THE WALKING DEAD: HERE’S NEGAN!
Bat Man Begins
released OUt NOW! Publisher Image comics
Writer robert Kirkman Artist charlie adlard
The Walking Dead’s baddest bogeyman made an impact when he debuted in 2012, bashing out a beloved character’s brains and chain-swearing his way into infamy. But in the TV series Negan’s background has remained largely opaque. Here’s Negan!, originally published in Image+ magazine, shows us who he was before the end of the world, tracing his transformation from a skeezy jerk into the callous sociopath we know today.
Due to its serialised nature, the story has a certain brevity that works in its favour. Major events like the terminal illness of Negan’s wife Lucille are conveyed quickly, while a single page brilliantly juxtaposes Negan meeting a succession of companions with their inevitable deaths. It’s a smart way of showing how this man became so deadened to the suffering of others. Charlie Adlard’s art is also reliably strong – he imbues the wordless scene where Negan wraps wire around his baseball bat for the first time with fear and doubt at the decision he’s just made.
That said, Here’s Negan! never shakes its sense of redundancy. There’s nothing that will change the way readers feel about the character, and details like how he got his jacket feel like pointless box ticking. Then there’s Negan himself. “I traded in nice for funny a long time go,” he says early on. The trouble is, he’s not funny – his schtick (saying “fuck” and constantly going on about his dick) long since ceased to be amusing. For committed Walking Deadheads only. Will Salmon
Pre-apocalypse, Negan was a PE teacher. Robert Kirkman’s also said that he once worked as a used car salesman.