The Walking Dead #75 – Review

By: Robert Kirkman (writer), Charlie Adlard (art), Cliff Rathburn (gray tones) & Russ Wooton (letters)

The Story: Is Rick Grimes… Our hero… Suitable for decent company anymore?  Or has he been so screwed up by his experiences leading a group of survivors through a zombie-infested countryside that he’ll never be the man he once was?

Grade: A-

[SPOILER ALERT – I’M JUST GOING FOR IT WITH THIS REVIEW, SO IF YOU DON’T WANT IT SPOILED, STOP NOW!!!]

What’s Good: Let’s start with the fact that we’ve had 75 issues of zombie-infused survivor-horror thanks to Kirkman, Adlard & Rathburn.  Most superhero comics from DC/Marvel don’t last that long and this creative team really hasn’t put out a crappy issue nor are they running out of story.  We still don’t know what caused the zombie plague, whether it is localized to the United States or whether zombies can even do things like swim (I’d love to see them hop a sailboat now that they’re in DC).  Bravo!  Bravo!

The big spoiler in this issue is that Rick is now the bad guy.  When we left off in issue #74 we saw the cowardly priest telling Douglas (the leader of the community where the survivors have found safety) how many bad things Rick and gang had done.  I figured that this knowledge would cause tension between Douglas and Rick, but I was dead-ass wrong.  It turns out Douglas knows darn well what Rick has had to do and applauds him for it.

But, as the issue unfolds, it is clear that Rick is so mentally and emotionally damaged by his time in the wild that he just can’t do this polite society thing anymore when he flips out on a guy who is abusive towards his wife and kid.