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You would imagine that a comicbook series about a zombie apocalypse would feature a lot of deaths, and The Walking Dead is no exception. Still, the series is different in that, as an ongoing title, the reader follows a group of core characters over a couple of years (it's been running since 2003) so when a character does die, it hurts. No more so than the arc running from issues #43-#48, in which Kirkman pretty much wiped out half the cast that had been there since the very first issues, including some characters many assumed would be in it for the long haul.

If you're not familiar with the series, you might not get a lot of this post, but I'll try to bring you up to speed.

Basically--the series follows a group of people living in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. They are lead by Rick, who was a police officer before everything went bad. Civilization is pretty much gone. In the first year or so, they discovered a (mostly) abandoned prison, which they managed to call home and be safe from the zombies outside.

Anyways, later on, the group discovered far away a neighboring town of sorts run by a sociopath called the Governor. If you want to get an idea of who he is, he keeps his zombie daughter chained up and feeds body parts to her. He chops off Rick's hand and repeatedly rapes Michonne, one of the series' heroines. At the end of the arc, he is tortured by Michonne, who basically chops off the guy's arm, gouges out one of his eyes with a spoon and castrates him. She doesn't kill him, though, so when he recuperates he decides to lead a siege against the prison, kill everyone inside and take over.

This covers #43-48. I made sure not to include more than seven pages from any issue.

At the end of #43...

So, basically, the Governor's plan doesn't go as he thought it would. Mainly, the tanks are just for show--he expects them to surrender outright. He can't break the fence down, because that defeats the purpose of the prison being a safe hold from the zombies.

Michonne and Tyreese decide to take advantage of this and head off to the Governor's camp to take out his men.

Now, we readers know that Michonne isn't dead because Kirkman's not going to kill a major character offscreen. But the Governor and his cronies think she is because she left her sword behind. They have Tyreese captive, so they decide to hold him as leverage to get inside the prison.

The calm before the storm with Rick, his wife and daughter...

In #46, the Governor once again heads to the prison...

So this would be the time where Michonne jumps out and saves the day, right?

If you haven't read the series, you probably don't grasp how shocking this was. Tyreese was built up from the beginning as one of the Big Damn Heroes. People expected him to survive this, but if he had to die, not to go out like this.

In #47, Michonne (revealed to be alive, unsurprisingly) ambushes the Governor and his men back at the camp.

The Governor, understandably pissed off, leads another attack on the camp. A battle ensues, but once again, it doesn't work in his favor.

So...in #48, the final issue of the arc, the Governor and his men have broken over the walls. A lot of the minor characters are killed off, and Rick and his family decide to make a run for it.

It doesn't go too well.

Huge shock right there...I never figured that Kirkman would kill the wife, but the baby? Seriously? You'd figure babies were off grounds. And Lori, Rick's wife, had been an integral character since the very beginning of the series.

Anyway, when Lori's shooter finds out what she did...

Zombies start to pile in, and the Governor distracts her and tries to get the other's attention, but...

So the remainders of the Governor's group head into the prison, but the zombies eventually overwhelm them and they run out of ammo. We don't see it, but it's pretty clear that they're toast.

Anyways, Rick and Carl escape from the prison.

For what's worth (and it might not be clear from this selection of pages) Rick and Carl aren't the only survivors. But at the time being, they're separated from the rest of the survivors and it's a couple of issues before they meet up again.

#49 opened with this brief epilogue concerning Michonne...

As you can imagine, the series took on a drastically different approach from this issue, with new characters and storylines starting from this point on.

creator: charlie adlard, creator: robert kirkman, title: the walking dead, nsfw: gore