute nadir and it's never going to pick up again because Rick is dead and so is the comic. It was not a great feeling after months of meh. That was of course years ago, and I've softened a bit on it. I don't hate it, but I think it still could've been done better.
I feel the opposite honestly. I think by the end of the series Robert had lost steam and was just ready to end it. Hence why it ended so abruptly. I think the writing of the comic went way downhill after the whisperer war. The whole commonwealth arc was boring and Rick’s death pissed me off beyond words. I wish he would’ve at least handed the comic off to another writer to continue on (he did say he wanted it to go to like issue 300) or did a spin off book instead of just up and ending it. And if he did insist on ending like that, go with his original ending of everyone being wiped out and the dead winning in the end.
When i finished the last volume of TWD some time ago, i closed the book, put it on the table netx to my reading chair, stood up, went over to my little library and picked up TWD #1 to read the whole story again. Immediately. Such was the greatness of TWD's ending.
Oh shit i didn't kbnow you were an AEW Fan. But the walking dead comics I always felt intimidated by then i read berserk and realized it wasn't too long of a comparably, so I think i will pick it up eventually
I read the series only in the last couple years by the omnibuses. Even though the end of the last omnibus was drawing near, the ending still surprised me. I was sad to see Rick go but I can’t say I dislike the comic at all. So glad I read that series
Capital owners are the working class in capitalism. Nothing stop you as a private citizen from owning capital and working a 9-5. The police uphold the laws as they are sworn to, which means they’re on the side of the government. The government has a vested interest in private equity flourishing, since that funds the government through taxation. If you think it’s bad now, you’d be in for a surprise when the working class has no access to capital because the State owns it all and claims that it represents the will of the people, and uses the police to crack down on dissent far more violently than what we experience now. Basically, just look at the Holodomir, Cambodian Killing Fields, Red August, or many other socialist massacres and see what we have now is far preferable.
I love the walking dead comic book. It remains an all time favorite of mine. I don't love the show but I appreciate that it brought attention to the book and other comics. Maybe one day we'll get a more faithful adaptation like an animated series or HBO version!
I have the TPBs and preferred the comics to the tv show. I stopped watching after Carl was killed off, didn't watch any of the spinoffs except the first three seasons of Fear The Walking Dead.
i can definitely agree that the ending they went with for the _Walking Dead_ comic, only knowing it from here, was the way to go. the one where they could've ended it earlier where it turns out to have basically been all for naught strikes me more as being like the asinine conclusion Alan Moore eventually wrote for _League of Extraordinary Gentlemen_
I picked up the series from the beginning, and eventually sold the early 1st run issues as their prices were too hard to turn down. Got about 2 and a half grand for issues 1 to 10 and replaced them with the first omnibus. As a collector, I miss having the individual issues, but they paid for the entire run and then some. I got out of collecting around the time 193 came out as I realised there wasn't much I actually cared about anymore, and I think a big part of the reason I carried on as long as I did was WD and Invincible. Kirkman really knows how to get you invested in a character and tell a complete story, and made all the other mainstream characters with their disjointed arcs and never ending, often repeated, stories seem a bit vapid in comparison.
I still haven't finished the walking dead show, but I started reading the comics last year and finished it this past January. Let me tell you, I love super heroes, i wouldn't be into comics without them but MAN. NO comic has ever hit me the way TWD did. Plus it actually had an ending and it is the best. I'm in the middle of Invincible now and I can't get enough of it either.
I've reading through TWD for the third time right now! This time I'm reading the Deluxe edition :) I think B&W will always be the definitive way to experience The Walking Dead, but this full-color experiment is pretty fun.
I liked that The Walking Dead in the end was a story about how everything that goes down eventually goes up, things rebuild themselves
I've heard Kirkman say in interviews that when he started the series and thought of an ending he was going to go in the opposite direction, show a new society and city get overtaken by zombies. Pretty bleak ending after 10 plus years of suffering
You wish, 30 years from now there won't be a single human alive in the universe. I have it on good authority
Endings are so hard to do, so many writers just don’t do them
Or have their ending hijacked and ending the book could only dilute the brand. ( he should still have ended it. )
Endings are not that hard, its the point pf the series, I think we all as writer shoukd always write the finaly first, the rest is just the road to reach it
@@vichobochowas going to say the same. Seems a few writers start stories with the Ending as an after thought or eventual epiphany. Eventually writing themselves off trail.
