The Walking Dead - Vol 11: Fear The Hunters

If you're been reading my reviews on this series you know damn well there will be SPOILERS.

Some of the reviews of this series, ever since about mid-way through when stuff started to get really fucked-up have accused Kirkman of trying to be shocking just for the sake of it. I have to admit that nothing else I've ever read or seen has shocked me, and made me as uncomfortable as this series. If anything this series has made me realize that I'm still somewhat grounded and I can still be offended. I haven't lost all hope!

Early on in this volume something extremely disturbing happens. It was set up just mildly in the last volume, but it rears it's ugly head here. And it throws down the gauntlet for something even more fucked-up to happen later... and boy does it ever. The group starts to be haunted and stalked by cannibals. Without revealing some extremely satisfying twists and turns, it's also grotesque in an emotional way. One of the Cannibals explains that a bear, in the wild, will eat it's own cub if it runs out of food - the rationale being that if the bears dies from starvation that the cub will die anyway, but if the bear survives, it can make another sub. Then the Cannibal explains that... there were children here at the beginning... and once you justify that to yourself, it's really not all that hard to do it to strangers.

Not surprising our rag-tag group deals with them efficiently, but with it, and the way they do it, are they ever-more showing signs of losing their own humanity? Are they any better or worse than the dead that hunt them?

I've mentioned before that Kirkman set out to write the zombie film that would never end. And he's doing it. Someone else has stated that every film you ever see would be a tragedy if you let the story continue. I guess my worry about this series is that it's going to get to a point where all the characters are just so past-the-point of no return that we stop identifying with them. I trust Kirkman enough to hope that he'll find someway to balance it.

Only one more left on my stack, and then another will come out at the end of the month. Very curious to see where this is heading and how the Washington D.C. story plays out...