I am getting pretty tired of all the average issues The Walking Dead has been putting out recently.
Not to say that any of these recent issues have been bad but the last time there was any real excitement to the story for me was when Michonne discovered her daughter was alive.
Since then there has been some interesting commentary on politics but no excitement to go along with this, except for extremely manufactured excitement.
Unfortunately, this carries through to Issue 181: Together Strong.
Usually I would be more forgiving of this because this is the beginning of a volume and those start out pretty slow but with so many average issues coming before it I cannot help but fault the story of this issue.
Once again, this issue was not bad but nothing all that interesting happened.
The one substantial thing to note was the scene where Jesus and Aaron told Maggie that all the Whisperers were dead.
This moment was either Robert Kirkman foreshadowing that the Whisperers would return or admitting through the characters that he messed up the Whisperer storyline.
I hope it is the former because with the Whisperers returning the story could potentially get more interesting.
Besides, just because Kirkman admits he made a mistake does not fix the mistake.
There were also some fairly average scenes throughout.
One scene that I personally thought would be kind of awkward was when Carl met the new kid Joshua.
I get the feeling this is going to be weird for both Carl and Lydia because both of them had friends named Josh and both of these Joshs died.
Finally there was the moment when the group fought off a small herd but this action felt manufactured just to put some excitement in the story.
Both Princess and Mercer were in danger during this scene but I found it difficult to care since they just got introduced and I know Kirkman is not going to kill them yet.
Although, I will admit the moment where Princess kissed Mercer afterwards was pretty funny.
Then there is the cliffhanger, which also feels manufactured to create tension.
It ends with Mercer glaring at Pamela but we already knew he had a grudge against her and her family so this is nothing new.
As I said, none of this was bad and if this issue had came after some exciting ones to bridge the gap between storylines I would like it more but, with a string of average issues coming beforehand, this one just felt underwhelming.
Sadly, it looks like Issue 182 will be just as average based on the cover.
That being said though, I am excited for Issue 183 because that is where it looks like things will get interesting.
Overall, Together Strong was just an average issue.
Not good, not bad, just okay.