A coup has occurred in the Commonwealth, but which side with Rick Grimes take?  Your Major Spoilers review of The Walking Dead #190 awaits!

THE WALKING DEAD #190

Writer: Robert Kirkman
Penciler: Charlie Adlard
Inker: Stefano Gaudiano
Gray Tones: Cliff Rathburn
Letterer: Rus Wooton
Editor: Sean Mackiewicz
Publisher: Image Comics
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: April 3, 2019

Previously in The Walking Dead: When the dust settles, what will be left of the Commonwealth?  And if a community as large and as organized as the Commonwealth can fail, what does this mean for the world?

Dark times ahead.

THE RULES ARE CHANGING

This issue opens with a tense conversation between Rick and Mercer (who has just been busted out of the Governor’s prison), with Mercer urging Rick to take over command of the Commonwealth and oust Governor Milton.  Rick realizes, probably correctly, that he can’t just walk in and overturn the existing order without more time and more access to the people but Mercer wants him to know: Time is the one thing they don’t have.  As if to prove him right, Eugene arrives at the gates with a warning of a huge herd of walkers on the move, causing Rick and his new friends to go to ground and wait out the swarm.  As the undead descend on the city, Rick tries to keep everyone calm, only to hear the horns that indicate that his troops for Alexandria have come to help clear out the herd.  Maggie and her people take out the immediate threat, while Michonne and her daughter come to terms on which of them is actually the badass in the family, and things are resolved…

…until Governor Milton arrives and accuses Rick of planning an invasion of her territory, bidding her armored army to attack!

A HERD AT THE GATES

There are a couple of really fun moments in this issue, such as when Elodie sees her mom in combat mode for the first time, and her friend marvels that Michonne is a badass, but nothing that happened here really surprised me.  The “meet a new group, feel out the new group, fight with the new group” paradigm is well-set in TWD by this point, so it wasn’t a question of IF things would go sour with The Governor than it was WHEN it would happen.  That cynicism about human nature is the weakest part of this entire series, and I have to admit, it did effect my enjoyment of the issue.  Even with that problem in play, though, Charlie Adlard does his usual wonderful work in art, making every visceral moment interesting and selling the emotion of the players as they realize change is coming faster than they thought.  I’ve been a little bit uncomfortable with the racial overtones of the alleged meritocracy in the Commonwealth for several issues, and the conflict between Mercer and the Governor brings it to the forefront in ways that are both better and so much worse.

BOTTOM LINE: THOSE WHO WILL NOT LEARN FROM THE PAST

Major Spoilers EIC Stephen has remarked that TWD has fallen into a pattern and, sadly, this story hasn’t really done anything much to allay fears that we’re in for the same old “battle between two factions” that we’ve seen over and over in this book.  Still, this creative team has surprised before, and The Walking Dead #190 is strong enough  to make me hope it will go someplace different than the battles we’ve seen before, earning 3 out of 5 stars overall.  If nothing else, it’s another solid chapter of a story that has been well-received by audiences for over a decade.

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