There have been only a handful of stories that I have read that by the time I reached the last page and closed the book, I was left affected and changed. These are my favorite stories. They are the ones that I savor every time I go back to them (and I always do with these ones). These are the stories that the writer truly struck a chord deep inside of my mind and have me pondering on the event days after I experienced it. That being said, even fewer of these stories have been comic books. I’m used to the basic good versus evil in its various forms. The dead heroes always come back and the adventures are truly endless. The exception to that is The Walking Dead #100. Written by Robert Kirkman, the comic book itself is already different in its structure and storytelling. The popular tale of the last humans surviving a zombie apocalypse is nothing new and has been told before, but for those that never read this book before, this comic is unique. It’s different. With The Walking Dead it’s hard to decide what is more frightening: the zombies or the humans. That brings us to issue 100. The scariest aspect of this world has decidedly become man. The story arc called “Something to Fear” concludes in this issue with a gut-wrenching ending that shows us explicitly just why man is indeed something to fear or rather one particular man. The Saviors are the bad guys (from our perspective) and they have finally caught up with Rick and the gang who have been trying to make it to “The Hilltop” safely. What happens is anything but that. Negan, the leader of “The Saviors,” needs to make an example of someone in Rick’s group to set the others in line. These pages are portrayed in the season 6 finale of The Walking Dead to a strikingly close degree, but as the old adage goes: “The book is better.” In this case the comic book is better because we see the result of “the example” that was made with the graphic depiction of the death of one of the most beloved characters. After I finished the book, I couldn’t stop thinking about this for days. It actually affected me mentally and I even had to take a break from reading the comic as a whole. A fictional character had died and I was mourning the loss as if it were someone I really knew. Then I realized something and asked myself: “didn’t I?” Kirkman does such a phenomenal job at letting us know these characters in their various moments and experiences that we really do get to know them. So as it turned out I did know this character and would miss them. This means that Robert Kirkman did his job well. This means that he is a damn good writer. He became someone that I could look up to. Since then, for me, when telling a story the main point of writing has become the idea of imparting something to the reader whether it be a thought, a concept, or in this case an emotion. This issue in itself gave me something to strive for: to make readers feel.
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