Calm down soft manchild
Or you get people like Abrams who starts a story with all those gimmicky “mystery boxes” but doesn’t have an actual ending in mind or any resolution to his mysteries or really any direction for the plot. Thats how you get messes like Lost or the new star wars sequel trilogy 😂
Despite The Walking Dead being one of the most iconic and recognizable IP's in modern media, it's source material feels SO underrated. Such a beautiful story from beginning to end.
How Kirkman ending his book like Invincible and TWD is why I respect him and rank him as my number 1 favorite comic book writer, man choose to end his story in a high note instead of stretching it out of demand or monetary to over complicated everything and flop at the end, this is something that make me wish that comic book and manga industry learn to follow.
he is a terrible writer
They should make an animated
Walking Dead series that is closer to the comics
Honestly, once invincible is wrapped up, that might be Sky bound’s next show.
🙏
I would love this, especially since we’d hopefully get to have more Steven Yuen as Glenn again and eventually a significantly less censored version of Negan.
I'd watch
I haven’t finished the video yet so I’m sorry if you covered this, but I think Rick’s death is so beautifully ironic and it’s the only way he could ever die. He finally completely let his guard down and felt safe and paid the price. And the scene of all the communities rallied together for his memorial is one of the few comic scenes to ever make me shed a tear. One of the greatest Characters of all times, Rick Grimes.
It would've been nice to get an old man carl
Some of the best advice i ever read as a writer: “Since a story is always a whole, and the organic end is found in the beginning, a great story always ends by signaling to the audience to go back to the beginning and experience it again.” - John Truby
Reminds me of The Dark Tower saga
When they were building up the last season of the TV show, they announced that Daryl and Maggie would have their own spin-off shows. I thought it was so stupid to announce this before the end of the season. It took away any tension that either of them would die before the end. Also we spent the last 11 years with these people, what more was there to say about them? Then I remembered the fake issues of the book and thought AMC were going to pull a similar stunt. Seeing as Andrea, Carl and Rick were no longer in the show, Maggie would get Andrea's ending and die surrounded by friends and family. Daryl would get killed by Sebastian and then finished off by Judith the next morning. I was so smug watching that last episode as I seemed to be the only one to have figured this out and everyone else was looking forward to these spin-offs. Needless to say, I had the rug pulled from under me. Rosita got Andrea's ending and we never got the Rick ending. Such a missed opportunity.
Dropped everything as soon as I got the notification! Robert Kirkman knows how to tell a complete story. Awesome, awesome episode! As always! Thanks Chris!
Best comic book youtuber and it aint all that close
Smokey's Videos is better.
I could have done with an arc or two following old man Carl being a badass but as far as endings go I think Kirkman nailed it. Shout out to Tony Moore too, I don't think we would have the comic as we know it without his influence.
That series is, so far, the only time a comic has made me cry.
Incredible book, I love it so much
Highly recommend Magneto (2014), that'll be the second one to do it 😂
@@dracomundo1498I didn’t cry but that is one very overlooked series.
Great start to the morning!
Comictropes is better than coffee.
Nice Sunday uploads.
Great stuff as always keep up the excellent work
Great video as always. Loved the little shoutout of Ed piskors red room and Jim ruggs mtsryr. Cartoonist kayfabe got me into comics
I read through the whole thing recently for the second time and I feel like all the great stuff in that last compendium does not get talkes about enough
Respect to Charlie Adlard for drawing over 150 issues in a row.
Maybe it’s just me but as a manga reader this doesn’t seem particularly impressive…
As a manga reader this is impressive. If you look how hard Mangaka and their assistants works to pull this off. (And even in Manga 150 chapters long stories might be the most famous, they're actually the exception.)
@@Melkac 150 issues is about 15 years, from 2004 to 2019, he never missed a deadline either in that period.
