Greetings fellow wikians!
Regarding my absence: I dont know if I had any "fans" while I was poasting my bimonthly reviews here, but for those who have recognized my absence and want an explanation, I was moving and while doing that worked a 40h week, so there wasnt much time to write blogs sadly.
But i did snoop in here from time to time and have seen that the dissatisfaction with the comics, mainly regarding the quality of the story, has been growing since my absence and that many of ou think that TWD just does the same over and over nowadays. Well I agree to some extent, however, I still think the comic has a pretty decent quality to it, but I have a theory as to why many of us start to get frustrated with the series.
Long story short, we have to ask ourselfs: Has the Walking Dead reached its limit?
But please remember Im not saying that any f my words are facts, its just a theory Id like to throw out to get a freindly discussion ging.
The Story:[]
allright, Analyzing the whole story of TWD would take way too long, so Ive decided to look at it in an extremily simplified way, and if we do it like that we have 3 Main Factors that influence the Story:
*Survival
*Shelter
*Antagonists
The most exciting parts of the series have allways been when one of those factors change, but since more than 5 years now, one (and by extension two) of those factors have stayed the same. Since the Crew landed in Alexandria, Shelter is completely out of the picture, as its their permanen thome now, and survival is only influenced by the third fasctor nowadays, the Antagonist. And thats one of the causes why the series seems so repetative these days, the story only develops through its antagonists, which is honestly pretty fitting as it can be translatetd to "the one that inflicts change". However with this the most unique aspect of the walking dead has been boiled down to a stereotypical "oh no theres a villain lets kick his ass and look cool" storyline, all the other aspects of survival are mostly out of the picture, like do you remember when finding food and hunger was an issue? So were basically left with 1,5 factors.
The Character development:[]
Another issue people take nowadays seems to be that the characters have grown flat and development is very limited and only inflicted by someone dying and being sad. And with this I 90% agree, it is true, however this is not a problem of TWD, but of the Zombie genre in general. Lets look at it this way: HOW can a survivor of an apokalypse be developed? (Yet again extremly simplified)
*Hardening
*loss
*Trust
Im pretty sure most of the development our characters received can fit into one of those three categories, Hardening due to horrors experienced, loosing something/someone you care about and building trust or said trust being betrayed. After over 150 issues, the characters that still live have witnessed so much that they are hard as steel (like Negans dick) and the only interesting part is how it manifests differently in each character. Trust and betrayal has recently been approached again with the saviors brief uprising, it was fairly well executed in my opinion, especially because we havent touched it so much in the past, only example I can think of are Kal and Dwight. so With one aspect out of the picture at this point, we have mainly two wways to develop characters these days, with doessnt bring much variety to the table either.
My resolution:[]
In my opnion TWD is still great and fairly unique upon modern comics, however Kirkman starts to reach the limit of how much can be done with the "Post Zombie Apokalpse" drama, which isnt nesecaryli a problem of the writer, but moreso of the genre.As the characters have grown numb to the horror of the new world, so have we the readers.I remember when we first encountert the whisperers and I thought to myself "whoa humans wearing dead skin... I should be way more shocked by this" and Im sure I wasnt the only one who thought so. Thing is, after seeing 4 year old children killing eachother, seeing characters we love being torn apart, poisoned by bites, having their heads smashed in while being ridiculed and being decapitaded, there isnt much that still CAN shock us.
My Awnser:[]
Thinking about, and writing this makes me really sad, becaus unfortunately, I think that TWD IS actually reaching its limit, as long as Kirkman doesnt find a new way to revolutionize the whole idea of a zombie apokalypse, were stuck with characters reliving the same story and same experiences they have been part of for over 12 years (in our time), and reinventing a whole genre for the second time is a really tough act. Nevermind that i for one am in high hopes that kirkman will find a way to improve again, as I know first hand, that if the story has problems, the author is generally the first one to notice that, and as soon as he finds a solution to the problems, Im sure that The Walking Dead comic will have a glorius comeback.
But thats it for now, Thank you for reading and peace out!
POLLS[]