AaAaAaAaAa doods, it's ahme, Tombo, back again with another blog for y'all. Since I didn't have enough spare time to make a blog about Issue 173 (which was garbage btw, unsurprisingly), I figured I should make one for 174 now that I do, in fact, have that spare time. And boy, do we have a stinker with this one
The NEGAN ISSUE starts with the character that was once the best thing about this comic… ranting about the usage of certain words to mean "penis"... to himself. Now, one might say that this is typical Negan behavior and that there's nothing wrong with it. Of course, one would be wrong, and a fucking idiot. This, right here, is the biggest proof that Negan, as a character, has been overused, overexposed and flanderized. He's not doing it to pass off the idea that he's crazy, he's not doing it to fuck with people, he's not putting up a show. He's by himself, in the middle of fucking nowhere, and he's still talking about things like Mama Negan's kitchen of death and shoving his vagina inside a woman's vagina. Because isn't that what Negan was always about? Saying weird shit for the sake of saying weird shit? Without any actual point behind the weird shit he says? Point being (my point, this comic doesn't really have one anymore), he clearly did that just to see people's reactions, which was shown time and time again with Rick, Carl and that random Savior he asked to fuck his baseball bat, but now that's just something he does when he's completely alone? Is he trying to entertain himself in his time of loneliness? Does he just like the sound of his own voice? Did he go FUCKING CRAZY in those two years of absolute isolation that we never got to see? (Don't worry, we'll talk about that later on).
Anyway, Negan then spares two zombies in what I could call a smart move if just the thought of praising modern Kirkman writing didn't give me a fucking stomach ache. Bleh, it's just a minor detail, regardless. He then puts the flower he picked up earlier (Who was tending to those flowers four years into the apocalypse, anyway? The place looked deserted.) in what I assume is a second grave he dug for Lucille, completely identical to the first one in everything except the location… Ok, cool I guess. It's clear that neither Kirkman nor Adlard are trying anymore so I won't try to understand the point of that, either. He puts the SEXY MOTHERFUCKER on his wife's grave, reminding the readers that of all the possible backstories Negan could've had, Kirkman went with literally the laziest and most uninspired one, and goes with that same generic "I wish you had lived instead of me" bullshit that all of you have already seen a million times, which makes me wonder, what the fuck happened to Robert Kirkman? He used to despise cliches and overused tropes back in the day, now he's turned them up to eleven in his own work? Is this like another M. Night Shyamalan situation, when a fairly competent person just wakes up one day and he has become complete garbage overnight? Or does he just not give a fuck anymore? He clearly hates having to deal with fans, based on his public appearances and the egotistical and frankly, annoying way he responds to anything but praises in the Letter Hacks… Or maybe just years and years of having to deal with fucking AMC broke him? Hell, I wouldn't blame him if that's the case, I'd just feel sad…
Moving on with the issue we then have a FUNNY SITCOM MONTAGE of how wacky and horrible Negan's life is now, including having to shoot and eat a dog, a moment I'm 100% sure was inspired by the TV show and which wasn't good when they did it, either, and - I'm not kidding with this - a literal diarrhea joke. That's how low we've sunk, guys. Negan eats spoiled food and then shits on a bush while doing his hilarious "fuck fuckity fuck" routine. Wow. I mean, fucking wow. I don't even know what to say to this. There's a literal diarrhea joke in TWD now. This is some Adam Sandler, Happy Madison bullshit right there. Not even AMC, the kings of shameless memes would do something like that. It was at this point that I realized that there was No Going Back from this awfulness. Not like I was expecting the comics to become good again, anyway, but that just put the final nail in the coffin.
Negan finds a new bat that was just conveniently lying around an open barn for someone to find and then has an internal debate over whether or not to replace the broken Lucille with the new bat. But OH-OH! Lucille was named after his wife! That means if he replaces the bat, he's replacing his dead wife! The plot thickens! Wait, what the fuck? If you're worried about insulting the memory of your wife why did you name a fucking baseball bat that you used to bash people's skulls in after her in the first place, you idiot? And why did you joke around asking a random ass guy if he fucked said bat? What the hell? It's almost like this "the bat is my wife" shit wasn't planned from the start and was just pulled out of your ass in a lame attempt of having something meaningful about it- Oh wait…
Anyway, Negan is in the middle of wrapping the bat in some barbed wire when SUDDEN MAGGIE OF SUDDEN CONFLICT suddenly appears out of nowhere and points a gun at him! They then have a very lame confrontation that has honestly been built up since Issue 100 and I too, at one point, was excited about happening one day, but of course, if Carl telling Andrea about how he killed Ben DURING THE TIMESKIP wasn't any indication that Kirkman doesn't give a shit about big character-related moments like this, the way he handled this one surely is. Negan acknowledges he's aware of who Maggie is, and that she fucking hates him for what he did, and then he says he's sorry. Wait, what? Fucking what? Negan is sorry that he killed Glenn? No, no fucking way. Negan would never fucking do that. At first, my reaction was the exact same as Maggie's, to think that he was bullshitting her to gain sympathy. Because, you know, that's actually something Negan would do? But no, apparently Negan is genuinely sorry that he obliterated Glenn's head with his bat to make a point, laughed and joked about it. This honestly undermines the most iconic moment of the fucking series. Now every time I reread Issue 100 (which is fantastic btw), I'll constantly keep reminding myself that Negan regrets doing what he did with such passion there. This is the DEFINING MOMENT OF NEGAN, the first thing he does when he first show up, and is what immediately clues the readers in what kind of person he is, and he fucking regrets doing it now. Which leads to the crowning moment of awful in this issue (yes, worse than the poop joke), Negan claims that while back then he thought that was necessary, he doesn't anymore because "Rick showed [him] the way"...
