.
At the end of the last issue of The Walking Dead comics, things did not look good for anyone. Gregory made a very amateurish attempt to poison Maggie to gain control and become the new leader. In the meantime, Carl had been seduced by the captive Whisperer, Lydia, for reasons we can only speculate. In this new issue, everything starts to look up but it could prove to be only temporary as a much bigger threat may be looming over the horizon.
We knew Maggie was tough but here we got to see just how tough this girl is. Just seconds after Jesus bursts into Gregory’s house and beat him to a pulp, Maggie is already coming to and adamantly refuses to see a doctor. Of course, as soon as Gregory sees that Maggie is alive, he begins to lie his ass off and says he has no idea what just happened. But, this doesn’t stop Jesus from dragging the lying bag of sh*t, kicking and screaming, to the jail.
While all of this is going on, Carl and Lydia are having the awkward after-sex conversation, with Lydia saying she liked it no matter how clumsy Carl was. She goes on to say that she doesn’t normally like it because if often hurt, which prompts Carl to go on a rampage about how her people are savages by allowing her to be raped. Lydia’s response — rape doesn’t exist in the world anymore, so it wasn’t rape. Nobody really wins the argument, but ultimately Lydia admits that she doesn’t want to go back. She wants to stay right there with Carl.
Of course this is perfect timing because almost immediately several dozen of Lydia’s Whisperers appear outside the gates and demand that she be released. Their leader is a woman named Alpha, and as a it turns out, Ken and Dante didn’t die and have been held captive by Alpha and her group the entire time. The situation at hand is made clear — Ken and Dante in exchange for Alpha’s daughter, Lydia.
It’s an easy, simple decision as far as Maggie is concerned but not so much for Carl. He pleads with Maggie, saying that Lydia doesn’t want to go back and that these people are dangerous. But Maggie dismisses it as a silly teenage crush and releases Lydia to her mother.
But it definitely isn’t over. Maggie and the group had written these people off as a small group of wanderers, but Ken and Dante have a different story to tell. They were always blind-folded but they do remember hearing lots and lots of people’s voices, possibly in the thousands. Wow. If that’s the case, this is the biggest threat we’ve seen in the comic-book series. Ever.
And, it gets worse. Old habits die hard, because Carl, once again, disobeys orders and leaves the group to go and find Lydia. My guess, if these people’s numbers are even remotely close to what Ken and Dante projected, Carl has got some major trouble heading his way.
I really liked this issue because it raised some interesting questions. Just who are these Whisperers, and how in the hell did their group become so large? And, who is this Alpha in particular? The first thing I thought of when I saw her name “Alpha” was our other visitor, Magna. The names are very similar, and actually, they even seem to look alike. Could they be related, and if so, how did both groups end up on the doorstep of the Hilltop?
