Good solid horror storytelling with lots of raw human emotion, but unrelentingly bleak. Like getting repeatedly hit in the gut. Makes you feel masochistic for reading. Begs to be devoured, but the unceasing roller coaster of depression-rage-epiphany-hope-depression gets old after a while.
- Compendium Two - collects issues #49-96. This tome begins with Rick and Carl alone again, everyone having scattered. Gradually, they find Michonne, Maggie, Glenn, and Dale. They meet up with the military man Abraham and the scientist Eugene. They try to make a life on a farm until it gets overrun. Carl gets shot, Morgan comes back, and they are recruited into a small town run by a pleasant but ineffective ex-politician leader called Douglas. Rick becomes constable there, but his paranoia and rage cause a lot of waves. Then they are approached by a man who leads them to a group of two hundred peaceable citizens, but they're under the thumb of a killer named Negan...
- Compendium Three - collects issues #97-144. Most of this tome covers the bloody war with Negan and his Saviors. Rick connects with two other large groups, the Kingdom and the Hilltop, and forms a still-uneasy alliance against Negan. And although many in his camp are ready to turn on him for his penchant for exercising droit du seigneur and branding people, Negan still has some surprises in store. I like the way Kirkman makes Negan a fully-fleshed character who has his own moral standards and isn't just a mindless brutal thug. Once the war is over, the narrative jumps forward in time, and the three communities have built a civilization with boats, barter, stores, and even a fair. But just when things are going great, they meet the Whisperers...
