When death lurks around every corner and the only stability in life is instability, you have very essence of the fourth volume of the Walking Dead trade paperback series, “The Heart’s Desire.†If you haven’t seen some of your favorite characters feel the pressure of what’s happened to them throughout the series thus far, you’ll feel it after reading this.
Make no mistake, after witnessing the continued story here, your opinion of Rick and his group will change permanently. Characters you thought were solid as rocks now have the emotional viscosity of motor oil and ones you thought were crazy are the only ones making sense. Crisis changes everyone in different ways and this book shows us exactly how these people are affected.
Seeing prison inmates fighting to keep their homes safe from Rick and his group, who are taking over the prison for themselves is ironic to say the least. However, it fits right in with Robert Kirkman’s idea of what the world has come to in the face of a zombie apocalypse. Seeing Rick go from the voice of reason to someone who won’t hesitate to kill anything or anyone to keep his people safe is alarming at first, but cements the notion that no one is safe from the trauma caused by the shape the new world is taking.
The same thing goes for Tyreese and Carol, who seemed to be getting along so well in the previous books. As a matter of fact, you might say they had the healthiest relationship of all the couple in the group.
That is until Michonne came along.
Easily the best new character in the series up until this point, Michonne is sly, sexy and seriously crazy. An amazing fighter as well, she gets what she wants through any means possible [sound familiar]. Lets just say she’s taken a liking to Tyreese and Carol’s emotional capacity will never be the same because of it. As a result, the happy-go-lucky portion of this saga comes to screeching halt and Kirkman’s epic of mass destruction and human psychology begins to truly take shape.
Through the introduction of Michonne and the continued struggles of Rick, Carol, Tyreese and the rest of the group, everything once thought dependable is washed away. Backed up by the continued artistic excellence of Charlie Adlard and Cliff Rathburn, this book is able to induce the type of emotional response in a reader that most comic could only dream of.
If you haven’t gotten by now that this series has more to do with humanity and it’s adaptability in the face of great horror, than the horror itself, than you never will.
Deep psychologically and emotionally satisfying from the turn of the first page, this series continues to do the comic book impossible- get better with age.
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