This is a discussion of the serial from Image+ ($1.99 per copy or free with purchase of Previews). Although is a comic, I posted the discussion in this forum because I thought it was a better fit alongside the discussions of The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, but started a new thread so anyone not interested for whatever reason can easily avoid it.
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Part 1:
SUMMARY:
The first installment opens with a birds-eye view of Negan wrapping his baseball bat in barbed wire for the first time. The camera pulls up to reveal he’s sitting next to a campfire. Close-up on Negan’s face as he smiles evilly.
The scene flashes back even further, to Negan playing ping pong in his garage with three high school boys who refer to him as “coach.” He verbally abuses them with vulgar insults. One boy becomes upset and leaves. The other two follow. Later, Negan’s wife tells him she’s been dealing with irate parents on the phone. Negan explains he treats them that way because he wants to be perceived as “the cool teacher.” Suddenly, for no apparent reason, his wife’s eyes roll back in her head and she falls to the ground unconscious.
COMMENTARY:
Negan makes two mistakes right of the bat (no pun intended). First is his desire to be “the cool teacher”; second is the way he goes about it.
If they're going to try to humanize Negan, it probably won't work for me. There is no excuse for some of his actions. I don't care if he was abused or his wife died or whatever.
PART 2: Negan rushes his wife to the hospital, where they receive some bad news from the doctor. Negan throws himself into his work: coaching boys, working out, having inappropriate private meeting with girl students. While having sex with another woman, his mind is not in it. His partner asks him what’s wrong and he confides, “My wife has cancer.”
Yes, that would distract me occasionally from my philandering.
PART 3: Negan’s lover doesn’t react well to the news. She questions his motive for telling her, then breaks off their relationship (which was apparently his intention all along). His wife awakens when he returns home and gets into bed. He tells her that he ended the affair. His wife was aware that he was having one, but questions his timing: “Now?! You wait for this to end it?! Why?”
The next four-panel page shows the progression of his wife’s illness over time: from wheelchair, to hair loss, to bed-ridden, to hospitalized. He devotes his time to her, and crys openly in public in one scene.
Suddenly, an orderly intrudes with the news that the hospital is being evacuated. He urges Negan to come, but his wife is too sick to be moved. Outside the window, the zombie apocalypse has begun.
Well, this isn't going to end well.
Negan barricades himself in his wife’s hospital room with the intention of riding the riot or whatever-it-is out. He says to his wife that by the time she wakes up it will all be over. She is not conscious, but there’s something about her that causes him to take her pulse in her nack. Apparently finding none, he places his ear to her chest to listen for a heartbeat. Distracted by a crash outside, his attention is drawn to the window. Just then his wife turns. As she attempts to get out of bed, she falls to the floor.
I'll bet a dollar he lives through this.
PART 5: Negan rushes to his wife’s side and calls her by name.
“Lucille?! Are you okay?”
She’s not. She makes gurgling noises and reaches toward him. He withdraws. She’s unable to move, tangled in the sheets and IV drips. He feels for a pulse. Finding none, weeping, he kisses her on the forehead. He apologizes as he leaves the room and enters the hallway. He sees a young black man in civilian clothes holding off two walkers with a gurney.
“Help me!” the man implores.
Image+ is no longer free with the purchase of Previews. I don’t know if I’ll continue to buy it beyond this issue.
PART 6:
Negan rushes to save the young man. The young man tells Negan that the only way to stop them is to bust their heads open. Negan grabs a fire extinguisher from the wall and does just that. Negan is visibly shaken after having “killed” his first two walkers: “I just… murdered two people…” The young man tells him what he knows about the walkers: that they’re dead, that they eat people, that it’s been in the news for days.
Negan gives him directions to his wife’s room and asks him to kill the walker he finds there. The kid walks off with the extinguisher. When he returns, he has sussed out that the woman was Negan’s wife. He confides that his mother had been sick, and when she turned he couldn’t bring himself to kill her. Negan says, “Listen, kid. We’re all having a sh*tty f*cking day. Let’s get the f*ck out of here.”
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