@@NFLDude56his art was hideous, it's not hard to miss a deadline if your art is subpar, the original artist was waaaay better
Lets not undersell him, I think he did 187 issues in a row. Even did 2 issues a month for half a year. People underestimate how much dedication a comic artist needs for a single title while writers get to do multiple series at a time.
Great video hope you do a top 10 of the year usually my favorite video of the year always great to hear your favorite stories to get some great recommendations
I’ll do a top 10 on Comic Tropes After Dark tonight.
Thanks Chris! Great work as usual. Happy new year.
I tapped out of the TV show right when Negan swung his bat. Didn't find out who he hit until a couple months ago.
I loved the comic, and do intend to finish it, though I'm really early in the run. It was just difficult for a while to get my hands on the floppies.Still at the prison! I'm going to buy it in digital (if available) sometime mid-Feb.
I laughed and laughed when I heard how he ended it. A character actually called the Swordman would have been a zombie shark jump.
The sheriff Grimes always reminds me of the sheriff in The Leftovers
I absolutely love TWD's comics and hate how the show still goes on. The comic actually had a story with a point and a good conclusion. Robert Kirkman told a really unique story with zombie media. Most zombie stories have a bleak ending or a really cliche happy ending like "the army shows up and wipes out the zombies", but TWD goes on long enough to have Rick push this idea to rebuild society in a better way, compared to making things like they were before the dead started walking.
The show doesn't have any of those ideas and just wants to continue shambling along like the zombies in it, creating new spinoffs until eventually AMC can't get another penny out of it. Almost every twist the show did vs the comics' original story was dumber and made things worse.
I wish the comic would’ve went more like the show and that’s coming from someone who read the comics before the show came out. The commonwealth arc of the comics was the most boring thing I ever read and the show made it so much better. It was exciting and killed off Sebastian, which should’ve happened in the comic. Killing Rick off was also the stupidest decision the comic made. At least the tv show avoided doing that. They had so much potential to go on with the comic for many more years or do spin offs and didn’t. That’s part of why I prefer what the show is doing to the comics.
@@BoogSReviews Never seen someone ask for more slop before. Interesting.
Seeing videos like this makes me happy that creative comic book writers still exist.
Thanks, Chris. I appreciate you and your channel.
Excellent synopsis. Really enjoyed this, thanks!
Thanks for this video Chris. I hadn't thought about The Walking Dead in a while. You've brought back a lot of nice memories, and your analysis is great
It took me by surprise. At first I disliked, After Re visiting the four omnibus.... I was YEAH it Makes sense!
found your channel in 2019 and have loved your analyses and reviews the entire time! here’s to another year of comic tropes :)
Wonderful video as always Chris! Happy new year
I haven’t seen this channel in a while. I forgot how good it is.
im really glad you made this video
I know the initial shock of 193 being the finale really rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, myself included. The issue, in a vacuum, was a good send-off. After watching this, i have an appreciation for Kirkman's rug pull.
I'd been going off the series over the last year so was really pleased it ended and didn't drag itself out anymore. Impressed me Kirkman seemed to realise it wasn't so good anymore and he'd done all he could with the series. Was a pleasant surprise.
Wait 193 issues. Wow, long running indeed!
Especially when almost no other books make it past issue 50 before being rebooted. Again.
Originally planned for longer run. Ending came out of nowhere.
The Long Running Dead
the thing i love about the walking dead and invincible is that theres REAL SUBSTANTIAL growth in the story and characters (rick and mark in particular) throughout the story theres a real sense of seeing these characters throughout different stages of there life and its fascinating to see thers a real sense of growth and is something a truly love about kirkman and his books
Love how it just came out of nowhere. Just "there's your dinner, it's done"
I'm not a Walking Dead fan but two of my kids are so I'll wish you a happy new year and keep my support going for you.