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That's a 100% real, word by word quote of Issue 174. "Rick showed me the way". If it wasn't obvious enough for everybody already, Rick MOTHERFUCKING Grimes is so great, so badass and so motherfucking perfect that he, BY HIMSELF, made Negan realize what he was doing was wrong and that THERE'S ANOTHER WAY. You know who else converts antagonists into the side of good with speeches about the power of friendship and working together? Naruto. And guess what? Even the fans of that show think it's stupid. But whatever, right? I guess Rick is literally God and can do no wrong now, am I right? Not like questioning the morality of people after society crumbles is the main selling point of the zombie genre to begin with, Rick MOTHERFUCKING Grimes is 100% morally correct, can do no wrong, and should be blindly followed by everyone because he's just SO GREAT, and everyone who opposes him or the other GOOD GUYS are 100% irredeemably evil douchebags or straight up imbeciles who had it coming like Gregory and Morton Rose. FUCK challenging the audience and questioning morality, our characters are as Black and White as they come now!
Also, Negan mentions that he has had time to think about his actions and be haunted by them in those two years he spent locked up by himself in a dark cell. Cool, another fucking moment that happened during the timeskip and we never got to see, and which would have been miles better than what we actually got. But hey, you don't need to SHOW the struggle Negan went through in his cell, just TELL the audience about it and they will accept it without batting an eye, right? It's not like that's literally rule 1 of storytelling, to show and not tell, right? God fucking damn it I hate this fucking timeskip more and more with every fucking issue...
Then the only somewhat decent moment of the issue happens: Maggie asks if Negan if he can remember his wife's face, and when he says he does and sees her and hears her voice all the time, she interrupts him saying that the only thing she can picture when she thinks of Glenn is his fucked up face with the eye sticking out and screaming her name in agony. This is genuinely a good moment and reminds me a lot of old Kirkman, which makes it even worse because it's in a fucking issue with DIARRHEA JOKES AND RICK MOTHERFUCKING GRIMES SHOWED ME THE MOTHERFUCKING WAY FUCK YOU KIRKMAN YOU PIECE OF SHIT AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!! But I digress, Negan's reaction to this is fucking priceless, he just looks at her in a face that is the definition of "Oh, fuck", before basically begging her to kill him. Now, if this was still old Kirkman, Negan would die right here and there. Maggie would shoot him between the eyes and leave the house silently without saying a single word to Dante. But since the good guys are apparently not allowed to kill people nowadays, as proven by Eugene literally going "I forgive you" to Siddiq a few issues ago, Maggie inexplicably decides to let Negan live, despite being openly vocal against this idea back in All Out War (something that Negan acknowledges in this very issue, by the way!), which leads to Negan grabbing her hand and pressing the gun against his head, now straight up begging to die, no "basically" needed. After he asks her "please" exactly five times (I've counted it), she still decides that he needs to LIVE WITH IT, and that he WASN'T WORTH IT… God fucking damn it, forget about killing him, lady, can you please shoot ME in the head so I don't have to keep reading this shitty issue anymore?
Maggie then kisses Dante for no fucking reason whatsoever and Negan burns the new bat he's found, signalizing that both of them have moved on from the entire thing, which means that now, like I mentioned before, the most iconic moment of the series and the confrontation that has been built up for over 70 issues... meant fucking nothing in the long run. GG Kirkman. G fucking G.
This is a new low for the series, and I think I have said this a lot. I shouldn't be saying this a lot, but for some reason Kirkman loves to prove me wrong every month. No matter how bad this comic gets, he always has something worse in storage for his beloved audience. Does he realize he's gotten so bad, or is he completely oblivious that he now goes directly against everything he once stood for? If he does, does he even give a fuck? Is he doing it on purpose? I just know that this is fucking sad, to see something that had so much time and effort put into it become so soulless and frankly, pathetic. Negan in this issue represented TWD as a whole, begging to be put down, but the selfish bearded man who honestly believes he is always on the right and can do no wrong keeps it alive to further profit from it. I give this issue a 1/10, would give it a 0 if I could.
Also Negan literally said "Everyone's a critic" in this issue WHAT THE FU-