It speaks to Kirkman’s phenomenal storytelling ability that he is able to make a heated fist fight between two friends a highly compelling and nuanced spectacle. What is so poignant about Rick and Tyreese’s blowout is that neither of the two alpha males are actually fighting one another. Sure, they may be clobbering the bloody hell out of each other, but make no mistake. Rick is fighting Rick. Tyreese is fighting Tyreese.

All of the immense loads of guilt that both characters have been doing their best to hide up until this point are on full display now. Rick may be accusing Tyreese of being a senseless killer, and Tyreese may be likewise acusing Rick of the same. Their biting words land their marks so brutally because the truth is that Rick and Tyreese are both technically killers, and that fact is eating them up. Almost every rage-filled word they batter one another with could just as easily be hurled at the themselves. Carol’s instance of self-harm initiated this spat, and Rick and Tyreese are proceeding to harm themselves by goading on one another. However Tyreese or Rick may justify their murders of Chris and Dexter (and much of their logic really does hold weight), it is painfully apparent that these two wounded men are not killers at heart, and the reality that they both have killed is simply too much for them. Perhaps by bloodying up and bruising one another, Rick and Tyreese can find a twisted sort of rest as they focus on the much more bearable physical aches rather than the unforgiving emotional scars. The same can probably be said for Carol too. To understand what happened in this issue, one must grasp that it was NOT about a heated fist fight between Rick and Tyreese. It was about the brutal depiction of what self-harm truly looks like, and it is just as tragic in the zombie apocalypse as it is in our world today.

With Rick and Tyreese in the compromised states they’re in as well as Andrea’s bitter report that Allen did not pull through, Rick’s response to Lori when she asked him if anything was broken seems grimly appropriate on more than one level. He confesses morosely that “everything feels broken,” and I get the sense he is not just talking about his new scrapes and bruises. He means the overall state of the group is floundering despite his best efforts to prevent that from happening. As Rick puts that bullet through Allen’s recently deceased skull, we are reminded that even now he must still be the one to take the reigns and lead in a way no one else can. more