The eighth collection of the long-running zombie adventure comic The Walking Dead is called "Made to Suffer," and it proves that the creative team of Kirkman, Adlard and Rathburn still have plenty of capacity to scare the shit out of me with grisly, relentless adventure stories that grab hold and don't let go until you've turned the last page.
The Walking Dead is your basic zombie story: zombies roam the land, survivors try to avoid them. Over the past several years, the story has had the plucky adventurers move from cities to campsites to a prison to a walled city governed by a retarded sadist of a mayor who uses blood-sports to keep the population in check.
In volume 8, we see the first major post-zombie war of the story, in which two bands of survivors go all-out to destroy one another, on a battlefield filled with biting zombies who pose a grave threat to both sides. There's some interesting stuff about human nature, mob mentality and so on in this volume, but that's not what I read it for.
I read it because it is so goddamned well plotted that I can't stop reading it. It's the kind of adventure yarn that gives you just enough characterization to get you caring about the people so that you won't be able to look away when they are plunged into disastrous combat. If you're looking to have an afternoon swiftly and mercilessly ripped out of your life, sit down with all eight of these collections and get scared and sweaty.
The Walking Dead Volume 8: Made To Suffer
See also:
* Walking Dead 7: The Calm Before — compelling, pitiless zombie comic
* Walking Dead: scary, engrossing zombie comic
* Walking Dead volume six: scary zombie comic gets even better
