Customer Reviews

The Walking Dead Vol. 4: The Heart's Desire

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

So far, I've loved and obsessed over Kirkman's The Walking Dead series and the previous three collected volumes have not disappointed me at any level. This fourth voulme collects issues 19 through 24 and is appropriately titled The Heart's Desire. We pick up from the cliffhanger that ended the third volume (Safety Behind Bars) as Dexter gives Rick and his group a choice that bodes nothing but death either way he chooses: stay and be shot or leave and take their chances with the zombies outside the fences.

The book starts things off with a bang as Rick realizes that Dexter's success in getting guns of his own has let loose a bigger set of problems as zombies from a locked wing of the prison was accidentally let out. What happens next as Rick's group and Dexter's group fight to stay alive shows a new side to Rick that surprised me alot. It puts a new wrinkle on Rick's rule of "you kill, you die" and will have long-reaching ramifications deeper in the story. It is also in this heart-pounding sequence that a new face is added to the mix in the form of a female survivor whose mode of survival, to say the very least, is interesting.

The rest of the book really deals less with the zombies but the emotional consequences of many of the characters' actions from the very start of the series all the way to point of this volume. I can fully understand the disappoint many fans have with the direction the series took with all the drama and sopa opera kind of twists nd turns of the heart, but I think people fail to realize that Kirkman is writing about the human condition rather than just about zombies. Sure I got abit impatient with all the emotional crisis and the meltdowns by almost everyone involved, but I can also understand why they've been acting the way they have. I think if Kirkman had written abit more of zombies and death in this part of the series people wouldn't be complaining much.

Kirkman himself has already admitted that zombies wasn't what the story was all about, but just a part of it. With the group in relatively safety within the secured fences of the prison and some sort of artificial normalcy starting to come back to the group he needed a way to continue the conflicts that make for good drama. What else but let the pent-up emotional baggage everyone has been carrying since issue 1 to finally come to boil. Part of me didn't fully enjoy this new arc in the series, but not enough to be disappointed with the end result. Hell, even all the drama Kirkman still came up with one of the best fight scenes in the series a la Carpenter's They Live and South Park's "Cripple Fight" episode.

The Heart's Desire is not as great as the previous three collected volumes in the series, but it still told a great story though with abit more drama than most fans of the book were willing to take. I myself enjoyed the book enough that it wasn't a waste and I was abit surprised and shocked at the observation Rick finally made and shared with everyone at the end of the volume. I know that after all the emotional trials and tribulations everyone in the series went through in The Heart's Desire and how the arc ended there's nothing left but up for the series.

Life has become routine within the prison complex that Rick Grimes and company call home. Crops are being planted, new clothes made, and so on. Of course, in the world of "The Walking Dead," routine is anything but. Now that the zombies are (mostly) at bay, relational tensions are boiling over. A fresh arrival brings her own wackiness to the already dysfunctional mix, and you never know who will end up dead (or at least pissed off and alienated).

I'm a little underwhelmed by this, the fourth collection of the ongoing comic book series. One of the AICN comic pundits expressed dismay that "The Walking Dead" was becoming a soap opera. I guess I have to agree with that. Frankly, I wonder how far this story arc can go? I further echo the AICN writer's sentiment that something needs to happen soon. Now's probably the time to bring in some government action, or pull a "Land of the Dead" move and evolve the zombies' behavior. Whatever occurs, I think I've seen enough of Rick freaking out and yelling his head off every couple of pages. And overall, things are getting a bit too depressing. I don't expect everything to come up roses, but there's a bit too much hate and discontent going on. Maybe they should've picked a Club Med to hole up in.

One story angle that bugged me was the inclusion of yet another bad-arse woman with a katana. "Y: The Last Man" pulled that stunt as well, joining the ranks of "Sin City" and the "Kill Bill" movies. Enough with the Japanese-inspired ninja women already! Why can't a mysterious female stranger show up wielding a Chinese Tai Chi sword, or an English Morning Star? I'm glad the tough-gal zombie fighter in "Shaun of the Dead" had the originality to use a golf club as her weapon of choice.

At any rate, despite my complaints I still recommend "The Walking Dead." Maybe this arc is the calm before the storm. I'm hoping it's a setup for the greatness I've come to expect from Mr. Kirkman & company.

