THE WALKING DEAD, Vols. 9-12 by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard et al. (Image)

After the seismic conclusion to the Compendium, I was curious to see what happens next, and figured I might as well just go ahead and get completely up to date, at least as far as the trades go.

The first half of vol. 9 is as downbeat and downtempo as I expected. Check out this spread of pages:

I mean, really, where could they go after annihilating the core of Rick's world in a way even the zombie apocalypse hadn't managed to do yet? Nowhere right away, and so we get a few issues of obligatory mourning.

By the end of the volume, though, Rick and son Carl have reunited with the few survivors who didn't take their chances in the prison against the Governor, plus a few new faces, and are off on the next long arc--a trip to Washington D.C., in the hopes of finding at least some remnant of a functional government working on the problem.

Traumatized by the devastating losses resulting from his own leadership--losses which left him bereft of important moral and psychological moorings--Rick continues his alarming spiritual deterioration. In vols. 10 and 11, he fights off two horrifying assaults that would bring out the savage in anyone, and I fear they may have tipped him into the abyss. As often as he warns Carl against getting used to doing bad things sometimes to stay alive, his violent defense of himself and those he cares about keeps getting more and more disproportionately retributive. Never mind "an eye for an eye"; now he's taking two eyes for one. Considering how truly dreadful his enemies are, that pushes him into some very dark territory indeed.

I wasn't very effusive about Adlard's art in the Compendium, but I think he does an exceptional job in these volumes of conveying Rick's grief, fear, revulsion, suspicion, weariness, and rage--all with a touch of something scarily close to psychopathy.

It's a testament to the grinding misery of everything that's gone before, that it comes as one of the most shocking developments of the series when Rick's crew is welcomed into a secure community of apparently sincere benevolence and goodwill. Just as a reader, it's hard to shake the lessons of Woodbury and believe this could be true. Rick's stump of an arm is a permanent reminder of those lessons, and everything that's happened since has only etched them deeper. Vol. 12 closes on an ominous note, as it looks like his hard-won paranoia might be pushing him through a full-blown face-heel turn. I notice that the forthcoming next volume is titled, "Too Far Gone." Yikes!

Still a very involving read, and even if the tv show turns out disappointing, I at least have it to thank for getting me started on the comics.