The Walking Dead #176

[cyberghostface]

 



Michonne wants to know where her daughter is.

Comments

[superfangirl1]

Awww, very sweet reunion scene.

I wonder what dark secrets this community got? As it is to good to be true.

[nyadnar17]

I hope none. Like the whole idea that ultra-violent psychopaths are the ones with the best chance of surviving and thriving in a post-apocalyptic world is insanity to me.

Like this place won't be perfect, but I really hope its an exploration of what can be done in the aftermath by non-crazy people rather than yet another faux utopia.

[mizerous]

But the commentary on humanity being evil in nature is too much to resist!

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Dude.

If you don't repeat the same basic plot every single time, how would you know it's a zombie series?

By the walking corpses?

Pfft

[cyberghostface]

There are only so many ways for stories like this to run but Kirkman has done an alright job not doing the same plot again and again. Negan and the Governor both started out as sadistic despots but Negan’s arc turned out to be much different.

[jeremyp]

I'm with you, but sadly the faux utopia is a tried and true way to guarantee melodrama. Dealing with the realistic struggles of a community that is legitimately rebuilding after an apocalypse just doesn't seem very popular.

My guess is that Michonne's daughter is going to die as a victim of whatever dark secrets this community has, and that Michonne will lead a war to destroy the place.

But I'd love to be wrong.

[leoboiko]

Sorry, but the issue is already heavy hinting at authoritarianism, rigid peck-order hierarchies, and other wonders of civilization. For example, one condescending officer asked our band of heroes about their jobs before the apocalypse; then he snidingly humiliated and dismissed a schoolteacher and a retail worker, choosing Michone as the representative because she was a high-status lawyer. This is what these capitalist pigdogs are recreating.

I'm betting the commentary for this arc will be: is the safety and progress of civilization worth heavy social injustice? Given the choice between a free-er, community-based life under threat by zombies and marauders, ad a safer lifestyle where others pick your job for you and you have to go "yes, sir, of course, sir", would you still pick the former? Probably something on that note.

[tripodeca113]

Awwww.

[bruinsfan]

Leah Remini is now a head of state?

[doctornone]

Perfect casting choice.

[beyondthefringe]

I dig the idea of civilization reforming during the zombie apocalypse, so I'm really hoping that the Commonwealth is perfectly legit and that whatever story comes out of this is character-based like for Michonne and not "oh, it's really a totalitarian state" or "Rick has to go to war... again."

I'm a huge fan of Mira Grant's Newflesh series, which postulates that it -is- possible to rebuild a semblance of society even with zombies. :)

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

We've already seen hints at their evilness. From Michonne's chat/interview, it seems like they've adopted functionalism. Everyone has their place i society, and must stay in it, no matter what.

Everyone in the Commonwealth are cogs

[beyondthefringe]

Well, damn.

[mastiff]

Wow. Sign me up for that kinda evil.

"You'll never have to sleep in car, terrified of being eaten alive by the walking dead, or scavenge for 5 year old tins of peaches, or wear the flesh of the dead, or worry that minor scratch will turn sceptic and kill you... but your dream of being a lawyer is over. You're now a barrista."

"Sold. Gimme an apron."

[janegray]

Yeah, I was thinking, that kind of commentary would work a lot better in stories where the thing at stake is not survival in its most basic form.

I'm starting to get really tired of the uber individualism that seems to be inherently typical in American writing. People all over the world routinely leave everything they know and love behind for a fraction of a chance to feed themselves and their children, and American comics/books/shows keep going on and on about the supposedly impossibility of answering the question "is not dying horribly worth giving up your dreams?"

Yes. Yes, it is.

Now, mind you, building a society where people can follow their dreams should be the next step. Just... address the "not dying horribly here and now" part first? Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, folks. You can't work for a better future if you are a corpse.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Putting aside the fact that zombies really shouldn't be a 'basic survival' thing, the lack of individualism in this society seems to be one that favors, needlessly, the intellectual elite vs, the working class.

Michonne is more highly regarded than the science teacher (who gave his people the ability to create bullets) simply because she used to be a lawyer at a law firm.

And the lady in charge immediately takes a shine to Michonne, simply because she's a bad ass.

Thus far, I'm reminded of Functionalism in IDW's Transformers. Everyone has their place, their function, all of which benefit the elite.

Also, I vaguely remember a Living Dead movie that had undertones of class warfare, and Kickman does lift his plots from them...