To this day I remember when Rick said those words “Don’t you get it? WE ARE the Walking Dead!” Boy, that hit me hard. It was one of the best dialogues ever in a comic book, and it was so true to the story and characters. Damn. Now, several years later, when I was reading las issues without knowing what was going to happen; When Rick said “We are NOT the Walking Dead!” I almost spit my coffee! This is it, I thought. We are almost to the end of the series! I swear I just knew it was close, but really had NO IDEA Rick would die soon! Oh my, I felt sad, I took a moment to think and digest it. Seeing Rick getting shot and later as a walker, it hit me. I remember my wife asking me “are you alright? What’s wrong?” I could not tell her that I felt like I just got news that an old friend had died. That was The Walking Dead Characters to me. I really came to care about them, and that is why I quit the show when they killed Carl. Now seeing Rick dying, I understood, finally understood that Kirkman was ending the series. This was probably the last issue. Last issue came, and it was what everyone had wanted since the eatly issues. Carl surviving. Making a life for himself. What a great ending.
I love that, like Watchmen, TWD is cyclical and is designed for you to go back to issue 1 upon completing the final story. An amazing book that the show ultimately failed.
My biggest gripe with modern media is the refusal to let stories end. So many IPs now are all about franchising and trying to milk things with forced sequels or spin-offs for as long as possible that having a self-contained narrative with a definitive beginning and end has become a lost art
Great work tropes 🙏🏻
Great episode, Happy New Year, Chris!
Great episode! I've been watching a lot of older episodes lately, you should promote your huge library of videos more, because a bunch of people only watches the newer stuff but there's so much great and fun episodes that deserve more views
It always picks my day up to see u posted
As someone that hasn't read the comics, I find Negan the most fascinating narratively.
In storytelling 101, any "evil" character turned "good" that HAS killed people (on-screen or beloved characters) HAS to die in order for their redemption arc to come full circle. TV Negan escaped this rule cause AMC wanted to milk money out of the character. But now that you made me aware that "Negan Lives" is a thing- I can finally put to bed this argument I have with my friend. He doesn't go through a redemption in the comics- he's just alive and still coming to terms with his consequences.
He started his redemption but I agree: he hasn’t finished it.
The comic had a phenomenal ending vs the show that had a ending that advertised there three new spin off shows.
YAY! the resolution and sound are much better!! Though movement still reveals some distortion, there's still reflections in your glasses and a few pillows around the room would help the sound more. Still
GREAT WORK, as ever. Followup audio at 9:45 is much cleaner. Also, it should be easy to work in these re-shoots without calling attention to them, if only you can keep the audio consistent. Perhaps do the whole show with the big mic visible, in a decorated recording studio instead of a rec room. Thanks for letting me offer feedback.
That original ending sounds so much better
Another great episode!
12:14 Malibu did that back in the 1990s with thier Exiles series too. And yea, retailers were not happy that they had to refund orders on comics that the publisher had no intention of publishing.
Comic with ending? Very weird phenomenon.
Not in manga
@erikbihari3625@moritakaishida7963 most comics have endings. Marvel and DC (main universe titles)are the exception.
Most indie comics nail the ending
Great video!
I was reading TWD in trade paperbacks as they were released, and eventually hit a point where I wasn't really motivated to read any more. In retrospect that was probably around the halfway point in the series (volume 15 or 16, I think?), but at the time it felt like it was just spinning its wheels, so I gave up on it.
Don't get me wrong, it was still a well told story with likable characters. But it didn't feel like there was an end in sight; it was not as if we were following our plucky heroes on a quest to find the cure for the zombie outbreak, or some greater end goal along those lines. We were just following the characters from one settlement to the next, things would spiral out of control, people would die, and survivors would move on to the next settlement. Rinse and repeat. I understand that that's simply the nature of following the characters and their survival, but after a while I wanted to see some sort of light at the end of the tunnel for them. I wanted the series to feel less like a catalogue of their day-to-day survival (which felt meandering to me), and more like a story that has a beginning, middle, and ending.
Now that the series is complete and I _know_ that there is an actual satisfying ending, I've been buying the colored re-release "Walking Dead Deluxe" issues ever since that started during the pandemic, and rediscovering my fondness for the series.
Such a great ending. It makes for such a satisfying reread
The dialogue being functional shows the purposeful world of having to survive.
I read the Walking Dead every month from issue three on. Five years later I don't even remember the ending. So I don't think he nailed it. It was just okay but forgettable.
thanks for covering this!! I had some issues with my local book shop and they lost my order list around the time the Whisperers were introduced... i never got back into TWD, so it was really nice to see how it all ends. Hell maybe i should get off my ass and reread it from the negan saga and finish the series
Excellent episode Chris!
