right, so, the The Walking Dead #100

like a lot of people, I am immensely disappointed and upset for a host of reasons I won’t go into

—except for the major offender

which is, of course, the handling of Glenn’s death and the gratuitous, indulgent brutality of it.

I realize that Kirkman holds nothing sacred in his story, and that he uses TWD as a means to gleefully explore the deepest pits of human depravity, but when it comes to axing a main character from issue #2, you really think he’d give them a better send-off than a shock page and a scene equivalent to beating a whimpering puppy to meat slurry and brain curds.

that isn’t to say a writer isn’t allowed to shock their readers via character death, because that’s not what I mean.

there’s a distinct difference between a shocking character death and turning the death of a major, sympathetic protagonist into shock pages.

Glenn is not just killed, he is destroyed, defaced—with a bat covered in barb wire, slugged in the head with it over and over, gasping and crying for Maggie, until he is literally chunky soup at some grinning psychopath’s feet, unrecognizable, and we as the readers get front seat to the entire grizzly execution. nothing is left to the imagination.

(“but it’s a horror story, horrific stuff is supposed to happen, and I’m glad Kirkman didn’t go soft!”—fair enough. this is where a whole lot of my opinion is about to rush in, so sit back down.) 

let me be honest with you.

I guess I was a little disillusioned by the comic when I first started reading it; I was initially drawn in by righteous zombie slaying, the art style (ha, ha, ha) and the unspoken promise of a story that would follow the stages of human desperation and ultimately perseverance against some of the bleakest circumstances known to fiction.

I was wrong. and for me, Kirkman’s zombies have officially lost their appeal—as well as their relevance.

TWD is sick, twisted people killing other people. it’s a gorno stripshow where the only thing being peeled off besides flesh and character dignity is the series’s humanity, and frankly, just because you think the world could spiral into something that fucked up in the zompocalypse, doesn’t mean you should write it. that is not a story that needs to be told.

…

I get that it’s realistic in zombie genre for none of the survivors to make it to the end.

and I could stomach reading or watching or, hell, even playing that, but the way the author/creator handles that kind of story is extremely important. and as TWD has proven to me, unapologetic, indulgent writing and a complete lack of emotional connection to its own characters is enough to lose some of your audience.

I was a long time supporter, a fan.

but Kirkman, I’m sorry—my wallet is zipped, this was my last issue.

(I still intend to follow the show, we’ll see how this season goes.)