[janegray]

Serious question: why shouldn't zombies be a basic survival thing? They are billions of super predators that caused global society to collapse to the point that healthcare and food production have been utterly decimated. Communication is down as well, as is shipping and reliable transport. Skilled workers (such as engineers) are in short supply, they likely need to work by memory alone because the protocols are lost, and the tools and materials they need to build things are almost certainly not available anymore (or if they are, they are going to run out of stock eventually).

As the WD world stands, a bad flu or a harsh winter might be all it takes to exterminate even the largest city of survivors. Humanity is surviving, but a giant Sword of Damocles is ever hanging over its head.

I'm not saying an unjust society is not horrible. I'm saying that it definitely beats the alternative of dying. And I don't mean "dying" as in "you lose your life but others lives on," I mean that a conflict between the few surviving societies could very well end up being the coup the grace to doom humanity as whole. There is a time and a place for outright fighting and this is not it.

Let's consider IDW Functionism. Megatron opposed the horribly unjust Functionism from the beginning. But, as long as the Senate """"""just"""""" oppressed the populace with shitty laws such as "you can't do the job you want, you must do the job that the Senate wants you to do," Megatron limited himself to peaceful protests and, at worst, clashes and riots that had a handful of casualties. He certainly didn't do anything that could remotely threaten the survival of his species, or even just the group of miners he worked with.

Megatron first resorted to outright violence when the Senate fired the miners en masse. In the total absence of a welfare safety net (it's shown that Terminus would have been left to literally starve to death if Megatron had not volunteered to share his rations with him), for all intents and purposes the Senate was condeming the miners to die. THAT'S what finally caused Megatron to snap and attack a Senator.

The Senate going from "we are treating you like crap" to "we are indirectly murdering you" is what flipped the Decepticon switch from opposition (even, at times, violent opposition) to outright war. Until that point, until survival was at stake, Megatron had been careful to avoid the escalation of violence into any serious threat.

So, I insist. In this particular moment in time, when everybody is in such a horrifically vulnerable position and the future could burn down at any moment, it would be an exceedingly bad idea to start a war with the most stable community they have found over ideological differences.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Well, in order...

Zombies are only super predators because of constant PIS. They lack the ability to plan and coordinate, they're easily lured and for all the talk of how tough they are, are still human. Get some cable, string it across two well planted pylons, lure them in and the work handles itself.

As for this Walking Dead Functionalist society, it's a bad idea for two reasons.

First and foremost, it seems pretty apparent that they're not doing it right. The leaders were more impressed by Michonne for being a lawyer than say, Eugene.

Him being a high school science teacher should have made him a priority recruitment. But instead they go to a former Elite.

Keeping people in one role, no matter what, overlooks their possible other contributions. Here, Rick would have just been a grunt, a soldier. The man who forged an impressive peace would never be much more than a front line soldier.

Second, what they're doing threatens to ruin them in the long term. I doubt people are going to want to stay in their position forever, for the benefit of those above them that do't want to get their hands dirty. Pamela talking down to Michonne, that she should be thankful for all of Pam's work is, I suspect, the line the higher ups feed those below them.

And this is a world more prone to violence than most ;)

[jeremyp]

I agree with you that it would be interesting to see society rebuilding, but unfortunately that seems unlikely based on the story so far.

I'm wondering if they're setting up Michonne to lead the war this time. I can imagine a story where her daughter dies because of the dark secrets of this community, and Michonne either completely destroys the place or takes over.

[informationgeek]

Alright folks, let's start the betting. How many issues until this instantly goes sideways and this new society falls apart? also, how many people you betting will be dead by the end of this? 3, 4, 5?

[skjam]

I'd guess about 45,000 as the new Dead infestation attacks their blind side.

[mastiff]

Honestly? I don't think it does fall apart.

I think there will be lots of problems, but I think Kirkman wants to end the series with more than bleak nihilism, and this gives him another opportunity. After the whole Negan storyline, he started looking at adding communities and imagining where society would start a new frontier. It's almost like a western, where people need to discover what law and order means all over again.

I could see this new society, safe, boring and intrusive, looking in horror at people like Rick. What would Michonne's daughter think if she found out how many people her mother has killed? People are happier not knowing what it takes to maintain their lifestyle, and I think that will be the conflict, rather than learning that "Soylent Green is People!" or something obvious. What's more important? Safety or Liberty? How do these hard-working people, who've built farms and communities from nothing, deal with a nanny-state gub'mint that wants to control every aspect of their lives and curtail their freedoms?

In short... I think the goal is to go all political commentary.

With zombies.

Because reading about the political reality isn't awful enough.