This special Artist Proof edition collects the monumental ALL OUT WAR story arc all in one volume as seen through artist CHARLIE ADLARD’s raw pencils. Read the story in a whole new way, never before collected together in one single volume. Collects THE WALKING DEAD #115-126.
Part 1 — Rick versus Negan with a little help from everyone else. Things do not go well.
Part 2 — The quiet before the storm. Our bunch of heroes draw back and consolidate in the Hilltop and prepare… They don‘t have to wait long for Negan to show up. Kaboom, boss fight!
In my review of the first part of All Out War I wrote that maybe the artwork was getting sloppier. Flipping through the pages of this artist‘s version, purely done as pencil sketches, I have to say that the sketches are very good and I might actually like this better than the inked version.
I wonder what comes next? Well, I have a vague idea from peeking at some episodes of the later TWD seasons. We‘ll see.
Our bunch of heroes draw back and consolidate in the Hilltop and prepare… They don‘t have to wait long for Negan to show up. Kaboom, boss fight!
Motherfuck, there is a lot of god damn swearing in this fucking thing. I don‘t generally mind, but even I think that this is a bit over the top.
This volume collects The Walking Dead #121-126.
This is now all past the point where I stopped watching the TV series. I am tempted to go back and pick it up again in… season 6, I think.
And now what? Before I delve into A New Beginning, I will skim through The Walking Dead: All Out War AP Edition: “This special Artist Proof edition collects the monumental ALL OUT WAR story arc all in one volume as seen through artist CHARLIE ADLARD’s raw pencils. Read the story in a whole new way, never before collected together in one single volume.“
Another one in the endless comic series of The Walking Dead. Getting ready for that ultimate confrontation with Negan.
At the Hilltop. Maggie is dealing with something not to be mentioned to avoid spoilers… Rick is rallying the troupes against Negan, with varied results. People are tired and want to live in peace. Jesus helps. Aaand… that‘s not going so well. Almost.
In the meantime the classic supply run is happening… ?
There is more of the Kingdom as well. Oh oh, measuring the length of… whatever. Michonne wins…
This one probably reached new heights of profanity. So many shit and fuck and variations thereof on one page, page after page. Must be a new record.
Rick has to really become the leader they all need….
Because Negan is going to war…
“This volume collects THE WALKING DEAD #109-114, the prelude to ALL OUT WAR—the epic battle that will change the world of THE WALKING DEAD for years to come.“
The last volume introduced Negan. Things have gone downhill very fast.
Do I think that Negan is a lunatic? I think he is a complete sociopath. Oh boy. And Carl is a really annoying little brat. Their scenes together go on entirely too long.
Rick obviously has issues with his people, ostensibly giving up to Negan. It‘s a hard sell.
This feels like an in-between volume again. The story is good, as little as there is. But there is too much filler. I had hoped for the action and mayhem of the previous volume to continue. Instead there is a slump, too much one-sided pointless dialogue by Negan and a slow build-up to the hopfully more exciting Volume 19.
Well, ok, there is some build-up and shorter excursions and skirmishes, but eventually we make his unpleasant acquaintance…
And then the unmentionable thing happens. You know what I mean, if you have read this or watched the TV series. And it is explicit. Wow. I am actually a little shell-shocked. The Governor was a fluffy teddybear compared to Negan.
And despite of the horrible violence, this was a really good volume. Tight plot, great dialogue, good artwork. Excellent story telling.
I checked out of the TV series during Season 6, so I don‘t actually know how Rick and the others are going to deal with this situation. Looking forward to the next volume!
Outside, scavenging for food, meeting Jesus… Rick is a little psychotic in this one, at least in the beginning. Something good happens and the ending is very upbeat. Oh boy, the next issue is going to be really horrible, right? Because of you-know-who….
Normally my next comics read would be The Walking Dead, Vol. 17: Something to Fear (Comics), especially now, with Negan on the horizon. But I think I need a breather from The Walking Dead. I watched Alita Battle Angel on TV last night — well, I watched bits of it and missed the ending, because I got distracted. Still, it looked good and it turns out that some of the comic is available on Kindle Unlimited. At least I won‘t have gotten the free KU trial for naught! So, next:
I finally bit the bullet and re-activated my Adobe ID, got the Adobe Digital Editions App and unpacked this comic there… reading app number 4, me thinks? Argh.
I am slowly making my way through my current reads.
In The Walking Dead, Vol. 16: A Larger World (Comics) I finally reached a spot in the narrative that is new to me. I never got this far in the TV series. New territory from here on out! And tonight I took a trip down memory lane and rewatched the first episode of the TV series. It was fun!
I read this for the first time in October 2017. Here is what I had to say about it back then:
I wonder if our writing team follows a how-to-list for their books, something like…. 1. boy or girl disappears / is kidnapped / dies and introduced a main plotline for the book doing so, 2. Holden shows up and contemplates his life, 3. Several new, possibly major characters show up, never to be seen again in the next book
I liked Anna, Clarissa, Bull, Sam, Serge…. Corey is good at making characters come to life. But, OMG, did Corey take writing hints from GRR Martin? I also liked the slightly time shifted chapters with alternating POVs, that made it very lively. The plot was more straight forward than in the previous two books, which makes it simpler, but dragged me along much faster, too.
