Comic-Caps: The Walking Dead #13-18

16 Jun

Robert Kirkman – Creator, Writer, Letterer
Tony Moore – Penciler, Inker and gray tones
Cliff Rathburn – Gray tones

Previously on The Walking Dead
Leaving the camp site the group pick up a few new friends and find an abandoned gated community which is not so abandoned and results in the death of Donna. On the road they go hunting a Carl is shot accidentally but survives and is patched up by Hershel. Ricks actions inadvertently cause half of Hershel’s family to be killed, after being kicked off the farm Rick and his group discover a prison.

Chapter 3: Safety Behind Bars (#13-18)

Issue 13
At the prison gates Rick formulates a plan to deal with the zombies in the yard and to check the rest of the perimeter fences for holes. Rick, Tyreese and Andrea go into the prison yard and start taking out the roamers, just as the last one is dispatched of they hear a loud noise coming from inside the prison. Out of the darkness comes 30 or 40 roamers, Tyreese with his trusty hammer and Rick with his axe and handgun start working their way through the horde as Andrea makes a dash back to the RV for more ammo.

After all the roamers are dealt with they burn some of the bodies and settle down for the night to rest up before going into the prison tomorrow to find some food. The next day Rick tasks Andrea, Lori and Allen with burning the rest of the bodies while himself and Tyreese go into the prison.

They find it mostly deserted with only a few roamers too weak to move, which are easily dealt with. They get to a door which has been barricaded from the outside with a guards night stick through the door handles. They make a plan to open open fire and start backing away as soon as they open the doors. When they open the doors they find the cafeteria empty except for 4 men sitting around the middle table, one of the men turns to Rick and Tyreese and asks if they want some meatloaf.

Issue 14
Rick and Tryeese go and get the rest of the group, as they all sit down to eat for the first time in days the men ask if they’re the rescue party, Rick says no and explains everything that has been happening over the past few months. Rick then realises that the men are not guards but in fact prisoners and Lori demands to know what crimes they’ve committed. We have an armed robber, a tax fraud, a drug dealer and a murderer who tells them not to worry as they’re not his wife or her boyfriend, as they’re both dead.

Dexter (the murderer) tells the group that they were helping some guards escape after the place got overrun but as they go towards the exit the guards locked them in the cafeteria, which is where they’ve been for the past few months. Dexter offers to show them around; Rick and Dale go with him. They come to the gym and find it’s been handcuffed shut but the key is still in the lock, they open it and find it teeming with roamers. They quickly shut the doors and lock it back up.

Later on Rick and Tyreese have a slightly heated discussion about Hershel. Rick wants to go back to the farm and ask if he and his family want to come live in the prison with them. It takes some convincing but eventually Rick wins out buy saying he can help them with growing food. The next day Rick and Dale head over to the farm, it takes very little convincing to get Hershel to agree to come with as they’ve been attacked by zombies quite a few times since Spring came about.

Later that night Chris and Julie have finally have their sexy time, after which they get their guns out (so not a euphemism) and a gun show echo’s through the prison. Rick rushes towards the shot and finds Tyreese holding Julie, dead, after being shot in the heart. Chris is sitting on the floor muttering ‘together forever, was supposed to be together forever’. Apparently it was a suicide pact so they could live on in the afterlife together. Tyreese begs her to open her eyes, to come back to him but Rick points out that she wasn’t bitten, she won’t come back and if she did, he wouldn’t want it to be as one of those things.

Right at that moment Julies eyes open and she lunges for Tyreese.

Issue 15
With Julie trying to rip our Tyreeses throat Rick points his gun but can’t get a clean shot, Chris does however, he pulls the trigger and blows her head off. Tyreese in a fit of rage goes at Chris and wraps his hands around Chris’ throat until his neck snaps. Tyreese tells Rick that when Chris comes back he’s going to kill him again but slower this time and tomorrow he’ll burn both bodies.

Rick goes back to his cell and tells everyone that Julie and Chris killed each other in a suicide pact. The next morning Rick says he has something really important he needs to do but won’t tell Lori what it is, which only makes her more angry with him than she already is. Rick gets a motorbike from the prison garage and heads out.

Meanwhile Glenn and Maggie are looking for somewhere to have some privacy and find a barbers. After they’ve had their fun they head out to Hershel who’s marking out the land ready for ploughing with Rachel and Susie, upon hearing about the barber shop and seeing Maggie’s and Glenn’s new hairdo’s the twins want to get theirs cut to so Maggie shows them where it is.