I stopped reading the series around issue 100 or so, but I ended up reading the last issue and it was a very satisfying ending. But without the surprise of it all I think the impact would have been lost, as you said.
Great video Chris!
Shout out to cliff rathburn who brought so much to this book, and is an awesome illustrator in his own right. Have loved his work for years. Also he grew up in a town called woodbury... have always wondered if the governor arch was a nod to his work...
Probably so. The survivors lived in Alexandria, VA because that’s where I lived when that happened. Robert would use towns and names of friends here and there.
@ComicTropes I went to school with cliff. We used to trade comics in grade school lol.
Haven't talked to him in years, but I still enjoy his work.
Love your vids!
Looking sharp Chris. Happy New Year
Wonderful episode, thank you very much Chris.
Thank you for another Wonderful Video.
The last Arch was great and even though i personaly didn't love the Epilogue, after the time jump, it was really well done.
As far as levity goes i like the tone of the comics and feel like the Balance between good and Bad is way better than the TV Show.
The Ending Kirkman chose is far more Interesting to me than the Zombie overrun earlier idea.
Fear the walking dead was great. All season no judgements.
Not a fan of the ending. Followed the man's story for nearly two decades, survives hell and high water and then gets taken out like a chump. It might be cliche, but I prefer the go out in a blaze of glory or let him make it to old age.
I remember very vividly reading the last issue in the park and it surprisingly made me cry. I did not expect this story, as bleak as it was, to end as hopefully as it did. It's a memory I'll treasure forever.
i miss the old comictropes intro :(
I watched the series after a co-worker recommended it, but never read the comics as I quit the hobby back in 1989. Horror was #1 to me and recall getting into comics near 1972 with horror which did feature some zombies. Monsters & Dinosaurs were next after horror and then followed by heroes after 1973ish.
I hadn't felt this shocked with what happened to Rick since Negan's debut and what he did to Glenn in the comic book.
Great analysis!
The Whisperers definitely aren't anarchists. Anarchism is essentially a form of stateless, classless socialism, that's based on mutual aid, the workers having communal ownership of the means of production and an opposition to all unnecessary forms of hierarchy (at least the most popular strain of anarchism, which is anarcho-communism as described in the writing of Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman etc. - Though the whisperers don't match the other strains of anarchist thought like Anarcho-Mutualism or Anarcho-Primitivism either.). Beyond that I love your videos, but that's a pretty big mischaracterization of what anarchists believe. We're more likely to be members of Antifa, not the whisperers lol
Great episode Chris. Felt more like comictropes of old.
Thanks for this.
Great vid
I only ever watched the first 2 seasons of the TV show, but have just recently finished reading the books (I have the 4 compendiums). I agree that it is a great story with a perfect ending
Really hope kirkman and skybound make a walking dead animated show like invincible that follows the comic
Great video.
Asking whether someone prefers the comics or TV show is like asking whether someone likes In-N-Out or McDonald’s.
Great overview !
Happy New Year Chris!
the ending of the walking dead comic is easily my favorite part of the whole series, and thats saying a lot because I genuinely love all of it except for maybe the last arc. Time scale is one of my favorite concepts that fiction plays around with and I really like being able to see carl and everyone else who made it out of the bullshit far off from it and just living their lives, because at the end of the day no matter what happens life has a habit of finding a way to go on. One of the best stories to sell the "things will be alright in the end" message in my opinion
Loved the video! The ending of the comics was mixed for me and for most of the folks I was watching at the time, so I haven't heard many takes like this.
The epilogue with adult Carl was awesome. Period. No notes lol.
The rest didn't go over so well as I recall. It felt like the arc had yet to really pop off, and the stakes of a riot didn't seem so bad compared to the heads on pikes we recently dealt with. Not to mention, millionaire Kirkman's attempts at social commentary on class were like 5 years too late and surface deep. (ironically the show had a similar issue when they did their version).
I mention this frustration as a backdrop for an anticlimactic ending to the arc, followed by the protag being killed in an underwhelming way, followed by Kirkman's biggest troll yet - we are ending the comics at its absolute nadir and it's never going to pick up again because Rick is dead and so is the comic. It was not a great feeling after months of meh.
