The Walking Dead, Vol. 32: Rest In Peace

I never actually watched the TV show, though I had plans to check out the early seasons. Back then, AMC was on fire with a bunch of great shows at the same time. What killed my interest was hearing that AMC planned to drag it out to 20 seasons, as long as it stayed popular and profitable.

So, what about the comic series? What if it got dragged on too? To keep it simple, I quit reading and forgot about it. That was four years and four months ago. The last volume I picked up was the 28th.

I ended up thinking about the series again last year when I stumbled across another zombie story: a manga called I Am a Hero. I'd heard it was good, but with a terrible ending. Before jumping into something new, I decided to check what was up with The Walking Dead comics. To my surprise, it had actually wrapped up. I only had four volumes left, so I figured, why not? The pacing was solid, even if not much was happening. There were lots of new characters and the story was clearly building up to something—I enjoyed it. Sure, it might've been tighter if it had focused on fewer characters, but hey, it wasn't bad.

Then came the final volume. Some people think Kirkman either rushed it or didn't know how to end it. Honestly, I think it's the latter, and his afterword backs that up.

Kirkman always knew how he wanted the story to end, and it was dark and depressing. But in 2013, he decided to switch things up for a more optimistic, happy ending. Yeah, maybe we got more good stories along the way like he said, but that original ending would've packed a punch and fit The Walking Dead's world perfectly.

I get why Kirkman went with the hopeful ending—it's probably more appealing in general. But for me, what really matters is which ending tells a better story. If you start the series with either ending in mind—a bleak, horrifying one or a happy, hopeful one—the abandoned dark ending just makes for a more compelling story. Even if someone just read both endings on their own, they'd probably be more intrigued by the sad one and wonder, “What happened here?”