Very good, really liked this book, looking forward to the next installment!
Cleaning up Atlanta… moving from day-to-day survival to re-building civilization. The next catastrophe has to be just around the corner, right? Instead we mostly get Rick searching his soul and contemplating Carl (the little, creepy twat). Internal strife is brewing, on more than one front.
Atlantic is starting feel boring after several installments. It‘s time for a new story arc. Which makes me a little apprehensive, considering what comes next…
And while we are talking zombies, I watched this movie last night:
Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.
Finally there is a resolution to the dating drama. Werewolf or vampire? I think a threesome would have been a nice outcome! But no, instead we are having big relationship troubles and jealousy. We’ll see how that’ll work out. Very hot sex scene. I will never look at my bathtub the same way again.
Cute story, although one wonders how often one woman can be kidnapped over the course of two-hundred pages. Pretty silly plot twists and I agree with other reviewers that the story bordered on the ridiculous side. Most of the side characters were so over the top, they were more like caricatures than anything else, with the impulse control and common sense of five year olds. And the ending left me pretty unsatisfied.
Her 7th book. The first 4 were brilliant. By no. 7 the the excitement has gone. Perhaps I got too used to the character. Or the storylines are really not as suspenseful anymore. I am not sure. My interest lasted longer than with Patricia Cornwell though.
Several short stories, loosely connected by the wanderings of the Blessing Stone through the ages. I liked the earlier stories, but the further on we got in history, the more boring I found the stories. Towards the end I was skimming quite a bit. I did finish, but I was pretty under-whelmed.
After the carriage wreck and a bit before the horses ran away, Lady Georgina Maitland noticed that her land steward was a man.
First sentence
Decent world-building, the first few pages had me giggling immediately. Good backstory, interwoven well with the main plot. The evil landowner is very evil indeed. The main characters are colourful and well drawn. Georgina and Harry are likeable and believable. For a historical romance the usual tropes are fairly mild and not too annoying. Sexy times are sexy. Surprisingly good plot. Not terribly suspenseful, although I had a few “Oh no!”-moments.
This book was boring and the main character was not interesting. Potential for great world building, but it was not happening. The narrative was flat, not funny and sloooooow and I have the sneaking suspicion that Rachel is really stupid, not just clumsy. Jenks was the only redeeming factor. The relationship with Ivy really ticked me off. It was a major struggle to finish this book and I doubt it very much that I will pick up another book of this series.
The first paragraph made me smile. Unexpected opening. An interesting read. I thought the end was a bit rushed. Very funny in parts – I nearly peed myself when I read the passage with Rembrandt’s smelly shoe… Rembrandt’s character was really well developped and very plausible.
Patrick O’Brien meets Anne McCaffrey. This picks up right where the first book ended. Old-fashioned feel to it, meshes well with other period-dramas I have read of that time. The naval jargon sounds true. Excellent world-building, great scenic descriptions. Good fight and battle scenes. Great travel narrative. However, there can be too much of a good thing. So much detail all the time got a bit boring and I did some skimming to get to the more action-packed bits faster. Those were always excellent.
The plot as such was good, but there were no great surprises. The characters were all pretty formulaic and stereotypical. None of them went through any noteworthy growing pains. I never managed to develop an emotional attachment to Laurence or Temeraire. And all other charaters were merely decorative anyway.
I read through the blurbs of all consecutive novels and quite a few of the reviews. Each book seems to be covering another continent and in at least every other book Laurence seems to be threatened with court-martial and an excecution. Sounds a bit tedious.
The first one of this very good crime series. Short and sweet. I keep picturing Holly Hunter in the title role. I even figured out who-dunnit for once, and why! Well, ok, only about half way through the book.
I eventually read 10 books of this series, mostly out of order. Not bad as a whole!
I liked the prose, the characters were vivid and the setting was great. For someone whose first or second language was not English, Conrad wrote in it beautifully. I am not a big fan of using letters as a plot device to bring the narrative forward, but other than that I enjoyed this story very much, despite the tragic ending.
The story centered around Lily and Rule, it is set in the here and now, werewolves play a large part of it and the plot that developed in Blood Lines is picked up again. It’s a cop story with shapeshifters, ghosts and magic. I liked the new characters, especially the cops and FBI agents. A nice addition to Wilks’ world.
Well written, vivid imagery, enticing main character, good backstory, well-paced, not too predictable. I haven’t read a lot of steampunk, so I can’t say if the setting worked for that. I liked it. The world building was great, I was transported there right away, down to the muck squelching in my boots. I would wish for more details on the automatons, to flesh out the imagery. Nice touch of explaining a little bit about Chicago before the start of the story.
Small set of characters, likeable, believable, nobody is silly or too stupid to live… I am not into mermaids as a rule, but here they were nicely evil and not the too sweet Disney version. Dark mermaids and Steampunk, I could do more of that!
Ok, Top Fifteen Wednesday — I got carried away! It was really hard to find purple covers on my shelf!
Cathy's Reading Bonanza 