The Walking Dead, Volume 4: The Heart's Desire

I just realized that if you put the different volumes of the Walking Dead trade paperbacks side by side, the zombies along the bottom of the covers form a continuous mural, with small gaps. It sort of blew my mind. Eventually the story's going to be too long to see all of them together unless you have a big hallway somewhere, though. This volume turned out to be a pretty significant turn in the story, and the hordes of undead hardly even played into it. They were a a catalyst for some upheaval among the survivors, but the spark that lit the fire really had nothing to do with them. It's nice to see that not all of the conflict will come from the constant threat of being eaten by mindless corpses, and in fact it seems that they may not even be what the story is really about. It's about how people deal with having their world destroyed utterly, and how they come together or turn against each other under unending stress. The story's not as emotionally affecting as it could be, because it's not the easiest thing to keep every single character and their feelings straight, and the rate of attrition among them is so high that it's pretty easy to just not get attached. It's definitely an intriguing story, though.