I've watched and read an unreal amount of zombie movies, comic books and stories and Robert Kirkman has one-upped them all! An amazing tale of survival and chaos.

... and hopelessness. Kirkman and crew have done a great job of showing us the difficult parts of humanity we might not otherwise want or need to understand. I believe zombie story lovers don't relish in the gore, but in the struggle. Overwhealming odds, the world out to get you, you don't understand a thing, zombies endlessly crawling overthemselves to get at you. It's more like real life. The Walking Dead is a masterpiece of humanity.

This installment of the Walking Dead series blew me away. In Volume 4, Kirkman stays true to his material and continues the saga of the survivors. The beauty of this tale is that no one is safe. You can't count on people to live or die because of the role they play in the overall storyline. You also can't rely on them to remain the same old character, as the continuing trauma begins to push some of them over the edge. In Volume 4, new dangers arise, in addition to the already plentiful zombie problem, and tempers flare.

This installment isn't any more soap operatic than Volumes 1-3; relationships, emotions, and ulterior motives have been weaving and diving throughout this tale from the very beginning. What we have in #4 is a logical progression of the drama that was begun in previous issues. In addition, and more importantly, we start to get into some deeper themes, such as the nature of justice and survival, questions of leadership, and whether civilization can be rebuilt.

Summary: the quality of The Walking Dead maintains its usual high standard. We'll see how muchlonger Kirkman can keep this up.

Like many readers, I've been an on again/off again comicbook fan for many years... In the last couple of years (since the year 2000) I've returned to the fold, this time taking advantage of the many top-quality graphic novels out there, and Robert Kirkman's "Walking Dead" was one of the titles most frequently recommended to me since I started this reading spree. It lives up to the hype.

I just finished reading books 1-4, which collect the first twenty-four issues of the comic, and man, I can't wait for book #5 to come out. The series tells the story of a guy named Rick, a small-town cop and self-described Barney Fife who wakes up from a hospital stay to find the world changed around him -- it's zombie time, but zombie time with twist. The twist is that, unlike all the movies and TV shows we've all seen, "The Walking Dead" has a much longer, open-ended story arc -- Kirkman and co. don't have to wrap things up in a tidy, two-hour package, so there is space for the story to unfold at its own pace, with character development that's more prolonged and in-depth than the usual zombie flick allows. By the end of Book 4, the crisis has lasted about a year and Rick and his band of survivors are about twelve strong, having lost about an equal number of family and friends over the course of the story. It's a taut, grim, reflective plot line that keeps your interest and compels you to read. I, for one, hope this isn't just another one of those neat B&W comix that kind of fizzle out, but rather that Kirkman really gets the chance to do what he says he wants to do, and follow Rick's saga as far as he can. Anyway, I'm hooked. As long as he keeps writing this series, I'll be first in line to buy it. [copyright joesixpack @ slipcue.com ]

Robert Kirkman has done it again, for a fourth time! This is the fourth installment of an amazing series from the mind of Robert Kirkman. This is a must read for anyone into comics, or zombies (or both). The art is well done, the story is brilliantly crafted, and the grayscale shading is beautifl.

Robert Kirkman isn't making The Walking Dead so that it's just another "gore for gore's sake" comic. This comic is infinitly more indepth than that. It's more along the lines of George A. Romero's work in that, he's trying to show what would happen to us in such an extreme situation. What would a zombie attack do to the human pshyche?

Now I just have to wait paitently for more of the series to be realeased...

I have to say that most of the Black and white comics out there turn me away.. the writing or the way it speaks to the people might be really good, but the artistry is what pulls you in at first.. umm almost sounds like attraction to a girl. ;)

Anyway, Everything about this story line is spectacular: Character driven plot mixed with Hard core action sequences. I can't think of words to describe how much I wish that this type of writing and direction was carried by the Film industry with regards to Zombie films and I've seen some pretty cheesy zombie films as well. If you read one good Comic about the living dead/ zombies. Get "the Walking Dead" YOU will not be upset and they are packaged in Graphic Novels now.

As a reader of The Walking Dead. I would have to say this is a great chapter in a mounting saga! This was the first time I picked up a volume and didn't put it down until I was finished. Rick really develops in this book and there are a lot of other great turning points as well.

After watching season one of the AMC TV show, I started onto the graphic novels. Excellent storyline, fantastic graphics. Book arrived in timely fashion and was packaged well.