Review

"You pricks could have told me we're surrounded"- Negan

Prior to the zombie apocalypse Negan, no first name, was a school sports coach with a foul mouth, which doesn't go unnoticed by his wife and the parents of the kids under his "care". Adding some misery to his already out of control life is his wife who is diagnosed with cancer, and there's no remission for the disease. As his wife comes to a terminal end the undead apocalypse erupts with devastating results. Not the least of which are his wife dying and then resurrecting as a flesh eating ghoul. Surprisingly our big psychopath isn't copying really well with the death of civilisation.

As the end of the world rolls around Negan gets to meet fellow survivors, some of whom have a grasp of the new realities, others who are not going to make the long lasting friend list. Gradually our boy is forged by the fires of danger into a fbomb wielding go to dude who dominates his slowly growing group of bad arses, including the ever popular Dwight. It's batter up and hey we get to learn how Negan got his vampire bat and more importantly why he named her Lucille, there's a joke there but I refuse to go anywhere near it.

So Mungo coming at you with a graphic novel review bitches. Let's rock out the standard pay for view details before getting into the actual review. The book comes at you in hard cover black and white goodness, standard U.S page size. For under $20 you get 68 pages of lean mean action on high gloss pages. The binding had me rocking to the beat and I honestly can't find fault with this highly professional production. Weird and wonderful there appears to be someone's signature on the cover and a copy number, mine is 817 if wanting to know, but since this isn't advertised I have no notion what is going down there. If pulling out the hard earns to get a copy let me know what you got and what copy number, there could be something cool going down.

The book covers events leading to Negan forming his band of psychos called the Saviours after the undead thing gets good and juicy. In a strangely similar situation to Rick Grimes at the start of the apocalypse Negan is in hospital when the brown substance hits the fan and takes some time to come to grips with things. I'm not aiming to make a point about Rick being hospitalised due to injuries suffered during the roadblock shootout, which seems a life time ago, and Negan being there due to his wife's terminal cancer, but interesting comparison I would have thought. In both cases Negan and Rick were babes in the woods as the world ended. Negan's first encounter with the undead comes as his wife resurrects and shows a hankering for human flesh. Surprisingly, for someone who has shown a tough side, our boy is less than successful with his handling of the immediate family problem.

Through the middle part of the graphic novel Negan gradually learns the "shoot them in the head" mantra and not surprisingly that not everyone is cut out for survival as the rigours of the new world order set in. He loses any number of short term friends on the road to, well nowhere really it's all about finding somewhere safe in the short term, and develops a harder view to how things have to be in order to survive. He does eventually run across a number of hard arses who have what it takes, and besides a few problems with emergent leaders things are pretty much shaping up well for the new society Negan is finding himself forging.

Things do eventually reach a satisfying conclusion as the Negan we all love emerges from the chaos to exert his special kind of order in the final act. And in case you are wondering we do learn exactly where he got his baseball bat and exactly why it's named Lucille. Satisfying conclusion with room for a second volume if the Writers, read Robert Kirkman, decide there's more to the Negan background than has already been covered. So for those of you wondering just how we got to the situation in the seventh season of The Walking Dead television series, then you pretty much have your information, though call me greedy if you want, I wouldn't be against a second Negan volume.

Guess in the final scream Here's Negan was a bit on the short side to successfully bring across the forging of Negan, there was a feeling of lip service being paid rather than a dedication to task and plot. While the Governor got a four novel back story, and yes talking prose here rather than graphical, Negan has to settle for a single graphic novel so not a lot of room for character development. If I had to continue this critical line of thought then I would add Here's Negan needed another couple of hundred of pages to successfully convey the notion of someone being forged and their destiny being tied to their early expierances during the zombie outbreak.

J talks a whole bunch about the naïve school of art, his missus is an artist so I guess he has some background, I'm more your did the pictures convey the story kind of guy. With the artwork in Here's Negan I'm giving two thumbs up like a manic Ebert and Roeper on magic mushies. The panels convey what's happening in the plot, enhancing what we are reading, and adding to the overall atmosphere going down. So everything is fairly black and white, both figuratively and literally, but somehow lack of garish colours works in the book's favour; there isn't much that isn't pretty freaking grim folks, dial it up and dig on in.

Mother flipper out of room, we may need bigger reviews around here to cover our subject matter. Quick sum up, the writing is pretty solid - Negan is his usual full on foul mouth self with delusions of grandeur, but lack of pages hampered the narrative. For $19 bucks Here's Negan is good value, you get a hardcover book with pretty solid binding etc.

ScaryMinds Rates this read as ...