Having just read #100 I can finally put this series to bed. Kirkman has officially shown he's from the same lazy writing school of thought as GRR Martin (Game of Thrones). There's a concept known as The Law of Instrument. It is an over-reliance on a familiar tool and is quoted as such; "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail." - Abraham Maslow
That's Kirkman and Martin.
Writers who can't write rely on crutches to create tension, and some know how to play off of those crutches to accomplish the same while truly raising the craft. Kirkland is the former. He's done it enough in this series for me to tell he'll do it over and over. Glenn didn't need to die to build up Negan. Kirkman just doesn't know how to write. Period.
I rode the GRR Martin train too long before I realized what kind of writer he was. Kirkman wants to go 300 issues - I'm not following this ride for 200 more just to feel as pissed as I did at GoT.
About two years ago I would've laughed at you and said you were nuts... but now I'm starting to see it for myself.
Issues #100-108 have been pretty much atrocious, and I've followed the series since around 2005. #100 I could forgive because it had insane buildup... but the story is just going
nowhere. It's been going nowhere - truthfully - since #48, when the prison war ended. Everything else has been the "aftermath" of that.
Negan in particular just does not work for me. A lazily written character with impossibly over-the-top language, he's almost annoying and irritating as opposed to scary or threatening. I'll be happy when he's dead because he won't have atrocious dialogue anymore. I just don't
care about anything he does. There's zero suspense.
Now with Jesus, Ezekiel, and everyone else... it's just "Bleh" for me. And I don't know if it's Kirkman truly being a terrible writer, or if he's just too preoccupied with the TV show (he's producing and writing episodes for the show too). And sadly, the show is kind of going downhill too.
I don't know. There definitely seems to be a decline in the comic
and the show, which is hilarious, because both are more popular than ever and are dominating the mainstream.