Tyreese asks Glenn and Andrea if they want to help clear out the gym, they agree to move in slow and clear the door before proceeding further into the gym, however, when the doors open Tyreese charges in gun blazing and is soon swarmed by 10 or more zombies.

Rick has finally reached his destination, he’s gone back to the camp site where Shane is buried and digs him out to find that Shane is also a zombie even though he was never bitten. Even though they had their problems towards the end, Rick didn’t want to leave his friend like that so he shoots him in the head.

Back at the prison Hershel is looking for the twins, he gets to the barber shop and finds them both decapitated.

Issue 16
Maggie see’s her Dad on his knee’s and enters the barbers to see her sisters’ headless corpses on the floor, as she hugs Hershel, Rachel and Susie come back, well their heads do.

In the gym Andrea, Glenn and Billy fall back and lock the doors behind Tyreese. When they return to the yard Lori knows something is wrong, when they tell Lori and Carol what happened Carol breaks down in tears. Billy notices that Hershel and Maggie are missing and asks where they are, they head to the barbers and find them with the corpses of Rachel and Susie. Glenn takes out his gun and puts a bullet into the head of each girl.

Lori storms to the cell Derek is sitting in and confronts him about Rachel and Susie, she believes he murdered them and locks him up.

When Rick returns Glenn fills him in on what’s happened while he’s been gone and Rick wants to go to the gym to make sure Tyreese is dead as he wouldn’t want to come back as a zombie. When they open the doors they find Tyreese sitting in the corner alive and well and a pile of bodies around him.

Rick confronts Derek who denies killing the girls and say’s he should look at his own group and wants Rick to keep him locked in as he’s safer that way.

In the laundry room Andrea is gathering some of the prison clothes left in the dryer for people to change into, Thomas (the fax fraud guy) asks what Andrea is doing, she tells him as asks if he wants to help, he doesn’t. She asks why is he here is he doesn’t want to help. “So I could cut off your head”.

Issue 17
Thomas attacks Andrea but she pushes him away and goes for her gun, he manages to wrestle it away from her and push her to the ground. With knife in hand Thomas stands over Andrea and says “Now…Lets’s get started”.

Lori finds Rick sitting my himself in the courtyard and asks if he’s okay, Rick tells her he can’t sleep or barely think straight, he tells her why he left the other day and that the reason Hershel’s daughters are dead is because of himself, if he didn’t go and get them from the farm they’d still be alive.

In the prison Derek tells Andrew (the ex-junkie) that it was people from Rick’s own group that killed the twins and he needs to go to A-Block to get the riot gear and guns because soon Ricks group will kill them.

Andrea with a huge cut to the side of her face bursts out of the prison and into the yard with Thomas right behind her wielding his knife. Rick realises it was Thomas that killed the twins and tackles him before he can get to Andrea, knocks the knife out of his hands and punches him in the face over and over and over and over.

Tyreese eventually pulls Rick off of Thomas before he kills him, Rick’s hand is severely broken with bones protruding through the skin and some of Thomas’ teeth sticking in his hand too.

Issue 18
The group have a big argument on what to do with Thomas, the end result being he gets hanged. Rick also instates a law of ‘You kill, you die’.

Both Rick and Andrea go inside to get themselves stitched and bandaged up. Thomas is dragged to a cell where he’s locked up until his execution, that is until Patricia, who just broke up with Otis, unlocks the cell and tries to help him escape because she believe’s he’s not evil, just crazy. Thomas, is indeed crazy and tries to kill Patricia until Tyreese points his gun at Thomas. However Maggie comes up behind Thomas and puts four bullets into his back.

The group grab Thomas’ body and carry him outside, open up the gate and throw him to the zombies where he gets torn to pieces. As they head back across the courtyard Dexter comes up behind Rick with a shotgun in hand and demands they get out of his house before he blow Ricks and everyone else’s brains out.

Final Thoughts
Just when things started to look up for Rick, all hell breaks loose. He finds a safe haven only for it to have a psychopath who hates females, who cuts off the heads of two young girls and tries to do the same to Andrea, gets into a fight with Thomas and breaks his hand so bad it may never heal right, has a fall out with Tyreese and now it looks like Dexter is going to kick them all out.

I should point out that Rick has indirectly been responsible for the death of almost all of Hershel’s children, I have a feeling one of those two will snap soon. So come back in two weeks to find out if Rick can wipe out the entire Green clan on his own.

Next week I’ll be recapping Robert Kirkmans Invincible comic, carrying on from where we left off with the Head of the Class story arc covering issues 14-19. I’ll be back with more of The Walking Dead the following week where I’ll be recapping Chapter Four: The Hearts Desire covering issues 19-24.