Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
Walking Dead #85
Image Comics
Kirkman, Adlard & Rathburn
The latest issue of Walking Dead proves to be a bit of a breather. Following the insane events of the previous couple of issues, Kirkman gives the characters (and the reader) a chance to get themselves together as the damage is sorted through. It's a good issue, as always, but suffers from a ramp down effective of the last arc and from the unresolved status of Carl. You can never go wrong with this series as every issue offers some level of good entertainment.
Coming into this issue it's safe to say that most readers wanted to know whether Carl was alive, dead or in between. However, Kirkman isn't giving that information away just yet. As frustrating as this seems it really isn't that unrealistic when you consider it took other characters numerous issues to die off from infections of various kinds. The tough part about Carl is that so much of his head was blown off it seems impossible that he is alive. It almost seems like he should be dead so why not just kill him off already. Whatever side of this debate you fall on you won't be getting much on this front… until the very end of the issue.
The bulk of the issue centers around Rick and Abraham on separate fronts. Rick unburdens himself of his treatment of Jessie and Ronny during the failed attempt to escape the zombies. His audience seems like an odd choice but proves that Rick just needed to speak about it and didn't really care with whom he did it. We shall see if this comes back to bite him. However, in the face of this remorse and his grief about Carl, Rick calls the core folks together to lay out his plans to make the community safer long term. Rick peddles through a range of emotions in this issue to be sure.
Abraham has some level annoyance as he seems to be the man that is taking care of all of the dirty work with the piles of zombies. In some ways the scenes are humorous until you realize some of these zombies had been important characters an issue or two ago. Abraham gets dropped into a soap opera as Rosita confronts him about his other girlfriend. This provided a good diversion from the Carl plot but seemed misplaced that Rosita would bring this all up at this time.
Adlard delivers his usual high level of artwork. He gives a lot of close ups for the full effect of the emotions in the dialogue. With the absence of action Adlard is relied on heavily to tell a compelling visual story and he pulls it off as always.
Kirkman gives another deep and deliberate read. While this issue is a slow down one, it still delivers an entertaining read that contains laughs, tears and some interesting plot developments. You can't go wrong with this title.
3 out of 5 Geek Goggles