That was of course years ago, and I've softened a bit on it. I don't hate it, but I think it still could've been done better.
I agree civil war's ending is crap but the journey is what gets me coming back.
I’m really glad the ending was so hopeful. Love the channel! ❤
I feel the opposite honestly. I think by the end of the series Robert had lost steam and was just ready to end it. Hence why it ended so abruptly. I think the writing of the comic went way downhill after the whisperer war. The whole commonwealth arc was boring and Rick’s death pissed me off beyond words. I wish he would’ve at least handed the comic off to another writer to continue on (he did say he wanted it to go to like issue 300) or did a spin off book instead of just up and ending it. And if he did insist on ending like that, go with his original ending of everyone being wiped out and the dead winning in the end.
When i finished the last volume of TWD some time ago, i closed the book, put it on the table netx to my reading chair, stood up, went over to my little library and picked up TWD #1 to read the whole story again. Immediately. Such was the greatness of TWD's ending.
Good stuff!!
Oh shit i didn't kbnow you were an AEW Fan.
But the walking dead comics I always felt intimidated by then i read berserk and realized it wasn't too long of a comparably, so I think i will pick it up eventually
ts caught me off guard too
great vid!
I read the series only in the last couple years by the omnibuses. Even though the end of the last omnibus was drawing near, the ending still surprised me. I was sad to see Rick go but I can’t say I dislike the comic at all. So glad I read that series
5:10 a cop siding with the working class and not the capital owners?????? Only at the end of the world in a comic book that would EVER happen
Capital owners are the working class in capitalism. Nothing stop you as a private citizen from owning capital and working a 9-5. The police uphold the laws as they are sworn to, which means they’re on the side of the government. The government has a vested interest in private equity flourishing, since that funds the government through taxation.
If you think it’s bad now, you’d be in for a surprise when the working class has no access to capital because the State owns it all and claims that it represents the will of the people, and uses the police to crack down on dissent far more violently than what we experience now.
Basically, just look at the Holodomir, Cambodian Killing Fields, Red August, or many other socialist massacres and see what we have now is far preferable.
@kman9884 🥾👅 🥾👅
I love the walking dead comic book. It remains an all time favorite of mine. I don't love the show but I appreciate that it brought attention to the book and other comics. Maybe one day we'll get a more faithful adaptation like an animated series or HBO version!
I have the TPBs and preferred the comics to the tv show. I stopped watching after Carl was killed off, didn't watch any of the spinoffs except the first three seasons of Fear The Walking Dead.
The Walking Dead got me back into monthly comics.
I like this ending than show
i can definitely agree that the ending they went with for the _Walking Dead_ comic, only knowing it from here, was the way to go. the one where they could've ended it earlier where it turns out to have basically been all for naught strikes me more as being like the asinine conclusion Alan Moore eventually wrote for _League of Extraordinary Gentlemen_
Happy New Year
I picked up the series from the beginning, and eventually sold the early 1st run issues as their prices were too hard to turn down. Got about 2 and a half grand for issues 1 to 10 and replaced them with the first omnibus. As a collector, I miss having the individual issues, but they paid for the entire run and then some. I got out of collecting around the time 193 came out as I realised there wasn't much I actually cared about anymore, and I think a big part of the reason I carried on as long as I did was WD and Invincible. Kirkman really knows how to get you invested in a character and tell a complete story, and made all the other mainstream characters with their disjointed arcs and never ending, often repeated, stories seem a bit vapid in comparison.
I still haven't finished the walking dead show, but I started reading the comics last year and finished it this past January. Let me tell you, I love super heroes, i wouldn't be into comics without them but MAN. NO comic has ever hit me the way TWD did. Plus it actually had an ending and it is the best. I'm in the middle of Invincible now and I can't get enough of it either.
I'm rather mixed on The Commonwealth arc myself but I thought the last couple issues were beautifully done and a great send off for the series.
I've reading through TWD for the third time right now! This time I'm reading the Deluxe edition :) I think B&W will always be the definitive way to experience The Walking Dead, but this full-color experiment is pretty fun.