The Walking Dead #28 is completely unlike any other issue of the series, and that's what makes it so great. I am literally afraid for the characters, and anytime a reader feels that strongly you know the writer is doing something right. Things have never been worse for the survivors, and things have never been better for readers of The Walking Dead. Read Full Review

There are lots of very good issues of The Walking Dead. Compelling plot twists, unexpected character developments, and just general zombie badassery all contribute to an issue falling into that very good category. Sometimes they’re even truly great. This issue was one of those even rarer issues, however, that makes you feel something on a visceral level. Even after having read this issue previously, I still put down this issue feeling a sick, hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. The depravity, it seems, of Man is a thousand times worse than any type a zombie can offer.

There are villains in fiction that we love to hate, and then there are villains who we just flat-out despise. The Governor falls into the latter category. He’s not a “cool” villain like Darth Vader or Marvel’s Loki. He does not have really neat powers, an epic costume, or display some occasional endearing qualities. He is a demented caricature of the utter worst possible state of human behavior. He’s not even human really. He’s a beast with an insatiable hunger for a depravity that cannot be satiated. His monologue about how he admires the zombies for how they just keep taking and taking and taking until there is nothing left to take is the perfect reflection of the Governor’s own twisted nature. He operates purely on animalistic greed, lust, and instinct. If he wants what you have, he will gladly kill, steal, and rape until he gets it all. He is human nature unchained devoid of any higher sense of morality.

One wonders how a man could end up in such a miserable state. I have only recently begun reading Jay Bonansinga and Robert Kirkman’s Rise of the Governor book series, and I can tell you quite simply that he does NOT start out this way. He was not born a monster. Circumstances and choices took the decent man he once was and perverted every aspect of his character. What makes the Governor (once a man named Brian Blake) so terrifying is that the potential of him lurks in all of us. The only thing more horrific than the monster we fear is the one we fear to become. Every time that Rick or Michonne or Carl or any other “good guy” character we care about makes a morally complex decision, there always exists the ever-present danger that another Governor could arise. The loss of one’s life in this world is a bitter one, but the loss of one’s soul is even worse. more