Tuesday, November 29, 2022

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #576: RIP NEGAN AND FRIENDS

 I was a fan of The Walking Dead for a long time before the show premiered. I knew the team of Kirkman and Moore before even the first issue came out. I was a huge fan of their previous book, Battle Pope, and at my first comics convention I bought a Battle Pope shirt off of them personally.


In case you're not familiar with Battle Pope


When I saw that they were putting a book out through Image about the zombie apocalypse, I got very jazzed. Bought it fresh off the press. The Walking Dead #1. I eventually got it signed by Kirkman and Moore. This was in the days just before the show started. Kirkman was easy to get. He wasn't even on the list of guests. He was just hanging out at the Image booth. I got to talk to him while waiting in line for Moore, who had been on the guest list. Our talk went so well that he gave me volume one of the Invincible omnibus for free. That's a hell of an expensive book, but it paid off. I got all the others in the series, too. Moore was a lot harder to get, and that's a story for another day because this isn't about the comics.


It's about the show. I remember when the first episode aired. It was a double episode, if I recall. I made it very clear to my girlfriend at the time that no matter what we did it would involve watching The Walking Dead. So we did. I loved the hell out of it, and after getting fabulously drunk and having lots of sex, we both passed out only to be woken up in the middle of the night by the replay. Specifically by the car alarm scene because I'd left the TV blaring when we passed out.


But after that first season the show had its ups and downs. A lot more downs than I would have hoped for. It got to the point where I was baffled by the writers because they weren't doing anything cohesive with this. If they found an opportunity to make a tangent, they would do so and follow it until they had no choice but to go back to the story. They lacked focus. But every once in a while they fired on all cylinders, and that kept me engaged.


And then they introduced Negan. They handled the end of his first episode poorly. His second went pretty well when he out-Neganed the comics Negan by killing Abraham and Glenn. That was pretty sweet. But Rick and his crew kept descending into madness and stupidity until I reached the point where I thought FUCK THEM. I want Negan to kill them all and take over the show.


And so Negan and Friends was born. And when I got tired of Fear the Walking Dead, I started calling it Where's Negan and Friends? But then it got really good and I started calling it The Adventures of Victor Strand in the Nuclear Zombie Apocalypse. And now it's going to be stupid again, so it's back to Where's Negan and Friends?


They really should have called Dead City Negan Lives, but what the hell. It will probably get bogged down by Maggie's bullshit, so I'm calling it Negan and Friend. The Daryl Dixon show? I won't bother. Maybe it will be Friend of Negan? Don't even ask me about the Rick and Michonne one. I have the least interest in that one unless Rick and Michonne die horribly in the first episode. It could be called Negan and Friends: Pee-Pee Pants City.


World Beyond? What's that?




























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PSS: This always makes me laugh.

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