The Walking Dead #128-129

[cyberghostface]

#128...






#129...

Comments

[silverhammerman]

Surely even in the relentless meat grinder that is The Walking Dead these people have to realize that anyone locked up in a post-apocalyptic hellscape is probably locked up for a reason? Right? Right?

Nah, Negan'll get out and then there will be further offerings of blood for the blood god.

[goattoucher]

This is what I love about WD: like how these people, rather than asking Rick et. al. (people they have trusted for years) what's up, will just turn this guy loose.

I have to think that if Negan were talking like this through the years, Rick would have wised up and put a bullet in him.

[md84]

So leaving the crazy and charismatic murderer alive backfired. Who would have thought it?

[goattoucher]

This is what happens when you take your criminal justice cues from Batman.

[cyberghostface]

These people haven't trusted Rick for years, they just showed up and have been at the camp for less than a week.

[goattoucher]

And Negan knows this (and uses it to manipulate them) how?

The thing is that Negan was the big bad before the time skip, and now he's been locked up, what, four issues, and now he's back to being the big bad again?

Pace yourself, Kirkman.

[cyberghostface]

And Negan knows this (and uses it to manipulate them) how?

Because when they're walking down the stairs they act as if they don't know what's going on.

The thing is that Negan was the big bad before the time skip, and now he's been locked up, what, four issues, and now he's back to being the big bad again?

Even if he gets it out he's no longer a leader of his group and will likely be in a much different position than he was before.

[goattoucher]

Fair enough. Let's hope it works out.

[drtechnobabel]

You know, I think the real question is why Rick never told them they were keeping a dangerous prisoner alive in a holding cell rather than killing him in the first place. Or at least why he didn't do a better job securing the place with something more than what even the other characters admit is an incredibly shitty lock.

[cyberghostface]

He did tell them.

[drtechnobabel]

Then why would they ever trust him over Rick if they know why he's supposed to be imprisoned? It's his word against Rick's (as well as pretty much everyone in town who was around during Neegan's downfall), and quite frankly, they have even less reason to trust him considering he's the one in the jail cell. If Rick was really trying to hide Neegan from them, he wouldn't have told them about him in the first place.

[cyberghostface]

He only told them that it was someone dangerous and not to meet him until he got back. They were suspicious.

[writeofway]

Which is kind of stupid on their part, because when someone tells me "There's a very dangerous man down there and don't meet him until we get back" my first inclination isn't, "Well, nuts to that, let's go chat'em up to see if this place is really on the level."

These guys aren't exactly the swiftest ships in the fleet, are they?

[donnblake]

On the other hand, given what I've seen of the rest of the Walking Dead universe (albeit mostly on the show) it's entirely possible that the last dozen settlements these guys stopped in had horrible secrets locked in that one room that they weren't supposed to go into, like they were killing and eating their new recruits, or trying to breed flying zombies or some nonsense.

[drtechnobabel]

True, but I don't think any of the other settlements offered to show them what was in there either.

[bruinsfan]

The problem is they think they're the party of PCs rather than Rick and those closest to him. If it were the latter sneaking around, the surprise actually would be some awful secret the folks in charge were keeping hidden that reveals what monsters they really are.

[cyberghostface]

What reason do they have to trust Rick?

[drtechnobabel]

What reason do they have to trust Neegan? They know him just as well as they know Rick, except they were told he was dangerous and they find him locked up in a jail cell with the bare minimum security, so it's not like Rick was trying to hide him or anything.

[cyberghostface]

We don't know if they trust Negan.

[writeofway]

And now the narrative will go out of its way to prove the villain right, that Rick should've killed Negan, that a true civilized society just isn't possible in the world of Walking Dead, that humans are animals/bastards/lather rinse repeat.

To be honest, I don't think Kirkman left Negan alive for any narrative reason other than to reinforce that notion.

[drtechnobabel]

See, that's why I don't really like most post-apocalypse stories, especially when it involves zombies. I'm getting real sick of the whole 'humans are the real monsters' theme that keeps showing up. Yeah, people can be real bastards, but there's a difference between being a dick and being a murder or a rapist, which is what these stories seem to keep assuming the majority of people would be if modern society didn't exist. If that were really true, we'd have never reached the point where we had said modern society in the first place.

[wizardru]

Not having read TWD for a while, can someone explain to me why Negan is still alive? I'm assuming there has to be some sort of logical reason that a deposed murderous psychotic warlord who murdered one of the central cast with a barbed-wire baseball bat to make a point is Not Dead.

But in the world of TWD, I'm hard pressed to guess what makes Negan so valuable alive.

[leoboiko]

Rick being holier-than-thou, basically.

[writeofway]

And more than likely it's going to come back and bite him in the ass because this kind of thing always does in books like Walking Dead.