This book… wow.

I’ve been reading this in trades for a while now.  I managed to get the first hardcover for Christmas one year and thankfully have been lucky with volumes two, three, and four in the fact that I got them all within 4-6 months of each other.

I’ve been blessed with Zombies, one may say, in the last little while.  For those of you who aren’t reading this book, start.  It’s really that simple I can’t explain it and I don’t want to ruin anything for you.  That being said let me talk about the fourth volume in a way that I hope you will go back and read the first three.

This volume continues our story following Rick, the ultimate Zombie survivalist.  Anyone reading this story already knows the man has had skill and luck on his side… oh boy has he had luck.  I feel like each time I read a volume of this book I wonder how it could get any worse AND people continue to survive.  Kirkman nails it.  It’s obvious that this book is his baby along with Invincible, I’ll talk about that one another time.  I’ve read some stuff recently of Kirkman’s that obviously was something he didn’t have his heart in and you can tell the difference when reading this book.  Go ahead and read his run on Ultimate X-Men, then read this.  It’s okay I’ll wait for you.

…

Yeah big difference isn’t it?  His run on Ultimate X-Men was crap.  I wanted to like it, but it was plain and simple crap.  This book makes me wish that sometimes things came out more then a monthly basis as I now will have to wait almost a year for the next one.  Also I wish that all writers had their hearts into a book as much as Kirkman does in this one.

As for Adlard and Rathburn’s art, phenomenal.  When they had Adlard replace Moore on this book for pencils way back when, I got upset.  Now if he leaves I may be more upset then when Moore left.  I also love that this book is done in black and white.  If it were done in color I almost feel like something would be missing, it wouldn’t leave as much to the imagination.  Adlard does a good job on making Zombies scary and that’s what is important.  The only thing I can say I dislike about his art is that sometimes it’s hard to tell certain female characters apart.  Kirkman does a good job of making sure with dialogue we know who everyone is, but I almost hate to say I wish more people had scars and such in this book to differentiate them.

The last thing I want to mention about this book is the build quality.  I love these hardcovers.  They’re simple, which works with the fact that this book is not flash, although some might argue this volume had plenty of flash, sadly the end of this was spoiled for me from some prick at a comic con.  The pages in this book, even though in black and white, just seem to pop because of the quality.  Also there were some extras in the back, but nothing to rave about.  Which I’m okay with, I got this for the story.  Like I said the quality is top, I don’t baby these like I do some hardcovers.

Overall this book continued to keep the pace going.  This story is epic and I truly hope that Kirkman reaches that goal of 100 issues.  He’s already over halfway there.  Once again if you are not reading this, go to your library and read the first trade.  If you don’t like it I would be shocked.

Now if only I could clone the team on this book and have them work in conjuncture to come out twice a month…