Part of The Walking Dead
First published 2012
Rick Grimes has spent years keeping people alive one day at a time. Now he is thinking bigger. He works to connect multiple communities into a network that could actually sustain itself, something closer to a civilization than a camp. It feels, for once, like progress. Then the Saviors show up. Negan leads them, and he operates on a simple principle: pay tribute or suffer. His group is large, organized, and brutal in ways Rick has not faced since the Governor held the prison under siege. The difference is that Negan has reach. He is not holding one location. He controls the roads between communities, and that makes him a different kind of problem entirely. Rick has survived by being willing to do what others would not. But Negan is willing to do more. The consequences of crossing him land on Rick's group with full force, and the loss is not abstract. Someone does not make it out of this volume. The emotional weight of that moment sits at the center of everything that follows, and it changes what Rick is fighting for. Collects issues 97 through 102.
Genres: fiction, drama, graphic-novels, horror, thriller
Vibes: brutal, dark, emotionally-devastating, intense, suspenseful
Tropes: antagonist-introduction, found-family, major-character-death, moral-dilemma
132 pages · Comics · Image Comics
Content warnings: death, gore, graphic-violence