Written by Robert Kirkman
Art by Ryan Ottley
Published by Image Comics
It’s effing awesome.
What else needs to be said about a comic book in which The Walking Dead is taken into a direction built from a pastiche of Independence Day and 8 million bits of sci-fi fantasy lore?
Don’t you want to see an undying Rick Grimes with a cybernetic hand and a laser-sword battling the undead and aliens?!?
If your answer is no, you’re no fun, and I want no parts of ya.
The thrill-ride quality of this book comes not only from Kirkman, whom we already knew as a someone who can write on an operatic scale with lots of suspense – as you expect.
And then you add Ottley to the mix, with his epic, van mural-big depictions of planetary violence featuring the smoothest, most casual eviscerations and decapitations.
Somehow, even on projects such as their collaboration Invincible, or Ottley’s run on the new Hulk series, all of these horrors happen with a sense of … glee?
Is that the right term?
Just the pleasure of seeing someone completely in the zone with the thing they do best.
Also, how dumb am I for not seeing the echoes of John McCrea in Ottley’s work before? A spread page with a closeup of Michonne sold it to me. (Side note: If Tommy Monaghan from DC cult classic Hitman showed up in the background of this story, I’d be happy.)
A book such as Rick Grimes 2000 just keys into the lizard brain in a way that I find deeply satisfying. It’s like the best Heavy Metal or 2000 AD story never made.
I don’t even care that this book, for the most part, is “and then” storytelling. For real, it is.
Rick Grimes wakes up in a medical bay and then he sees a robot hand where Ol’ Righty used to be and then he falls through a spaceship into a battle of undead and his old buddies from The Walking Dead who are now reincarnated, cybernetic supersoldiers and then the Governor shows up and then there’s a giant zombie made of a thousand zombies and then and then and then.
I don’t care. The roller coaster nature of the storytelling keeps me going: big climbs, big drops, bone-rattling turns and a loop or two. Strap in and feel the G’s, people. No messin’ about!
And that’s all without getting into when Negan shows up with all his verbose cruelty, and a new form of Lucille that rivals He-Man’s power sword.
This book is all power plus some fun digs at Walking Dead lore for the fans as basically everyone who ever died is back – and maybe they die again, and come back again.
This hardcover edition also features variant and previously unpublished cover art. Arthur Adams’ take on these characters and the alien monsters is both boilerplate from him and a delight. And Kirkman’s own sketches of the characters are really fun – so it was his idea for the Governor to still have an eyepatch but sport a cybernetic clamp arm.
Do your lizard brain a favor and pick this one up now!
Grade: A+
